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#mother as a non gendered term for the person that grew the child in question
panderp123 · 9 months
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✨ Zephyr Dalael ✨
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❌ DO NOT REPOST ❌
Art by @kodoukat
Name: Zephyr
Gender: Male (Non Binary)
Age: 81 (Preteen for Elves)
Sexuality: Demi Homosexual
🔹Species: Drow/Dark Elf
🔹Height: 5ft-5ft 2”
🔹Skin colour: Navy
🔹Hair colour: pearlescent white
🔹Eye Colour: Lilac
🔹 Class: Wizard
🔹 Job: Exotic Dancer, Travelling Troupe
🔹 Personality: Friendly, confident, outgoing, shy at times, intelligent,
🔹Hobbies: Reading, Learning Arcana,
🔹Likes: Jewellery, Entertaining, Practicing magic.
🔹 Dislikes: Being alone, not belonging, called stupid
🔹Backstory:
Growing up in Nicodranus was challenging for Zephyr. With the nature of his kind being light sensitive the wonderful people of the town did aid and accept him as one of their own.
Adopted by the Dionysios family, who were a mixed family for sure.
A half-elf adoptive mother dark skin and sun kissed complexion & human father who was a sailor. The half-elf woman, Zelda had short curly black hair and golden eyes, she was a local medicine specialist who had moved from Zadash to be with her new husband, Michael who was a burly man, heavy build, hairy and trimmed beard.
Michael and Zelda had tried for many years for a child until a mysterious man cloaked offered them a child. They were over the moon to be receiving a miracle from the Wild Mother. This cloaked individual was short so Dwarven looking who had bestowed them with a basket and a small deep navy skinned elven baby boy.
Before they could ask any questions the figure vanished leaving the crying child at their doorstep. Asking for guidance on what to do next from the WildMother a gentle sea breeze warmed them and consoled the couple. They raised this child as their own.
No name of his own Zelda named him Zephyr, a Greek term for ‘cool breeze’. A parchment was at the end of the basket retaining the family name this child once had. The couple swore to keep it a secret until Zephyr was old enough to ask them.
As time went on and Zephyr excelled in the arcane arts but his love for dance especially the local traditions he grow up mixing both world. Although his family did not have the means for a fancy school the local Archmage did find this one and only drow in the town rather puzzling.
Yussa of Tidepeak offered to tutor the boy and aid them in seeking where did they come from.
Yussa was not the most social of elves but he was give the role as guardian should anything happen to the boy’s parents. The Archmage found it more intriguing that a Drow child was left so far away from the Dynasty. So it started as a personal curiosity and investigation but over time Yussa grew fond of the young wizard. They became more of a fond uncle and nephew which was much needed when the boy’s parents passed away while at sea.
Yussa was a pillar in Zephyr’s life especially with coming to terms with elven aging process. They both loved their afternoon teas and when Zephyr joined a travelling entertainment troupe known as the “Cirque du Desire”.
Zephyr overtime became a famous dancer with the beauty of their drow features which was still rare to see so South of Xhorhas.
Over the decades Yussa taught the young drow as many things as they could. A deeper mentor and student relationship and Yussa had done some research into the hows of Zephyr’s arrival was possible. This did cause a conflict with Zephyr and Yussa for a period of time but they eventually came to terms and the pattern over the decades shows drow children who were mysteriously smuggled and adopted by family not of their own.
Zephyr is now travels throughout Wildemount and Exandria to perform but with the research Yussa provided them. They did meet some of the Drow outside of the Dynasty and a name kept coming up to seek aid.
Essek Thyless…a member of the Kyrn Court who has been on the run since the war.
The question is would Zephyr seek out Essek to help with the mystery of his past? Or would Zephyr just carry on living, entertaining the world with magic and performance?
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hannahhook7744 · 2 years
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Do you think Lonnie is obsessed with her mother?
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That depends on what you describe 'obsessed' as.
But in my personal opinion, no. Not really.
Look, I know she talks about her mom alot compared to other characters but that's easy to explain away.
She's the child of two warriors, who grew up up surrounded by several warriors and their wives. She comes from a traditional culture that can be a bit overbearing as seen in the Mulan movie and as in seen in many posts about families/places in that culture.
So assuming that she grew up there at least for a few years before moving to Auardon than that alone would have given her some problems with her identity as a not entirely feminine young lady.
And then she moves to Auardon where gendered sports are a thing and where female sports apparently don't exist even though that Fencing (which can't be too different from Swords and Shields) is as far as I'm aware a non gendered sport.
She was expected to act a certain way by teachers and her peers. And while it wasn't a big deal most of the time because she is feminine too, it did cause some conflicts for her growing up.
In theory at least.
And Lonnie, who seems to be going to school at a boarding school where her brother no longer attends probably had issues coming to term with who she was as a person. Probably had trouble coming to terms with her conflicting cultural beliefs and personality.
She's feminine yes. But she also loves sword fighting and sparring and hip hop and a ton of other non feminine things that kids would be cruel about (speaking from experience).
And being away from home wouldn't help. Especially after her brother graduated.
So, my theory is that Lonnie brings up her mom alot for a lot of reasons. Not only because she misses her but because she's everything Lonmie wants to be and because she's a convent throw away excuse to use whenever Lonnie has to defend the way she is.
Her mom is confident. Her mom is well liked. Her mom is strong and funny and nurturing and doesn't need to be feminine to get by. Her mom is beautiful without trying.
And part of Lonnie wants to be that.
But another part doesn't want to throw away her femininity.
Lonnie wants to be both. She wants to be all that and more.
