#what happens when you read a nonbinary person's mind

[bitterbeanren]

I spent days writing this self-indulgent basically a self-insert/self-ship (but I made it second person with the hopes that others could enjoy it) fic because holy shit am I down bad. Story under the cut.

Jing Yuan x AFAB nonbinary reader. Slow burn. I tried to not mention skin tone either, skin just heats up, warms, etc. because THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS TO ME WHEN I GET EMBARRASSED!!!! Reader has boobs but size aint exactly specified. I think they’re only mentioned like once. Also, like, literally fam I wrote this for me and with my experience as enby in mind, which is gunna be different from other people’s.

This is long. This is bad. This includes some of my favourite tropes. It’s for me, IT’S FOR ME!!! But I wanted to SHARE so yeah.

THERE MIGHT BE SPOILERS MAYBE SO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK I HAVE NOT GONE OVER THIS AT ALL I JUST WROTE AND WROTE AND WROTE—

Warnings: character deaths(?), loss of a parent figure, slightly possessive Jing Yuan, author being a bit feral, exactly three underscores being used for your name, and reader has hair on their head for plot reasons. JING YUAN IS TALLER THAN YOU(because he would easily be taller than me ;-;)!!!

Moments in Time

The first time Jing Yuan meets you is after he is taken in by Swordmaster Jingliu. It’s at his new mentor’s estate while he’s still getting used to living there instead of at home— you poke your head out from behind one of the courtyard veranda’s pillars with a grin. The two of you are around the same age, though you might be a bit younger.

Jing Yuan is practicing his strikes, 586, 587, 588… and you watch him with a spark of mischief in your eyes. “Hello!” You greet, he ignores you. 589, 590, 591–

You dart towards him and he stumbles back, keeping his sword in his hand but twirling it so you’re staring up at its flat edge. “Hey!” Jing Yuan snaps at you with a glare, “That’s dangerous, be more careful!”

“You weren’t going to hit me,” you state, poking the blade before returning your gaze to him, smiling. “You’re Jing Yuan, right? I’m Yingxing’s apprentice!”

Sheathing his sword, Jing Yuan quickly wracks his brain— Yingxing… Yingxing… ah, the furnace master of the Artisan Commission. Jingliu’s friend. He remembers the sandy-haired man and Imbibitor Lunae visiting for tea. “I didn’t realize that the furnace master had taken on an apprentice. Is he here as well?”

“Yes! He’s in a meeting with the swordmaster, so I decided to look for you.”

Jing Yuan frowns. “You… decided to look for me?”

“Yeah! Jingliu mentioned you were training, and I wanted to meet you!”

The white-haired boy places one of his hands on his hip, looking at you expectantly. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, apprentice swordsmith.”

“Oh, I guess I should have introduced myself better…” you let out a laugh. It’s cute. Then, you hold out your hand to him. “Nice to meet you, Jing Yuan. My name is ___.”

~*~

Whenever Yingxing comes to visit Jingliu, you come along to visit Jing Yuan. You remind the boy of a duckling— you follow behind Yingxing like one, eyes bright, and usually chattering cheerfully. It’s cute… you’re cute, Jing Yuan thinks. Especially when Yingxing ruffles your hair and you pout.

Jing Yuan starts ruffling your hair too, and you complain and scowl, but then you laugh and try to ruffle his unruly hair in response, and Jing Yuan compares you to a sun. Warm, cheerful… your smiles and laughter brightens any space you’re in.

“It’s people like that who we as Cloud Knights aspire to protect,” Jingliu tells him one day, the two of them watching as you animatedly tell Dan Feng a story while Yingxing looks at you and the Vidyadhara fondly. “They’re the ones who make what we’re doing worth it, Jing Yuan.”

The boy nods his head in agreement.

You’re the bright-eyed apprentice of the furnace master, and he’s the apprentice of the swordmaster. As your mentors are friends— along with the High Elder of the Vidyadhara— it makes sense that the two of you would become close as well. And Jing Yuan doesn’t mind.

Whenever you visit, he’s the first one you look for. Jing Yuan teaches you starchess, and you show him sketches of weapons you want to make. Some days you practice basic combat with him in the courtyard. Your mentors sometimes sit on the veranda and watch the two of you while chatting over tea, and once you’re both worn out from training you dart over to claim some snacks for yourselves.

The years pass and Jing Yuan is significantly taller than you now. It’s more difficult for you to ruffle his hair. So now, Jing Yuan mostly just pats the top of your head, only ruffling your hair when he feels particularly playful. Both of you are now in your early twenties: Jing Yuan is an apprentice Cloud Knight and you spend your days designing weapons and continuing your apprenticeship under Yingxing. On your days off, the two of you often sit together in the courtyard where you first met, relaxing under the pomegranate tree and enjoying the shade it provides. You lay on the ground, arms and legs splayed out, and let out a yawn.

“Tired, are you? I hope I’m not boring you, apprentice swordsmith,” Jing Yuan teases.

“Sorry,” you smile sheepishly. “Yingxing always scolds me when he catches me napping in the middle of the day, but I just feel so tired sometimes, you know?”

The white-haired apprentice Cloud Knight chuckles, shaking his head. “I’m sure that Master Yingxing is just concerned about you.”

“Yeah, I know. Ugh, it’s so embarrassing— I accidentally called him Dad the other day when he was scolding me,” you groan, covering your eyes with your arm. “He looked so taken aback, I didn’t know what to do.”

Jing Yuan lays down next to you, crossing his arms behind his head as a makeshift pillow. It’s comfortable. “Really? I assumed that the Furnace Master would be overjoyed to hear that from you. You’ve always acted like a kid around him, and he always struck me as the sort of man who would treat his apprentices like his own children.”

“I—“ you pause, removing your arm from your face. “I mean, you’re not wrong. It’s just… been a bit tough for me to face him lately. He has basically raised me since I became his apprentice over a decade ago, but… it’s a weird situation.”

“Ah…” Jing Yuan lets out a thoughtful hum. He knows you should just talk it out with Yingxing, but understands that it’s a tough thing for you to discuss. Unlike you, the furnace master is a short-lived species— you’ve obviously become attached, and though you’ve spent a good amount of your youth being trained by the man, you knew that he would be gone in the blink of an eye in comparison to you. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out, ___. You’re smart, after all.”

“I am smart, aren’t I?” You grin widely at the compliment, then look a bit sad. “I… won’t talk about it much more than this, Yuan, and we should talk about something else soon because I know thinking like this could get me in trouble, but… I wish Yingxing could be long-lived like us. I want him to be around for all my milestones, you know? It’s… selfish.”

“It’s not selfish for you to wish for,” Jing Yuan assures. “Sadly, it is not a wish that can be achieved.”

“I know, I know… let’s change topics now,” you sigh, then turn your head to smile at him. “You have an expedition coming up with Jingliu soon, right? Man, I can’t wait to hear all about it…! Do you think you’re gunna lose another sword?”

“That happened once, ___!”

The two of you banter back and forth for a bit before just enjoying the quiet and the artificial sunlight, and the next thing Jing Yuan knows he’s dozed off.

Later, when he wakes, you’re curled up against his side. Your head is laid on his arm, one of your legs is slung over his, your arm is loosely resting across his waist, and your chest—

Jing Yuan feels his face go hot. Your chest is pressed against his side and now it’s all he can think about. He’s a young man after all— and though you prefer to live as gender neutrally as possible, you have the body of a beautiful… person and it’s one that Jing Yuan is undoubtedly attracted to. Often it’s hard to remember due to your preference for unisex clothing and tops a bit too big for you, but you’ve matured.

“Aeons,” Jing Yuan curses under his breath. When he tries to carefully untangle himself from you, you whine, nuzzling against his arm in your sleep and the white-haired man knows he’s absolutely fucked.

With his other hand, the one attached to the arm you aren’t currently resting on, he runs it down his face, covering his mouth and willing his heart to slow down.

He shouldn’t be attracted to his best friend, but he is. You’re kind, funny, and dedicated— your smile is something that never fails to brighten his day. Everything about you, even your flaws, were things that Jing Yuan found endearing and cute and—

Oh. Oh no. He’s in love with you. You snicker a bit in your sleep as though you’re amused by his realization, then roll onto your back, allowing Jing Yuan to gently remove his arm from under your head.

You’re precious to him. You’ve been precious to him for years. For Aeons sake, he can’t figure out when the friendship shared between the two of you blossomed into something more for him.

Before the artificial sun sets, he shakes you awake with a lazy smile and lets you know that you wasted the day napping. You complain that if he was awake, he should have woken you up sooner.

Jing Yuan loves you, he realized it. But he isn’t going to tell you unless you realize it yourself. Instead, he teases you and thinks how he understands now why you’re wary of your attachment to Yingxing, even if his empathy comes from a different place.

After all, the idea of losing you in any way terrifies him.

~*~

You craft something that isn’t a weapon. A floral hair stick with a hair slide, both made of steel.

“And what is this for, Apprentice Swordsmith?” Jing Yuan asks you after you show him.

“It’s for Da—“ you cut yourself off, smiling sheepishly. Ah, you’re still doing that. Thinking of him as your father, but doing your best to use his name and title as if it’ll lessen your attachment. “For Master Yingxing. It’s a gift for his birthday tomorrow. I worked really hard on it— small things like this are much harder to make than weapons... I broke all my other attempts.” You look up into Jing Yuan’s golden eyes, your worries etched on your brow. “Do you think it’s good enough? Should I have crafted him a weapon instead?”

“He’ll love it,” Jing Yuan assures. At his words, you perk up, practically bouncing from foot to foot. “Am I to assume that Master Yingxing’s birthday is the reason why you invited both myself and Master Jingliu to his estate tomorrow night?”

“Yes! I also invited Baiheng and Dan Feng,” you tell your friend cheerfully. “Birthdays are important, after all.” The ‘for short-lived species’ goes unsaid.

“I’m impressed, though,” Jing Yuan picks up the hair stick and slide. “I never thought you of all people would make something so delicate.”

“Oh, shut up,” you laugh, snatching it back and placing it carefully into the box. “I wanted him to have something nice to put in his hair, but I couldn’t find one that I liked in the market… so I figured I could design one myself.”

“It’s well crafted.”

“I’m sure that Master Yingxing could make a better one. He’s so talented— I need to learn as much from him as I can. I mean, look at your guan dao. It’s a work of art— all of the weapons of the High Cloud Quintet are masterpieces.”

Jing Yuan has heard this before. “You should give yourself more credit, Apprentice Swordsmith. The weapons you make for the Cloud Knights—“

“Aren’t good enough,” you interrupt, shaking your head stubbornly. “Not yet.”

Though he doesn’t like it when you’re so hard on yourself, the determined glint in your eyes is more than enough to make his heart flutter. For years, Jing Yuan has allowed his feelings for you to grow, and now they simmer under the surface of every action, word, and thought towards you.

You tuck the box into your bag, then reach out and clasp Jing Yuan’s hand between yours, beaming up at him. Your smile is a sun and it’s all he can do to revolve around you. “I’ve gotta go and pick up supplies for the party tomorrow— see you then?”

“Of course,” Jing Yuan replies, grinning back down at you.

The next day, Jing Yuan arrives at the Yingxing estate with Jingliu, whose red eyes are cold but soften slightly when Yingxing waves at them from the courtyard. She’s close to them, but not with Jing Yuan. The spider lilies are in bloom in the garden, and the leaves of the courtyard’s maple tree almost match them. The aging man stands tall in his casual clothes as they approach, smiling brightly, his long, sandy hair blowing slightly in the breeze. “Jingliu! Jing Yuan! It’s good to see you both, are you well?”

“Yes,” Jingliu answers with a curt nod, a smile forming on her lips as she rests a hand on her hip. “Happy birthday, Yingxing. Have you enjoyed it thus far?”

“I have! Dan Feng arrived earlier and is currently helping ___ bring dinner into the sitting room. Baiheng is there, too,” Yingxing turns around, showing off hair accessories that Jing Yuan recognizes. “And look what my kid made me! Aren’t they beautiful?”

“Your kid?” Jingliu lets out a short laugh. “It’s… sweet how attached you are to your apprentice.”

“They called me dad, Liu. Let me be happy about it,” the furnace master chuckles. “We practically raise our apprentices, after all. And ___ will probably be my only one,” Yingxing adds. His expression changes slightly for a moment, sad, but then he grins and gestures towards the main house. “Let’s go join the others.”

“…Yeah,” Jing Yuan’s master nods. Her expression is more guarded, now, and she glances over her shoulder at Jing Yuan. “You better not be thinking of calling me Mom, Jing Yuan.”

Ah.

As Yingxing bursts into laughter, Jing Yuan understands. This is yet another difference between short-lived and long-lived species… and his master is trying to cheer her friend up. Jingliu is, at times, stubborn to a fault, but she quickly realized what she needed to do for her friend after unintentionally reminding him of his mortality.

Jing Yuan smiles, following after the woman he respects so much. “What, you won’t find it cute if I did?”

“Not at all. It would be much cuter coming from ___.”

“I’m hurt, Master.”

“I agree with Liu— ___ is far cuter than you in every way, Jing Yuan,” Yingxing teases. “But I’m sure you already knew that.”

“You’re correct,” Jing Yuan smiles. “___ is incredibly cute. I don’t think a cuter person exists.”

Yingxing shoots Jing Yuan a knowing look, and Jing Yuan grins back at him boyishly. Jingliu lets out a small sigh, and the three continue to walk towards the main house. “Are you ever going to tell them, Jing Yuan?”

