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silverskye13 · 2 months

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Will enby Helsknight/trans Tanguish/top surgery scars/stubborn avoidant Welsknight in a gender crisis make it into the main story of RnS? Like, a full acknowledgment of it? Because yes, us on tumblr are aware (and happily bully RnS Wels for it) but I’m curious to how it may be brought up in the main storyline instead of rambles and drabbles. (Don’t get me wrong, those rambles and drabbles are what get me through the day. But my best friend, who isn’t in the MCYT fandom whatsoever, just caught up with RnS and doesn’t use tumblr, and besides spamming her with tumblr posts I wanna know how much I can revel in the glory of the skrunkles with her!)

That is a great question, actually. And the answer is I don't really know.

So this is one of the downsides to writing things chapter by chapter. If I had gone into this going "oh heck yeah they're trans", this would've come up in the plot way sooner. It's nice information 1) for all the trans folks reading and 2) because it has the potential to inform the themes in the narrative. This whole story is about two chief things I think: death [the inevitability of] and identity [what defines you and why]. Why should you care if literally no one else (including the universe) does? That would be so cool to speak about in terms of a trans allegory! Why do you care about gender when it's just one thing in a world of crazy things? Or at the very least, how does it inform your identity? But this is a change I made on a whim suddenly, and I know Exactly Where I Want This Plot To Go, so trans topics and allegories as Plot Points probably won't happen.

On the more technical side of introducing trans characters -- how do you do that without just dropping "oh btw they're trans" in? Like, how do you make it a relevant thing to talk about, that doesn't feel forced or shoehorned in, especially this late in the story? Probably me overthinking, but I read it done wrong so often. It gets tired. And if I ever work on my original stories, there are trans characters in there! If I can figure out how to Do It Well in a fanfic, then I can figure out how to do it in original fiction someday maybe. So I kinda wanna take the introduction seriously? I've actually been thinking about it so much I've thought about rewriting the intro to the next chapter ahaha [it already needs rewritten in general, there's a lot going on, but the intro was going to be Helsknight waking up from something, and he sleeps shirtless, and not addressing top surgery scars then would be kinda silly I think.]

I can say at the very least, Gender Avoidant Wels probably won't factor in the story much. He is a character, but I don't think he'll become Enough of a character to faithfully address something like a trans self discovery arc. At best his issues with gender might be mentioned in passing.

Sorry! I know you probably want a better answer! My answer is basically: I don't know I'm still working on it. I want it to be there, but the capacity it's there is undecided.

That being said, I've been sitting on this glorious ask since the shenanigans started and the temptation to just Do That grows every time I read it:

#rns asks #trans tanguish #nonbinary helsknight #anonymous #no one asked but i think to date #the best intro to a trans character ive seen #is from the book 'what moves the dead'#where the mc explained they were a soldier and when you join the army you get assigned pronouns that only soldiers get #and they explain some people join the army to fight and some join because their old pronouns dont fit #and i dont think the mc ever defined why exactly they chose to be a soldier #but hey thats their pronouns now take it or leave it #them being a soldier has impact on the plot which means #even if the story isnt a trans story [about being trans] their pronouns still have weight and importance #the long pronoun explanation has a very compelling reason and never feels odd or forced #and it gets even more interesting in the second book 'what feasts at night'#where the soldier's PTSD has a direct effect on the ending of the story #[sighs dreamily] goddamn it T Kingfisher how do you always write so good #anyway enough about my writer crush on Kingfisher

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scholar-of-yemdresh · 5 months

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The TERF brigade in the BES fandom makes my skin itch. God forbid you interpret Mizu as transmasc. Like having a different interpretation of the character is somehow taking anything away from cis women. Musty asses already castigated any HCing Mulan as transmasc are you not tired of harassing asian transmascs by now???

Anyway instead of getting cis "people" in your mentions crying about the "evil [white*] transes taking away wombmyn stories". Protect your peace and stan a book series that's got a transmasc asian(fantasy Korean not Japanese) swordsman as one of the main characters, his name is Keun-ju and he's so pookie ☺.