She wants to be confident and strong and nurturing and funny but feminine as well. She wants to be accepted for who she is. For every side of her. For every part of her.
And until that can happen without people questioning her, without people dismissing her or accusing her of wanting to be special/wanting attention she will continue to bring up her mom.
Because no one really thinks twice about a kid wanting to be like their mom or dad. About a kid bringing their parent up as a reason for wanting to do something.
Plus, Lonnie wants to make her mom proud of her. So of course she'd bring her up alot. But no, she's not obsessed.
She just has a good relationship with her mother who she wants to make proud and issues with her identity because traditional places and sometimes even non traditional places aren't always accepting of people who are different.
Hope that answers your question and thanks for the ask. If you have any other questions about her or the other main aks and vks and why they are the way they are I will gladly answer them.
Or if you just have a random question about any of my stories and ocs. I always love nice asks.
Also I wonder if I'd be a good therapist or character profiler.
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dreamingquinn · 9 months
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Thinkin about gender and spirituality
Preface: I don't have a real point to this. I just remembered you can basically post anything to tumblr.
My ex-mother in law said something to me the first time we met. "I've never understood queer relationships. You need the masculine and the feminine to balance eachother out... But I suppose that's why gays tend to have one masculine partner and one feminine partner."
This woman was a huge name in the druidic community of the UK. She is polyamorous. She told me that she remembered past lives and regularly saw the dead, animal and human. But she couldn't wrap her head around the idea of something outside of heteronormativity.
And she wasn't the only one in my life like that. I was basically raised a little heathen but I still grew up white in the US. Christian overtones policed my thinking and the thinking of those who influenced me. Most of my non-male partners have been feminine in their gender expression, and in turn I acted more and more masculine. I tried to fit a role based on expectations rather then what I (or even my partners) wanted.
Now I'm with someone I expect will be for life. They are 'masc' in that they are Butch. Not divorced from their womanhood even if they do not embrace that part of themselves the way someone who really enjoyed more 'typical' femininity would. Meanwhile I just bought two skirts for the first time since middleschool and I'm becoming even more comfortable with the term 'agender'.
I'm still a spiritual person, more now then when I knew and had access to people with connections in the 'neo pagan' movements. And yet every fucking time I see people talking about spirituality I still see people stumble over the ideas of the 'masculine' and the 'feminine' in nature.
My ex-MIL also said once that I should be careful not to anthropomorphize things. That my experience with a specific tree feeling safe when I was a child in need was probably just me projecting.
On this one thing, I actually agree with her. We project a lot of bullshit onto the natural world. And onto ourselves. Especially in the spiritual community. What is masculine about the sun? What is feminine about the moon? Nothing. They are objects in space with mass and gravity. Why would that make them any less magical? They still have a huge impact on our lives. The sun's impact is generally more overt. The moon's is more subtle. We can talk about these things in how they relate to us, I don't think that's unreasonable. You can't experience the world except from your own perceptions. The sun is hot and brings life but also can cause damage and death. The moon and night is cold but gives us the tides which effects us just as much but usually in ways we either live far from or don't directly think about/see.
The problem really comes in, I think, from how we don't just say 'the sun is masculine and the moon is feminine' it's how that inevitably leads us to imposing that duality onto people. People pose anthropomorphized ideas onto things that are not human and in turn try to use it as a mirror or a measuring stick to hold up against themselves or other humans. And not all cultures even believed these things or have lines drawn this strongly, I know. But I can only talk from the experience I've lived. The presence of strict ideals that specifically Christian-fascism (current and historic) have given us are so pervasive in people like me that they go completely unquestioned. Every book I read, including my ex-MIL's did nothing to question it, and in many cases actively reinforced it.
It's really no wonder that there is a fast and ugly pipeline of 'witch' to 'right-wing' if the people who position themselves as outside the mainstream culture are still just recreating it in the spaces they make.
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Dad!Harry talks to his daughter about her questioning sexuality
A/N: might make this into a blurb series? so presh. if you have any concepts around this, send them my way. 
wc: 2,249
June was Harry and Y/N’s first baby, their biggest accomplishment before they were soon having another child. June was currently 13, the awkward age of Middle School, puberty, and overall questioning of identity. Y/N and Harry wanted this weird stage to be a smooth transition. They always encouraged her to express herself, with clothes, in hobbies, with their conversations. Although their first child, they both felt as though they managed to get through the difficulties of becoming a parent easily (thanks to the massive amount of parenting books, from birth to adolescence, that Harry kept buying while June was still in the womb). 
Yet, there is only so much you can prepare your child for, and surely you can’t be there to guide them through every difficulty. Harry and Y/N weren’t sure if June would question her sexuality as both of them weren’t straight, they didn’t know if the process was the same for heterosexuals. But they never skirted around the topic. If anything, they encouraged watching same-sex couples in movies and such, even having many friends who had families with someone of the same gender (or a partner that was non-binary). 
Harry hoped that this would be an excellent way to acclimate their children to the varying diversity of the world. Y/N grew up with racial diversity, but anything deviant from heterosexuality or cisgender was heavily frowned upon. They hoped that with their lack of omission of the varying aspects of identity their children would have the opportunity to understand themselves easier rather than constantly question their identity. 
They forgot to take into account that this was simply a stage in adolescence they had to endure though, as Eric Erickson put it: a fight between identity and role confusion. And June was currently right at the center of it.
June, even as a child, was usually calm and they rarely had problems with her being fussy like they do with the twins, Mazzy and Mick (named after the artists constantly playing on their home turntable). Thus, any changes were quickly noticed in her behavior. 