“I’m waiting for them to realize it themself,” the white-haired knight replies. The three of them drop the conversation as they enter the building, seeing you balancing multiple plates while Baiheng and Dan Feng arrange the dishes on the table.

“Jing Yuan!” Your eyes lock onto his instantly, and a happy look spreads across your face. Then, you look at your mentor and his. “Welcome back, Dad! And hello, Jingliu!”

Jing Yuan smiles. You two must have finally talked it out.

“One would almost think that it’s your birthday today with how excited you are, little ___,” Jingliu comments, crossing her arms.

“I’m just really happy that everyone showed up to celebrate Dad’s birthday with him today!” You respond easily, and the sandy-haired man chuckles, ruffling your hair fondly.

Though you’re all adults, the other four members of the High Cloud Quintet sometimes treat you and Jing Yuan like you’re still kids at these events. The two of you sit together, pouring sweet wine for your elders and feeling happy. At the square table, only three sides are used. Baiheng sits next to Jingliu, Yingxing and Dan Feng sit together, and you sit at the corner between Dan Feng and Jing Yuan. You take pictures of everyone and pass food around and drink along with them, your smile never leaving your face even when it’s time to say goodnight.

Yingxing has an arm slung around your shoulders as you grin up at him in the courtyard with everyone under the maple tree. “Dad, Dad! Did you have a good birthday?” You ask the older man, who ruffles your hair with his other hand.

“Of course I did. I can’t wait for next year.”

Dan Feng watches the two of you with a fond expression, and Jing Yuan feels his heart clench as he realizes that the corners of Yingxing’s eyes didn’t used to crinkle like that when he smiled.

Every year, Yingxing looks a bit older than the rest of his friends.

~*~

Time takes away from you, again and again.

Dan Feng is going to be forced to reincarnate and lose all his memories. None of you are allowed to see him. Once his new incarnation comes of age, he’ll be banished. At the same time, Yingxing is being kept under close watch by you and the remaining members of the High Cloud Quintet.

You’re mad at both of them, but you still feel grateful. Your wish came true, but it’s at the cost of someone else that you cherish. You’re heartbroken, but Yingxing is your dad. He’s the one who taught you how to use the forge, the one who encouraged you, the one who would help bandage your burns, cuts, or scrapes.

For the next century you enjoy your borrowed time. He teaches you more and more and more. Then the mara strikes him— his sandy hair turns black. His eyes change, and he doesn’t recognize you anymore.

“…Dad?”

He doesn’t smile at you. Doesn’t call you his kid, something that always made you happy even though you weren’t a kid anymore. His arms are bound behind his back and he stares at you with empty eyes, now blood red.

“He’s gone, ___,” Jingliu tells you. She looks tired. “…To be struck with mara is to be a long-lived species. It just… happened sooner than we expected after what happened.”

It hurts more, this way. Before, you knew he would be gone before you, but after what Dan Feng and Yingxing had done you let yourself believe that maybe you would still have one of them around for a long time.

It hurts more, this way. Now Dan Feng is gone, and though physically Yingxing is here, he isn’t.

You’re led away by the Cloud Knights after you say your one-sided goodbyes. Time keeps on taking from you.

Jing Yuan comes to visit you. The spider lilies in the garden are blooming again, but now you sit under the maple tree alone, feeling empty. The Cloud Knight Lieutenant says your name, and you look up at him with tears in your eyes.

“…A momento,” Jing Yuan says softly, kneeling down in front of you and taking your hand in his. In it, he places a familiar hair slide and stick. “I’m so sorry, ___.”

Your lip quivers, and you throw your arms around your friend’s neck with a sob.

~*~

You are asked to take on an apprentice after Baiheng passes away, but you don’t take one on. Then, after Jingliu is struck with mara and Jing Yuan goes to confront her, you are offered the position of furnace master. You refuse.

You continue to live in and care for your adopted father’s estate, though you opt to live in the east wing rather than take the main house. Whenever Jing Yuan needs his weapons maintained or repaired, you are the one he goes to. He's an arbiter general now, and you’re proud of him. But now it’s more rare to see him, and now that there are guards stationed at his estate you don’t feel comfortable visiting him. Today, he’s visiting you, and you’ve set up tea in the courtyard under the maple tree.

“I heard you were offered the position of furnace master,” Jing Yuan mentions. You wince under his stare. “Care to explain your refusal?”

“I don’t want to deal with all the politics that you need to deal with now that you’re in a position of power,” you shrug. The man pouts. “Plus, I enjoy what I’m doing now. The forge here is all I need— I don’t need more.”

It’s true. The forge and workshop that Dad had created in the west wing has everything you need to do your work, alone, without strangers peering over your shoulder and commenting on what you should do. What you should make.

“I’ve also heard whispers that you’ve been refusing weapon commissions.”

With a sigh, you put down your teacup. “What is this, an interrogation?”

“Just curiosity. What have you been crafting instead?”

“Tools, armor, and other such things,” you lean your head against your hand. You’re tired of war. Of battle. You’re tired of losing the people you care about. “Your weapons are the only ones I’ll work with now.”

“Oh? I’m the exception then?” Jing Yuan gazes at you curiously, and you smile at him.

“Yes, you’re the exception,” you tell him genuinely. “See, I like making armor and tools more now. I don’t like fighting— I know that it’s necessary sometimes, but I want to help people create. I want to protect them in my own way… I know you’ll use your weapons to protect, so now the only weapons I create will be for you.”

Jing Yuan’s expression softens and he reaches out to place his hand on yours. “You want peace?”

“I do.”

“Then that is what I will aim for as well.”

~*~

Jing Yuan visits as you’re tending to the garden.

“Look, ___! A grimalkin! I’ve named it Mimi.”

You stare at the white fuzzball in your best friend’s arms, and can’t help but reach out to pet the little thing. “A grimalkin? It’s so cute! But aren’t you too busy to take care of a pet?”

Jing Yuan’s eyes hold a spark of mischief. “I’ve decided that Qingzu is going to be responsible for it while I’m busy with my duties.”

Your heart sinks for the Vidyadhara. “Yuan… it isn’t very nice of you to purchase a pet, then have your subordinate be the one to care for it.”

The man had the gall to look offended. “I will care for it. I already feel incredibly fond of Mimi, after all.”

Arms crossed, you give Jing Yuan an unimpressed look. “You know that isn’t what I meant, General.”

“Please, my dear friend, you know I prefer it when you call me by name.”

“Which I would be more than happy to use… were you not using your position to sic your responsibilities on others.”

“You wound me, ___.”

You let out a long-suffering sigh, then bury your hands in Mimi’s fur. “Your owner is awfully irresponsible, isn’t he Mimi? I would like to apologize on his behalf.”

The little grimalkin stares at you with big blue eyes. You feel your heart melt at the sight, and you lean forwards to press a kiss to the top of the pet’s head.

Jing Yuan watches you interact with Mimi and decides that the sight of you and the white-furred grimalkin together was worth every cent he paid to that merchant.

“If you’d like, please feel free to visit Mimi at the Seat of Divine Foresight,” Jing Yuan offers. Since he had taken up the position of Arbiter General, you hadn’t visited him at his home or workplace. If he wants to see you, which he always does, he has to visit your estate or chance to see you at the markets. “Or at my estate, should we not be there.”

You let out a small laugh. “And what reason would a lowly artisan have to even enter the Seat of Divine Foresight, General? I don’t think it would make sense for me to visit your workplace. Especially if I say it’s to play with your pet.”

“The guards at both my estate and the Seat of Divine Foresight know that if you ever come by, you’re to be allowed in regardless of reason, even if I am not there,” Jing Yuan tells you firmly. “And you aren’t a lowly artisan. You’re the only swordsmith who I will allow to handle my weapons as well as my dearest friend.”

You’re surprised by his words. Ever since Jing Yuan had become Arbiter General, you felt like you couldn’t visit him. To learn that the man had given his guards specific instructions to let you in was enough to make your cheeks warm in embarrassment.

“Yuan, you really didn’t need to go to all that trouble!”

Jing Yuan grins down at you. “I’d love for you to visit me personally, but if Mimi is the one you come to see, I completely understand.

“Yuan!”

~*~

After Jing Yuan introduces you to Mimi, you try to visit the adorable creature every few weeks when you have time. This continues up until early November, when you leave to spend a couple of months on another Alliance ship to deliver some non-Luofu commissions. When you return in mid-January, it is clear that Mimi is not a grimalkin. Mimi is, in fact, a lion. You have never felt worse for Qingzu. The Vidyadhara looks frazzled when you drop by the Seat of Divine Foresight to play with the not-grimalkin upon your return.

As soon as Mimi sees you, they rise from where they were laying down and pad over to you, brushing their head against you. You look around in alarm, burying your hands in familiar white fur, and soon spot an exhausted looking Qingzu approaching.

“Ah, ___,” Qingzu greets you with a bow. “It has been awhile. Are you here to play with Wave-Treading Snow Lion?”

“…Jing Yuan shouldn’t be allowed to name anything. When and why did he change their name?”

“A couple of days ago,” Qingzu smiles at you but her eyes look empty. “He decided that Mimi didn’t fit as a name anymore.”

“They were raised with the name Mimi. We shouldn’t confuse the poor thing,” you sigh, running a hand through your hair. “And I’m assuming he’s been making you the primary caretaker of a lion you didn’t ask for?” A nod. “I’m so sorry, Qingzu. Thank you so much— Mimi’s still so sweet and behaved thanks to your care… I’ll talk to the general about this, though. Is he here?”

The exhausted Vidyadhara gives you a thankful look. “Yes, he’s in his office.”

“I’m going to kill him. Ignore the screams.”

“Of course, ___.”

You move through the Seat of Divine Foresight with a mission. Mimi makes a sound akin to disappointment, padding after you. Despite you being away the last few months, it still isn’t unusual for you to visit. You get along well with most of the staff, even. Plus, you’re the only one that seems to be able to talk sense into the general. Some jokingly say that you’re the only one who can tame the man, which always earns an eye roll from you. You don’t even knock before you enter Jing Yuan’s office, and the white-haired general blinks at you sleepily, a lazy smile gracing his lips. You could throttle him, you’re sure of it.

“Ah, ___! You’ve returned. How was your trip?” Jing Yuan asks, and after Mimi has entered the office, you shut the door, storm up to Jing Yuan and place your hands down on his desk, leaning over it to glare at the man. “Ooh… you don’t look happy. What have I done this time?”

“Stop siccing your pet on others!” you snap. Mimi senses your fury and opts to head towards a large pet bed in the corner of Jing Yuan’s office. “And for goodness sake, Mimi is a perfectly fine name. Don’t go changing it on them!”

“But Qingzu does such a good job of feeding and watering Wave-Treading–” Your glare darkens, “Apologies, Mimi. And Qingzu hasn’t complained–”

“You are taking advantage of your position as arbiter general, Jing Yuan. How is she going to complain to you, her superior, about how her superior is taking advantage of his position to make her take care of his pet?! If the next time I visit, Qingzu looks as tired as they do today, I’m going to personally drag you to her by your ear and make you apologize.”

Jing Yuan begins grinning cheekily, as though the idea amuses him. “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad…”

“Oh, really?” you reply dryly, moving around the desk and reaching for Jing Yuan’s ear. The man dodges, easily catching your wrist in his hand and tugging you towards him. “I thought you said it didn’t sound so bad.”

“Mmm… But this isn’t the next time you’ve visited. You haven’t yet given me an opportunity to rectify my previous actions,” Jing Yuan pouts. You roll your eyes, moving to sit on the man’s desk. “Though, I don’t particularly mind the idea of your manhandling me.”

Your face heats up. “Don’t talk like that, Yuan!”

He seems to relish in your embarrassment, standing from his desk and leaning in close to you with a spark of mischief in his eyes. “Talk like what, ___?”

“You know what I mean, General,” you grumble, pushing his shoulder. You’re not unused to being physically close to the man— you grew up together, after all. But this feels… different than usual.

“I missed you while you were away,” Jing Yuan tells you genuinely. “Mimi missed you as well. It was incredibly cute how they followed you in here.”

“Don’t change the subject. You were the one that accidentally adopted a pet lion so—“

He leans in again. “Did you not miss me?”

You feel your heart speed up. “Why are you being so… clingy, Jing Yuan? This isn’t the first time we’ve been apart.”

“Normally you don’t leave the Luofu,” Jing Yuan sighs, resting his head on your shoulder and loosely wrapping his arms around you in a hug.

Your ears feel hot and you have no idea why. This wasn’t the first time Jing Yuan hugged you like this. Why did it feel different now? His unruly hair tickles your cheek, and you hesitantly hug him back. “You’re not going to avoid this conversation forever, you know.”

Jing Yuan hums, nuzzling you, then releases you from his hold with a relaxed expression. “Should I get Qingzu to bring tea—“

“No! I’ll make it myself,” you huff, hopping off the desk and heading towards the door. “I’ll be back in a few moments, and then we’re having a long talk about how you should be treating the ones who work under you.”

“So long as I also get to hear about your trip, then that sounds fine to me.”

~*~

Some of Jing Yuan’s employees had invited you out. They said it was to thank you for helping them deal with the General.

Since your return to the Luofu, the dozing general had stopped giving his subordinates Mimi-related tasks and was handling them himself (although Qingzu was given a raise to continue handling Mimi’s food and water when Jing Yuan was tending to business away from the Seat of Divine Foresight). You personally assisted Jing Yuan with the budget and planning of Mimi’s meals— Mimi did not need fancy cuts of meat and also did not get nearly as much exercise as a wild lion. Therefore, Mimi’s diet was adjusted to suit its lifestyle. Which was, thankfully, much more affordable for the man.

