hey. share your Thoughts on the cutesy and unassuming line youve referred to it during our Trans Scott Discussions but never elaborated

i actually have gone semi in-depth abt it here but it was in the middle of the night and more about trying to help a dude w the ~abstract nature of gender~ so nobody except the question asker really saw it BUT ID LOVE TO TALK ABOUT IT AGAIN WITH MORE CLARITY. big paragraphs under the read!

okay like. firstly you have to look at scott as an archetype and what exactly he was written to be before you can get into top ten transed gender moments. i mentioned in the previous explanation how the scott pilgrim character was written by o’malley as an expression of “[his] fantasy of being a cute white indie rock boy (which, as an ostracized mixed-race weirdo, was something I occasionally wished for when I was younger).” (the article in question is more about race and the way he’s making sure he doesn’t accidentally make all his characters white out of racial ambiguity like he did w spvtw and i really recommend reading it)

So once you address the way that scott pilgrim is, essentially, partly a self-projection power fantasy, you can see where it comes through. Best fighter in the province, gets all the girls, cool band, doesnt work a job, etc etc etc. this, however (im tapping my screen with a pencil) this doesnt line up with the rest of the story. The way that traditionally male protagonists would deal with arcs is completely different from how scott deals with his character arc. Like, the closure of his break-up with Envy and realizing he was in the wrong rather than them getting together/her slobbering all over him; he doesn’t end up with knives at the end thank GOD and in fact, she moves on from him (and this is why we kill edgar wright - for wanting them to be together :vomit:); he has to take ramonas feelings into account to even attempt to mend their broken relationship - he has to move on from being an asshole, which for most male protagonists, goes hand in hand with power fantasy.

That alone is amazing and #smashgenderroles and all that, but once you carve further into the details like you and i have bc we’re obsessed with meta, its not just within the arc itself where hes positioned as non-traditionally masculine. Its also the way he is with his loved ones, whether friends or romantic interests.

Him being his best self is entirely due to this softness that he has. Scott’s relationship with knives, positioned in the first book as creepy but something to be semi-appreciative of, is bad and reads very. Cis to me. Idk how else to describe it, but thats how it is. The same goes for some of his time with Lisa, Envy (USE HER CHOSEN NAME YOURE TRANS YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS *SHAKES HIM*), and Kim throughout the course of the books. Spoiler alert, its when he’s being an asshole and ignoring ppls feelings and ignoring his own past mistakes.

Scott, as he is who he is, despite being a skilled fighter, is, well. Somewhat pathetic. Or, well, i guess a better way to say it is that he inspires a sense of protectiveness in people? Despite being pretty self-reliant (at least in the fighting sense) and being a dick (at least in the all the time sense), his friends love and care for him, attempting to help him when he massively depressed, or when hes fighting the exes.

Even ramona feels this! Here is where we get the first addressing of scott “cutesy and unassuming” pilgrim. Throughout the books, hes constantly juxtaposed against his female counterparts, arguably to a degree more than his male counterparts. Wallace, Stephen Stills, and Niel are his only male friends, with the rest of the dudes being very very very secondary characters or exes, and they usually serve to sometimes goad him, sometimes help him (mostly wallace), sometimes just be his casual friends. On the other hand, all of the female characters, unless theyre very very very secondary (like julies friends), impact his actual character VERY deeply. This in turn calls to mind the time in v5 when scott said all his high school friends were girls and ramona remarks that shes unsurprised he was “raised by teenage girls” as hes “such a sensitive boy.”

Like, the dudes are just dudes hes friends with. Wallace is really the only one that fosters any visible emotional growth in him, but even so, despite living with him, basically being his best friend, and helping him out with the fight training, a lot of the growth that wallace pushes him towards is incidental, and more due to the women in the story.

Theres something kinda eh when you acknowledge that literally every single female character except for julie&co was/is into him, but at the same time, it is pretty interesting when you realize that all of scott’s emotional growth, while not manic pixie dream girl-ed by them, was at least pushed towards him due to his interactions with women. And THATS TRANSGENDERISM. 

I mean. Im not a girl. But because of my agab, i feel MUCH more comfortable with having girl friends rather than guy friends, and im sure thats not a rare phenomenon in transmasc ppl. the fact that scott has a cutesy/unassuming demeanour to him, especially when you consider that this statement is coming from his girlfriend, the frequent references to him being soft and “raised by girls” and, as said by envy in a flashback, “the girl of the relationship,” it all points to the conclusion of him being very non-traditionally masculine at the very least, and definitively trans at the most. 