-------
Picking up the kids from daycare and June from school was on the top of Y/N’s list of things to do for the day. She adored seeing everyone’s faces after a day at work and seeing their warm smiles and tight hugs always brightened her mood. 
Today, things seemed different. 
June jumped into the front seat with a grunt, a frown, and even went as far as throwing her bag onto the floor of the car forcefully. This was generally out of character, except Y/N and Harry have noticed these bursts of anger more recently. 
“What’s eating at ‘ya bug?” Y/N calmly asked, wanting to maintain a balance of emotions although knowing June was perhaps all over the place as most teenagers are. 
June rubbed her hands on the top of her thighs and noticeably took a few deep breaths; a calming tactic her father taught her when she was younger to calm herself. She took a few more breaths until facing her mother to talk. “Sage didn’t want to hang out this weekend,” she finishes, the frown being found on her face once again.
“Oh, is she busy? Thought you two were having a sleepover at home?” Y/N inquired. She knew Sage and her daughter were best friends since the beginning of sixth grade, and she hoped they would maintain their friendship although she knew the ups and downs adolescents faced it might not be possible.
“She said she’s going to the mall with Rye.”
“As in the bread?” Y/N chuckled, trying to lift the mood.
June rolled her eyes, another behavior that has risen in frequency. “No mom. A boy. That she likes.” She grumbled crossing her arms and sinking further into the seat.
“Oooooh I see what’s going on here, Sage is going on a date!” She rose her voice to a pitch of puppy love, which didn’t sit well with June. 
“We promised we wouldn’t date boys in Middle School. They’re all so stupid and ugly. I don’t get why she’s ditching me for him.” 
Y/N was a bit surprised by this. Harry and she have talked about the day they’d have to worry about June’s infatuation with others and they were dreading it. Hearing that June didn’t have interest in it now was a relief, but of course, this whole conversation was concerning. 
“I understand, not the nicest to make plans with someone when she already made some with you. But June-bug, you guys are teenagers. Of course, she’s going to take an opportunity to go on a date with a freaking boy!”
“Language momma!” Mick yelled, the three-year-olds’ well acquainted with naughty words.
“I guess. Just rude s’all.” June finished with another grumble. She wasn’t known for throwing huge fits, and her outbursts were usually this short. 
Still, Y/N knew that this would be something that would affect her for the rest of the week. Her daughter is calm but incredibly sensitive, and the two parents have learned how to work through her internal struggles. She decided to ask the usual question during June’s turmoils: “wanna talk to dad about it?” 
“Yes please.”
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Harry was finishing washing the plates as Y/N was getting the twins ready for bed. The small domestic moments like these reminded Harry of how lucky he was to have a family like his. He noticed June’s mood as soon as everyone entered the house, and once Y/N confirmed they would need to talk later, Harry was preparing himself to support his daughter through her problems. Y/N and he were definitely lucky with their firstborn being like June. Sometimes he’ll credit his efforts in teaching June meditation early, and depending on the day, Y/N agrees. 
As he dries the plates to put back in their cupboards, June walks in. 
“Hiya bug. C’mere give Poppa hug.”
June rolls her eyes (he’s having a hard time adjusting to these teenager habits) and walks closer to her father. Although she’s extremely close with both of her parents, there is a timeless connection she has with her father. “Not a child anymore dad. And please, do not call yourself poppa again. You’re not that old yet.” She mumbled in his chest, clearly needing the affection.
“Mom said you wanted to talk? Want her there?”
“Uhm. Maybe we could just talk in my room please.” 
“Of course, let me just put these plates all back” Harry smiled, only letting go of the hug once he felt June move away. A small trick he learned from his mother after she attacked him with countless parenting trips: never let go in a hug with your child, let them determine when the hug is over. It gives them more comfort and stability in their lives and although he saw this as minimal, he understood its significance.
“I’ll help.”
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As they walked to June’s room, they caught Y/N walking back from the twins’ room. “Hey baby, twins are done for. I’ll be in the room. “ She pecks Harry quick on the lips and turns to June to wrap her in a hug. “Love you cutie,” she winks at June as she goes to her room.
“Love you momma” June smiles, happy that she has a supportive family like this one. 
“I’ll be there in a bit,” Harry smiles, his arm going back to June’s shoulders, giving it a squeeze. 
Once they get to her room, both take a seat on June’s bed. Her back is on the headboard while Harry sits at the edge facing her, cross-legged. Every once in a while June would request to speak to Harry, Y/N,  or both of her parents on the issues bothering her. Harry and Y/N were proud of having a daughter that felt comfortable enough to communicate with her parents, and they always were looking for new ways to enrich themselves with the issues kids have a different ages. 
“Speak to me June, what’s on your mind lady?” Harry starts, initiating the push. He can tell that she’s struggling to bring her thoughts to words.
“Did you....well. How did you ... realize you didn’t like ... uhm, just girls?” She hesitantly asked, too flustered to look at her father on such a strange topic. 
Oh, it’s happening, Harry thought. “Well, I was pretty young, I guess around your age, and I realized that I just wasn’t fully straight. It developed from there I guess, I talked to a few friends about it, spoke to your grandma, and eventually met a boy I really liked. It was really scary, I’m not going to lie, figuring out my feelings at that point. After that, it wasn’t a big deal and everyone in the family understood. I just knew something like gender wasn’t a big deal to me, and if I liked someone I liked them. But it’s different for everyone. Your mom can tell you how she found out she’s bi.”