Jing Yuan’s sudden change in behavior in regards to his pet coinciding with your timely return had essentially made you a living legend to all who worked at the Seat of Divine Foresight. So, not seeing a reason to refuse, you joined them for food and drinks at a nearby establishment.

A few hours have passed since you joined them… and you have had far too much to drink. It wasn’t entirely your fault, though. Everyone was offering you drinks and you had trouble telling them no. When you stand to use the restroom, things feel a bit wobbly, and the edges of your vision blur a bit.

Qingzu steadies you. She looks a bit worried. “Are you alright?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” you laugh. “Just had a bit too much to drink. Be right back.”

After your restroom visit, as you head back to your table where the others are, Jing Yuan enters the eatery. His hair is down, he’s dressed in gray pants and a dark red linen shirt, and the moment he sees you he smiles.

“Yuan!” You greet him cheerfully, taking his hands in yours and smiling up at him. “I didn’t realize you were coming!”

The general notes how you seem a bit off balance, how your eyes can’t seem to focus, and how unguarded your smile is. Ah. You’re drunk. “Qingzu mentioned it to me, so once I was finished with Mimi I came over.”

“Everyone’s been buying me drinks and stuff,” you tell him with a grin. “How much trouble did you put them through while I was away?”

Jing Yuan gazes down at you, feigning innocence. “Oh, I don’t think it was that much.”

“The amount of glasses I’ve been handed tells me otherwise.”

“They could be handing you drinks because of how cute you are,” Jing Yuan offers. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you like this. Perhaps I should thank everyone.”

“You look smaller without your armor.”

Jing Yuan nearly trips over his own feet, and the look of genuine surprise on his face at your unexpected comment causes you to laugh. “I… didn’t expect that.”

“I mean, you’re not a small person by any means, but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen you outside of your armor. I like it, you look cute,” you begin to ramble. “You’re always cute, though. Except you always seem tired now, so I feel bad wanting to spend time with you since I know you should rest. And you need to get your bangs trimmed, because it’s hard to see both your eyes. They’re very pretty, you know.”

Your best friend begins to laugh, placing his hands on your shoulders and moving to stand in front of you. He looks down at you with an amused, happy grin on his face. “My dear, if you keep talking like that, people are going to get the wrong idea. Come now, let’s return to the others and let them know we’re leaving… I am suddenly feeling awfully tired, and would rather spend my off-time with you privately.”

“But you just arrived! Shouldn’t you have a drink with everyone too?”

Jing Yuan leans down, his voice low. “Oh, I don’t think it would be wise for me to be drinking tonight.”

A shiver runs down your spine, and you agree with a hint of uncertainty. Jing Yuan keeps a hand on your back, guiding you towards the employees of the Seat of Divine Foresight, and thanks everyone for treating you and being so welcoming as you follow the general’s lead, being guided to his estate and led inside where Mimi greets you.

Yuan brings you water, and you rest on the floor, using the pet lion as a pillow while you sober up. Your best friend sets himself up next to you, also resting himself on Mimi lazily, and he gazes at you with a softness that makes you feel warm inside. You reach out with both hands and pet Jing Yuan’s hair with a cackle.

The man catches your wrists in one hand, chuckling, and you feel your chest tighten as you stare into his golden eyes and see his boyish grin.

Oh.

Oh no.

His free hand reaches down to ruffle your hair, and you take the opportunity to lower your head and hide your expression. Your face and ears feel hot, feeling mortified by how touchy you’ve been with him— has it just been you being friendly, or were you subconsciously gravitating towards him because you’re attracted to him? And you feel guilty. Because Jing Yuan has always been a good friend to you— your best friend. But maybe you haven’t been thinking of him as a friend— you’ve overstepped. You’ve hugely overstepped.

You ask for more water, your throat feeling even dryer, and Jing Yuan stands to go grab some for you. When he returns and you take the glass, the man gazes at you a bit worriedly and asks if you feel okay.

You don’t.

This realization has made you feel sick, and your head and your heart are starting to hurt because you have drunk way too much and you feel like you have taken advantage of your friendship with your best friend to be so close to him. And he’s sweet, he’s so sweet, rubbing your back as you place your head between your legs and try to sort out your thoughts and blame your nausea on all the alcohol and not your internal crisis.

He doesn’t want you heading home while you aren’t feeling well, even though you insist on it. So you end up sleeping in his guest room with Mimi.

You don’t get much sleep.

~*~

Jing Yuan can tell that you’re avoiding him.

After that night, you seem to only visit Mimi at the Seat of Divine Foresight when he has responsibilities elsewhere. If he sends you a text you respond much like normal, but attempts to call you go straight to voicemail. When he asks you to visit him, or if he can visit you, you’re always too busy, which might have been true… but you still seemed to have time to visit Mimi. Then, the last time he chanced to see you in the markets, you mysteriously disappeared, when before you would cheerfully greet him and chat for a bit.

The Arbiter General feels a tad neglected.

Not wanting this to go on any longer, he decides to drop by your estate unannounced. If you really are just busy, then he will apologize for his rudeness… but Jing Yuan feels that there is something wrong because this feels different.

At your estate, he sees you sitting in the garden under the maple tree with numerous envelopes surrounding you. As soon as you see him, your eyes widen and you stand. “General! What are you doing here?”

General.

Before, his title was only used to tease him. You are not currently teasing him. Still, he stays level headed and places a smile on his lips. “Am I not allowed to visit a friend?”

“I mean, you are… but I’m very busy, see?” You hold up one of the many envelopes surrounding you as Jing Yuan approaches. The General picks up one of the open documents, and you try to snatch it from his hands, horrified. “Don’t— those are personal!”

The General clenches his jaw as he reads over the letter. “These are courtship requests,” he states, voice flat.

You look down at your hands, feeling embarrassment coming off you in waves. “Yeah. I’m looking into them. They’ve been piling up since I returned— apparently I’ve caught the eye of many artisan families.”

The General crosses his arms. Jing Yuan feels… resentful. He isn’t surprised that you have received courtship requests— you’re hardworking, kind, and attractive. However, you have never shown an interest in dating before, happy with his friendship and building positive relationships with the staff at the Seat of Divine Foresight. And your business relationships were all going well from his understanding. Yet, suddenly you’ve taken an interest in more?

A possessive, primal part of him wants to tear up all the requests and make you only see him. After all, no one could care for, cherish, love you more than he has these past few centuries. But the other part of him is just hurt. “And these potential suitors… matter more than spending time with me?”

“No!” You shake your head frantically, reaching for his wrist, then faltering before you actually touch him.

This won’t do. Jing Yuan thinks, frowning. You had never held yourself back from touching him before. But now, you’re lowering your shaky hands down to your side, refusing to meet his gaze and staring down at the ground. “Dearest, what’s wrong?” He asks, concern lacing his words as he reaches out to hold your hand.

You step back, barely dodging him, holding your hands to your chest, and when your eyes lock onto his he can see it— fear. You’re scared and Jing Yuan has no idea why. The white-haired man’s golden eyes widen, and he feels his throat tighten uncomfortably.

“I’m sorry,” you blurt, hiding your face in your hands. You seem so small like this. Jing Yuan hasn’t seen you this scared since… since Yingxing was mara struck. “Please don’t touch me, Jing Yuan. I can’t— I don’t think I can handle it right now, it's too much.”

“___…”

“I’m so, so sorry,” you tremble, now wiping your eyes as tears form. “Please don’t be mad. It’s all my fault, I’m sorry. I’m just looking into them to try and fix things, then I can be around you again.”

Jing Yuan steps forward, grabbing your wrists and forcing you to stop hiding from him. You weakly try to tug yourself free as you cry, and Jing Yuan lowers the two of you to the ground, kneeling in front of you. “Tell me what’s wrong, ___. Please. I can’t stand to see you like this.”

“I’ve been a terrible friend,” you sniffle, staring into Jing Yuan’s eyes. You look pained, and he wipes away your tears with his thumbs. “I’ve been hugely overstepping and taking advantage of our friendship, and it’s unfair to you, and I’m so, so sorry.”

Jing Yuan releases your wrists and pulls you into his chest, hugging you close. “You have never taken advantage of our friendship,” he assures, but you shake your head as you melt into his hold, clinging to him like a lifeline.

“Even now,” you cry. “I can’t stop thinking— My heart shouldn’t feel like it’s about to burst because you’re here. I’m so happy that you’re here, and I feel so guilty, because I still want more. It’s selfish. I should be happy with just this, I shouldn’t want to be closer to you— when did I start wanting to be closer?!”

His hold tightens on you, and his heart beats faster. You’ve realized it. You’ve finally realized it. Jing Yuan can’t help it, even as you’re crying and rambling into his chest, he grins. And, Aeons, he’s going to take his time with you. Everything has hit you all at once, but he’s been patient for centuries.

It’s time for him to be selfish.

“Trust me, ___,” he chuckles into your ear, pulling back and smiling down at you with half-lidded eyes barely concealing his joy. “You aren’t being selfish at all.”

#honkai jing yuan #jing yuan x reader #jing yuan #honkai star rail #blade is yingxing #hsr spoilers #hsr writing #self ship #self indulgent fanfic

[bas-writes]

a lot has happened lately, but so far i haven't made any official statement about my decisions and the path i want to take as a writer. it was a long road of trial and error & detailed examination of conscience in regard of my bad habits, gained experience, and goals and expectations. there are some massive changes that i need to address, followed by explanation of my decisions. i know i don't need to explain myself but i feel it's only fair to my loyal readers to share at least little insight into the context.

I. One Piece goes on indefinite vacation...

not going to lie, i was falling out of this fandom for years. it's started in 2021 when i fell victim to bullying and stalking, initiated by a widely-known (and still active, as far as i am aware of) x reader writer. it's the biggest reason for my slow withdrawal but not a sole one: pressing discourse around my comfort characters, toxic environment i fell into when looking for a relief from relentless bullying, forcing myself to write for topics and characters i didn't even like, readers overstepping my boundaries over and over again, falling into a trap of purity culture...oh, the list is long. way too long.

i still love one piece but i don't want to create for it en-masse anymore. right now it's just a wound that's far from healing, i need to treat it at my own pace. aside from an occasional poke at sapphic topics and my fav trio, i doubt it will appear in other way than commissions or gifts for friends. and some characters (kid, sanji, marco, katakuri, shanks & a few more) will never return.

II. ...but new fandoms arrive!

jujutsu kaisen is right now the main love of my life & will remain as the main fandom for long. but i found more series and characters i adore enough to feel that creative spark buzzing in my veins. soon you should see fics appearing for: demon slayer, chainsaw man, haikyuu and hell's paradise!

i'm keeping my head low rn when it comes to requests but i want to hold at least a kinktober open for them so you definitely will have an opportunity to see your faves from those series from me!

III. It's a gender neutral & afab Y/N sphere now!

it's something that was inevitably floating over me and my fics (and some of y'all definitely caught the whiff of it already), but i couldn't quite find courage to put a hard limit. we all know how it is in the y/n circles: way too many people expect from writers to cater to everyone, and treat it as a personal offense if you prefer to play in your own sandbox. as if writing y/ns was "activism", not a fandom activity like any other.

so, i won't force myself to write against myself anymore. i feel the most happy and comfortable when i make my y/ns gender neutral and when i'm giving them vaginas (and sometimes boobs) when i'm writing smut with them. i don't want to battle my weirdly-veiled dysphoria to force female reader out of myself. i don't want to stress myself while writing amab y/n, from the sheer biological fact of being unable to relate via lack of penis, to being sick and tired of the toxicity and misogyny that m!reader circles reek of.

so, gender neutral and afab it is. sometimes i will stray towards afab nonbinary or transmasc direction, if i feel like i need some good gender vibes coming from my fics.

it doesn't mean i will never write different y/ns. commissions, gifts for friends, exchanges, random ideas for a plot that requires a specific kind of y/n, sapphics feels, and such will appear here and there. i will also interact lots with f!reader fics, since it's what i see lots around & don't mind reading, if i feel more fem or if it's from a writer i like and trust.

incoming ino x reader (that i hope to publish tomorrow) will be the last non-sapphic f!reader that will appear for a long while. all requests i'm keeping in my drafts right now will be turned into completely gender neutral or from fem to more general afab reader (i don't have any requests for amab readers rn anyway). unless you really don't want to have f!reader taken out of your request - then please, let me know, i will delete it so you can head with it to a different writer.

IV. Never miss a fic again - sign for a tag list!

and now a little treat! if you don't want to miss a fic about the topic that might interest you, you may sign for a tag list by filling a simple form!

V. And what am I going to do now?

write, write, and write even more! i wanna write the in the heat of spring drabbles before the spring is gone, have three fully-fledged multichapter fics outlined and itching to be written and posted, and an interactive event with which we will welcome the summer 💦

in june i want to publish a few sapphic fics that i had in mind for a while now & later towards the second half of summer (think august-september) i'll smile at you again with a kinktober i really want to complete this year!

there might be a few smaller events on the way, depending on how busy i'll be. there's an idea for dilf enjoyers and for a chubby y/n, as well as many others that still didn't take a clear shape.

i also didn't forget about the kiss event and nonsexual acts of intimacy for the fluff enjoyers!

if you survived this wall of text (or just scrolled down here lol understandable) - thank you for your patience, understanding, and support. whether you're here with me since the very beginning or clicked the follow recently, i'm happy to have you here ❤ if you have any questions or just want to talk, my askbox is open for any kind of interaction! and if you want to support a poor writer who has way too many health-related spendings lately, you can buy me a ko-fi ❤

#bas speaks

[thewisecheerio]

The Sandman and Queerness

It's hard to express how transformative The Sandman can feel for queer people. It's not that it's the only queer literature around; queer literature abounds. It's not that it was the first of its kind; queer literature has been around forever. It's that The Sandman gets a lot of things right that many attempts at queer stories don't.