It's called The Crimson Empire trilogy by Alex Marshall. It's a batshit heavy metal dark fantasy trilogy with pretty much every queer imaginable. Also If you can handle the gore/violence of BES then this shouldn't be an issue. The Main character(there are a lot of important characters) is a scarred up brawny bi woman who's in her late 50s/early 60s.

Oh and all those ot3 Mizu/Akemi/Taigen shippers I see you...so Keun-ju is bi and gets into a throuple with a feisty(Low key a dumbass tbh 💀) princess(who's his childhood friend and he's her bodyguard because I know yall eat up that shi) AND a cis guy who he starts out with a pseudo antagonistic/rivalry relationship.

Caveat unlike BES these three do start off the series as teens (16-17/18) but by the end they're all firmly adults.

*Totally ignoring the trans POC specifically the East asian trans people because "transness is a taint forced by white people" or some other bullshit. And it make it easier for the TERFs to pretend they're fighting the "oppressor" if they act like trans poc calling them out on their shit don't exist.

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souldagger · 2 months

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happy trans day of visibility, i wanna share my favourite books i read for the trans rights readathon!

fiction:

fierce femmes and notorious liars: a dangerous trans girl's confabulous memoir by kai cheng thom (magical realism YA - a dark, humorous and surreal subversion of the "trans memoir" genre; trans MC+author)

a lady for a duke by alexis hall (cute historical regency romance; trans MC+genderqueer author)

the brides at high hill by nghi vo (fifth novella in the exquisite singing hills cycle; nonbinary MC; comes out may 7th!)

the salt grows heavy by cassandra khaw (weird (<-complimentary) and gory gothic horror novella about a killer mermaid and a plague doctor; nonbinary love interest+author)

nonfiction:

none of the above: reflections on life outside the binary by travis alabanza

readme.txt: a memoir by chelsea manning

#tdov #trans rights readathon #books #.txt #i'll be real there's a whole bunch of books i didnt get to so i might just keep going lmfao #i rly wanna read the devourers +her majesty's royal coven+the undetectables #and reread a psalm for the wild-built in polish #(i will definitely be normal abt reading a book i loved using nonbinary pronouns for the MC in my native language. for sure.)

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blood-choke · 6 months

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hiiii… i wanted to ask more about this particular val scene where mc and her talk about that portrait and mc is a bit stuck on the word husband and wants val to know theyre not a man. can i ask what inspired that type of convo? i wanted to know if it’s something you’ll touch up on again? is this underlying feelings mc had before their entombment… worried that val sees them as a man just because mc is masc? cause i know that’s kind of broader discussion in the lesbian community iirc….. was that why you wanted to incorporate it? this ask has so many questions LOL but basically i wanted to say i was intrigued and it did made me think more on those type of dynamics (thinking back to those resources you rb’d a while ago that go more into depth about diff things in the lesbian community)

oh boy get ready for another long-winded answer from me!

a lot of the feelings mc has about their gender are inspired by Leslie Feinberg's work (mainly Stone Butch Blues)

Feinberg was someone who lived & passed as a man for years of hir life, and wrote a lot about the complexities of hir gender and what it was like being a "gender outlaw."

there was actually a scene in particular from sbb that kinda put the kernel of an idea in my mind that led to this narrative of the mc feeling overshadowed by Standard and anxious about being perceived as a man. it's towards the end of the book when Jess (sbb's protagonist) meets Ruth (a trans woman that Jess falls in love with)

Jess offers to help Ruth carry groceries up to her apartment, and Ruth takes this the wrong way & is offended, partly because she thinks Jess is a man.

One Saturday afternoon I found her clutching two huge bags of groceries and fumbling with the downstairs front-door lock. I pulled out my key.

“Here, let me.” She didn’t say thank you. She hurried ahead of me on the stairs.

“Can I help you carry those?” I offered.

“Do I look weak to you?” she asked.

I stopped on the stairs. “No. Where I come from it’s just a sign of respect, that’s all.”

She continued up the stairs. “Well, where I come from,” she called out, “men don’t reward women for pretending to be helpless.” Once I heard her apartment door close I kicked the stair in anger and frustration.

later, after they get to know each other better, they have this interaction:

I laughed and picked at my salad. “Do you know if I’m a man or a woman?”

