#literally just seeing the trans flag out in the wild always made me :) and i never thought enough to figure out why that may be | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

7fckingidiots · 3 years

Note

Would you be alright with writing some HCs about the brothers and a MC who's a trans guy? Sorry if it's a tall order or too vague, they're a big comfort for me and I'd like to see what ideas you have bcs your headcanons are fantastic ;w;

HELL YEAH DUDE!!!! IM ALSO TRANS!!! AH!!!!! demigirl rights :3 but i also find a huge comfort in the boys and i hc all of them as trans because no one can Stop Me •• but i really hope you enjoy these and remember you’re valid and i care u so much! Also i hope you don’t mind but i kinda made it gender neutral so every trans folk could enjoy!

The Brothers With A Trans MC

Lucifer

He didn’t know until you came out to him honestly. He knew all his other siblings were trans but with all the work Diavolo gave him and adding new students from different realms on top of that he hadn’t really had time to notice any minor changes in you.

He feels guilty about this and immediately makes sure(like everyone else)to ask for your pronouns, name, and how you would like to present yourself from now on.

Fixes your ID cards and your papers with Diavolo right after dinner

God. He’s such a dad and he gets you things that have your new name on them. You wake up to see you have a new pencil case with your name embroidered on it with matching pencils. God.....he’s so weird i love him so much

Asmo does most of your clothing shopping but for formal wear he takes you shopping! He’s not about to buy you some cheap tux or gown ok it’s gonna be over 2000 grim and he’s gonna get you three of them STOP HIM

He’s not the best with verbal affection so he writes down notes that are like “you looked very handsome/pretty today.” or when he first starts writing them they’re like “you’re a boy/girl/kid. i’m proud of you.” Thank u mr morningstar

You want surgery or to start hormones??? He will stop all his work with Diavolo and spend forever looking up things for you, he wants you to be as safe as possible(pls he almost fainted after he realized you’d have to give yourself a shot like everyday dhdhdhjdhd hc that demons/angels don’t have to do hormone therapy i’m so JEALOUS)

Practices saying your pronouns in his study when you first come out. He just wants to make sure you feel as safe as possible in his care(and he remembers how terrible it felt to be misgendered)

Guess what....he loves you no matter what :)

Mammon

You’re blind as hell if you couldn’t see his top scars but I respect it

King DOES slip up on your pronoun change but always immediately corrects himself. Satan has a spray bottle that he sprays Mammon with when he does it. Mammon is NOT amused but the same can’t be said for Belphie.

Gender affirming activities??? Oh yeah like robbing a bank?? That’s pretty gender neutral and trans right?? Yeah!!! Wow such a good supportive brother.

If you want you can wear the formal wear Lucifer bought you to the said bank heist. Boom trans rights

You can practice painting his nails or doing his makeup if you’re too nervous to do it on yourself first!! Dw if it’s bad he also can’t do makeup or paint nails so once you let him return the favor you’re both laughing and Asmo is distraught.

KING at dying hair he will get you whatever you need and if you want an entire different hair cut entirely he’s ON it

Very used to being Loud and Brash but if you need someone to talk to about anything really he always calms down and sits down to listen to whatever you have to say.

Lots of gendered gifts from him. This said for men??? Oh ok adds to cart. Oh pink??? For ladies??? yeah that can go in there too

You’re never gonna believe this.....But he loves you and supports you :)

Levi

He was the first one to come out to you at the house!! He was just so excited! Same hat!!!

Gets literally any video game where you can design the protag/have custom pronouns and will play games like that with you for hours

Would you like a pride flag.....for u.....He has too many.....Please take the trans flag please he has no room....he bought in bulk for a pride event and didn’t consider the consequences of his actions

Miku binder but irl. He will get if for you but unironically.....thanks King. He just likes binders with patterns and i respect IT

Dysphoria?? He gives you his hoodie bc that was his trademark dysphoria hoodie and i GUESS for you he can share............he would give u anything just ask nicely he’s sensitive

Reads any character that matches up with your gender and is like!!!!! That’s you!!!! OMG!!!! You in da IRL

Goes back and edits his tweets if they use your old name or pronouns(also has he/they in his bio. this is for nothing just makes me :D)

If you haven’t chosen your name he’s gonna suggest so many fictional characters. POV levi kin assigns you.

You listen to music together that just has Trans Vibes.....maybe u cry together but there’s no judgment!! It’s just nice :)

God it’s wild but! He loves u and thinks ur great :)

Satan

Enby Satan. That’s all :)

He’s very quite about it, he supports you! He’s just not loud like his brothers

He brings you book about gender studies and LGBTQ history that he thinks would interest you(there some of his favorite books and they’ve made him feel the most comfortable in his gender)

Gives you a name list if you haven’t named yourself yet! He cares about you and wants to make sure you have the right name that suits you

He’s the one that tells you that it’s ok if you’re still figuring it all out, learning about yourself is a very tricky process and if anyone knows that it’s Satan

Any of the brothers would kill anyone who misgendered you but with Satan that shit is ON SIGHT

Asks you how you know and what were the signs that gave it away to you, but only if you’re comfortable telling him!! He just finds everyone’s experience interesting and would like to know yours as well.

Spells for fucking DAYS Satan personally kills body dysphoria the best he can(mainly bc he’s HIGHKEY afraid of you getting surgery he hates knives so much)

Makes your comfort food for you when you’re feeling down about yourself and will read whatever you want to hear outloud to you.

!!!!!! GET THIS !!!!!! He loves YOU :0

Asmo

Fucking excited!!!! This means you two are going to buy so much clothing together and he gets to style you let’s GO

Buys you whatever you want but he will make you try it all on so be CAREFUL what u wish for.....ur gonna be there till the store closes yeah......

Paints your nails with the trans pride flag!! Also does your makeup and gives you tips on how to look more masculine or fem!!

VOICE LESSONS

He will help you lower or raise the pitch of your voice if it KILLS him. It eventually becomes like a mini class after school

Helps with internalized transphobia! Hes dealt with his fair share and knows how awful it can be and he will NOT being having you experience that as well we r practicing Self Care now

Picks apart any one who misgenders you until they’re crying he has NO fucking time for that behavior in this HOUSE

Sometimes self care is eating whatever you want and sitting in the dysphoria hoodies while watching chick flicks with Asmo

He likes dressing you up but he’s always sure to set boundaries so he never puts you into something that makes you feel uncomfortable

ALSO edits his posts and takes down anything that makes you uncomfortable!!

He loves you so much!!!!

Beel

another one to hand you The Dysphoria Hoodie and it’s very large and comfy!

he’ll help you make out a work out routine that will help you get the body you want and it makes him really happy to work out with you :)

he’s gonna hold your hand if you have to take shots and will give you puppy eyes if you don’t let him. He’s just worried!!!! He wants to help

stands behind you whenever you’re nervous about coming out to someone, he will NOT have someone making you feel bad or misgendering you

he’ll see food with trans pride colors and gives it too you, probably doesn’t even know what it is half the time but it made him think of you so he makes sure to get it for you

he doesn’t trip up on any of your new pronouns or name and makes it seem like he never even knew them. dead name???? what’s that??? a type of sauce?????

will let you vent to him whenever needed and will always make you a sundae after you’ve finished. it’s comically huge but it’s tasty and does make you feel a lot better, thanks beel

makes sure you remember to take off your binder if you’ve been wearing it for more than eight hours! and if you’ve been wearing heels to feel more fem he reminds you to take those off too and has a pair of slippers for you in his room that you can wear instead

hey! get this! He loves you so, so much :D

Belphie

you’re trans? ok kid join the club. he doesn’t make a big deal at all

are you still gonna cuddle with him and join him in his quest to make lucifer’s life difficult? yeah? ok then cool what’s ur name

if he hears someone misgender you he waits till you’ve left the room and just kills whoever did it, dude’s unhinged what did you expect from him honestly

he’s actually really curious about any hormone therapy you’re on and likes listening to you rant about it to him. he likes seeing your face light up and it partly reminds him of lilith

calls your hormones something stupid like “oh dude, your gamer girl juice arrived.” or “hey your little man potion is here.” ...thanks belphie

will NOT let you sleep in a binder or push up bra!!! not healthy!! let ur chest breath guys

like mammon, he gets you gendered gifts but they’re so fucking weird? you didn’t need a girls version of a collectable hot wheels set???? he got you blue lightning mcqueen sheets?????? those EXIST here????!!!!! when does he even shop......