June was soaking in the information her father gave her. She knew both of her parents weren’t straight, but hearing how they found it out was something entirely different. It wasn’t that she was foreign to the concept, but in personal terms, it was utterly confusing. 
She finally looked to her father, giving him a small smile at the personal information he shared. They were a very open family, but something about this felt even more personal. “But, did you ever think you were faking it?” 
“Not really, but you already know how pretentious your father is,” he chuckled, lighting the mood. “Your mother, as she’ll tell you, had a completely different experience. Said she struggled for years thinking she was either faking it or actually completely gay! She once told me that she just couldn’t disclose it with anyone, and that led her to a lot of contemplation. But if you’re feeling this way too, I need you to know your mother and I are here to support you in any way we can.”
“Dad,” June scrunched her eyes looking down at her crossed legs. “I think I might like girls. Or at least, I think. After Sage told me she’d ditched me I just realized I don’t like her just as a friend.” 
At this moment, tears began to form in her eyes from all the confusion. Instantly Harry brought her into aa encompassing bear hug, keeping her safe in his chest. It hurt him to see her going through this dilemma, the inter-workings of adolescents were never fun. 
“It’s just,” June suddenly choked on a sob, grasping her dad’s hoodie. Harry began to rub her back for support. “I like her I think. Like really like her dad. I don’t want her to date a boy, I want to date her. But she won’t like me and...I don’t know! Why did this have to happen to me!” She continued, clearly soaking his hoodie.
“Oh baby, please don’t ever think this is a bad thing. Sexuality is a spectrum, many of our friends are somewhere on it, and you already know Elizabeth and Mary are married. This is a beautiful thing to discover baby. But yes, I won’t lie to you, it’s going to be hard. There may be times you like someone who doesn’t like girls but bug, that’s simply life.”
“What if I am dad. I don’t know if I like boys at all.”
“Then you are. As simple as that. You can label how you feel or not, it’s all about what feels most comfortable to you. As you know, your mother and I will be here to support you in any way we can. If you like girls, so be it, you’re still our daughter and you know that. If you like boys, which I mean yuck,” he imitated a gagging noise, rising a laugh out of June “then okay. Both or everyone? It’s all okay bub. I do want you to think about it, It might take some time to accept it but we’re accepting you any way you are. You’re so beautiful and strong, and your sexuality doesn’t diminish that in any way.” He made sure to hug her tightly as he said this, expressing his full support. 
“Dad, thank you.” June exhaled, releasing herself to wipe her tears. 
“Of course, June. I’m so happy you were able to tell me this, I know it must’ve been hard.”
After a deep breath, June looked calmer after her small crisis. “I knew you guys would be okay with anything but it’s just, much harder than I expected to really like your friend who doesn’t like you.”
“It’s hard, so so hard. Ask your mum, seriously I swear she told me she also liked one of her friends at your age. Universal gay experience perhaps?” Harry pondered. 
June gave a small laugh to that. “Yeah, I’ll ask. I don’t want her to think I left her out of this, it’s just that I’ve heard about your sexuality in the media more.”
“Pesky things, but I understand. It was so hard for your mom in comparison to me. Do you want me to let her know first, is it okay that I let her know you might be questioning?” He gave her daughter a sincere inquisitive look, valuing consent over everything. 
“Yeah, of course. Probably talk to her tomorrow after we drop the twins off. I really appreciate it, dad.”
“No problem bug. Let’s get you tucked away.” 
__________ part 2
OH MY GOD this is my first I HOPE YOU LIKE. please any feedback would be so sexy. 
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dirk-has-rabies · 3 years
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Gender variance and it's link with neurodivergency
Okay so this is it going to be another long one
All quotes will be sourced with a link to the scientific journal I took it from
Okay Tumblr, let's talk gender (I know, your favorite topic) my preface on why this topic matters to me is: I'm autistic ( diagnosed moderate to severe autism) I'm nonbinary trans ( in a way that most non-autistic people don't understand and actually look down on)  and I went to college for gender study ( Mostly for intersex studies but a lot of my research was around non-binary and trans identities) I will be using the term autism as pants when I have experience with however when ADHD is part of the study I will use ND which stands for neurodivergent and yes this is going to be about xenogenders and neopronouns.
autism can affect gender the same way autism can affect literally every part of an identity. a big thing about having autism is the fact that it completely can change how you view personhood and time and object permanence and gender and literally all types of socially constructed ideas. let me also say hear that just because Society creates and enforces an idea does it mean that it doesn't exist to all people it just me that there is no nature law saying that it's real and the “rules” for these ideas can change and delete and create as time and Society evolves and changes.  gender is one of those constructs.
Now I'll take it by you reading this you know what transgender people are  (if you don't understand what a trans person is send me an ask and I'll type you up a pretty little essay lmao,  or Google it but that's a scary thought sense literally any Source or website can come up on Google including biased websites so be careful I guess LOL) anyway to be super basic trans people are anyone who doesn't identify as the gender they were assigned at Birth (yes that includes non-binary people I could do a whole nother essay about that shit how y'all keep spreading trying to separate non-binary people from the trans umbrella)  some people don't like to use the label and that is totally fine by the way.
now autistic people to view the world in a way differently than allistic (neurotypical) ppl do.  we don't take everything people teach us at 100% fact and we tend to question everything and demand proof and evidence for things before we can set it as a fact in our brains. This leads to why a lot of autistic people are atheist (although a lot of religions and this is not bashing on religious people at all I am actually a Jewish convert)  this questioning leads to a lot of social constructs being ignored or not understood At All by a lot of autistic people and personally I think that's a good thing.  allistics take everything their parents and teachers and schools teach them as fact until someone else says something and then they pick which ones to believe. autistic people study and research and learn about a topic before forming an opinion and while this may lead to them studying and believing very biased material and spitting it out as fact it can also lead them to try and Discover it is real by themselves.