-----

First, The Sandman's queer characters are simply allowed to exist without the entire story revolving around their queerness. Their story doesn't have to center on a coming out journey or parental rejection, which seems to be all that Hollywood is capable of writing. While this kind of work can be important, it still paints us as "other" and "abnormal". We are anything but an accepted facet of reality.

Meanwhile, the world of The Sandman is a world where queer people are an accepted and normal part of it. As such, their stories can be more complex than the tropes we are normally fed.

Second, by virtue of queer normalization, the world of The Sandman lacks the constant vigilance that queer people have to deal with in reality. In our world, you always have to wonder if someone is going to accept or reject you once they find out, and be careful about who you talk to or what you talk about. Depending on where you live, you might have to worry about getting hatecrimed, attacked, or even killed for your queerness. This creates a constant vigilance of monitoring your surroundings, and policing your own language and behavior to keep yourself safe.

However, in a world where queerness is normalized, all of that labor disappears. You can simply exist without the added strain (at least in regards to queerness). Reading or watching The Sandman is freeing in a way that existing in reality is not.

Third, certain problematic stereotypes in media dissolve. In most media, queerness is deeply linked with villainy. Antagonists are purposefully queer-coded (read: made to look or act queer on purpose), while heroes are usually anything but. This creates a link between "evil" and "queerness" in the consumer's mind.

Besides being problematic on its own, this presents a problem for writers who want to write non-problematic stories about queer people. It means that you can't actually have a villain in your story that is queer without an audience assuming that their queerness and villainy are tied, i.e. that the villain is evil because they are queer. Sandman subverts this.

Consider the Corinthian: he's evil and he's queer. But because he exists in a world where queerness is everywhere and normalized, we know that he's not evil because he's queer; he's evil and happens to also be queer. Not having him be the only queer character in the story unlinks his villainy and queerness.

Further, even if we narrow our view to only the Corinthian, we have examples of his queerness existing without his villainy: he sleeps with Carl without killing him. This single act immediately unlinks his murderousness and his queer identity, allowing us to see them as separate facets. And in so doing, The Sandman manages to fully subvert the queer-coded villain trope that otherwise ends up being harmful and everywhere in media.

Fourth, queer characters finally get to be sexy. Did you laugh at that sentence? It's okay. But this is a real thing that happens in media: queer characters are often so stereotyped or infantilized that seeing normal, queer folk that are attractive is a freeing experience in and of itself.

Nonbinary folk in particular are usually infantilized. Yet The Sandman gives us Desire, a nonbinary person and the literal embodiment of hotness who creates thirst outside of the bounds of gendered constructs (or, perhaps, within all of them). Desire is anything but infantilized. And in giving them to us, The Sandman manages to turn this trope on its head in a single, swift (and sensuous ;)…) movement.

The final point has less to do with the story and more to do with the context of publication. When queer folk write queer stories, those stories tend to circulate largely only within the queer community. This does very little to allow engagement from the people we need engagement from most, i.e. non-queer folk who could benefit from unlearning stereotypes.

But when a story gets published by a major label, it allows that story to be seen by a much wider audience. The Sandman opens up queer media to a wider audience by virtue of being written for a major comic label and then later transformed into a popular TV series. It does much more to undo the harm caused by stereotyped pieces of media when a transformative work reaches a wider audience. Yes, it's unfair that people outside of the queer community often won't engage directly with queer media. But that's the reality we live in, so works like The Sandman become hugely important.

So when you see the queer community delighting at The Sandman, it's not an exaggeration. It's an expression of unmitigated joy.

#the sandman #sandman #lgbt #lgbtqia #lgbtq #lgbt representation #queer media #queer representation

[pwincesa0]

Ace Markey haters.

PLEASE NOTE!!: There will ALWAYS be someone who disagrees with you about something, and/or doesn't like you. So unless if you have either some constructive criticism, or you're going to express how you agree. Don't bother being annoying and commenting something hateful, it makes you look dumb in the end. Not me. Anyways. I don't like most Ace haters. It just seems like they're hating him just because they can. Maybe I just haven't seen any actual logical argument, but a lot of things I've heard were that "He's ugly" or he is a bully. ⛦ Literally no one cares if you think he is ugly or not. Beauty is subjective. Let's just get that out of the way. ⛦ As for him being a bully. I actually think that's an understandable thing to not like someone for. Me personally, I like antagonizing characters but I know that's not everyones cup of tea. But if you're going to make that argument, you also need to keep in mind that the way he starts yelling and him bullying the cast are two different things. Not to mention that Ace does everything for a reason. And he doesn't willingly get mad at people and shit for no reason. As shown right here:

🐴-"You think I act like this for fun?" The way he said this is obvious proof that he doesn't just go around blowing up on people for fun. In fact he really doesn't like it. Though going back to the bullying parts, I suppose that in scenes like this:

He does actively go out of his way to pick on others. Calling people losers is not a nice thing to say to people. So if you're someone who likes mostly nice and caring characters, then he isn't going to be your type. And that's fine. ⛦ People also say that they don't like Ace because he's "transphobic"? That is not true, and let me tell you why. Here in this scene:

Ace threatens to expose Nico's secret. Nico's secret is that they're Nonbinary. However, Ace didn't know this at the time. Sure he knew that their secret said "No one accepted you because of your identity" But as proven in this scene here:

Ace didn't know what that meant due to how vaguely worded it was. And it's not like he was the only one who didn't understand it.

⭐- "I'm sorry, but I have no clue what this means" David also didn't know what it meant. In fact he was the first one to mention it since he read Nico's secret outloud. Therefore you can not use Ace being "transphobic" as an excuse to hate him because it's not true. To add on to this, Ace actually uses Nico's correct pronouns after learning that they're nonbinary. As shown here:

🐴- "Did THEY tell you?" Ace said they, not he. And as far as I could remember, Ace didn't make any transphobic comments against Nico. Because you can obviously be transphobic while using someones correct pronouns. Ace doesn't say anything about their identity, but instead just use their pronouns. ⛦ I really don't like when people say "Nico ate when they tried to kill him" "Hu ate when she slapped him" ect ect. Like no all 3 of them are wrong. Maybe less of Hu but still. Ace shouldn't have provoked them, Nico should have thought about the consequences when commiting a murder instead of acting based on their feelings, and Hu shouldn't be going around slapping people. 💀 Though I do think it was good that Hu stepped in to shut Ace up. She shouldn't have stood there and watched it happen. Just, don't slap people??? But yeah between Ace and Nico its just like J said:

🎧- "Basically, you both suck and are wrong!" Be like her!!! ⛦ All in all, I'm not saying theres something wrong with not liking a character. But for what I can remember, those are the only reasons why people say they hate him. So I just needed to prove to them that their way of thinking is wrong. But if you don't like him because you think hes ugly, annoying, a bully, ect ect basically anything subjective then good for you. I don't like Hu despite a lot of people liking her. It just seems that Ace fans don't ever back up anything they say when they wanna prove something. ⛦ IF THERE'S SOMETHING YOU DISAGREE WITH, OR WANNA ADD ONTO THIS THEN GO AHEAD! LEAVE A COMMENT! Just be RESPECTFUL and use common sense.

🦇 pwrincesa

#ace markey #drdt #drdt fanart #drdttober #drdt spoilers #drdt meme #david chiem #hu jing #nico hakobyan #j moreno #j rosales #pwrincesa #ace drdt

[waitmyturtles]

hello! I hope you are having a good day :) I just read your blog piece about tharntype, thank you for writing it! I want to offer a few complicating thoughts, as a queer person myself:

-in the twittersphere, I actually know a lot of other queer people (and, specifically, queer men) who like tharntype in a kink way. as in, the parts that make it "problematic" are the parts that are hot. so this "reading" of TT (lol) sees it as erotic art intended to arouse, rather than offer "representation" or change the public's mind in some way. so from this perspective, the target audience is anyone who finds the erotic story enjoyable, rather than say, random 14 year olds who need to be convinced gay people are human.

-more on the above: gay people aren't unproblematic. like, we do engage in all the things that you said were problematic stereotypes included in tharntype. many gay men are homophobic in the exact way type is, before they admit it to themselves. that's a whole genre of gay porn, because it's such a common part of the gay experience that it enters sexual fantasy frequently! gay people call each other slurs all the time, too (not saying it's right for anyone to be spoken to like type did, I'm just saying, for a lot of us there's a lot of humor and love there when it's spoken kindly). many gay men ARE promiscuous (not all, obviously, but many) and the way in which they are is shaped by their gayness, and while straight world might think that's bad, other gay people might not see it as such. and I very much get how that's very inconvenient when one is trying to argue that gay people aren't sex perverts (so we can have rights) but sometimes what ends up happening is that people who ARE sex perverts (I mean this in a positive way) get told that their lives don't matter, or that even depicting them in fiction "makes you all look bad." it's the usual assimilation problem :/

-I really really really recommend diary of tootsies for a show by gay people for gay and straight people. it's one of my all-time favorite gay dramas, and it might elaborate more on what I'm saying above. it's a gay comedy that's actually executed well.

-it's actually not true that yaoi has only ever been dominated by cishet women! I love this website for more info on how men and nonbinary people have been involved in yaoi historically https://www.fujoshi.info/ . totally true that treating real people like dolls is gross to do in real life, but I don't think women writing yaoi have done that, on the whole, and I certainly don't think the existence of yaoi does that automatically. and I think it's a case of unfair maligning of asian women to say that it does.

-I don't think tharntype is a "good" show. nothing like, say, moonlight chicken (as an example of a show that I think is very good). it's very poorly executed in places. it's trashy. the way it's been marketed, with tharn and type as like, political gay rep, is bizarre. but it's a cheap, trashy snack, a gay bodice ripper type of story, and so I don't think that's a hate crime, or a failing of lgbt people, on the whole.

I know as an ally it is always difficult when there is disagreement in the group you are trying to be an ally to regarding what is acceptable/offensive, but I feel the best thing to do is always to come to a personal opinion oneself that aligns with one's own moral values, after hearing from differing perspectives within that group. So I've provided my own perspective here, which may be totally different than other people you've heard from or your own, and that's okay too! again, hope you have a great day and thanks for your time :)

ANONYMOUS, COME 'ERE FOR A HUG, YOU! THANK YOU for sharing your perspective.

Yes, this show and the related topics are unbelievably difficult for me to write on as an ally. I really appreciate your understanding of the gray areas all around this, and with the help of a number of Tumblr friends, I tried to dive into and balance as much of the gray areas of the topic of TT as much as possible.

I really appreciate the further history on yaoi's origins, and would like to tag some folks to take a look and offer their thoughts -- and, I do not take corrections personally AT ALL, I LOVE LOVE the learning and constructive criticism (that's a major point of the OGMMTVC!), so I WILL be happy to edit any corrections into my posts if need be (cc @nieves-de-sugui, @miscellar, @lurkingshan and anyone else who knows more about yaoi than I do).

I'm getting one or two nasty comments here and there, but by and large, the feedback today on the post has been thought-provoking and eye-opening. I love hearing and reading all of it.

#thanks for the ask! #tharntype

[neurodogical]

right obviously you can dislike something for whatever reason you like, but the way you talk about it still has an impact on the world around you? when people limply reference to Homestuck being “problematic” and Andrew being “problematic” it just evokes transphobic whisper campaign. this is how people treat trans girls on this website too, no? how many times have you seen camab trans people be avoided on “vibes” or “because they said something racist [citation needed]” like is it really necessary for you to contribute to a transphobic rhetoric in your discussion? you can just not like something you don’t have to act like there’s some deep political flaw with homestuck that makes it irreconcilably evil — people literally ONLY do this to camab trans people’s work, it’s nuts.

I understand that this means a lot to you, but my criticism of hussie and her work has nothing to do with their gender. you can criticize something while liking it, too. i agree that people criticize things harder when it's by someone whose TMA though, I've seen that happen. and I'm sorry that it's something that you need to look out for, truly. however, it's really strange to act like homestuck isn't very racist at times, though. do you not remember damara megido's entire existence? how about the manner of speaking of the condensce and other instances of them using aave in weird ass ways? people can grow and change yes, but i don't have to forgive racism and the groups she was racist against are ones im not part of.

I didn't say a thing about racism in my original posts, but somehow you knew to bring it up though... if hussies work spoke to you deeply, well, I'm glad you found something important to you even if it's something I really can't bring myself to like (speaking truthfully, "problematic reasons" aren't even my full reason for disliking it. honest! I was just in online fandom WAY too young, like 11 years old, and was the main moderator of a 15,000+ person homestuck facebook group for years, got taken advantage of by older people, etc.) I won't get further into it, but i don't like being called transphobic for just disliking a piece of media especially when I didn't even state my actual thoughts about it as a piece of literature, I just shared my broad opinion. I don't see how it's transphobic to dislike one piece of media created by a trans person. I never used the words "evil", I think that's unproductive and disingenuous when talking about literature, even if it's something i dislike more than homestuck.

if people take "I should go be transphobic now" out of "i hate homestuck and don't like the author much", that's their issue because they're not truly reading what I'm saying either and they suck. that is to say though, had i known that hussie was nonbinary before this entire thing unfolded, i would not have claimed she wasn't LGBT in my tags of that reblog. i haven't even read DTWOF and therefore don't have thoughts on it, i just had a visceral reaction to homestuck, remembered the hussie i made up in my mind over the course of 2014-2020, and said something rude that I wouldn't now. I'm sorry for how upset I've made you, but I'm allowed to have my own thoughts on a piece of media that's shaped a large part of my life.