introduces you to new people like “this is our resident boy/girl/human. they don’t do much but i think they’re cool.”

he really does care about you but he remembers when he came out he just didnt want people to make a big deal about it so he’s just doing what would have made him feel the most comfortable, but you can still see how much love he has for you when you look into his eyes

he loves you, so, so much :)

296 notes · View notes

aro-aizawa · 4 years

Text

alright so i finished up playing all of pokemon shield including the post-game mini plot, so here’s a quick fire list of all the things i liked about it and disliked about it before i go on to explain it in more depth (also spoiler warning). here we go.

what i liked:

the graphics, a little weaker in handheld form but largely unnoticeable unless you were looking for it. GREAT graphics when playing on tv mode.

the new pokemon. they were all really cute, and i especially loved the alternate forms and new evolutions of older gen pokemon.

opal, she’s hands down one of my favourite gym leaders so far only shortly followed by bede.

bede is a nonbinary icon as proven by the fact that they didn’t use any pronouns to refer to them until after the fourth gym, and the fact that when they’re in their gym uniform its trans flag colour. it may not be canon, but its canon in my heart.

gym battles are treated as they should be -- huge spectacles that gets people amped the hell up.

dynamaxing. its so goddamn satisfying to finish off a gym battle with your best pokemon as a fucking giant behind you, no matter their actual size. tiny pyukumuku behind you? badass. huge ass wailord? bad. ass. an actual baby pokemon? bad. ASS.

the wild area. introducing camping was a good system, it definitely helped a lot when you couldn’t exactly jump back to a pokemon center so you cook your pokemon some curry to revive and heal them. i imagine they took some inspiration from breath of the wild, tho i haven’t played it to really confirm.

what i didn’t like:

they cut so many corners in the game, you can definitely tell it was made in a hurry.

a minor note here, but for me i have this annoying bug that makes it so some pokemon have the exact same cry. its a sort of whooshing noise that you’d expect for a flying type pokemon, but it frequently appeared instead of well known and familiar cries. i can’t pin down exactly what the cause of this is, or if i’m hearing things wrong, but it was infuriating.

the towns are empty and barely even give you flavor text anymore. you might as well not speak to any npcs except shop keepers and named characters.

there is exactly three cute outfits and three cute hairstyles and that’s about it. i know a lot of this point is mostly about personal taste but please nintendo, we had such a good range in the previous game.

don’t explore. there is literally no point in looking in all the nooks and crannies of this game, because i guarantee that if the game doesn’t tell you to go there, then there’s nothing there.

it’s too easy. it’s....actually crazy that i’m even putting this as a point, because i’m a strict believer in making games playable for everyone. but it’s just....too much.

the cut down pokedex will forever inject salt right into my veins. especially when they had the audacity to include one of the first starter pokemon, but not the other two. charizard is an okay pokemon but its overrated, nintendo please accept that.

the plot didn’t exist until suddenly it did and then it made no sense.

i hate the fact that the team in this game were just delegated to fans. i understand the whole “fake out” thing they might have been going for by getting the player to think that they’d turn out to be bad, but no. it just sucks.

fucking. swordward and shieldbert. i???? literally. have no. words. (i do but they’re super long so hmmm down below)

a game worth about £20 ($25) less than i paid for it. its a decent quality game, but not nearly nintendo quality.

wow this post is longer than i expected it to be already. but anyways, the rest is super long and under the cut further going into depth about the points i raised.

to start with, i’ll talk about the good points because honestly?? i really wanted to love this game. i really really did. maybe it was just the fact that at first i didn’t like sun and moon because they changed the formula so much, but it turned out to become my favourite game in the series. or maybe it was just that i don’t like being hypercritical of things i spent fifty fucking pounds on. either way, i wanted to like the game, and overall i sort of did but i sort of didn’t. lots of mixed feelings. anyways. onto explaining the good stuff. (or you can skip to “now on w the bad junk” for the bad stuff)

1. the graphics, a little weaker in handheld form but largely unnoticeable unless you were looking for it. GREAT graphics when playing on tv mode.

one of my favourite things about the pokemon series in recent times is seeing the process from 2d undetailed sprites to 3d incredibly detailed models. the most ambitious thing about gen 5 was the way the camera moved with your movements as you crossed the bridge, and now i just sometimes sit back and thing “wow 13 year old me would FLIP if she could see how good they got”. bc i kept just....admiring all the graphics and the quality of them.

2. the new pokemon. they were all really cute, and i especially loved the alternate forms and new evolutions of older gen pokemon.

definitely one of my favourite things about the game was seeing the new forms of pokemon we already knew and the alternate forms they’d take when dynamaxed. i love seeing pokemon with new types that completely flip the script, like darumaka becoming an ice type instead of a fire type. or the fact that they gave mr mime a galaran form and it actually doesn’t look bad.

i really loved that some of the galaran forms had unique evolutions, such as linoone evolving into obstagoon. or meowth into perrserker. it makes sense and i’m always super happy to see new evolutions for old pokemon, it keeps things interesting when pokemon other than eevee get new evolutions.

(tho that being said, still disappointed there’s still not another eeveelution. still holding out hope for that ghost type.)

3. opal, she’s hands down one of my favourite gym leaders so far only shortly followed by bede.

i’m not super well versed in the pokemon universe besides from gen 1 and gen 5 onwards (if you couldn’t tell), but its really refreshing to have an old gym leader that’s visibly elderly rather that just grey haired maybe retiree man. her personality was also really fun, it sort of felt like she literally had the most personality of all the gym leaders, which kind of sucked but it made me really love her character.

and bede i didn’t wholly expect to really like as much as i did? i mayhaps might have spoiled myself a little on their gym leader status by dipping into the swsh tag here on tumblr before i fully completed the game. but still, they seemed just generally really annoyingly stuck up? but something endeared me to the darl and i just think it mostly had to do w the fact that opal took one look at them and declared they was her grandchild now.

4. bede is a nonbinary icon as proven by the fact that they didn’t use any pronouns to refer to them until after the fourth gym, and the fact that when they’re in their gym uniform its trans flag colour. it may not be canon, but its canon in my heart.

argue with me on this point all you like, but you can’t deny the fact that in CANON they literally did not use any pronouns to refer to bede until after the fourth gym. the only mention of pronouns before that was their trainer card, which i did not check because good character development should be shown not told through an impersonal medium such as character cards.

5. gym battles are treated as they should be -- huge spectacles that gets people amped the hell up.

i’ve always loved the way the league is set up, because it makes sense. the pokemon formula works and its interesting, but in previous games most people only vaguely acknowledge it as something every kid tries but doesn’t really complete. it’s already set up people love pokemon battles, there just wasn’t a spectator sport about it unless in the anime or movies. they’re just a thing that happens that none of the npcs care about.

finally its treated like the spectator sport that it should be. like,,, hell yeah,,,

(also do you think that in the pokemon universe there’s various stories/tv shows about made up kids completing the league and becoming champions? because i definitely do.)

6. dynamaxing. its so goddamn satisfying to finish off a gym battle with your best pokemon as a fucking giant behind you, no matter their actual size. tiny pyukumuku behind you? badass. huge ass wailord? bad. ass. an actual baby pokemon? bad. ASS.

i p much summed up most of my thoughts in this point well. but i love when pokemon are so visibly powerful. like these creatures have powers that we’d equate to actual gods like summoning whole storms, creating giant waves, create earthquakes and so much more. pokemon are so powerful and to see them become giant and have so much weight and power? its so satisfying controlling that and bringing down other giant pokemon.