because of this autistic people are more question their gender or not fall in a binary way at all as the concept of gender makes no sense to a lot of us. “ if gender is a construct then autistic people who are less aware of social norms are less likely to develop a typical gender identity”
no really look: “ children and teens with autism spectrum disorder ASD or Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder ADHD  are much more likely to express a wish to be the opposite sex compared with their typical developing peers” That was posted in 2014. we have been saying this stuff forever but no one wants to listen. the thing is gender variance (being not cisgender or at least questioning it)  has always been closely hand-in-hand with autistic and ADHD people I'm even the doctor who did that study understood right away that it all made sense the whole time: “ Dr. Strang said they were initially surprised to find an overrepresentation of gender variance among children with ADHD. However, they later realized that prior studies have shown increased levels of disruptive behavior and other behavioral problems among young people with gender variance”  SEE YOURE NOT WEIRD YOURE JUST YOU AND YOURE NOT ALONE IN THIS!!
5% autistic people who did the study were trans or questioning. it was also equal between the Sexes fun fact. that may not seem like a lot till you realize that the national average is only .7% that's literally over 700% higher than the national average. That's so many! and that's just in America.
 in Holland there was a study in 2010 “ nearly 8% of the more than 200 Children and adolescents referred to a clinic for gender dysphoria also came up positive on a assessment for ASD” they weren't even testing for ADHD so the numbers could be even higher!
now I want to talk about a  certain section of the trans umbrella that a lot of autistic people fall under called the non-binary umbrella. non-binary means anything that isn't just male or just female. it is not one third gender and non-binary doesn't mean that you don't have a gender. just clearing that up since cis people keep spreading that. non-binary is an umbrella term for any of the infinite genders you could use or create. now this is where I'm going to lose a bunch of you and that's okay because you don't have to understand our brains or emotions To respect us as real people. not many allistics can understand how we see and think and relate to things and that's okay you don't have to understand everything but just reading about this could be so much closer to respecting us for Who We Are from you've ever been and that's better than being against us just for existing.
now you might have heard of my Mutual Lars who was harassed  by transmeds for using the term Autigender (I was going to link them but if it gets traction I don't want them to get any hate)  since a lot of people roll their eyes at that  and treated them disgustingly for using a term that 100% applied correctly.  Autigender  is described as " a neurogender which can only be understood in the context of being autistic or when one's autism greatly affects one's gender or how one experiences gender. Autigender is not autism as a gender, but rather is a gender that is so heavily influenced by autism that one's autism and one's experience of gender cannot be unlinked.” Now tell me that doesn't sound a lot like this entire essay I've been working on with full sources…..
xenogenders and neopronouns are a big argument point on whether or not people “believe” in non binary genders but a big part of those genders is that they originated from ND communities and are ways that we can try to describe what gender means us in a way that cis or even allistic trans people just can't comprehend or ever understand. Same with MOGAI genders or sexualities. A lot of these are created as a way to somehow describe an indescribable relationship with gender that is so personal you really cant explain it to anyone who isnt literally the same as you.
Even in studies done with trans autistic people a large amount of them dont even fall on a yes or no of having a gender at all and fall in some weird inbetween where you KINDA have a gender but its not a gender in the sense that others say it is but its also too much of a gender so say youre agender. And this is the kind of stuff that confuses allistic trans people and makes them think nonbinary genders are making stuff up for attention, which isnt true at all we just cant explain what it feels like to BE a trans autistic person to anyone who doesnt ALREADY know how it feels.
In this study out of the ppl questioned almost HALF of the autistic trans individuals had a “Sense of identity revolving around interests” meaning their gender and identity was more based off what they liked rather than boy or girl. That makes ppl with stuff like vampgender or pupgender make a lot more sense now doesnt it? We see that even in the study: “My sense of identity is fluid, just as my sense of gender is fluid […] The only constant identity that runs through my life as a thread is ‘dancer.’ This is more important to me than gender, name or any other identifying features… even more important than mother. I wouldn't admit that in the NT world as when I have, I have been corrected (after all Mother is supposed to be my primary identification, right?!) but I feel that I can admit that here. (Taylor)” and an agreement from another saying “Mine is Artist. Thank you, Taylor. (Jessie)” now dont you think if they grew up with terms like artistgender or dancergender they would just YOINK those up right away????
In fact “An absence of a sense of gender or being unsure of how their gender should “feel” was another common report” because as ive said before in this post AUTISTIC PEOPLE DONT SEE GENDER THE WAY ALLISTIC PEOPLE SEE IT. therefore we wont use the same terms or have the same identities nor could we explain it to anyone who doesnt already understand or question the same way! Participants even offered up quotes such as “As a child and even now, I don't ‘feel’ like a gender, I feel like myself and for the most part I am constantly trying to figure out what that means for me (Betty)” and also “I don't feel like a particular gender I'm not even sure what a gender should feel like (Helen)”
Now i know this isnt going to change everyones minds on this stuff but i can only hope that it at least helped people feel like theyre not broken and not alone in their feelings about this. You dont have to follow allistic rules. You dont have to stop searching inside for who you really wanna be. And you dont have to pick or choose terms forever because just as you grow and evolve so may your terms. Its okay to not know what or who you are and its okay to identify as nonhuman things or as your interests because what you love and what you do is a big part of who you are and shapes you everyday. Its not a bad thing! Just please everyone, treat ppl with respect and if you dont understand something that doesnt make it bad or wrong it just means its not for you. And thats okay.