#tw homestuck

[badgrav-31]

MY PROTOCOL HEADCANONS THAT NO-ONE ASKED FOR

sam, alice, colin and gwen are ALL nonbinary and ALL too nervous to come out yet

source: trust me bro

you didn’t want to know more. TOO BAD.

sam - they/them

alice - they/them, and whatever neopronouns happen to catch their fancy

colin - he/they

gwen - he/she

sam listens to bad pop music and indie

alice likes punk especially pop punk and queer punk

colin listens to heavy metal and his favourite band is ALESTORM, a scottish pirate metal band

gwen listens to classical music she doesn’t even like it that much it just makes him feel fancy and deserving of a more senior job

alice has at least five piercings probably more I am an alice dyer snakebites truther

colin has one(1) piercing. maybe a septum I haven’t decided

alice loves horror films none of the rest of them can handle them

but colin does like a good horror video game sometimes

norris and chester are the fragmented remains of jon and martin having been torn apart by the fears crossing dimensions and their fractured minds are trapped inside the machines they barely have enough consciousness to conceptualise what is happening to them but they absolutely have enough consciousness to feel pain as the angles cut them when they try to understand what they have become the horror of statements once again drawn from their lips against their will but they don’t have lips anymore they have no mouth and yet they must scream

chester uses it/its pronouns (horrified at its own existence at what it has become less than a person yet just as monstrously horrifying doesn’t feel worthy of having an identity of calling itself real)

norris uses they/them pronouns

gwen has an embarrassing tattoo hidden somewhere on her body she got when he was a teenager

sam has no piercings but kind of wants one and when they pluck up the courage to ask they will get their piercings advice from alice

colin usually finds death is a bit too heavy for them but after a long day of the computers refusing to cooperate death metal is how he calms down

thankyou for reading would love to hear your ideas

#tmagp #doors.txt #tmagp spoilers

[lavenderlegends]

I'd love to hear anymore of your headcanons for Trans!Erica it's something I didn't know I needed in my life till right now!

omg omg yaaaaay!!!

so it's something i've seen a few times, back in the day, but i didn't know i was trans/nonbinary at the time so i didn't explore it too much.

but literally, i've been obsessing over the idea of trans!erica for the last few weeks since i've decided to dip my toes back into fandom and here's what i think:

erica has the biggest transformation on the show imo and her storyline could really VERY easily have been a trans storyline. so here is my trans!erica head canon (that turned into like a mini fic):

happiest she's ever been

ao3

erica has been struggling with her feelings of gender and sexuality for quite some time, but doesn't really know what they mean. until stiles.

stiles, this bisexual king, who has spent hours and hours obsessing and hyper-fixating on figuring out his own sexuality and reconfirming his own gender. he's learned so much about the queer community since discovering he might be bi that he's practically an expert on the subject.

erica doesn't really know what to make of stiles, but when he comes out as bi, she wonders if maybe he'd be a safe person to talk to. after all, he did do a bunch of research when he learned she was epileptic so he could better support her and yell at people for incorrect biases. he's always been nice to her, really.

she finally gets the nerve to talk to him, and when she does, she blurts, "so you're bi."

but stiles knows that look. he's worn it on his face a million times before he met derek. so he takes her hand and walks her to a more private spot.

they start talking, and the more stiles talks, the more relaxed erica feels around him. she finally, and quietly, asks, "what if i like... dresses and skirts and high heels and lipstick and... girl things."

stiles launches into all the research he's done on trans identities, and even recommends her some trans and nonbinary books he'd read in his rabbit hole. erica types the recommendations into her phone, despite already memorizing the titles.

she works up the courage to get them from the local library, where her crush, boyd, volunteers. she's shaking when she checks out the books, but boyd simply lifts one up and says, "this is one of my favourites. you'll have to let me know your thoughts once you've finished it."

so erica starts with that one. she loves it. she cries, she smiles, she laughs, and she clings to the characters as if she was them. and then she reads the next, and the next.

she tells stiles she's trans first. he's delighted and more than happy to help her in any way possible.

she changes her name after the main character in boyd's favourite book.

erica and stiles go shopping. it's a disaster. stiles asks if it's okay if he tells some of his friends, who will be more than understanding, willing, and protective of her secret, who can help her shop for women's clothes better than he can. she hesitates but agrees.

lydia, allison, kira, and malia all come to her rescue. within a weekend, erica has been completely transformed. she knows the basics of makeup. knows what clothes she likes, and what clothes she hates. she's broken in her new pairs of leopard print high heels.

and she's gained a thousand times the confidence she used to have.

"so," lydia asks, as she paints erica's nails. "tell us. have your eye on anyone?"

"well... i do, but i don't think he'd like me like this."

the girls all look at her, and then allison says with a decisiveness that warms erica's heart: "if that's true, then he's not the one for you."

"you should give him a chance though," kira encourages. "maybe he'll be different."

"maybe." but erica's not sure.

she looks over at the library books she still has to return.

maybe.

and maybe happens on a friday. the library is usually quieter then. she spends over an hour getting ready, changing her mind, and trying to figure out what to wear. but she manages. she only has to message the girls' group chat twice with make-up questions, so she counts that as a win.

walking into the library, she's nervous. she doesn't know what to expect. but there he is, beautiful as ever, standing behind the counter. their eyes meet. she almost expects him to make a face.

instead he says, "i don't believe we've properly met. i'm vernon boyd."

"erica," she says, stumbling over her chosen name. "erica reyes."

he smiles and asks, "so, what did you think of the book?"

and she knows. right then and there, this is the love of her life.

so when monday rolls around, she enters the cafeteria in her new look, embracing her true self, and has more confidence than she's ever experienced before. she doesn't know what shocks people more: her coming out as trans or her sitting with vernon boyd and holding hands.

but she's the happiest she's ever been.

#ask answers #angryqueercrypted #berica #berica headcanons #erica reyes #trans erica reyes #teen wolf #teen wolf headcanon #vernon boyd #gooooooooood god i missed them so much

[reveseke]

Spontaneous crossover / au time with Spiderverse and Criminal minds about Spiderverse! Reader within Criminal minds ( feat a arcade themed stim board bc i wanted to make one <- TW bright colors & lights + flickering { Glowcore popping balloons } )

(( CW Sooo ~ Rather dark themes, mentions of being a lab rat, kidnapping, possible paranoia at some point even | mention of Jumping spiders ( due to the powers ) | You have been warned, approach at your own risk :3 ( probably didn't get all of it down these were the ones I thought off, if you find more please lemme know! )

Au/tropes — Crossover of Spiderverse × Criminal minds | Sci-fi | scientific super powers | found family (mention/hinted) | Angst(hinted)

Random – concept headcanons | Arcade theme in play

About reader — Masc! Aligned; trans, nonbinary & masc ambiguous friendly ! | He him pronouns used | R instead of y/n or m/n used | teen! reader around sixteen fifteen y.o ? | Hinted to have small amounts of background & a dog! | Tech savvy reader !!

Disclaimer – English is my second language and I'm Dyslexic, grammatical errors are more than going to happen. this is barely proof-read completely, it's just breezed through that's it lol.

DNI — Fudanashis/Fujodashis, fem-aligned, basic DNI criteria(ableists, racists, sexists etc), Maps(+other related terms), Pedophiles, transmeds, TERFS ( + other related terms ), antisemetics, proship/profic, kink/nude/18+ blogs, sh/pro-ana/Ed blogs, blank blogs

Gif ID. Three gifs in upper row; a gif showcasing the 90s arcade mat designs with varying colors and shapes, second gif of a bundle of cables with small flashing RGB lights in between the cables, third gif of cyan and magenta glitters being stirred.

three more gifts row down; a gif of glow in the dark stars if varying colors being thrown down, a gif of two balloons filled with green and orange glowing liquid Uber a black light being driven over by a car popping them, third gif of three arcade machines against a wall flashing lights and active. Gif ID end

Credits — 👑|👑|👑 — 👑|👑|👑

What if spiderman! Au, masc!reader being something similiar to Spider-Man, a teenager and gets to work for the government when he's caught. Of course suffering through the court etc -> as in assault charges that can be linked to him even if it was against bad guys. Y'know lol .

Also bad guys just being criminals most of the time. And actually being normal people. Ofc there can be an alternative of serums etc etc.

If they were serumed up then there would be more chaos tbh.

But I'm still thinking wether or not it be the known sci-fi type with differences to the actual Spider-Man powers. Also bc i personally love jumping spiders, i think the powers will circle them specifically. ( So the suit design descriped wouldn't be the one Spider-Man actually wears bc originality if i ever continue on this concept lol )

R just swinging around and avoiding cops and agents as he starts to realise he's being chased / targeted.

His powers are seen as something pricy and unique, one could say people may be interested in seeing him fighting in a rink.

I think he would be a lab rat if caught by anybody who has the proper or improper equipment and skill(s) to be used.

I think the first time he'd use his powers would be after being attacked or scared and having the fight or flight response activated.

Most likely panicked and absolutely bat shit scared.

At some point may have had something to do with a murder or being an accessory in it. Koff Koff. Or maybe just do something with a murder of somebody in general bc of not knowing how much power he actually has.

:0 Vigilante good guy misinterpreted to be a bad guy bc his powers went haywire.

Oh yeah heh mentioned jumping spiders above, think about ultraviolet vision as something R would be able to access.

Also bc of 15-16 y.o R he would be in highschool during these times. ( Think about it being the present)

Getting a dog for his own protection, company and to combat the possible paranoia the shit underneath may have caused and is spoke of.

Yes I'm kinda just portraying this origin of Reader to be close to the original spider-man origin. Thinking of ways he could get his powers; i don't like the origin how that ended, bc angst i need angst and the Reader being a full lab rat by being kidnapped for tests with other people. Either they survived it or died during the testing. ( I think he could have been a bit younger when this happened. )

Also kinda wanna include Survivalist intuition(link) to the mix in a way, not only for thee possible danger intuition that will be part of the myriad of things the testing may have given him.

Having a friend group that somewhat knows what's up with the reader and tries to help him as much as they can. Which includes possible not talking to the cops or FBI if being questioned at one point bc the fbi found possible lead to the reader after seeing him appearing around newspapers and the streets of Virginia mainly.

If the reader does have parents they are spoken with aswell, if he does not then he's basically taken in as the shared child of the BAU team in time lmao .

If he does not have parents as in they aren't really there in his life that much.

Finding out he's a student, a minor in general surprises them a little, especially after connecting dots and finding out what may or may not have happened to him when he was younger.

After being caught he's held accountable for the crimes he's committed. And doesn't exactly deny them either. But he's also offered a possible job bc they could actually use someone like him in the forces due to his powers.

Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait what if more sci-fi type of shit is going on and the technology is a little more advanced from the 2000- 2018 (i think?) Technology evolution. And the reader was tech savvy and build his own equipment and instead of actual webs or chemically composed webs it's just wires?? Like grappling hooks but small and study as fuck ¿¿ Lmao

So like in a way he's not smart in chemistry way, but in technology & physics way if you will lol ??

And if the reader liked a more colorful arcade-ish designs ?? :0

The fanfiction would be a crossover obviously, but idk if there would a specific world to be put in. Bc spider verse! Reader sounds really cool. Especially arcade-aesthetic style/ tech savvy(kinda like Peni from Spiderverse, but not completely y'know?) version would be really cool.

AAAAAAAAAAA— just thinking about a case where spiderverse! Reader is already part of BAU and is sent to go undercover in a school campus bc there's a killer and nobody knows anything and he's the only one that could easily without raising any suspicious'

Also how he's secretive about being hurt and sucking it up to bandages himself home bc that's basically what he's been doing. The amount of scars and wounds he has and how's he not dead yet ?? The teams shook lol .

Oh also JJ's basic maternal instinct; he's basically if put to work with the BAU department under Hotch as a trainee also under her, Emily and Penny's gaze. Also Hotch and Derek lol imo would look after the reader a little if they're assigned with him.

Also Derek will absolutely if the Reader is energetic and speaks alot pretend to be annoyed before actually being annoyed bc he can't catch a break off of you ( in this situation he'd voice it out politely. Instead of ignoring R completely lol ) . Also teasing how much of a motor mouth R can be.

With Reid he can absolutely talk about the most random things that come to mind and if he doesn't know what R's on about R can actually educate him on it !

Also i actually think especially if the Reader is neurodivergent Reid would absolutely be the best person to talk about hyperfixations and specials interests. In other seriousness you could pour your interests and likes to him and you'd get a good conversation out of it :³ .

Also mama hen Rossi content. You cannot convince me this man does not hen over the team in general. I have seen too many headcanons and hints off of this, + the show let's it up as well in some episodes and I am headcanoning it myself lmao. He's really caring tbh.

Can you already tell I'm hip deep in found family trope content with the old BAU team lol ?

Absolutely think once Penny gets a sniff at something R's interested in she's going to get him something related to that to keep his mind off of the dark things the job forces him into. She's absolutely the one you could just pour out and she's ready to help, care and possible be doting ;; .