7. the wild area. introducing camping was a good system, it definitely helped a lot when you couldn’t exactly jump back to a pokemon center so you cook your pokemon some curry to revive and heal them. i imagine they took some inspiration from breath of the wild, tho i haven’t played it to really confirm.

i really appreciated the change that started in pokemon let’s go with some pokemon being visible and easy to encounter wandering through the grass. it makes it so much easier to search for the one pokemon that you don’t have in your pokedex yet, or if you’re looking for a specific pokemon to join your team.

i love how large and expansive the wild area is, and with the camping system you can just explore and fill out your pokedex without ever leaving if you’re fully stocked up on supplies. it makes you really believe the whole “yep this kid isn’t just blasting through the whole thing in one day”. kids sleep in tents on their journey with their pokemon and cook curry for them all. adds a nice level of immersion and convenience.

jesus fuck this is so long and i haven’t even gotten to my criticisms yet, is anybody actually reading this chunk of text??? well rip to you my friend and thank you. but now on w the bad junk.

1. they cut so many corners in the game, you can definitely tell it was made in a hurry.

they did a decent job considering it was in development for only two years w one only for the concept and the second actually making it. but they cut so many corners it doesn’t quite feel like a true installment into the pokemon universe. it feels like it was made by another dev studio rather than gamefreak. like how fallout new vegas and fallout 3 barely feel like the two installments in the same franchise.

this point sort of leads into many different points that i raised, so i’ll explain those a little bit more in depth there. but to sum it up, the easiest way to see it is just how...flat things are. if you only pay attention to the things the game directs you to, then you will not miss a single thing. flavor text is less about adding depth to the world and more just...pointless. it adds. nothing.

and in the post game when sonia gets a new assistant, even though she plays a fairly important part in the post-game plot, she doesn’t get a name nor a unique character model. she get’s a generic doctor model yet it’s treated like we should feel betrayed that nameless npc 234 went behind sonia’s back and stole from her.

OH! and i almost forgot!!!! but that one part where rose is trying to talk leon into something “mysterious”??? they straight up just used images!!!! like,,,, what???? you didn’t have time to program the minimal animations for that?? who’s fault is that for pushing the release!!! give your employees time to work at a decent pace and not crunch them to reach an impossible goal. game freak, you don’t have to release a game every november.

2. a minor note here, but for me i have this annoying bug that makes it so some pokemon have the exact same cry. its a sort of whooshing noise that you’d expect for a flying type pokemon, but it frequently appeared instead of well known and familiar cries. i can’t pin down exactly what the cause of this is, or if i’m hearing things wrong, but it was infuriating.

also p much just explain this in the point. BUT it happened all. the. time. the only pokemon i know for sure was effected by the bug was gyarados, because instead of the roaring cry i heard the whooshing sound that was probably meant to be another pokemon’s cry. it sounds wack when im saying it rn bc im not 100% convinced i wasn’t making this up, but it was the sole reason i turned the pokemon cries to get drowned out by the music and sound effects.

3. the towns are empty and barely even give you flavor text anymore. you might as well not speak to any npcs except shop keepers and named characters.

i touched on this previously in 1 but basically walking around a town and talking to npcs will not get you any interesting dialog. going into the houses/rooms, and you’ll only get one npc who’s all like “i’m brushing my hair!” and that’s about it. there aren’t any items tucked away in houses or corners of buildings for you to explore or battle people. when you acknowledge that there’s no flavor text from npcs all the towns feel practically empty whereas in the previous games it actually alive.

not to mention how little the diaglog changes? like it may just be my faulty memory at play but im pretty sure that the npcs in the previous games had more dynamic dialog in which they’d change what they said depending on your action in the town or for the plot. after a major event just happened, if you walked around and talked to everyone in that area they’d talk about it. but that happened like....once.

4. there is exactly three cute outfits and three cute hairstyles and that’s about it. i know a lot of this point is mostly about personal taste but please nintendo, we had such a good range in the previous game.

one thing i loved about the series was the increasing freedom in customisation of trainers. fashion kept getting wider and with more variety, clothes that were still cute and i’d frequently have about 2k because i just kept buying them. by the end of my playthrough of swsh i had almost a million saved up because i didn’t like most of the clothing options. i found one outfit and hairstyle i liked a quarter of the way through the game and stuck with it until the end. they drastically cut down on the options, and that sucked.

5. don’t explore. there is literally no point in looking in all the nooks and crannies of this game, because i guarantee that if the game doesn’t tell you to go there, then there’s nothing there.

again, already touched on this point but one example i know is this. when you go to the energy plant to battle rose, or go to the roof to battle eternus, i expected to go back to it when the event was over to see if something was left behind or because i’d been locked in a cutscene and unable to explore before, that meant there would be something now. but nope. don’t bother. even when you think you might be able to do something fun, don’t try until the game points you in that direction itself. if something interesting is going to happen in the game, i assure you they will point it out for you.

6. it’s too easy. it’s....actually crazy that i’m even putting this as a point, because i’m a strict believer in making games playable for everyone. but it’s just....too much.

hard games disinterest me. if a game is renowned for it’s difficulty, then i will avoid it. i don’t care if defeating dark souls is a badge of honor for your stubbornness or skill. i simply don’t enjoy playing a game that makes me want to quit in frustration because i am not good at video games. i appreciated how easy the games have been in recent years because it makes it a lot easier for me to actually complete them and enjoy them, it’s why i have trouble getting into the earlier gens of pokemon.

but when it got to the point where after only about an hour or two of dynamax farming, by the time that i got round to the championships i was literally one shotting every single pokemon. even when i didn’t have super effective moves. i was almost 20 levels ahead of the competition, and blasted through the whole thing in a total of 10 minutes battle time and 30 minutes dialog and cutscene time, with a 20 minute pause for a phone call.

i defeated leon with only very minimal struggle. i couldn’t one shot all his pokemon, i will admit. i two shotted them. i went into the championship fully stocked up on potions and revival items and left with all of them. none of my pokemon fainted or even sustained major damage.

while satisfying feeling that you’re op enough to utterly annihilate your opponents, there comes a point where it’s just “why bother i know i’ll win” which kind of sucks.

7. the cut down pokedex will forever inject salt right into my veins. especially when they had the audacity to include one of the first starter pokemon, but not the other two. charizard is an okay pokemon but its overrated, nintendo please accept that.

sorry to charizard fans, but please acknowledge that it’s overrated. its design is basic, and already has multiple different forms. the fact that they passed over the opportunity for the creativity that dynamax venusaur or blastoise could give, for another basic dragon design is so annoying.

not to even mention the fact that they didn’t even bother to keep the rest of the starter pokemon either. i vaguely remember one time some nintendo employee or big shot saying that the best thing about it is that every pokemon is at least one person’s favourite. the underused or underloved pokemon will always be ONE person’s favourite, and that’s why you can get the whole pokedex. but y’know fuck that philosophy in the name of getting the game out on time. when they could have very easily pushed the release date back. i’m lucky that most of my faves got included but i know that a fair amount did not. and i’m pissed.

8. the plot didn’t exist until suddenly it did and then it made no sense.

9. i hate the fact that the team in this game were just delegated to fans. i understand the whole “fake out” thing they might have been going for by getting the player to think that they’d turn out to be bad, but no. it just sucks.

these two go so hand in hand, that i’m taking the time to address them together considering in every single previous game so far the team has had some HEAVY influence on the plot in one way or another. they’re always linked to the legendary pokemon of the game and they’re always included in the overarching plot, either by driving the player to act or subtly there.

i kept seeing team yell show up and trying to work out how they were going to join the plot. were they a cult doing Science Shit in the background trying to revive the legendaries? was marnie the leader of this cult and going through the league to distract people from her totally devious going-ons? or would it turn out that marnie though the team harmless but really it was a front for her relative’s secret cult?

nope!!! they were annoying roadblocks who added literally nothing to the plot.

and when i realised that, it was the seventh gym battle and so far the only plot i’d glimpsed at was the mysterious explosions in hammerlocke city and the overarching tale of the sword and shield that had been obvious since literally the first time sonia started to talk about it. there had been no plot. there was literally no plot other than the gym battles which sonia and leon specifically called out to “leave this to the grownups, you two just focus on the gym challenge”.

and when i got my eighth badge and was completing the equivalent of the elite four, i was still confused as FUCK because where the hell was the plot???? and then the whole weird ass “we have to save leon” from a meeting with.....a chairman? how about you wait just an hour jfc it’s not that bad? he’s not being held against his will? the chairman wasn’t doing anything obviously evil or even hinted at?

the whole thing was vague and rose’s motivation was just ??????? i don’t know???? i still don’t exactly know what the whole deal was. it came out of nowhere and made. no. sense. it had completely lost me. along with the fact that they were suddenly introducing dynamax raids like we hadn’t already been doing that so many times in the wild area????

which leads me to my next point.....sigh.