“No,” Ruth said. “That’s why I know so much about you.”

I sighed. “Did you think I was a man when you first met me?" She nodded. "Yes. At first I thought you were a straight man. Then I thought you were gay. It’s been a shock for me to realize that even I make assumptions about sex and gender that aren’t true. I thought I was liberated from all of that.”

I smiled. “I didn’t want you to think I was a man. I wanted you to see how much more complicated I am. I wanted you to like what you saw.”

i think the inspiration here is quite obvious, hahaha. i figure anyone that's read sbb can sense the similar through-line here in my work. though the conversation between mc and Valentina has a much different tone.

there's another scene later as well after something happens to Jess and she has to have her jaw wired shut. she's working at a new job and is unable to speak, and she's also passing as a man at this job. she overhears some of her female coworkers talking about her and they refer to her as a "creep" and speculate that she's always watching one of them. Jess overhears all of this and then walks out of the job, goes home and pulls the wires out of her mouth herself:

After I was sure I’d gotten the last piece of wire out of my gums, I rinsed my mouth with whiskey and then drank the rest of it so I could sleep without remembering how Marija’s words had stripped me of my humanity.

butches & gnc women still face this kind of dehumanization; compared or likened to men in a derogatory way, accused of being "heteropatriarchal," the predatory stereotype of the fat ugly lesbian, and on the other side they're also hypersexualized, especially online and in queer spaces. butchphobia is a specific kind of misogyny that hits from all sides, even from the people that are supposed to be a part of your community. and this attitude especially effects trans women and women of color, who are already experiencing all of these things due to transmisogyny and racism.

i also really wanted to use this to touch on the kind of gender essentialism that we see in a lot of these cis feminist discussions - to these women at this job, Jess had committed no real crime other than being quiet and being the “wrong” kind of man. something about this scene has always stuck with me and really bothered me, but it's hard to put into words; on one hand i can admit i have probably been one of those women who made some kind of similar remark about a man i barely knew, but i've also been someone on the receiving end, too, because of the way i look. the mc in blood choke is put into this box, but they can't fit in, as someone who has been on both sides and doesn't really understand where they belong because of it; how can she stand beside Valentina or Hana or Clear when they might see her as a perpetrator, someone who can't be trusted? how does this mindset harm both the women and the men of the council and everyone in between? how can we break this cycle?

one of the films i mentioned recently when talking about the character designs was The Same Difference, which is specifically about the Black lesbian community and the discrimination within that community based upon gender roles (though this is not something limited to just the Black lesbian community)

a lot of the women in that doc talk about the boxes they're put in as AG or stud lesbians - they can't have their hair long, they can't wear makeup, they can't do this or that, they have to be aggressive and hard or else they're not real studs. they discuss stud on stud (or butch4butch) and how other lesbians look down on those types of lesbians, as well as the disdain for bisexual women for "betraying" the community. it explores the way misogyny and the patriarchy still oppress these women and forces them into this restrictive gender role despite their refusal to adhere to the other role originally assigned to them, and the way racism specifically intersects and exacerbates it for Black lesbians. there's a stud that's an exotic dancer and wears a weave, and a lot of other studs have a problem with this because a weave is "a female thing." another section follows a pregnant stud, and how the community shuns her for that, because she "dresses like a man and acts like a man" so why is she getting pregnant when she should be "the man"?

mc doesn't remember how they felt before entombment, but waking up they feel this need to prove themselves - both in that they are hard and aggressive like a butch should be, but also in that they want to be this person for Valentina or Clear or Hana (or all of them) that is safe and comforting. but they aren't sure how to do that when the world perceives them as this one specific thing - as a husband, as Standard, as a man, specifically this man who hurt Valentina.

of course we've already seen this to not be true of the companions with the last chapter as the mc learns more and spends more time with everyone. but this is kind of the foundation of where this whole idea came from. it started with my novel & i chose vampires for that story & this one because there is a long history of lesbian vampirism (and also because it's sexy) but there's this "curse" that both Hana & Valerie talk about in their respective stories, the first one being the racism she's had to face, the transphobia, along with this alienation and perception of lesbians as predatory and conniving and aggressive, as vampires, which i just think really lends itself to expanding upon these issues lesbians & trans women face both in general and within the community.

anyways if you want to read more i suggest Stone Butch Blues, which you can get for free on Leslie Feinberg's website, as well as S/he, by Minnie Bruce Pratt, available on the internet archive, Gender Failure by Ivan E. Coyote & Rae Spoon also on the internet archive, and you can rent The Same Difference for $10 on vimeo.