Anyways.. I dunno if that makes ANY sense but writing this just made me have several very nice relizations about how to read the story in a new light. Tl;dr: scotts trans and i proved it youre welcome everybody

a freaky and disorienting thing is that ive realized that, as i accept more and more that i am a trans guy and thats ok, the more i sympathize w/ male characters that are just........ objectively The Worst. like i suffered through the ENTIRETY of Just Friends(2005) for Ryan Reynolds, and-- actually, hold on a sec, before i get back to the point i gotta take a quick sidebar to explain the pain, the TORTURE that is Just Friends, the 2005 film starring Ryan Reynolds and Amy Smart, and written by Adam 'Tex' Davis. 

i had to watch it muted for like 90% of the film. the intensity of the “cringe” aspect of this film that bills itself as a “cringe “”””comedy””””” was so off-the-charts that i physically could not stop myself from vocalizing my discomfort through groans and screeches. i would mute the film, turn the screen away, play on my phone for a minute because i literally could not handle seeing the rest of the scene, only to turn my computer back around and find it STILL ON THE EXACT SAME SCENE. i skipped entire swathes of the film. it literally got to the point that i could not handle what was happening and i just--

i gave up! i gave up and i just skipped forward until i found scenes i thought i could handle, or that featured two people Talking instead of some Event Happening, and i’d watch that, and then the scene would change and i’d be in Suffer Town again, population 1: me. Me is the only inhabitant of Suffer Town. so much of the movie hinges so thoroughly on like-- like. A Person Failing At A Thing They’re Good At. and it made me want to die. i think this movie gave me depression, on top of my preexisting depression. it squared my depression. 

OKAY, back to my original point. or like, a mixture of explaining The Film, and explaining why my own reaction to it startled me so much. anyway.

so, ignoring the intense amount of Suffering you’ll have to live through if you’re bound and determined to watch ryan reynold’s entire filmography and you get to this monstrosity, the gist of the plot is thus: ryan reynolds plays a man who was a Stock Dweeb Character in high school. overweight, very low self-esteem, “uncool” hobbies, a very uncomfortable fixation on the one pretty girl who is nice to him and hangs out with him(who herself is dating a Stock Jerk Jock Football Player, who we’ll call SJJ, because I can’t remember his name and he doesn’t matter). on their graduation night they throw a party, he signs her yearbook with a Love Confession, and intends to give it to her.

something something The Yearbooks Accidentally Get Swapped, something something She Reads The Wrong Note And Goes “Um. Wtf My Dude????”. cue him going “NOO I DIDNT WRITE THAT WHAT? WHAT? WAIT OH NOOOO!!!”. cue him running downstairs and seeing SJJ reading his confession aloud to a chorus of twittering classmates.

so yeah, he’s embarrassed, the whole school’s laughing at him because of Course. he runs from the party yelling that he’s going to “be somebody” and also something about how the rest of them will never be anybody. ya’know. that usual thing you see Generic Stock Nerds saying when their feelings are real hurt in movies. 

cut to the future. he looks like ryan reynolds in 2005, so, you know. Really Fucking Good. like, Only Reason To Watch This Garbage Film levels of good. like, They Should Have Given Him Shirtless Scenes As Payment For Me Sitting Through The Rest Of It kinda’ fine. anyway. he’s hot and beautiful and is a talent manager for celebrities. he’s all rich and attractive, and he’s a complete sack of garbage to women. 

he’s actively horrified of the “friendzone”(im cringing right now just writing the word. its so awful) and he’s really not interested in women above a surface level. we see a woman at a bar who’s clearly his date telling him that he’s the Worst and that he needs to see women as people. as she talks he is disinterested at best. she walks away and another lady, who’s overheard the conversation, looks him up and down and decides she doesn’t really care what he’s like because he’s pretty, they flirt, and suddenly he’s been broken up with and acquired a NEW date in the span of about a minute of screentime.

he gets women basically wherever he goes, because he’s only really interested in a specific type of person and(i promise this is the last time i say it) because he looks like 2005 ryan reynolds. 

so because of some Plot Devices, he ends up back in his hometown and unable to get a plane out. he sees SJJ who is now a washed-up drunkard who wears his old varsity jacket around because Of Course. ryan finds him offputting, as do i, and it’s one of the few nearly funny scenes in the film, just because i enjoy juxtaposition and so(despite it being the most boilerplate, run-of-the-mill, dull point to make in a film) it actually was something i didn’t hate to see. 

he also sees Pretty Girl From High School. they semi-hit it off. she’s shocked that he looks Like That(i know i promised not to mention it again but it’s a legit plot point this time leave me alone), he’s shocked she still looks Like That. they agree to get food the next day. 