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woman-loving · 3 years
Text
Islam, heteronormativity, and lesbian lives in Indonesia
Selections from Heteronormativity, Passionate Aesthetics and Symbolic Subversion in Asia by Saskia Wieringa, 2015.
These passages discuss some general social developments related to sexuality and gender in Indonesia, and then describe stories from different (mostly lesbian) narrators. They also touch on the creation of a religious school for waria (trans women), and include two trans men narrators, one of whom talks about his struggle to get sex reassignment surgery in the 70s. I also included a story from a divorced woman whose sexuality was questioned when her husband complained that she couldn’t sexually please him. Accusations of lesbianism can be directed toward any woman as a method for managing her sexuality/gender and prodding her into compliance with expectations of sexual availability.
In spite of protests by religious right-wing leaders, Islam does not have a single source of its so-called 'Islamic tradition'. There are many different interpretations and, apart from the Quran, many sources are contested. Even the Quran has abundant interpretations. Feminist Muslim writers, such as Fatima Mernissi (1985), Riffat Hassan (1987), and Musdah Mulia (2004 and 2012), locate their interpretations in the primary source of Islam--the Quran. According to those readings, sexuality is seen in an affirmative, positive light, being generally described as a sign of God's mercy and generosity toward humanity, characterised by such valued qualities as tranquillity, love, and beauty. The California-based Muslim scholar Amina Wadud (1999) describes the jalal (masculine) and jamal (feminine) attributes of Allah as a manifestation of sacred unity. She maintains that Allah's jamal qualities are associated with beauty that, although originally evaluated as being at the same level as Allah's masculine qualities that are associated with majesty, have en subsumed in the 14 centuries since the Quran was revealed.
The Quran gives rise to multiple interpretations. Verse 30:21 is one of my favorites:
“And among Allah's signs is this. That Allah created for you spouses from among yourselves, that you may dwell in tranquillity whit them, and Allah has put love and mercy between your [hearts]: verily in that there are signs for those who reflect.”[2]
The verse is commonly used in marriage celebrations, and I also used it in my same-sex marriage ritual. It mentions the gender-neutral term 'spouse,' which leaves room for the interpretation that same-sex partners are included.
Indonesian waria (transwomen) derive hope from such texts. In 2008, Maryani, a well-respected waria, opened a pesantren (traditional Islamic religious school) for waria, named Al-Fatah, at her house in Yogyakarta. After her death in March 2014, it was temporarily closed, but fortunately soon reopened in nearby Kotagede. A sexual-rights activist, Shinta Ratri, opened her house to waria santri (santri are strict believers, linked to religious schools) so they could continue to receive religious education. At the official opening, Muslim scholar Abdul Muhaimin of the Faithful People Brotherhood Forum reminded the audience that, as everyone was made by God: "Everyone has the right to observe their religion in their own way...", and added: "I hoped the students here are strong, as they must face stigma in society."[3]
Prior to her death (after she had made the haj),[4] Maryani herself, a deeply-religious person, said: "Here we teach our friends to worship God. People who worship are seeking paradise, this is not limited to our sex or our clothing..."[5] So far, hers is the only waria pesantren in Indonesia, perhaps even globally, and may be due to the fact that Maryani was an exceptionally strong person who spoke at many human-rights meetings. In October 2010, I also interviewed her and was struck by her warm personality, courage, and clear views.
In spite of those progressive readings of the Quran, women's sexuality is interpreted in light of their servility to men in practice, and has been linked to men's honour rather than women's pleasure. Although marriage is not viewed as too sacred to be broken in Indonesia, it is regarded as a religious obligation by all. An unmarried woman over the age of 20 is considered to be a perawan tua ('old virgin'), and is confronted by a continuous barrage of questions as to when she will marry.
Muslim (and Christian) conservative leaders consider homosexuality to be a sin. Women in same-sex relations find themselves in a difficult corner, as exclusion from their religion is a heavy burden. Some simply pray at home, privately hoping that their God will forgive them and trusting in the compassion taught by their holy books. However, outside their private space, religious teachers and society at large denounce their lives as sinful and accuse them of having no religion.
Recent Indonesia legislation strengthens the conservative, heteronormative interpretations of Islam. Apart from the 2008 anti-pornography law (discussed below), a new health law was adopted that further tightened conservative Islam's grip on women's reproductive rights and marginalised non-heteronormative women. That 2009 health bill replaced the law of 1992, which had no chapter on reproductive health. The new law states that a healthy, reproductive, and sexual life may only be enjoyed with a 'lawful partner' and only without 'violating religious values'--which means that all of our narrators would be banned from enjoying healthy, sexual, and reproductive lives.[6]
Conservative statements are also made by women themselves; for example, members of the hard-line Islamic group Hizbut Tahrir, who not only want to restrict reproductive services (such as family planning) to lawfully-wedded heterosexual couples but also see population control as a 'weapon of the West' to weaken the country.[7] They propose to save Indonesia by the imposition of sharia laws. Hard-line Islamic interpretations are widely propagated and creep into the legal system, thus strengthening heteronormativity and further expelling non-normative others.