10. fucking. swordward and shieldbert. i???? literally. have no. words. (i do but they’re super long so hmmm down below)

first things first, is that i hate everything about these characters. from their names, to their designs, to their motivations, to how they’re handled in canon. it was shitty and while i had fun playing with the whole “this is what a champion does after they beat the previous one” thing, it was just in general really bad.

like, i cannot get over how shitty their designs were. their hair was literally a sword and a shield. i kept thinking “wow swordward has a penis head that wiggles when he moves” and couldn’t take a single thing he said seriously. i literally wanted to weep at the horrible character design.

not to mention the suddenness of their whole schtick. “yeah we’re royalty and we’re “”””CELEBRITIES”””” even if none of you have heard of us”. like what????? the fuck????

it just sort of pisses me off to an astronomical degree that this low quality shit was jammed into a pokemon game when they were getting so good at storytelling. it felt like game freak were hammering me with a club while singing “YOU PAID 50 WHOLE POUNDS FOR THIS IN PARTICULAR!!!” like,,,, thanks. thank you. thank you for waiting until after i’d finished the game to really hammer home that point.

which somewhat leads me to my last point that really just sums up the majority of my thoughts on the whole game:

11. a game worth about £20 ($25) less than i paid for it. its a decent quality game, but not nearly nintendo quality.

if i knew what i knew about the game know, i wouldn’t pay fifty fucking pounds for it. it physically pains me to spend more than £30 in one sitting, that i actually winced while i was buying it even though i was being 100% optimistic that i was going to love it. at most i’d pay £30 for it, but only then. it’s a good game to really distract you and power through but other than that, i don’t see it as a game i’m going to come back to so i can complete the pokedex and i certainly am not going to buy the other game so i can play it again unlike how i’ve done in the past with my favourite installments.

maybe i’m just picky, or i don’t buy games often enough, but i really would not classify this as a quality installment in the pokemon franchise. if you get a free copy, or just the opportunity to play it for a few hours then fine it’s a great game. but not quite something you should want to spend your money on. but don’t pirate it. that’s a fast way to get bugs.

to sum this whole mess of a post up: immediately after finishing the game i said to myself “now time to go play a REAL pokemon game” before booting up pokemon moon.

#long post #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon swsh #pokemon #shut up danni #wow this got LONG its literally 4k words #i got a little salty #ooooppps #i really wanted to like this game #i really really did because i hate being negative about pokemon #its one of the few series that i love with barely any faults #but this......this is just painful #i should be thankful on some level because it distracted me from the fact that i was in the process of rehoming my dog #but still there's just....so many things wrong with it.....#sigh #(pls give this post attention it took me an hour and a half to write)

4 notes · View notes

wethesoc-i-ety-blog · 5 years

Text

List of LGBTQ+ Media

Feel free to add on to this! Please, if you do, put the name of the source down, and if you want, where you can find it, and some thoughts on it! To clarify, I’m listing pieces of media with:

- Healthy representation - please, no 2018 LeFou. No-one needs that. - ‘Real’ representation - i.e. not queer-baiting (which is why Voltron should not be added to this list) - Present representation - no gay side characters who are solely present for the purpose of being gay and providing writers with a chance to look diverse, in hard quotations.

Video:

The Politician (2019)

I binged this on a Tuesday, and I’m an IB Student, so you know it’s gotta be good.

Starring Ben Platt, the former star of the revolt of a musical Dear Evan Hansen, and his co-star Laura Dreyfuss, this show is absolutely magnificent representation in the sense that it is completely normalising, in a way that made me tear up and laugh and feel deeply inspired throughout and after I was done with it. This show is gorgeous, with a rich colour pallet and a deeply intense sense of fashion; if that’s not enough to make you watch it, it’s basically a run of a US election scaled down to a high school, and at this point (October 26th, 2019) scaled up to a localised senate election, which it does hugely well at representing.

When I talk about the show being normalising, I mean this: you know character tropes? Twisting, turning plot lines of romances that are usually confined to straight folks? This show throws forth multiple fleshed-out, informed, refined romantic and non-romantic relationships between queer characters, never parading its LGBTQ+ themes for the media but nonetheless including them in a way that I have never seen so whole-heartedly done before and I was deeply impressed by. I won’t spoil too much, but here’s the thing: a wlw relationship, a mlm relationship and a relationship between a non-binary character and female character are all included, and all of them are well fleshed out, meshing well with the story and not just ‘there for the sake of it’, as I know can become an issue. There’s an LGBTQ+ person of colour, too. And I know this shouldn’t be something I have to say, but all the queer characters are played by queer people, and that’s pretty great for media repping.

I love this show, can you tell? No spoilers - but the first song is a miracle.

-----

Steven Universe (2013)

She says, running away.

Steven Universe follows, funnily enough, Steven Universe, on his quest to develop the powers he derives from the magical gem on his bellybutton, in order to become a better help to and eventual member of the Crystal Gems, a group of gems taking human forms who fight against the gems of Homeworld, the gem home planet, to defend the Earth, an organisation set up by Steven’s mother, Rose Quartz, whose gem he now possesses. Wild, I know. It gets wilder.

This show started airing in 2013, a relatively-early time for LGBTQ+ media with proper representation of healthy relationships as well as unhealthy ones. It is a kids’ show, fundamentally, so some issues are oversimplified, but in my experience, growing up with this show was fundamental not only to normalising my own sexuality for myself but to understanding what constitutes a healthy relationship. The show is very much central around this concept; what is ‘healthy’, and in turn, what represents ‘unhealthy’ relationship dynamics? On top of that, it also deals with a traditionally feminine protagonist who is male and, from what we understand, straight, combatting masculinity stereotypes which are particularly damaging. A great show to hand your kids or younger siblings, because it’s got a huge plot line, and now that the show’s finished, it lacks the issues of upload schedules which it had had before when new episodes were constantly being produced.

The gems are all ‘feminine’ (though they avoid some criticism, I think, because they’re literal rocks and therefore cannot be gendered) and are referred to as she/her for the length of the series; they undergo a process called fusion by which they can combine their bodies to create a product larger than both their parts, an oversimplified but useful framing of a relationship. These fusions can be forced - unhealthy - or desired - healthy. In this way, gems commonly match up, giving good representation, even if it is slightly forfeited by the fact that they’re not human, to wlw relationships, and in ways that address unhealthy dynamics as well as healthy ones that can also apply to straight relationships.

The show is heavily left-wing, so if that’s not exactly your thing, be wary. I’m not here to argue about what’s right and wrong about the show - just to say that it’s got good representation, and if you’re down for a little suspension of belief, this is the way to go.

-----

Love, Simon (2017)

One of the most mature pieces of coming-out story fiction I’ve ever seen. It gets flack because it’s popular, but it’s popular for a reason, and many many many of my friends have had a personal experience with themselves in watching this film. Simon is a teenager struggling with an undercover mlm relationship and with coming to terms with his sexuality while also being a high school student. When word gets out about his sexuality at school, he has to deal with that on top of everything else, too.

If you’re going to watch a teen movie, this is the one to take a stab at. The material is sensitively handed; the show deals with a troublesome parental situation in terms of Simon’s eventual coming out, as well, which is unusual for these types of movies. Usually it’s either radically ‘you’re gay so we want you out of our home’ or ‘you’re gay and we accept you’ but here there’s a good balance between the two that still resolves itself non-problematically, with a great conclusion to the undercover relationship that will appeal to theatrics. This movie also deals with the issue of outing, which is something that surprisingly few people understand well, in a context that is terrifying for the protagonist. He is not prepared to come out, and deals with positive and negative consequences; the movie does a good job at giving both sides equal time, and at producing resolutions to those situations that aren’t unbelievable.