Also just randomly thinking about those roof-top chase scenes where reader would be the dominant one bc he could catch up faster with the target especially if it's jumping roof top to roof top. Bc naturally much stronger and longer leaps than a human can do and more stamina. ( Bc of having a jumping spider specific powers )

#bau team #criminal minds #crossover #criminal minds x male reader #criminal minds x reader #masc reader #male reader #ftm reader #gn reader #x masc reader #x male reader #x ftm reader #x gn reader #aaron hotchner #derek morgan #spencer reid #david rossi #jennifer jareau #emily prentiss #penelope garcia #aaron hotchner x male reader #derek morgan x male reader #spencer reid x male reader #david rossi x male reader #jennifer jareau x male reader #emily prentiss x male reader #penelope garcia x male reader #x nonbinary reader #🔮.headcanon #🔮.series.🎡🕸️

[catchyhuh]

Please please please hit us with the Gender Studies!!!!

YOU HAVE OPENED TJE FLOODGATES!!! LET’S GO GENDER actually sexuality too let’s hit ‘em both because i have my piece and need to speak it. less about their physical bodies, more about their Mindscape. do i sound insane? i will by the end of this i promise!

lupin: listen give me a week i will compile all the evidence i have that lupin is CANONICALLY bisexual. beyond that he’s… also probably polyamorous cuz. y’know. look around. this is one hell of an open relationship. i feel like out of all of them though he’s the only one that’d like. bring it up. state it proudly. his gender is fun because you know mp didn’t MEAN anything writing a ? next to GENDER on Lupin’s little govt file but. oh baby. there’s definitely some meshing of a man and a woman in there, simultaneously coexisting even if he’s in guy mode or whatever. but like. he would only really notice that if it was pointed out to him. y’know that tweet that says “i’m probably nonbinary but i have a job rn so i’m not really thinking about it too much rn” that’s Lupin the Third

jigen: yeah prepare to be shocked. that’s a gay man. that’s a homosexual. contrary to the jokes i don’t think he’s GAY and misogynistic because of it, i think he just has (lets be real somewhat understandable in his position) beef with fujiko specifically. but when you look at his other interactions with women, they’re either just basic decency for a fellow human being or largely apathetic. and that getting betrayed thing but lets be real again that’s happening regardless of if he’s truly in love with them or if it’s just an “i have eyes” aesthetic appreciation. the transmasc reading of jigen like clicks in my head and it’s hard to pinpoint why exactly? i guess it’s just because he’s got that like. completely self-assured guy vibe. he knows he’s a man and that’s how it is. he doesn’t give a shit!! which could be taken as a cis guy thing too but either way he’s very comfortable in his guyhood and that’s cool. there’s a confidence and comfortability in his man-ness that you only really get after a level of selfintrospection, if that makes sense. if jigen isn’t actually trans he must be cis+ or some shit but. i’m leaning towards the former

fujiko: where lupin puts a label on it, fujiko simply makes a coy little face and shrugs her shoulders. changes the answer a little each time she really thinks about it. bi, pan, unlabeled, questioning? she’s scratched off the last one at least. she’s pretty damn sure she’ll bang any sane consenting adult with enough money. but that does bring us to another thing that i haven’t brought up with anyone yet: i’m a firm believer in demiromantic fujiko. that’s what that’d be called right? the romantic version of demisexual? fujiko just cannot form a romantic attachment to anyone unless there are years, like YEARS of consistent, honest trust and understanding in there. it’s not even an option in her mind until she’s known someone 3 years minimum, and even then that’s only when it BECOMES a SUGGESTION. sexual attraction is easy, romantic attraction is a sidequest altogether. it’s not just a mental mindset thing it’s like. her chemical makeup dude. but veering back on course, she’s got the same solidity in gender that jigen has, just in the Pink direction, so the same general reading of “is she a trans woman or does she just Get it” hits for me

goemon: goemon really hasn’t thought about his sexuality too much. he sees it as more of a person by person basis rather than a potentially gender specific attraction? if he finds a woman attractive, he finds a woman attractive, if he finds a man attractive, he finds a man attractive, if he finds a person who is attractiDo you get the general gist here? at best i could say he has a slight skew towards women, but it doesn’t like ERASE the rest of the options here. goemon views gender similarly, almost like an outsider looking in. it’s not some deep psychological perspective where he’s like, intentionally distancing himself to best study it, it’s just that he doesn’t feel a huge need to label himself in that sense. a foot in the nonbinary door. any pronouns, any terms of address, it’s no biggie to goemon! i do think he’d be somewhat interested to hear others’ perspectives on it, but he knows who he is. the one with the kickass sword lmao

zenigata: this shit is hard uh damn. nothing would shock me with him in any sense. he could be anything, he could be gay (lots of people get married to women before realizing who they are later in life!) he could be bi or pan, he could just be really butch for all i know brother!! any reading is a whole new canvas for unsuccessfully repressed tension and internal sexual turmoil! as for gender, uh it’s kind of. the same sense? he could really be anything. maybe like, betwixt jigen with the “solid in the dudeness” sense and goemon in the “just checking off boxes” shit. like regardless of if he is a MAN man his masculinity is a choice (wild sentence to be saying about the guy drawn to look silly on purpose) and HE wouldn’t get it, like he wouldn’t just start spouting off all this shit if you asked, i mean you'd probably just hear a distant dial-up tone looking at the expression on his face if you asked him. but like. a well-informed third party would get it. i know i sound wild cuz this is literally a baby boomer but listen to me,

#if these seem overtly general and vague it's because they are! lupin alone has 30 mbti types because he's so different in every iteration!!! #and that's kind of how These go for me. i'd have to do MONTHS of work to actually break down that entire science of that. maybe one day but #NOT TODAY LMAOOO anyway enjoy. if you disagree i believe you and understand! peace out! #lupin #jigen #fujiko #goemon #zenigata #asks

[v8mpco]

dating regulus a. black.

a set of headcannons about dating regulus black during your guys' time at hogwarts! it's pretty long and the hcs are very detailed!! no content warnings, all shits and giggles! reader is gn, no pronouns mentioned.

_ when you both first started dating, he was terrified to touch you, let alone hug you. it took a total of three weeks and a lot of easing that regulus was finally able to give you a rather awkward, but comfortingly warm hug. (yes. regulus arcturus black may be always cold, but gives the warmest hugs. i stand by this.)

_ forehead kisses. forehead kisses. FOREHEAD KISSES!!! touch starved, yet physical touch and acts of service are his ways of expressing wordless love when his poetic, eloquent mind is not able to fathom something to tell you. nervous wreck when he gives you these, you can feel him shaking against your forehead, so sometimes, you hold his hand tightly to calm him down

_ so. utterly. loyal. girls, boys, nonbinarys, genderfluids, everybody loves regulus black, you know, everyone knows it, except him of course. because of this, whenever he receives confessions, he becomes flustered and always responds with i currently have a partner... i apologize. it's so adorable, please. he loves you so much, please don't ever do those cheating pranks on him or he'll cry (real shit)

_ searches for you during quidditch matches. he's not too obvious about it, yet people (& yourself) can tell his eyes are sweeping through the crowd, soon enough, charcoal orbs lock with your own and you both are stuck in this love-filled staring contest of some sorts until the whistle rings. the way his dark eyes fill with love whenever he sees you is absolutely enamoring

_ you rant a lot (a/n: i do a lot so this one is kinda personal <3), but regulus doesn't mind, in fact, he loves it so much. as you ramble on, he stares at you with so much love and adoration, everyone can see it. it's obvious despite how much he'll deny it

_ you and regulus vs james and lily. it's bound to happen. who's the best hogwarts couple? plot twist, it's sirius and remus

_ while regulus is accepting towards all blood statuses and in all honesty, thinks house elves are better than humans, i think you would be a pureblood because that's what he's most comfortable with and his family would be a lot more accepting towards it, bonus points if you're from the sacred twenty eight & in slytherin!

_ walburga hate channel, but she absolutely adores you. she often sends you care packages and spoils you like the child she's never had. orion is indifferent towards you, but you and regulus can feel his approval

_ sends you the most poetic letters you'll ever lay your eyes on! you can tell he's poured his soul into it, he does it often. whether it's during class, holiday, or just as a general habit, regulus sometimes will leave you small poems in your books to help you through the day, they serve as his version of reminders to do tasks like drink water or turn in your potions essay

_ dances with you in the rain or under the moonlight, it's a given. he also enjoys teaching you about astronomy and constellations, especially because it's apart of his family's legacy. he's secretly planned out names for your future children because you're stuck with him for life

_ he's not the best with emotions, especially as he has a hard time expressing them himself as he was raised to repress them, so if he's having a hard time, he'll come to you and you only! he likes to climb into bed with you or sit by the fire and listen to you read, it's a comfort thing really

_ he's so in love with you, treat him well, love him back forever. he's more into long lasting relationships so once again, love him forever! regulus black is a lover boy honestly

_ lovers rock by tv girl & lover boy by queen are your theme songs!

#regulus x reader #regulus black #regulus headcanon #regulus black fluff #regulus black x y/n

[why-am-i-here-just-to-suffer]

Guys, gals and nonbinary pals: I present the latest development in Dystopian Tech Inventions:

[begin article: "Are You Ready for Workplace Brain Scanning?"]

"Get ready: Neurotechnology is coming to the workplace. Neural sensors are now reliable and affordable enough to support commercial pilot projects that extract productivity-enhancing data from workers’ brains. These projects aren’t confined to specialized workplaces; they’re also happening in offices, factories, farms, and airports. The companies and people behind these neurotech devices are certain that they will improve our lives. But there are serious questions about whether work should be organized around certain functions of the brain, rather than the person as a whole.

To be clear, the kind of neurotech that’s currently available is nowhere close to reading minds. Sensors detect electrical activity across different areas of the brain, and the patterns in that activity can be broadly correlated with different feelings or physiological responses, such as stress, focus, or a reaction to external stimuli. These data can be exploited to make workers more efficient—and, proponents of the technology say, to make them happier. Two of the most interesting innovators in this field are the Israel-based startup InnerEye, which aims to give workers superhuman abilities, and Emotiv, a Silicon Valley neurotech company that’s bringing a brain-tracking wearable to office workers, including those working remotely.

The fundamental technology that these companies rely on is not new: Electroencephalography (EEG) has been around for about a century, and it’s commonly used today in both medicine and neuroscience research. For those applications, the subject may have up to 256 electrodes attached to their scalp with conductive gel to record electrical signals from neurons in different parts of the brain. More electrodes, or “channels,” mean that doctors and scientists can get better spatial resolution in their readouts—they can better tell which neurons are associated with which electrical signals.

What is new is that EEG has recently broken out of clinics and labs and has entered the consumer marketplace. This move has been driven by a new class of “dry” electrodes that can operate without conductive gel, a substantial reduction in the number of electrodes necessary to collect useful data, and advances in artificial intelligence that make it far easier to interpret the data. Some EEG headsets are even available directly to consumers for a few hundred dollars.

While the public may not have gotten the memo, experts say the neurotechnology is mature and ready for commercial applications. “This is not sci-fi,” says James Giordano, chief of neuroethics studies at Georgetown University Medical Center. “This is quite real.”

How InnerEye’s TSA-boosting technology works

In an office in Herzliya, Israel, Sergey Vaisman sits in front of a computer. He’s relaxed but focused, silent and unmoving, and not at all distracted by the seven-channel EEG headset he’s wearing. On the computer screen, images rapidly appear and disappear, one after another. At a rate of three images per second, it’s just possible to tell that they come from an airport X-ray scanner. It’s essentially impossible to see anything beyond fleeting impressions of ghostly bags and their contents.

“Our brain is an amazing machine,” Vaisman tells us as the stream of images ends. The screen now shows an album of selected X-ray images that were just flagged by Vaisman’s brain, most of which are now revealed to have hidden firearms. No one can knowingly identify and flag firearms among the jumbled contents of bags when three images are flitting by every second, but Vaisman’s brain has no problem doing so behind the scenes, with no action required on his part. The brain processes visual imagery very quickly. According to Vaisman, the decision-making process to determine whether there’s a gun in complex images like these takes just 300 milliseconds.

What takes much more time are the cognitive and motor processes that occur after the decision making—planning a response (such as saying something or pushing a button) and then executing that response. If you can skip these planning and execution phases and instead use EEG to directly access the output of the brain’s visual processing and decision-making systems, you can perform image-recognition tasks far faster. The user no longer has to actively think: For an expert, just that fleeting first impression is enough for their brain to make an accurate determination of what’s in the image.

Vaisman is the vice president of R&D of InnerEye, an Israel-based startup that recently came out of stealth mode. InnerEye uses deep learning to classify EEG signals into responses that indicate “targets” and “nontargets.” Targets can be anything that a trained human brain can recognize. In addition to developing security screening, InnerEye has worked with doctors to detect tumors in medical images, with farmers to identify diseased plants, and with manufacturing experts to spot product defects. For simple cases, InnerEye has found that our brains can handle image recognition at rates of up to 10 images per second. And, Vaisman says, the company’s system produces results just as accurate as a human would when recognizing and tagging images manually—InnerEye is merely using EEG as a shortcut to that person’s brain to drastically speed up the process.

While using the InnerEye technology doesn’t require active decision making, it does require training and focus. Users must be experts at the task, well trained in identifying a given type of target, whether that’s firearms or tumors. They must also pay close attention to what they’re seeing—they can’t just zone out and let images flash past. InnerEye’s system measures focus very accurately, and if the user blinks or stops concentrating momentarily, the system detects it and shows the missed images again.