Yet strong feminist voices are also heard in Indonesia's Muslim circles. Even in a relation to one of the most controversial issues in Islam--homosexuality--a positive, feminist interpretation is possible. Indonesia's prominent feminist Muslim scholar, Siti Musdah Mulia, explains that homosexuality is a natural phenomenon as it was created by Allah, and thus allowed by Islam. The prohibition, however, is the work of fallible interpretations by religion scholars.[8] In her 2011 paper on sexual rights, Mulia bases herself on certain Indonesian traditions that honour transgender people, referring to bissu in south Sulawesi, and warok[9] in the reog dance form in Ponorogo. In those cases, transgender is linked to sacred powers and fertility. She stresses that the story of Lot, always cited as evidence of Quranic condemnation of homosexuality, is actually concerned with sexual violence--the people of Sodom were not the only ones faced with God's wrath, as the people of Gomorrah were also severely chastised even though there is no indication that they engaged in same-sex behaviour. Nor is there any hint of same-sex behaviour in relationship to Lot's poor wife, who was transformed into a pillar of salt. Mulia advances a humanistic interpretation of the Quran that stresses the principles of justice, equity, human dignity, love, and compassion (2011: 7). Her conclusion is that not Islam itself but rather its heterosexist and patriarchal interpretation leads to discrimination.
After the political liberalisation (Reformasi) of 1998, conservative religious groups (which had been banned at the height of the repressive New-Order regime) increased their influence. The dakwah ('spreading of Islam') movement, which grew from small Islamist usroh (cell, family) groups and aimed to turn Indonesia into a Muslim state, gathered momentum.[10] Islamist parties, such as the Partai Kesejahteraan Sosial (PKS), or Social Justice Party, gained wide popularity, although that was not translated into a large number of seats in the national parliament (Hefner 2012; Katjasungkana 2012). In the early Reformasi years, official discourse on women was based on women's rights, taking the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action as its guide, but recent discourse on an Islamic-family model--the so-called keluarga sakinah ('the happy family')--has become dominant in government circles (Wieringa 2015, forthcoming). The growing Islamist emphasis on a heteronormative family model, coupled with homophobia, is spreading in society. During KAN's [Kartini Asia Network for Gender and Women's Studies in Asia] September 2006 TOT [Training of Trainers] course in Jakarta, the following conversation was recorded:
“Farida: Religious teachers go on and on about homosexuality. They keep shouting that it is a very grave sin and that people will go straight to hell. My daughter is in the fifth form of primary school. She has a best friend and the two were inseparable. But the teachers managed to set them apart, as they were considered to be too close. The mother of my daughter's friend came to me crying; she was warned that she had to be careful with her child, or else she might get a daughter who was different. And now the new school regulations stress that a woman must wear the jilbab [headscarf].[11] This has put a lot of stress on tomboyish girls. They cannot wear the clothes they are comfortable with any more. Zeinab: When we were taught fiqih [Islamic law], we never discussed homosexuality. When we studied the issue of zinah [adultery], one of our group asked: "But how about a woman committing zinah with another woman, or a man with another man?" Our teacher just shook is head and muttered that that was not a good thing. The only story we learnt was about the prophet Luth [Lot]. But when we went to study the hadith [Islamic oral law], we found the prophet had a very close friend, Abu Harairah, who never married, while all men were always showing off their wives. There were some indications that he might have had a male lover. Yet the prophet is not known to have warned him. So, while the mainstream interpretation of Islam is that they condemn homosexuality, there are also other traditions that seem to be more tolerant, even from the life of the prophet himself.”
The above fragment shows how fundamentalist practices creep into every nook and cranny of Indonesian people's lives--the growing suspicion toward tomboys, forcible separation of close school friends, and enforcement of Muslim dress codes. But we also see a counter-protest arising. At the TOT training course, the women activists realised that patriarchal interpretations of religion had severely undermined women's space, and started looking for alternative interpretations, such as the story of the prophet's unmarried friend.
However, for many of our narrators, religion is a troubling issue. Putri, for instance, does not even want to discuss the rights of gays and lesbians in Indonesia; she thinks the future looks gloomy, with religious fundamentalism on the rise, and her dream of equal rights is buried by the increasing militancy of religious fanatics. [...]
Women-loving women
Religion is a sensitive aspect of the lives of our women-loving-women narrators, who are from world religions that, although propagating love and compassion in their distinct ways, interpret same-sex love negatively. In some cases, our narrators are able to look beyond the patriarchal interpretations of their religions, which preach hatred for what are emotions of great beauty and satisfaction to them, while others are devastated by guilt and shame. [...]
Indonesian male-identified Lee wonders why "people cannot see us as God's creatures?" but fears that Islam will never accept homosexuality. He knows the story of the prophet Lot, and how the city of Sodom was destroyed by God as a warning so others would not commit the sin of sodomy. Lee was raised as a good Muslim, and tries to follow what he has been taught are God's orders. For some time, he wore a man's outfit for praying.[16] At that time, he thought that religious duties--if conducted sincerely--were more important than his appearance but, after listening to some religious preachers, he felt that it was not right to wear men's clothing: "Sometimes I think it is not right, lying to myself, pretending to be someone else. We cannot lie to God, right? Even if I try to hide it, definitely God knows." So, after attending religious classes, he decided to wear the woman's outfit--the mukena--when praying at home.