-----

Adventure Time

I have to confess that I stopped watching AT in the same religious sense that I did as a child early on, but I resumed my watching when I reached that queer milestone of recognising characters as gay and seeing Marceline and Bubblegum, as I think they were always intended to be, as those two lesbians we can all relate to. I don’t feel like this is a spoiler because most people know already, and because there are hints from the beginning - it’s just a question of whether or not it’ll be properly fulfilled.I love how they finished the series, because it wasn’t a Voltron ending where the ‘will they or won’t they’ ends in ‘they won’t, because of our producers’, as opposed to ‘they will, because we’re finishing what we started’. No spoilers, but there’s gayPDA, which is important, especially in kids’ shows, because it shows that yes, we do kiss each other, and yes, it is possible. Our faces don’t repel like opposite sides of a magnet.The queer characters are archetyped stereotypically as goth and geek and not as the typical butch and prep thing you see with lesbian representation, which is great because the show is focusing on the people themselves and recognising the LGBTQ+ part of those characters as factions of their personalities, not the other way around, the best way to normalise. Great times.

Youtube:

Thomas Sanders

I, I think like many other older viewers, started watching Thomas Sanders because of his web series, Sanders Sides (which is a whole other boat of representation for mental health considerations, but we won’t get into that), and fell in to his other contact like a little queer magpie clicking on rainbows.

His video on Pride discusses a lot of useful stuff, in a lowkey fashion, for people all over the spectrum and for those not really sure what the spectrum is. How can I stress that he needs to be shown in schools to groups of young people? He’s all about positivity, respect and being openly proud, not just LGBTQ+-wise but also generally - and his channel features a very diverse group of invested people, so if you’re looking for down-to-earth, unstrained representation, this is where it is.

mackdoesit

Basically a big ???

Hosting such great video titles as REACTING TO ANTI-GAY COMMERCIALS BECAUSE I’M GAY, Mack is one of those Youtubers you watch when you’re comfortable with yourself and just want to enjoy some gay shit. You can’t go anywhere on his channel without seeing a rainbow flag. If nothing else, he’s great because he is so openly embracing of his sexuality without even needing to state that he is; it’s so evident in how often and how well he talks about it that he’s comfortable and it sets a great example of where you should want to be in terms of yourself, especially if you’re young and uncertain of where you are on the spectrum.

Miles McKenna

Ah!!!

Miles started his (now completed) transition (ftm) in early 2017, with a video entitled ‘So I’m Trans’, having previously identified as female and a lesbian. I started watching Miles, then Amanda, early on in 2015 because he was deeply constructive as an image of a lesbian role model for me, when I thought I identified the same way; since then, there have been a few changes and I now watch him as a queer icon and as an excellent educational tool.

Miles posted this great video in April of 2018, I AM MILES, showing snapshot clips of his transition over the year since he started T, and it’s honestly deeply emotional, personal and, critically, a great demonstration of transitioning, its struggles, and its benefits for the person going about it. I have learned a lot from Miles - generally and also about myself - and I would recommend his channel to anyone off the bat. There’s some good stuff in there - including a classic ‘things get better’ scenario, because his deeply religious mother, who had rejected him for years on the basis of his sexuality and then transition, has recently started participating in Miles’ videos.

Eugene Lee Yang (another Youtuber, attached to the Try Guys)

Watch I’m Gay by Eugene. I’m serious. That video didn’t change my life, but it changed my perception of what I needed from queer media icons, and this fulfilled some part of me never touched before.

Eugene is openly gay, and has been for some time; his videos have also centred around his experience as a drag queen, which is a very rarely well-represented field and should be exposed more by people accessing young audiences. Go, watch. He’s good for the soul.

Books:

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjamin Alire Sáenz

My favourite book. I actually picked this up because a Youtuber I used to watch, John Green (who wrote Will Grayson, Will Grayson, another LGBTQ+ staple which I haven’t personally read yet but intend to) recommended it in a video list. It follows Aristotle (Ari) and his life in Mexico in friendship with a boy he meets at a swimming pool, Dante. They bond over their unusual names and Dante’s proclivity for reading, poetry and swimming; the book follows their friendship’s progress after he moves to Chicago and has to write rather than talk to Ari.

Without spoilers: Aristotle and Dante is this tremendous achievement because it describes a person’s struggle with their sexuality in the frame of international content and masculinity, two things which pose a huge threat in some circumstances to a person’s journey with their sexuality. Both of the titular characters witness a sharp, studied detailing of their progress into accepting themselves, in the context of their lives and stories, in a way that is deeply touching and, on your first time reading it, so cleverly executing that when the moment comes it’s genuinely surprising. I lay down and thought about my life for a few hours after finishing it in one go. It’s not a difficult read - Sáenz writes beautifully - but it is emotionally challenging, so watch yourself.

Please go read it!

-----

Simon versus the Homo Sapiens Agenda, Becky Albertalli

This is the origin story for Love, Simon, so everything I said about her applies the same for this one. I have to betray my book-loving instincts and say that I didn’t actually enjoy the book all that much, at least not as much as I adored the movie - by the time I finished this one, I had already read all the other books on this list and come to the conclusion that I was sated with representation for a while, so I wasn’t really wowed until the movie came out. That being said, if you’re not a fan of movies, the book is just as well-written as the others on here, and honestly provides you with a better-developed story just simply because of the fact that it’s a book.

-----

They Both Die at the End, Adam Silvera

Before Aristotle and Dante, this was my go-to recommendation for queer reading. Adam Silvera is a beautiful person and writes a lot of good LGBTQ+ stuff, but They Both Die in the End has that quality of life-ending-ness and inevitability about it that makes it devastating to you as you’re reading up to the end, because, obviously, you already know what’s going to happen.

How do I describe this book? Two boys meet each other on their death day, something predicted by a mysterious agency who can’t tell you when, where, or how, except that you will die within the next 24 hours, and it could be in 30 minutes or in 23.5 hours. It isn’t the type of book I’d normally read, and it also isn’t the type of book that has what I like to call ‘the queer outset’, which is nice, because Silvera isn’t baiting his readers. It was this pleasant surprise in the end when you uncover the LGBTQ+ part of it that justifies its classification under the LGBTQ+ shelf at Waterstones.

It changed my life completely outside the realm of LGBTQ+ stuff, just because I consider every moment more precious, now - but in truth the representation of a mlm relationship here is excellent, and I was and am struck to the core by it.

-----

* I want to put C. N. Adichie’s wonderful (hah) book, Americanah, down. The first use of LGBTQ+ characterisation is in a character from Nigeria connecting a gay man she meets at an event to witnessing the beating of a gay boy at her school in her youth. This is said in passing, but it can be triggering. There is more representation as the book goes on - I include it because it is one of those rare novels where LGBTQ+ people are side characters, but in a way that is incredibly normalising, and not for that ‘diversity’ factor.

Shows and Theatre:

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

I have to confess, I haven’t seen this show. I’m asking for tickets for my eighteenth.

That aside, I heard from my friend, who recently transitioned, that it was great. The show follows an aspiring drag queen, Jamie, in a British state school - that in itself is great for us Brits, who don’t often have that LGBTQ+ representation in our media except for if its transitioned over from the States, but drag queens don’t get much representation in the media either, especially few cases that are healthy and constructive.

History Boys, Alan Bennett

I put this play on last year with a group of English Literature students who read the play and loved it; unsurprisingly, all those students are now a part of SOC(I)ETY, my school’s GSA, which speaks to the nature of the text. It follows a group of state school students in the UK (again, go Brit representation!) who are applying to Oxbridge for History and return to school for a seventh term after their A-Levels to be coached on how to pass the exams. The boys are strung between the new substitute Oxbridge tutor, Irwin, who is regimentally focused on pass marks, and Hector, their longtime English teacher, with a more nebulous style of teaching. The boys progress through the preparation time taking sides with these teachers.

Here’s the thing. There are four queer characters in this play: Posner, a young Jewish (!) boy who is openly gay for Dakin; Dakin, another student, arrogant and who is later revealed to be attracted to (although this can be challenged) Irwin; Irwin, who exhibits a level of attraction towards Dakin but is morally resolute-ish; and Hector, a homosexual and arguably a paedophile, who gropes the boys when he brings them home on his motorcycle, which they take with a good-natured grain of salt.