ryan acts like a bit of a dick, name-dropping celebs he works with left and right, and getting really aggressive when a waitress drops off a plate of his old usual(a really fattening pancake... thing. it looked gross tbqh.) and like, ok, so, i just, here’s where i--

okay. okay. okay. okay. in Ye Olde Days, i wouldve written him off as a douche, and hated him, and, i. i

i couldnt help but, feel, SO bad for him???? like. okay. he just. he had NO self-esteem as a teen. he felt extremely bad about himself, for a TON of reasons, so he literally ran away and reinvented himself entirely and, found a marginal amount of enjoyment from his life???? like, was he happy? no. but he was... he hated himself a little less maybe? he worked really hard to feel good about his body, he worked really hard to get a job he felt any semblance of pride in, he worked REALLY hard to eventually get to a place where he could feel... literally anything positive at any point. he genuinely truly put in real effort to become healthy and have a good career.

and then he, he gets stuck back at his old house, and people are trying to force him to eat food that makes him feel awful and then mocking him when he gets defensive about it, he gets injured and needs to go back to wearing his retainer again, he openly fails at a BUNCH of stuff that he’s specifically been working REALLY FUCKIN HARD AT, for YEARS, because he was insecure about being bad at it in high school(like ice skating, he’s really good at it now because he sucked in high school and he wanted to overcome that), and then also receives more mocking for failing at it, and. you just.

you’re watching someone who was at the bottom of a pit of despair, who clawed tooth and nail at the clay walls of their misery-prison in order to haul themselves all the way up to the lofty height of “misery pit again, but different this time”, as they get caught in a downpour that completely erases all their progress and they slide right back to where they started. you see him completely regress and it K I L L E D me. he gets stuck back in a place where every single flaw he tried to overcome is just! shoved! back! on him! all over!

and, yeah, he’s. not great to women. he’s not beating them or anything, i don’t think he treats them SUPER badly, or actively thinking of them as lesser. but it doesn’t change the fact that he is BAD to them, and he thinks of all interactions with attractive women as transactional. and thats TERRIBLE. but i just!!! i cant help myself man i cant stop i just i look at him and all i feel is like!!!!!!! 

leave him alone!!!!!!!!!!! get the boy therapy or something!!! dont tear him down like this!!!!!!! we cant just tear someone down every time they make a semblance of an attempt at being Not Miserable!!!!!!!! just!!!!! he doesnt need this, man!!!!! hes literally just The Saddest Person with The Lowest Self Esteem Of All Time, so he uses his newfound ability to find people willing to sleep with him, as a way of raising his self esteem. is he the Best Person? not on your life. but he’s just! a sad little man! who’s trying his best! i dont wanna see him torn to shreds, man. i just want him to realize that his self-worth doesn’t have to rely entirely on whether or not he’s sexually appealing.

because at the end of the day, i think that’s his major problem??? his own self-worth is so thoroughly wrapped up in whether he perceives himself as someone who’s sexually appealing to others. 

which like! fuck you! thats considered a Big Problem and So Sad when it’s a girl, if she feels her only self-worth comes from being sexually attractive to men, but, it feels like every time i see a dude goin thru somethin similar, its like “oh hes just a Bad.” and i get it, not only do men have the societal power in this equation, but also when theyre dealin with this same problem, dudes tend to externalize it in really unhealthy and sexist ways, and im not. im not saying every sexist dude just needs a manic pixie dream girl to waltz into his life or some shit!!! im just!!!!!!!!!! idk!!!

i just cant stop sympathizing w/ the dude. and wanting him to get Help. and suffering immensely when i see him literally regressing into a place of misery right before my very eyes. 

when really all i was supposed to get from the movie is “man was Fat and Gross. he grow up 2 b Sexist Womanizer. now he see old crush and learn Sexism Bad. then kissy”

so I read Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

short description if you haven’t heard of it: its written by a trans guy. a trans dude marxist prof finds manuscript that purports to be the accurate confessions of Jack Sheppard, 18th century thief, wherein it reveals that jack is Also a trans dude. the prof annotates it w some notes and also about whats happening in his life (being put on unpaid leave by evil capitalist dean, failed dates)

it uhhhhhhh left me with a lot of conflicting emotions. i also realised i haven’t really read any novel by a trans guy before which was like, i was like, is this what cis people feel when they’re reading about cis people?! i’ve been missing this so long?!