#im gonna be real idk if this makes sense to anyone but me. lmfao #but basically leslie feinberg is a huge inspiration for me #and just exploring the way homophobia and transphobia and misogyny all intersect when someone is gnc #and the expectations put on them #i think about butch al a lot and the things she says to jess and the way that section of the book plays out #and then in the end when the cops raid the bar #al and jess are fags except for what the cops did to al and the way they dehumanize her #how the mc is considered a man in certain instances - when the girls throw a brick at her or when the woman yells at her in the bathroom #or when atlas shakes hands with her and calls her their man #but other times she's a 'proper lady' with V or when that man gives her and Hana a dirty look in the elevator #or when cassius says 'ladies first'#mc is always one or the other whatever is convenient and degrades her the most in the moment #you know?#i dont know. im just saying stuff #basically i want to explore these gendered expectations & stereotypes and how they harm someone vulnerable like mc #how they feel alienated even from V & hana & clear for not being butch enough #but also for being butch and trans in the first place and feeling like an infiltrator #ask #anonymous

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thetentacleking · 10 months

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Been reading Hell Followed With Us and was gripped by the need to make a bead lizard since I had never made one before

1st bead lizard ever and it ended up kinda being the perfect colors for the book, and I’m still reading ^^

#cillie's babble #shut up cillie no one cares #bead lizard #hell followed with us #book #trans mc #trans author #queer fiction #can’t wait for this book to destroy me c:#I have only about a 1/4 left to read

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thistlearts · 1 month

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New story with a cover art by me is out there!

#illustration #digital art #book cover #book cover artist #trans mc #trans representation #m/m romance #achillean #indie books #vampire romance

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haveyoureadthistransbook · 4 months

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Being Ace: An Anthology of Queer, Trans, Femme, and Disabled Stories of Asexual Love and Connection edited by Madeline Dyer

goodreads

From a wheelchair user racing to save her kidnapped girlfriend and a little mermaid who loves her sisters more than suitors, to a slayer whose virgin blood keeps attracting monsters, the stories of this anthology are anything but conventional. Whether adventuring through space, outsmarting a vengeful water spirit, or surviving haunted cemeteries, no two aces are the same in these 14 unique works that highlight asexual romance, aromantic love, and identities across the asexual spectrum.

Mod opinion: I haven't read this anthology yet, but I'm very excited for when I get around to it.

#being ace #madeline dyer #polls #trans books #trans lit #trans literature #lgbt lit #lgbt literature #lgbt books #anthology #asexual #short stories #ya #nonbinary #there are a few nonbinary ace MCs in here but only two implied binary trans LIs (one trans woman & one trans man) afaik #to read

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aroaessidhe · 1 year

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2023 reads // twitter thread

The Art of Prophecy

Wuxia inspired epic fantasy

about a spoiled prophesied chosen one who’s never been in a real battle

the greatest war artist of her generation takes things into her own hands and decides to train him, but things go wrong and they both have to go on the run

martial arts, bounty hunters & assassins, some steampunk vibes, mentor relationships

no romance!

this is so fun and funny I loved it. the MCs three awesome baddass women and one pathetic teen boy and i love them all