These characters are not necessarily healthy characters in terms of representation. Dakin represents at least a bisexual character, which is great, and Posner a relatively unproblematic Jewish LGBTQ+ figurehead; but Irwin and Hector openly discuss potential relations with the boys in one of the final scenes, and although nothing ever happens, there is the sense that it would have done had it not been for a major event in the play.

Read it if you can stomach the material. It never gets explicit physically; but there are a lot of swear words, so if that’s not your thing, be careful.

Some further ones that aren’t really great for representation, but for one reason or another deserve a spot:

High School Musical

I know this is meme’d to high hell at this point, but Chad and Ryan and I Don’t Dance are seminal moments in LGBTQ+ media representation, and quite frankly, at least in my opinion, considering when it was made, one of the best shots at introducing LGBTQ+ related concepts to young children that didn’t threaten its widespread takedown in the early days of the 2000s. As a young queer I watched every High School Musical movie the week it came out, once on the actual day and once on the weekend with my family. Looking back on it, it’s pretty insane to see how we all missed that one and yet still learned a lesson from it.

For those who haven’t heard, the song I Don’t Dance has been reconsidered recently because it hints heavily at something (loosely-defined) going on between Ryan and Chad. The main thesis of the song is this: Chad, a stereotypical high school basketball player, wreathed in typical attitudes, is confronted with Ryan, one of those early ‘meant to be LGBTQ+ characters’ from a time when it was more acceptable to represent gay men as pink-wearing, song-singing musical theatre people, and assumes that Ryan is not able to play baseball, his sport of choice at this time. Ryan smashes it, of course (we stan a queen), over the course of the song, proving him wrong while also doubling back on the idea that Chad himself says that he doesn’t dance.

Note the wording here: not I Can’t Dance, it’s I Don’t Dance. The implications here are clear. The song, at the very least, works with defeating stereotypes associated with masculinity, which is a hugely-pressing issue to this day and deserves more appreciation like this in the media; but the undertones of LGBTQ+ presence in both of these characters is there and important. Ryan himself is one of the less offensive, at least in my opinion, versions of this ‘flamboyant man’ archetype and therefore has some credit as a character for introducing that concept to young kids anyway, but Chad hits differently. Because he’s a jock. Because he’s a high schooler, a sports player, and, clearly, was intended to be LGBTQ+. And don’t we need more representation like that?

Lil Nas X

Please follow this man’s Twitter. That is all.

As I said, please do add to this! I hope you all indulge.

3 notes · View notes

esompthinfics · 6 years

Text

So, Pride was pretty great. It was my first time going, and I was so happy? Content? Freed? Blessed? Gay? Gay.

It was a grand old time. So I went with my boyfriend (ace, trans), my QPR partner (ace, panro, polyam), a friend (bi) and her boyfriend (the lone het). We arrive around noon, because we didn’t really want to see the parade (both my bf and my QPRP don’t like small spaces with lots of people and loud noises) so we just went to the festival.

Still a super duper fun experience, because - let me tell you - everyone was in rainbow. We had ya drag queens, we had ya gay boys and ya lesbians, we had soft babies and hard punkers, we had wild costumes and normal clothes, we had people without shirts on and just tape on their nippies, we had people being led around on leashes, and we had the super old gays who remember a time when none of this was possible (those are my favorite gays), we had just about every walk of life in that festival. Just walking into the area made me feel like I was lifted to another, a better, world.

Anyway, so we’re all havin a grand old time; the first thing we decide to do is eat. The festival had carnival food; so we had lemon aid and hotdogs and fries and the like. As we were in line for the food, two older gays started shouting, we only got the tail end of their conversation, clearly missing the lead up to the joke, but they were yellin, “Free foot-longs for everybody! Happy Pride!” and “Ban small hot dogs! Foot-longs for life!” (was it a dick joke? only gay jesus knows.) Regardless of the context, it was gr8 and I laughed.

We sit down and eat our food and everything is good. I’m feelin the vibe, I’m pointing at hot people, I’m laughin it up. Everything is great. And then -

Disaster struck. Alarms start going off. People are ushering the gays out. Required evacuation. A very lovely bear in an official shirt was loudly informing us that we had to go. (“That looks delicious,” he said to a woman holding a phallic popsicle, “It’d be better in one of the surrounding buildings. This is a required evacuation, I need all of you to leave,” He looks at me, observing my A.Ham hat, “I love Hamilton, you have to go.” But would I be back?) The gays were forced out of the festival, children were crying, drag queens took off their heels. A catastrophe. This is homophobia at work.

(There was a tornado watch.)

We had no real clue where to go, so we followed the other gays; for, gays are known for getting lost, but they are also rather resourceful. Like our own miniature Pride parade, the rainbows led us to safety, in the form of a car garage. We sat there for a little while and watched it rain outside. After an hour? Maybe? (It truly did not feel like long, but my sense of time is absolutely horrid.) The rain stopped and a wondrous queen stood on top of a truck and yelled into a megaphone, “GAYS! WE’RE BAAAAACK!”

It was like being called out of your room for dinner; slowly, bright bits of color slunk out from the shadows to return to the promise lands.

(My group and I took a quick interlude to partake in an past time that is not yet legal in my state. Some gays could smell our activities and waved to us as they walked by; cheering. The cops had much on their hands at the moment and could not care less about those stupid homos getting lit behind a tree.)

We return to the festival moments later, stoned out of our minds. Everything was amazing after that (and before that, too, if I’m being honest - which I am. The storm could not dull my good mood). I paused in the middle of a crowd, staring at the most amazing lesbian girl ever (everyone there was so cute, god damn), and it was in that moment that the reality of the situation hit me.

I was at Pride. I was at my first Pride, with two people I loved (and two other people who are also rather chill), and no one could tell me that I didn’t belong there. I almost cried, looking around and just watching as gays of all ages, sizes, colors, and creed intermingled. It was perhaps the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Just, lots of dicks and dykes everywhere.

At one point, I saw an individual who had the cutest freaking dress on. They were clearly nervous about wearing it (I’ll be honest, I didn’t ask their pronouns, they could’ve been a young drag queen - although they didn’t seem to be in drag so much - or they could’ve been a pre-e trans girl, or just an adorable twink in a dress; i don’t know, regardless, they were cute.). The dress itself was just gorgeous; it was Doctor Who, with a space pattern and a tardis on the bottom left corner. A bit short and loose; absolutely adorable. I wanted one. But mostly, I wanted to inform the owner of how well they rocked it. I saw them earlier, when we were getting food, but didn’t have the chance to speak with them. I made time for the chance. I went up to the individual and told them that a) their dress was fantastic and b) they looked great in it. Do you know what they said? “Thanks, it took a lot of courage for me to come out here and wear this.” I responded with something like, “Well, you look amazing. I hope everyone has been nice, because you deserve it.” Literally as soon as I said that, a woman comes up to them and complements them on the their dress. I was probably more excited about it than the poor buddy. But they smiled shyly and thanked her. It was honestly a blessed moment. Complement people, it could honestly make their day.

Anyway, then we shopped a bit. For myself, I bought a giant pan flag, a polyam button, and a button with they/them/theirs on it. For my sister, I bought a key chain that had the ally flag on it and one of those equal sign stickers. And for my gay friend whom could not yet go to Pride, I bought a magnate that said “love is love”. Always bring back something for those who could not see the wonders for themselves.

After that, we didn’t really wanna do much else. It was already a pretty long day, so we decided we’d leave Pride (I know, a truly upsetting notion) and walk across the city to get ice cream. We took pictures and went home.

A full day, for a full gay.

The end.