Having a human brain in the loop is especially important for classifying data that may be open to interpretation. For example, a well-trained image classifier may be able to determine with reasonable accuracy whether an X-ray image of a suitcase shows a gun, but if you want to determine whether that X-ray image shows something else that’s vaguely suspicious, you need human experience. People are capable of detecting something unusual even if they don’t know quite what it is.

“We can see that uncertainty in the brain waves,” says InnerEye founder and chief technology officer Amir Geva. “We know when they aren’t sure.” Humans have a unique ability to recognize and contextualize novelty, a substantial advantage that InnerEye’s system has over AI image classifiers. InnerEye then feeds that nuance back into its AI models. “When a human isn’t sure, we can teach AI systems to be not sure, which is better training than teaching the AI system just one or zero,” says Geva. “There is a need to combine human expertise with AI.” InnerEye’s system enables this combination, as every image can be classified by both computer vision and a human brain.

Using InnerEye’s system is a positive experience for its users, the company claims. “When we start working with new users, the first experience is a bit overwhelming,” Vaisman says. “But in one or two sessions, people get used to it, and they start to like it.” Geva says some users do find it challenging to maintain constant focus throughout a session, which lasts up to 20 minutes, but once they get used to working at three images per second, even two images per second feels “too slow.”

In a security-screening application, three images per second is approximately an order of magnitude faster than an expert can manually achieve. InnerEye says their system allows far fewer humans to handle far more data, with just two human experts redundantly overseeing 15 security scanners at once, supported by an AI image-recognition system that is being trained at the same time, using the output from the humans’ brains.

InnerEye is currently partnering with a handful of airports around the world on pilot projects. And it’s not the only company working to bring neurotech into the workplace.

How Emotiv’s brain-tracking technology works

When it comes to neural monitoring for productivity and well-being in the workplace, the San Francisco–based company Emotiv is leading the charge. Since its founding 11 years ago, Emotiv has released three models of lightweight brain-scanning headsets. Until now the company had mainly sold its hardware to neuroscientists, with a sideline business aimed at developers of brain-controlled apps or games. Emotiv started advertising its technology as an enterprise solution only this year, when it released its fourth model, the MN8 system, which tucks brain-scanning sensors into a pair of discreet Bluetooth earbuds.

Tan Le, Emotiv’s CEO and cofounder, sees neurotech as the next trend in wearables, a way for people to get objective “brain metrics” of mental states, enabling them to track and understand their cognitive and mental well-being. “I think it’s reasonable to imagine that five years from now this [brain tracking] will be quite ubiquitous,” she says. When a company uses the MN8 system, workers get insight into their individual levels of focus and stress, and managers get aggregated and anonymous data about their teams.

Emotiv launched its enterprise technology into a world that is fiercely debating the future of the workplace. Workers are feuding with their employers about return-to-office plans following the pandemic, and companies are increasingly using “ bossware” to keep tabs on employees—whether staffers or gig workers, working in the office or remotely. Le says Emotiv is aware of these trends and is carefully considering which companies to work with as it debuts its new gear. “The dystopian potential of this technology is not lost on us,” she says. “So we are very cognizant of choosing partners that want to introduce this technology in a responsible way—they have to have a genuine desire to help and empower employees,” she says.

Lee Daniels, a consultant who works for the global real estate services company JLL, has spoken with a lot of C-suite executives lately. “They’re worried,” says Daniels. “There aren’t as many people coming back to the office as originally anticipated—the hybrid model is here to stay, and it’s highly complex.” Executives come to Daniels asking how to manage a hybrid workforce. “This is where the neuroscience comes in,” he says.

Emotiv has partnered with JLL, which has begun to use the MN8 earbuds to help its clients collect “true scientific data,” Daniels says, about workers’ attention, distraction, and stress, and how those factors influence both productivity and well-being. Daniels says JLL is currently helping its clients run short-term experiments using the MN8 system to track workers’ responses to new collaboration tools and various work settings; for example, employers could compare the productivity of in-office and remote workers.

Emotiv CTO Geoff Mackellar believes the new MN8 system will succeed because of its convenient and comfortable form factor: The multipurpose earbuds also let the user listen to music and answer phone calls. The downside of earbuds is that they provide only two channels of brain data. When the company first considered this project, Mackellar says, his engineering team looked at the rich data set they’d collected from Emotiv’s other headsets over the past decade. The company boasts that academics have conducted more than 4,000 studies using Emotiv tech. From that trove of data—from headsets with 5, 14, or 32 channels—Emotiv isolated the data from the two channels the earbuds could pick up. “Obviously, there’s less information in the two sensors, but we were able to extract quite a lot of things that were very relevant,” Mackellar says.

Once the Emotiv engineers had a hardware prototype, they had volunteers wear the earbuds and a 14-channel headset at the same time. By recording data from the two systems in unison, the engineers trained a machine-learning algorithm to identify the signatures of attention and cognitive stress from the relatively sparse MN8 data. The brain signals associated with attention and stress have been well studied, Mackellar says, and are relatively easy to track. Although everyday activities such as talking and moving around also register on EEG, the Emotiv software filters out those artifacts.

The app that’s paired with the MN8 earbuds doesn’t display raw EEG data. Instead, it processes that data and shows workers two simple metrics relating to their individual performance. One squiggly line shows the rise and fall of workers’ attention to their tasks—the degree of focus and the dips that come when they switch tasks or get distracted—while another line represents their cognitive stress. Although short periods of stress can be motivating, too much for too long can erode productivity and well-being. The MN8 system will therefore sometimes suggest that the worker take a break. Workers can run their own experiments to see what kind of break activity best restores their mood and focus—maybe taking a walk, or getting a cup of coffee, or chatting with a colleague.

What neuroethicists think about neurotech in the workplace

While MN8 users can easily access data from their own brains, employers don’t see individual workers’ brain data. Instead, they receive aggregated data to get a sense of a team or department’s attention and stress levels. With that data, companies can see, for example, on which days and at which times of day their workers are most productive, or how a big announcement affects the overall level of worker stress.

Emotiv emphasizes the importance of anonymizing the data to protect individual privacy and prevent people from being promoted or fired based on their brain metrics. “The data belongs to you,” says Emotiv’s Le. “You have to explicitly allow a copy of it to be shared anonymously with your employer.” If a group is too small for real anonymity, Le says, the system will not share that data with employers. She also predicts that the device will be used only if workers opt in, perhaps as part of an employee wellness program that offers discounts on medical insurance in return for using the MN8 system regularly.

However, workers may still be worried that employers will somehow use the data against them. Karen Rommelfanger, founder of the Institute of Neuroethics, shares that concern. “I think there is significant interest from employers” in using such technologies, she says. “I don’t know if there’s significant interest from employees.”

Both she and Georgetown’s Giordano doubt that such tools will become commonplace anytime soon. “I think there will be pushback” from employees on issues such as privacy and worker rights, says Giordano. Even if the technology providers and the companies that deploy the technology take a responsible approach, he expects questions to be raised about who owns the brain data and how it’s used. “Perceived threats must be addressed early and explicitly,” he says.

Giordano says he expects workers in the United States and other western countries to object to routine brain scanning. In China, he says, workers have reportedly been more receptive to experiments with such technologies. He also believes that brain-monitoring devices will really take off first in industrial settings, where a momentary lack of attention can lead to accidents that injure workers and hurt a company’s bottom line. “It will probably work very well under some rubric of occupational safety,” Giordano says. It’s easy to imagine such devices being used by companies involved in trucking, construction, warehouse operations, and the like. Indeed, at least one such product, an EEG headband that measures fatigue, is already on the market for truck drivers and miners.

Giordano says that using brain-tracking devices for safety and wellness programs could be a slippery slope in any workplace setting. Even if a company focuses initially on workers’ well-being, it may soon find other uses for the metrics of productivity and performance that devices like the MN8 provide. “Metrics are meaningless unless those metrics are standardized, and then they very quickly become comparative,” he says.

Rommelfanger adds that no one can foresee how workplace neurotech will play out. “I think most companies creating neurotechnology aren’t prepared for the society that they’re creating,” she says. “They don’t know the possibilities yet.”

[end article.]

Ok what the fuck has gotten into the capitalist's brains this time?

The working class has been voicing its issues with its employers since the beginning of time. Hundreds and hundreds of studies show what needs to be changed. Shorter week and hours, more pay, less power dynamic, etc. Nothing is being changed regardless. There's no need to do fucking brain monitoring to figure out what the problem is. Are they really that ignorant or is it an act?

And there's no telling how long if possible it will take to fully decode people's thoughts. The scientists behind it imply they are quite close. If it happens then it will be literally 1984 but unironically. Employers and government would quickly jump on the train of creating thoughtcrimes exactly as Orwell envisioned it. Why wouldn't they?

Also, anonymize my ass. Make it FOSS. Software is always guilty until proven innocent. There's literally no way I can prove that you aren't sharing the data, and literally no way you can prove there will never be a data breach.

And these so-called "ethicists" just brush it off like

Both she and Georgetown’s Giordano doubt that such tools will become commonplace anytime soon. “I think there will be pushback” from employees on issues such as privacy and worker rights, says Giordano. Even if the technology providers and the companies that deploy the technology take a responsible approach, he expects questions to be raised about who owns the brain data and how it’s used. “Perceived threats must be addressed early and explicitly,” he says.

" 'Percieved threats must be addressed early and explicitly.' " So you're admitting that workers don't get to have a choice in the matter and that you intend to use force (Economic pressure is still force. If you can't find a job in the future that doesn't do this you are effectively forced. And the government could use this too.) to make us comply.

Everyone called George Orwell crazy. Everyone called Richard Stallman crazy. Everyone called Edward Snowden crazy. Yet their predictions continue to come true again and again. And no one bats an eye. Society had just blindly accepted the onset of mass surveillance. Everyone knows about it in dictatorships like China and North Korea but no one wants to talk about how rampant it is in other places where it's done more silently.

Some people say "I have nothing to fear because I have nothing to hide." Ok, so what happens when the government goes wack and decides to start rounding up groups of people? What happens if your race/ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, disabilities, etc falls into one of those categories? It happened in Germany and we are at risk of it happening in the U.S. and other places. (In Germany there wasn't surveillance tech yet so they just force searched your home instead. Same difference.) How do you know it will never happen? What do you do then? What. Do. You. Do. Then.

No one I have asked it has ever been able to answer this question beyond blind faith that it won't happen. The real answer is you're fucked. That's the answer.

#fuck capitalism #workers rights #privacy #technology #science #fuck government #ai #artificial intelligence #computer science

[humanheartharmonia]

To all fictives, factives, and introjects...

If you struggle with discomfort with doubles who are different from you, or with your source being different, that is an understandable reaction - someone who looks like you, has the same name, maybe even acts like you, having such fundamental differences can be startling, and if you have had issues with your identity, it may even feel threatening to you.

That being said, it is very unpleasant, especially if your system is active in your source's fandom or if you've been looking for sourcemates. It can also be very inconvenient. I really struggle with this. I avoid the "me" side of fandom, and I mute servers that have doubles in them, even though I feel I really ought to be more comfortable with them.

With all this in mind, here are some things that may help you.

You are you, and nobody else can change that.

If your existence is spiritual/metaphysical in nature, remember that there are infinite universes in which anything can happen.

If your existence is psychological in nature, different systems have different interpretations of characters, and that absolutely can affect what traits they were introjected with.

While I do not agree with 'you are not your source, you are a psychological construct made for [x] purpose', I do think it is healthy to have some degree of source separation, if possible. If it does not work for you, then it does not work for you, but I think it helps to be able to look at your source character/person and say "That is not exactly me, but I am a lot like them." Perhaps even, "That is the template from which I was created".

Most importantly: you are you, and nobody else can change that.

The most useful part of the post is over, but I have included some personal anecdotes below the cut if anybody is interested.

Let us look at two cases of this from our system - Hunter and myself.

Hunter is sourced from The Owl House. He is very strongly aroace and was incredibly uncomfortable when a new popular ship involving him and another character arose. It quickly became one of the "default" ships of the fandom, almost as popular as Lumity. He stayed around, but did not go anywhere near front very often. Recently, though, we have been able to contact him in our headspace. He now has antlers, and is now living his life as a forest elf, instead of what he was before. In his case, he found it helpful to distance himself strongly from canon. He is who he is, and he embraced new aspects of himself so he could feel more like himself. Because of how extreme his reaction was, we have stopped watching the Owl House and stopped engaging with the fandom, but we are still taking steps to help him distance himself. He seems to be doing quite well now!

Now, for myself. In canon, my source character is a presumably cisgender man using he/him pronouns. The way I am was actually affected by fandom - I am fairly sure that the amount of nonbinary headcanons influenced my gender as I formed. There are a great deal of headcanons and ships involving my source character, most of which I do not follow. I am a human, not a Zoroark, and I did not have any romantic relationships. I have found it hard to accept that just as character interpretations influenced my gender, different character interpretations have influenced other aspects of those with the same source character. There is a primal negative reaction when I see someone who looks like me, and has the same name as me, with similar aesthetics, who is very much not me despite everything. It is something I hope to lessen, and eventually get over. (In all honesty, I am mostly writing this post for my own sake.)

Separation is hard, and does not come naturally to us. We, as fictives of Team Sieben, are not the types who can read fanfiction and headcanons while feeling fine and unthreatened by other people perceiving us in a way we do not control. I wrote this post in hopes to build that skill. Maybe I will never be able to post art of myself and label it as 'fanart' without feeling nervous and wrong, but I hope I will at least be able to engage with fictives who are different interpretations and different versions of my source character.