#The Art of Prophecy #wesley chu #aroaessidhe 2023 reads #fav #this is so great i loved it so much!!!#also natalie naudus audio narrator!#i wrote 'women!!!' like 3 times in my notes zkjdgfd #no romance books #**i do feel like there might be a little in book 2? will probably be pretty minor side things tho #one of the MCs is a chaotic lesbian(?) assassin. im pretty sure the boy is gay? some kind of queer #also i love the cover so much shoutout to Tran Nguyen and designer Cassie Gonzales #also this had been on my periphery for ages but i saw someone say 'older lady training teen boy' and came running #--then i also saw a review that said they spend a significant part of the book separated; which was probably good to know going in (they do)#but i think they will be together more in the next book. their dynamic is great #she accidentally adopts a different young person in the meantime anyway LMAO

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jrhartauthor · 1 year

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I've heard nothing but good things about jem zero, an author with not one, but two, amazing books on this list with trans books to fill your TBR. You can shop the full list right here, and while you do, be sure you add Home Within Skin.

#book list #book recs #books with trans mcs #trans book recs #bookfunnel

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beauvandalen · 4 months

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So happy to share another lovely artwork of Prince Hal, Kaiser and Elwood, from my gay romantasy series 'The Prince's Dearest Guards' about a trans Prince who romances his two guards - Book 2 is coming out this February, so excited for this release! 👑💕✨🌸

Art by the wonderful @vita-divata ! 🥰✨

#fiction #writeblr #writing #lgbtq #trans mc #lgbtq books #queer books #novel #art #gay #trans books #romantasy #gay romantasy

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boycritter · 6 hours

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thought about the spirit bares its teeth too hard. taking poison damage as we speak

#THAT BOOK IS SOOOO AUGHGEHGHGHG #the way it describes being an autistic trans man without having the words for it....#and like how being autistic and a trans man interact #and how the mc doesnt know if he wants to be a boy or if he just wants to be normal #ITS SO ITS SOOOOOO

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arashisenshi · 1 year

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The Stones Stay Silent launches on April 14th!

Here is the official blurb:

When a deadly plague sweeps the land, the priests of the Parents accuse those deemed to have incurred the gods' wrath. Leiander, unmarried and with interests unbecoming to the woman people consider him to be, flees for his life. With the Night Demon Kevv'ach by his side and his deepest wish undiminished, he journeys to the Great Lith, said to still channel the magic of the Parents. He will beseech the gods to remake his body in the image of the Father, so the world sees him as his true self: Leiander.

And here’s what you can expect:

- A character-driven medieval-ish fantasy story; - Transgender aroace main character seeking to live his life and maybe bake; - Cinnamon roll Night Demon bestie with partial amnesia (and a sweet tooth); - Steadfast friends turned found family (and occasionally, a pair of mules); - Absent gods who left behind mysterious blue monoliths; - Strict gender roles dictating what jobs people have, what colors they wear, and what tattoos they get + a couple of fanatics hell-bent on enforcing said rules; - Extensive travel through a plague ravaged realm; - A conspicuous lack of magic; or swords; or sorcery; or monsters; - Even more giant statues; - A bunch of recipes to try for yourself, from Romanian, Austrian and... whatever cuisine baked goat cheese in walnut crust comes from; - Named chapters! Pronunciation guide! Maps for each part! Extensive content warnings! Handy reference chart for timekeeping! Cameo appearance by my cat! - Eventually, I promise, a happy end.

You can already preorder the ebook on Amazon and have it synch to your device on Friday, when the paperback will also be available there. If you’d rather support your local indie bookshop, go for it! You can ask them to order a book for you once published, by providing them the following details:

Title: The Stones Stay Silent Author: Danny Ride ISBN: 9783982494906

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If it’s not up your alley, you don’t want or can’t afford to buy the book, you can still support - it would mean so much!

- share this post - let your friends know - ask your local library to order the book for you! (you and anyone else can read it for free then!) - suggest it as reading for book clubs - add the book to your list on goodreads - mark it as to read on the story graph - upvote it on reedsy discovery - there is a detailed review there from an independent reviewer, and you can also read the first chapter for free!

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images: 1) promo material of the book featuring the book cover 2) moodboard of the seven parts and the epilogue 3) promo material showing a sample of the book interior

#The Stones Stay Silent #Danny Ride #lgbt fantasy #lgbtq fantasy #lgbtq representation #trans books #ace book #aro books #aroace books #aroace mc #trans mc

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