#pride #pride month #if you ever can; go to pride #even if you dont really like people or crowds; its so calming to just be surrounded by tons of other people just like you #it feels like it all went by so fast lol

5 notes · View notes

gabriella-lost-in-the-big-city · 7 years

Text

And in her heart was a sea of darkness… Pt. 1

The choice I make to say what I have to say in the next post is a risky one. It may change how people view me or act around me entirely. I may be seen as a victim crying out for help (and maybe I am). However, despite the consequences of talking about this matter, the whole point of this blog was to be nothing but 100% honest with the people that read what I write and give my self the opportunity to say all the things I wish I could say or do or feel on a daily basis. So without any other further interruption, here I go…

My depression has been with me since the 6th grade, a time where my emotional intelligence grew and I became more secure with my sexuality. I felt such guilt and fear for being a male (at the time) who had sexual/romantic feelings for other men since I grew up in Raleigh, NC from 2005 to 2014. Feeling like I could confidently be out of the closet as a gay male (let alone being a trans woman) was not an option in the south. I was surrounded by so many narrow-minded people that knew nothing but the tobacco farms and cattle that surrounded them, that still thought racism was a politically correct thing, that God, Jesus, and whoever else from the nativity scene where the only “people” that were going to save you from burning in hell for your “sin”. There were no political activists, social justice warriors, or open-minded liberals, just white Republicans chewing tobacco and riding down the highway with confederate flags in tow. It was not always like this, but when these images crossed my path I knew that there was going to be backlash on being anything other than white straight and Christian. I knew I couldn’t tell many people around me, especially not my family (diluted Catholics from El Salvador), so I spent the next 4 years keeping who I really was a secret (something I would pick back up when I discovered I was actually trans this entire time in college) and that really tormented me mentally. I felt alone among even my closest friends. I felt like I couldn’t get too close to anyone at school or in the neighborhood to avoid having them find out I was gay and possibly hating me for being gay. I began to develop thoughts of suicide during this time in my life as my depression worsened over the years. I just kept having these thoughts that things were never going to get better, that I would have to live the rest of my life in secret from my family, that I would never be loved for being who I am, and that my feelings/thoughts/actions would always be seen as wrong. My thought process was if I just killed myself I wouldn’t have to feel the pain and agony of my depression, I didn’t have to live my life in fear – distant from the world around me. In hindsight, the emotional turmoil I endured with my transition into the woman was way more deserving of a desire to commit suicide then what I went through in middle/high school. Middle/High school is the common cold and what I have been going through during the past 3 years of college is like a stage 4 pressure injury infected with MRSA. I never like talking about my life as a gay male (2007-2014) even if it is a brief background story because I always feel it’s such a cliché/diluted story of what I’ve been through.

Now that you know that I suddenly didn’t just start being depressed and suicidal when I moved to NYC for college, this is where the real fun begins. I don’t want to focus on how I discovered I was trans all along in this post, so I’ll just skip that part for now. As a trans woman, my depression began to worsen – I finally found the answer I had been looking for to explain why I never could relate to the guys in the neighborhood or why I felt “different” all my life, but now I became an even bigger monstrosity in society. For some reason, people can be ok with people being Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual (which even that is something people can’t get their heads around, but I digress), but are not ok with people being trans. My parents, for the most part, had dealt with me being “gay” neutrally a.k.a. they never really mentioned it after I came out to them. However, I knew that being trans was a pill they would not be able to swallow (a thought that would come true soon enough). I chose to act on my desire to be a woman my freshman year of college in secret from my family – I would put on my E.L.F. makeup on and look like a total mess and occasionally wear an ill-fitting dress from F21 and super high heels that I knew I could not walk in (something I still have not mastered). Some of my closest friends called me Gabby (which in hindsight I am so grateful they took the initiative on), but for the most part, I was still Justin (GOD I FUCKING HATE HAVING TO SAY/SEE/THINK OF THAT NAME). Over the course of the past three years, It became increasingly harder to be seen and treated as “Justin” as I came close to becoming the woman I am today, but in those early years it was easier to still be “Justin” as I had already made up my mind that there was no way I could live ha happy life being trans. My family would never respect or accept me (which is mostly true in my current situation) and I would never be truly loved by a man (or a woman) as a transwoman (which I still think is true because my run-ins with online dating are terrible, but we will save that for another post). I think the hardest part was having to keep everything a secret, especially when I moved in with my grandma my sophomore year where I literally had to pack Gabriella in a box and be forced to only be her when I was in the bathroom. I worked so hard those four years of high school just to have the courage to come out the closet and be free, just to be thrown back in with no way out in sight. On the outside, I pretended everything was fine on the outside, but I the inside, the negative thoughts I had about myself just fermented inside of me. There is nothing healthy about bottling things inside because eventually the pressure becomes too much and you either have to begin to release the pressure little by little or wait for the bottle to eventually explode. My form of dealing with my emotional distress was nowhere near healthy – from my self-diagnosed binge eating disorder to the binging of alcohol at parties to numb the pain to my favorite, the burning of my wrist with a lit cigarette, There are a variety of ways to commit self-harm, some choose to cut or inflict physical pain on themselves, but I chose the delightful burn of a recently inhaled cigarette. I had an affinity for cigarettes when I first came to NYC for college, the warm smoke entering my lungs calmed my nerves and the burn from smashing the cigarettes onto my wrist riled the inner masochist in me right up. It only ever happened a handful of times during my freshman and sophomore year of college, but I still have the scares that I guess will haunt me for the rest of my life. Looking back over the years sometimes I wish I had the courage to drink a little more, to keep the cigarette on my body just a little while longer and fry my veins, maybe grab a blade and slit my wrists or cut through my carotid, maybe jump in front of an incoming train or into incoming traffic, or down a whole bottle of pills from the medicine cabinet. I never had to guts to do more than what I did to self-harm or actually kill myself despite wanting to do it so badly – a part of me was scared of surviving my suicide attempts and having to live with the consequences or I felt bad for how my suicide would affect the people around me. However, my fears of self-harm and suicide slowly diminished – the pain or the consequences didn’t seem so bad and I thought that my life was way too insignificant to actually make a lasting emotional impact on the people around me. People die all the time, and sure it’s hard, but we eventually moved on and they become nothing more than a stone on the ground or ashes in the wind. And I am sure you’re asking yourself if all of that is true, what is stopping you from going back to hurting yourself or killing yourself, and If I wasn’t asking myself that very question every day of my life I would have an answer for you. I guess what’s still keeping me alive is that little part of me that feels like I do have some value in this work, that my work and future ambitions in healthcare and public health matter and are important. However, at the same time, I can’t tell you that there is also a part of me that is willing to give up my value in this world just for the selfish desire to just end my life long-suffering. I know this may seem crazy that this is how I feel, that I would be willing to throw all the good things I have worked long and hard for - to be where I am today, a semi-successful, semi-confident, semi-functioning TLW on the path of bigger and better things one day. If could be worst, I could be physically sick, have cancer, have a stroke, have my leg amputated, need a major organ transplant, etc – but then again this is just siding with the whole “mental illnesses don’t matter as much as physical ones” debate.

I can’t tell you what would make me feel better. I can’t tell you what will make me value my life. I can’t tell you when or why I have these thoughts, only that they worsen when I find myself alone or I am not distracted by the world around me. I can’t promise you I’ll be safe, that this is something or someone to save me. I’m a wild card, I’m a ticking time bomb, I don’t know how long I will last. All I can tell you is that I’ve felt this way, every day, with varying intensities, for the past 12 years. I don’t know if it will ever end. I know a lot of you this is a lot to digest, things you never thought I go through on a daily basis. However, that’s the way I chose things to be. If I was outward and honest with these feeling with everyone around me, I wouldn’t have all the friend that I have, I wouldn’t have accomplished all the things I have, I wouldn’t be able to smoothly move through life like I have all these years. My façade, a happy/sarcastic/melodramatic woman, helps me get through every day if my life – and I don’t know if I will ever truly feel that being happy is no longer something I just pretend to feel. This is not everything I want to say on the matter or it is a complete representation of how I truly feel (and I don’t know if it is physically possible to convey such feelings and have you truly understand them through words on the screen). This is just an abridged version of what goes inside my little head, behind the scenes, behind closed doors where you never think to look and see.

- G

#trans #transwoman #transgender #depression

2 notes · View notes

itsworn · 6 years

Text

2018 Trans-Am Racing at the Monterey Historic

We all have them: the automotive bucket lists that we’ve compiled in our heads over the years. As teenagers growing up on the East Coast, we would sit around drinking beer and talk about how one day we’d roll in the Hot Rod Power Tour, break records at Speed Week, and then rumble down Woodward Avenue in Detroit as part of the Dream Cruise. These were the events our adolescent psyches lived for; excursions that we’d mentally plan out but that would most likely never come to fruition. We would talk about what we’d drive there, how we’d scoff at the law by doing burnouts and donuts and then ultimately, be discovered by a news crew or magazine publisher and then become instantly famous due to our radiating coolness. That is were our minds were at in those days, and it was the weekend b.s. sessions like that which got us through the winter months when two-feet of snow lined the streets.