#fictive #factive #introject #pluralgang #plurality #plural system #endo safe #traumageninclusive #plural #actually plural

[scriptlgbt]

i'm currently in the writing process of writing my first book. the main love interest is an androgynous non-binary heir. Considering it's a fantasy world, I chose to make it societally normalized. My biggest issue so far has been gender coded appearance descriptors and gendered titles (ie. prince/princess). I want this character to remain as impossible to misgender as possible. close friend's of mine who are non-binary said that oxymorons (ie. softly angular) are my best bet - (1)

(2) - as a cis writer, i thought i'd ask you on how to describe someone androgynous in writing without using gendered words/descriptors. I'm sorry if this may seem like an overbearing question, and please correct me if I had said anything misinformed or offensive. Thank you for your time.

Don’t worry about this being an “overbearing” question - it’s not at all. This blog specifically exists to answer questions like this. There are undoubtedly other people who wonder the same things but who either are afraid to ask (so don’t) or are rude about it. So asking a question respectfully, especially in a setting where you are specifically invited to ask questions, is the best option of those. At least when it comes to something where you need to know the answer for some reason, like in writing good representation.

To get to the actual advice though: I can’t actually tell what you mean by gender-coded appearance descriptors, so I’m going to try to cover what I can. If you’re worried about something like, “soft ringlets and bold eyeliner” skewing feminine (for example), I wouldn’t worry that much about it. Something that describes body parts that happen to be gender-coded by society (breasts or an Adam’s apple for example) will land a lot differently, however. They will likely read with a fetishy tone in most writing. (I’m sure describing these characteristics on a trans character *can* be done in an alright way, but I don’t advise it because of how difficult that would be to pull off.) But as for general descriptors, I wouldn’t worry too much about making sure the descriptions are perfectly even.

Androgyny tends to be perceived differently based on the birth assignment as well. This isn’t fair, but it’s something society does a lot. Ideas of masculinity bringing a DFAB person closer to androgynous, and vice versa, as though our birth assignments are inherently going to skew us one way or another and we need to take efforts in our presentation to counteract that. I found when I started presenting in a way where I was confident and assuming what I would want to wear after top surgery and being on testosterone for a long time, people started assuming I had a different birth assignment more often. I think some of this may be just that people tend to assume groups of people are the same and that I am most often with trans women. But I only think that’s some of it. I’ve sometimes gotten this assumption when I am on my own as well. (Someone once asked me how I’d deal with it as a nonbinary person after being on testosterone long enough to “start passing as a man” and I had to explain that I never really passed as a cis man. Maybe I’ve passed as DMAB, but not as a man. These are not at all the same things.)

Another thing: I get what you’re going for when you mean “as impossible to misgender as possible” but I think it’s also important just to keep in mind that people will find ways to misgender us no matter what. Being seen as myself doesn’t change that some people are going to want to undermine that by making up details in the absence of information. There’s no shortage of people on the internet who tried to hurl transmisogyny at me when I was pointing out transphobia, because their sole perception of transness was the kind that transphobes fearmonger about. So if you can’t get an audience who genders the character correctly, it’s not your fault. Pronouns are easy to get (w/ some variation) when you fundamentally believe that a person is who they are and that their pronouns are part of that. And/or when people practice enough. Don’t take this as a measure against your writing.

Some neutral-coded description ideas:

(Note: some of these may not be neutral-coded depending on setting, but I read them as such personally.)

describing mood/facial expression

mannerisms/the way they carry themself

tone of voice

the way they dress (do their shoes look comfortable? jeans look well-worn? shirt ironed? aesthetic choices?)

confidence, hesitancy, timidness, how this may change around different characters or in different settings

voice speed/volume/pacing

their body language in relation to others present

hair, complexion, other physical features (highly rec this masterpost by Writing With Color on describing various features)

interacting with some object or hobby that helps paint a picture of them (smacking gum, holding a skateboard, paint stains on an apron, boxing gloves hanging off their bike)

piercings (& jewelry), tattoos

the way the weather is interacting with them (wind making their hair blow into their face constantly, rain weighing down their velvet pantsuit, clumsy on the frozen sidewalk, twirling a parasol)

- mod nat

#mod nat #feel free to add #describing characters #trans #nonbinary #androgynous #writeblr #lgbt characters

[primeministerofantarctica]

YUKI RURIKAWA PROPAGANDA POST for @eggcrackerbracket 2023

A3! (Act! Addict! Actors!)'s Yuki Rurikawa is...an incredible character. 14 years old at the start of the game, he's one of the youngest characters but has the drive and confidence most adults can only dream of. Not only is he one of the actors in the in-game acting troupe (it's a game...about actors...), he's also the principle costume designer and tailor, something he takes great pride in and absolutely rocks at. He's snarky, sharp-witted, and doesn't tolerate crap from anybody. And on top of all that, he's also just. Straight-up gender-nonconforming.

He likes cute dresses, he looks good in cute dresses, he's going to wear cute dresses. Yuki's very clear about identifying as male, being quick to correct people who misgender him, he just happens to be a boy who likes frilly skirts and thinks societal expectations are fucking stupid. And while it's all but blatantly stated that he developed his abrasive personality as a defense mechanism against bullying, in-game none of the other characters give him shit for it. It takes at most like five seconds for them to go "Oh, you're a guy? Okay, cool. Anyways." The one time he does encounter bullies in the story proper they are portrayed as very clearly in the wrong (and pathetically narrow-minded).

I want to reiterate: this is a middle schooler who regularly flips off gendered expectations despite the backlash because he'd rather be true to himself. Yuki Rurikawa is cooler than you. And me. And literally everyone else.

That's already awesome for a cis male character, but there's also a pretty decent argument to be had for headcanoning him as transmasc as well. In a flashback, another character recalls meeting him when he would have been about four or five and assuming he was a girl because he wore "girl's clothes"; while these types of games don't really concern themselves with being realistic the average child in that age range does have their outfit choices at least overseen by their parents, so five-year-old Yuki either had the chillest parents imaginable or he was wearing girl clothes because, well, that's what people assumed he was.

Whether you headcanon Yuki as cis, trans, nonbinary, or anything else, in the end his genderqueerness is an immutable aspect of his character. His first motif song, "Minority", even reads very strongly as a trans allegory (albeit unintentionally). He's helped me embrace the traditionally "girly" stuff I still love - the frilly skirts, the fairytale princesses, the pink and ballerinas and flowers - and know I can still like that stuff while still being a whatever-that's-not-a-girl (jury's still out :P) because gender is only what YOU make it and nothing else.

In conclusion: Stan Yuki Rurikawa (and vote for him on the bracket! Please 🥺)

#astra rambles #a3! #yuki rurikawa #yuki my BELOVED the light of my life <3 who is sometimes an asshole and that's okay <3 #incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be not normal about him #*wipes away a single tear dramatically* #Youtube

[aliorsboxostuff]

i saw in your bio that you're genderfluid and i'm literally screaming i'm genderfluid too :)) is it ok if i request a tangerine x genderfluid reader fic? :3 i don't have any idea for the plot, maybe reader coming out to him? if that's ok with you, of course. much love <3

A/N: HI FELLOW GENDERFLUID!! I, too, am the fluid of genders. And yes absolutely! As for the fic itself, I'm taking a little bit of my own experience being genderfluid with my accepting friends so if this is too short I (sadly) have yet to find a man that accepts my fluidity :( BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THE WRITER enjoy this fluffy, soft fic anon! <3

At Your Pace

Tags: Tangerine x Genderfluid!reader, no masc/fem specified, no use of Y/n, fluff, no smut, soft!Tangerine, supportive!Tangerine, coming out, reassurance and acceptance, anxiety (Only a bit), no hurt all comfort, Tangerine might be a bit OOC sorry!

Three months and he still hasn't asked about your gender. You started to worry, because he either doesn't care or he’ll care too much and freak out when you finally tell him. Your brain leans to the latter possibility so you decide to confront him one fateful night. 

—

Three months

9 weeks, 91 days, 2,184 hours since Tangerine and you became a couple.

Three months since you went on your first date with him—a trip to the aquarium where you beamed at every fish that swam past you, adoration in Tangerines eyes—and has since gone on various different dates and meet ups with him. 

Yes, you're aware of what he and his twin do for a living. No, you didn't get killed by his agency and swore to protect that information. Yes, you actually don't mind it since he's the most interesting thing that has happened in your otherwise boring life. And yes, you miss him a lot when he goes on missions, but despite it all, you await his return home for another week or two going to places with him by your side. 

Three months, and he doesn't ask what gender you identify as.

To put it simply, when you and Tangerine met, you instantly clocked the posh and pristine look and thought; "He's definitely gay." 

while on the other hand, taking account of your choice of clothing and makeup, it's not clear what you are. A damn fine human being for sure, but either you're in or out of the gender spectrum is questionable. Despite that though, Tangerine saunters over to you from across the park, to where you're sitting and reading your book, and introduces himself with the most charming smile. He only asked what you go by—pronouns and sexuality so he doesn't approach the wrong person—and went on with his conversation.

Since then, you've been spending most of your time stuck to his side, going on date number 60th and so on, sharing stories from missions or from your everyday life, and planning on far futures you dont think could happen, but can hope. 

He's always been supportive of your choices; encouraging you to wear pieces you know you'll look good in but anxious to wear, beaming at you when you go out with a new makeup look, and overall loving you without hesitation. 

You tried bringing it up once or twice, while watching a movie where one of the characters is either nonbinary or genderfluid, and has since learned that Tangerine is cisgender and gay. He asked you the same question, minus the gender, and that got your gears going because; who asks the "What sexuality and gender are you?" without the gender part?

Ever since then, you've just been slightly inching your way to find a perfect opportunity to tell him.

Tonight, is the night.

Four days into Tangerines week off and you and him are currently setting up a comfy night in. Blankets, pillows, and a movie already picked for the living room TV. You've currently cocooned inside one of the many blankets on the couch when you hear Tangerine walk into the room.

"Here we are," He sets down the bowl of snacks. "Room for one more?"

You chuckle and extend your arm, enough so Tangerine can slip next to you underneath the blankets. He starts to shuffle for the remote and you realize this would be the only chance to finally talk to him about it. No romantic settings, no days out, just a safe space between you two.

When he finally finds the remote, you also find your courage.

"Wait," Your hand stops on top of his. Tangerine turns towards you, bright blue eyes with curiosity in them. "I have something i wanna talk about,"

He nods, setting down the remote and fully bringing your hands into his. "Of course love," he answers slowly. 

Words jumble in your brain as you try to arrange them right, anxiety biting at your tongue. “Take your time,” Tangerine, ever so carefully, caresses circles in between your index and thumb. You inhale, then exhale a shaky breath before you have those stark eyes laced with worry.

“We've been dating for three months now, yes?” He nods, you slowly continue.

“You’ve told me about your work, and I've told you my secrets as well, but…” Your voice croaks. You half expected Tangerine to push on, but instead, he sits attentively, still holding your hands in his. There's really a reason why Tangerine would freak out—Or hell forbid, break up with you—So the growing sweat beneath your collar doesn't add up to Tangerine's patience. You gulp, finally continuing.

“There’s something you need to know,” You wait.

A beat, before he replies steadily, “Alright,”

“I’m gender fluid.” Your eyes snap to the blanket pooling at your waist. The silence was nauseating, nothing good could come out of a pause from such a heavy confession, and a late one at that. What were you thinking? You should've given him the chance at the first week, hell, the first day! It’s common courtesy nowadays, isn't it? Why did you wait for-

“Okay,” 

Your head jerks up. “Okay?”

“Yeah, okay, and?” 

Your moth mimics a fish, eyes blinking rapidly. Tangerine grins and tilts his head as if your answer confuses him instead of the other way around. “That's it? Okay?”

“Yeah, what else am I supposed to say?” He grins. “I thought you were going to say you’re a murderer or sumn’, now that would make m’jaw drop,”

“Huh?” You laugh in disbelief. 

“Well yeah, we only got one room for a killer in this relationship and I believe that’s been taken by me, love,” 

“Tangerine!” Your laughter grows, careening into his shoulder as he also chuckles. 

“What? I'm right, aren't I? I’m the assassin and you’re my dear to come home to,”

“Come on!” You giggle and punch his chest lightly. You’re startled when he grabs the hand that punched him, lacing his fingers between yours.

“I’m serious, angel,” You lift your head and could feel your breath stutter with the way his gaze bores into yours. “I feel honored to know you’re comfortable with me to tell me you’re fluid,” 

“I didn't want to pry while being so early together, I wanted you to share with me at your own pace,” He smiles. It shines rivals stars in the sky. “Thank you, dearest,” 

He brings your hand and presses a gentle kiss on your knuckles. You held your breath. “I thought… you’d wanted to know that earlier, I worried myself thinking I told you my gender too late,”

“Darling, I fell in love with you and your personality, believe it or not,” He smirks. “Definitely not with what you’re hiding under those baggy trousers-”

“Tangerine!” You fully crumble in a heap of laughter while Tangerine holds you to his chest, also giggling. These are definitely the reasons you fell for him—And to quote the man himself, ‘Definitely not with what he's packing’—The ability to reduce your anxiety and comfort you through it. 

“Thank you,” You reply, finally sober from your laugh. “For accepting me,”

“Of course, my love, every day,” Your smile broadens, and so do Tangerines. He slowly treads his finger behind your head, brushing at your hair and on your nape, and brings you close to press a kiss. You hum against his lips, relishing in the warmth of his hold, worry replaced by relief and your heart floods with love. 

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