On one hand: i don’t even have words to describe how weirdly like, similar it was not only in ~Trans Experience~ but also in the similarity of Metaphors used that i also used for my own life, and it fucked me up in that sense. Like usually what surprises me w/ similarity in books is that it feels the author is siphoning things from my head and could peer into my brain. In this case what was surprising about the similarity is that it had somehow emerged from outside of me. Like just finding something completely extermal to me, that happened to match SO CLOSELY with my own experiences, was extremely fucked up and wack and I was astonished. And not only the Metaphors but the References to Foucault and Herculine Barbin and Derrida and that one fucking queer theory essay that talks about a “pussy” or w/e being “a loved point of entry”-- not that I agree and love every reference but just that Constantly i was being put upon by things that I knew and understood, and had also read. It was bizarre.

Also somewhat related to ^^^ is that in places it was almost Embarrassing, as in i was receiving extreme Secondhand Embarassment to be seeing these words and experiences being put out so plainly, and in the public eye, to the point where I almost don’t want to recommend it to people because the recommendation would be some sort of exposure of feelings better kept hidden. Tho that is the point of a book?! It had me very flustered.

The third part: both Jack and the prof are straight trans guys. In theory I am not really opposed to straight trans people calling themselves “queer” bc I really just, don’t care, I don’t have a stake in it, & it makes sense to me that ppl with non cis bodies would relate to a word that expresses that sort of thing, particularly in regard 2 their relationships. So to be clear, IDC, officially. ....In practice, though, it made me SORT OF UNCOMFORTABLE that these guys getting with women kept having their relationships and love be described as “queer.” Bc me as a gay was like, What Am I Then.... What’s OP consider me.....I think overall this is something that is just like, a personal insecurity on my part, because I doubt that OP would think I’m not ~actually~ gay. I also think it gets into an area thats really uhhhh....potentially rife for troubles. Because like: I think we can talk about how sometimes trans guys have history with and reason to relate to the ~(cis) lesbian community~ and how trans women have the same with the ~(cis) gay community~ but ALSO that history and relationship sometimes won’t be there, or will be broken off, and/or trans guys will feel comfortable with the (cis) ~Gays~ and same w trans women for the (cis) ~Lesbians~. And we can acknowledge BOTH of these experiences w/o making it so one invalidates the other. Like, trans people have a complicated relationship to dominant modes of gender!! Its literally stated right there in the “trans”!!!!

BUUUUUUUT, having said that, i ALSO have a problem when one narrative gets more attention with the other. So Im also kind of upset that the “straight trans person w ties to the gays of their aab  gender” is like the ONLY narrative that gets ANY sort of traction,like recently I read Joseph Cassara’s The House of Impossible Beauties which had the same thing w/ trans women and gays. And starting both of these I was like “Wow! Amazing how these trans books seem to have gotten a lot more attention than say, Casey Plett’s Little Fish!” And then I saw that both of them had the “straight trans people are Kinda Gay” perspective and was like “ohhhhhhhhhhh” bc you know cis people eat that shit up.

Anyway those are my #thots, i sort of want to rec it to the prof i had whos a socialist that i worked on medieval manuscripts and talked about foucault with bc i think he would find it entertaining but i also have the problem of,,,embarrassment lmfao. (thats another thing bc it has trans experience that is sometimes relateable and sometimes not and im always worried cis ppl will read it and be like “oh this is what trans ppl are LIke” and thus think thats what I am Like aaagh. maybe i’ll rec it to trans ppl only idk lmao!)

i know exclusionists like to pretend that a) inclusionists are actually cishet and b) they're rhetoric is TOTALLY different from terf rhetoric but like i literally made a post (untagged) on my discourse blog about how id feel more comfortable w the hypothetical cis dude who identifies as bi to not misgender me than a "proper" cis lesbian who refuses to acknowledge that im not a woman and not only did it get reblogged by exclusionists (bc it was in fact ace discourse related) but it ALSO was reblog by terfs who, proving they can't fucking read, decided that i was obviously a trans woman and that "shut up lesbians don't want your dick" as if i even had a dick to begin with or gave a fuck about their disgusting selves or that any self-respecting lesbian would ever give them the time of day like it's the same crowd and they'll do everything they can to not only lie about you to your face but also misgender the hell out of you to prove their point I, AN AGENDER NB AFAB QUEER, WAS CALLED A CIS DUDE BY TERFS (aka they assumed i was a trans woman despite literally saying i would be misgendered as a woman on the post, ironic) ON AN ACE DISCOURSE POST THAT THEY ONLY SAW BC OF SHITTY ACE EXCLUSIONISTS STALKING ANY BLOG WHO DOESN'T AGREE WITH THEM like point proven, thanks (this happened like idk last year but i just think about it a fucking lot bc jesus christ can yall be any more blatant w the terf rhetoric when my post got attention by terfs thanks to yall)