But that was then, and now I live on the West coast, in Northern, CA, a mere 118-miles away from one of the greatest automotive events the world has to offer. I speak of course about Monterey Car Week, that yearly orgy of automotive gluttony and excess that takes place mid-August in and around the Monterey Bay Peninsula. During this week the streets are literally filled with billions of dollars worth of automobiles, auction houses, and individuals whose wristwatches are worth more than most new cars. It’s a true spectacle, and if it’s not on your automotive bucket list, then add it immediately, because it’s something you’ll not want to miss.

One of the highlights of car week comes in the form of the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion (a mouthful, I know) that is held at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. This event plays home to all manner of racecars stretching over the last 100 years. There are vendors, celebrity drivers, thousands of like-minded enthusiasts, and automobiles that have been borrowed from some of the finest collections.

The various grids are made up of everything from pre-war Bugatti and Alfa’s, to early Formula One cars and the Trans-Am Series hot-rods of the 1960s and early 70’s. We’re talking about vehicles with dollar values in the high six-figures (and beyond) that are piloted by drivers who don’t hold back. Ever see a 1952 Allard go head-to-head with a ’54 Porsche? You will here. How about a 1984 Nissan 300ZX Turbo roll in the same field as a 1973 BMW CSL? It’s crazy I know, but this is where it happens. We’re talking about an automotive Disney Land that your imagination would be hard pressed to topple if given the opportunity.

Races aside, one of the best aspects of the Motorsports Reunion is the unbridled access that everyone in attendance has to the vehicles, personnel, and the drivers. There are no security guards in black suits or velvet ropes keeping folks out. Instead the paddock is filled with EZ-Up tents that house tools and the crews who work feverishly to make sure that the cars are ready for the next race. There’s also an understanding that everyone in attendance respects: look but don’t touch, ask questions and be polite and above all else, enjoy. For the teams participating, this is serious, and it costs big dollars. Therefore, keep your distance when work is underway, and more importantly, understand that being here is a privilege, despite what that $110.00 ticket says.

As a standalone track, Laguna Seca is pretty damn good. We’re talking about a 2.2-mile road course with 11-turns, a ¼-mile+ long straight and of course, the legendary corkscrew that, when taken properly, makes you feel like your falling off the Earth. From a technical perspective it’s somewhat of a point-and-shoot affair, but that doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining. I’ve driven everything from a Porsche GT3 RS to a Dodge Caravan through these bends, and each and every time, I’m reminded that I’m rolling on hallowed ground.

Wandering around the pits is enough to send your brain into sensory overload, especially when your childhood heroes are sitting in front of you. Vehicles like the 1971 championship-winning AMC Javelin driven by Mark Donohue, or the ‘70 Boss Mustang that was wheeled by Parnelli Jones (1970 Trans-Am Championship Winner). There was also Sam Posey’s Sublime Green 1970 Dodge Challenger (complete with Keith Black small block), along with some lesser-known cars like Rusty Jowett’s red 1968 Camaro Z/28, the ’68 Ford Mustang Coupe of Dean Gregson and another one of my favorites, the 1964 Pontiac Tempest (known as the Gray Ghost) that debuted at Lime Rock in 1971.

As a muscle car guy, the Trans-Am Championship Series of racing that took place between 1966-1972 was my favorite series of all time. We’re talking about racecars that looked almost identical to their showroom brethren and that would rip a hole in the atmosphere every time they cranked to life. It was the golden age of motor racing in the United State,s and it was one of the few times in history when racing was still relatable to the common enthusiast. Camaro’s, Mustang’s, Javelin’s, Tempest’s and Challenger’s would all mix it up and grind fenders, while at the same time, igniting the imaginations of every kid who had their faces pressed against a showroom window.

These are racecars that ran carburetors and manual transmissions and employed drivers whose nether regions were so massive that they overcame the need for self-preservation. Drivers aside, this was also when the engineers and pit crews from back in the day cheated so tastefully that it would drive the tech inspectors insane. As a case-in-point, consider Sam Posey’s ’70 Dodge Challenger that had been acid dipped to reduce weight. The roof material was so thin, when a tech-marshal rested his elbow on it, it actually dimpled it was so thin!

Want to cheat like the professionals? Well then, that’s how you do it.

Throughout the day, we watched everything from the pre-war cars on their pizza-cutter sized tires to the wild-looking IMSA rigs that dominated the 1970’s and 80’s. And while they were a sight to behold, it was the 8-cylinder symphonies of the Trans-Am cars that had me glued to the fence. One after the other, they roared passed while I camped out at the corner of Turn 4. The red, white & blue Donohue Javelin, Posey’s Challenger, the Grey Ghost Tempest – for me, and without getting overly dramatic, it was a dream.

Lap after lap, they swapped positions while four-wheel sliding through the bends. Some of these cars were more than 50-years old, and the drivers were pushing them like they had every modern safety feature incorporated into them (*see nether regions). Between the sonic booms emanating from the open exhausts, the fans and the announcements being made over the P.A. system, if you closed your eyes you may have actually thought you’d gone back in time. The race lasted around 25-minutes with the tri-colored AMC Javelin driven by one William Ockerlund taking the checkered flag. The yellow and black ’69 Z/28 Camaro wheeled by Chad Raynal took second, with third place going to the Grey Ghost 1964 Pontiac Tempest with John Hildebrand behind the wheel.

The cool down lap was filled with drivers, hands out of their windows, waving to the crowd like victorious gladiators. The cars, now a bit dirtier and with a few more paint chips, seemed to be relieved that the race was over, yet in their heyday they would’ve covered 90-laps or more. We followed other fans down from the grandstands and through the paddock to watch the cars pulled back into their stalls. As we walked, I heard those around us comment on how awesome it was to be here, and it was great to know people felt the same way I did. We had all traveled long distances to witness a mere 25-minutes of awesomeness, and I highly doubt if there was one among us who left disappointed.

We muddled around the paddock for another hour or so before heading home and once there I headed straight for the Internet to find original Trans-Am Series footage. As I watched, I wondered what it must’ve been like to experience these cars in their prime with the cheating, balls-out driving, and competition. I suppose in some respects it’s not much different than today, sans the advanced technology and safety regulations we’re all privy to. Then, I began to think about the track days we do out here in our own cars. Head to any HPDE event for instance and you’ll see Mustangs, Porsches, Camaros, Challengers, and all manner of Corvette and Miata ripping around with the drivers involved in mental battles with the clock and those around them. Is it real racing? No, at least not in the literal sense anyway. Yet for those of us who still yearn to see semi-modified street cars run flat out on the track, it’s about as good as it gets.

The vintage races that are run at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion are spectacular. There are events from Thursday on, with races held on both Saturday and Sunday at the track. Then there’s car week in general, which brings together automotive enthusiasts from around the globe. From a people-watching perspective, it’s downright hilarious, as Botox and overpriced shirts seem to be the norm. If you’re into auctions there’s Mecum, RM Sotheby’s, Gooding & Company, Bonhams and more. As for the high-class meet-ups, you can always hit up the McCall’s Motorwerks Revival, the Quail Lodge at weeks end, or the Concours d’Elegance on the lawn at Pebble Beach on Sunday. If these are your types of jams, though, just be prepared to spend upwards of $375.00 for each ticket (we know, it’s nuts).

Automotive enthusiasts will gravitate to anything with an engine, be it a barstool or a HEMI ‘Cuda. We love them because it’s how we’re wired and there’s nothing anyone can do to change that. Car week is everything we love about the automobile in excess, and the Trans-Am Series races are just icing on what we view as the world’s greatest cake. Are these events expensive and time consuming when you factor in hotels and food? Sure they are, but believe me when I tell you that with all the stress that everyday life can bring, knowing that gatherings like this still exist make me feel pretty damn good about being in this hobby.

The post 2018 Trans-Am Racing at the Monterey Historic appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network https://www.hotrod.com/articles/2018-trans-racing-monterey-historic/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hot Rod Network

0 notes