Lia grew up in a strict Muslim family. When she pronounced herself to be a lesbian, it came as a shock to her relatives, who invoked the power of religion to cure her. When her mother went on the haj, she brought 'Zamzam water' from Mecca. The miraculous healing powers of the liquid from Mecca's Zamzam well were supposed to bring Lia back to the normal path. Dutifully, Lia drank from it and jokingly exclaimed: "Ah, my God, only now I realise how handsome Delon is!"[17] Yet she found succor in her religion when she went through a crisis in her relationship with Santi:
"When Santi hated me very much and avoided me, I prayed: "God, if it is true that you give me a guiding light, please give me a sign. But if it is a sin...please help me..." Was my relationship with Santi blessed or not? If it wasn't, surely God would have blocked the way, and if it way, would God broaden my path? As, after praying so hard, Santi and I became closer, God must have endorsed it. Does God listen to my prayer, or does God test me?"
So, even though she got together again with Santi after that fervent bout of praying, uncertainty gnaws at Lia, who realises that mainstream Islamic preachers prohibit homosexuality. Ideally, she feels that a person's religion must support people, but Islam does not do that because she is made to feel like a sinner. But, she says, the basic principle that Islam teaches is to love others. As long as she does that, Lia sees nothing wrong in herself as one of God's creatures. She realises that, particularly in the interpretation of the hadith (Islamic oral tradition), all manner of distortions have entered Islamic values, and wonders what was originally taught about homosexuality in Islam. She is aware that many Quranic texts about the status of women were manipulated in order to marginalise them, and avidly follows debates on feminist interpretations that stress that the real message of the Quran does not preach women's subordination.
Lia knows that there are lesbians in the pesantren who carry out religious obligations, such as praying and doing good deeds. If someone has been a lesbian for so long that it feels like natural character, and has been praying and fasting for many years, they cannot change into a heterosexual, she decided.
Religious values are also deeply inculcated in Sandy, who is tortured by guilt and shame about her lesbian desires. Although masculine in appearance and behaviour, she wears the mukena while praying both at home and at the mushola (small mosque) that she frequents. Since she was 23, when her mother died, she realised that what she did with her lover, Mira, was a sin and started reading religious books to discover what they said about people like her. She accepted the traditional interpretation of the story of Lot and the destruction of Sodom. When she was 25 years old, Mira left her to marry a man. Sandy was broken hearted and considered suicide. In that period of great distress, she realised that God prohibits suicide and just wanted her to give up her sinful life. She struggled hard against her desires for women and the masculinity in her:
"If I walk with women, I feel like a man; that I have to protect them. I feel that I am stronger than other women. But I also feel that I am a woman, I am sure that I am a woman, that is why I feel that I am different from others. I accept my own condition as an illness, not as my destiny. ... Yes, an illness, because we follow our lust. It we try to contain our lust, as religion teaches us, we would never be like this. So I try to stay close to God. I do my prayers, and a lot of zikir.[18] I even try to do tahajjud.[19]"
Sandy believes in the hereafter and does not want to spoil her chances of eternal bliss by engaging in something so clearly disproved of by religion, although she has not found any clear prohibitions against lesbianism in either the Quran or hadith.
Bhima, who considers himself to be a secular person, was brought up in a Muslim family. His identity card states that he is a Muslim, which got him into serious trouble when he went for his first sex-change operation at the end of the 1970s. He went through the necessary tests but the doctors hesitated when they looked at his ID, fearing the wrath of conservative clerics. Bhima was desperate:
"Listen, I have come this far! I have saved up for this, sold my car, relatives have contributed, how can you do this to me? Tell me what other religion I should take up and I will immediately get my identity card changed. I have never even been inside a mosque. I don't care about any institutionalised religion!"
The doctors did not heed his plea, instead advising him to get a letter of recommendation from a noted Muslim scholar. Undaunted, Bhima made an appointment with a progressive female psychologist who had been trained in Egypt and often gave liberal advice on Muslim issues on the radio. He managed to persuade her to write a letter of introduction to the well-known Muslim scholar Professor Hamka. Letter in hand, Bhima presented himself at the gate of Hamka's house, and was let in by the great scholar himself. Bhima pleaded his case, upon which Hamka opened the Quran and pointed to a passage that read "when you are ill, you must make all attempts to heal yourself":
"Are you ill?" Hamka asked. Bhima nodded vehemently. "Fine, so then tell them that the Quran advises to heal your illness." "It is better, sir," Bhima suggested, "that you write that down for them."
With that letter, Bhima had no problem to be accepted for the first operation, in which his breasts were removed.
Widows [...] In Eliana's case religion played an important role in her marriage--and subsequent divorce. While still at school, she had joined an usroh group (created to teach students about religious and social issues in the days of the Suharto dictatorship). Proper sexual behaviour played an important role in their teachings. According to usroh, a wife must be sexually subservient to her husband and accept all his wishes, even if they involve him taking a second wife. Eliana felt close to her spiritual leader and tried to sexually behave as a good Muslim wife would. She forced herself to give in to all her husband's sexual wishes, including blow jobs and watching pornography with him. Yet the leader blamed Eliana for not doing enough to please her husband, saying that is why he needed a second wife. Her teacher even asked if she was a lesbian, because she could not satisfy her husband. As both her spiritual leader and husband agreed that it was not nice for a man to have an intellectually-superior woman, she played down her intelligence. Eventually she divorced her husband.
Internalised lesbophobia and conservative-religious (in this case, Muslim) norms prevented Jenar for enjoying the short lesbian relationship that she had between her two marriages. It is interesting how she phrases the conversation, starting on the topic by emphasising how much she distrusted men after her divorce (because her husband did not financially provide for their family). The relationship with her woman lover was not long underway, and had not advanced beyond kissing, but she immediately felt that, according to religion, what she did was laknat (cursed). Anyway, she added, she was a 'normal,' heterosexual woman and did not feel much aroused when they were touching. A middle-aged, male friend added to her feeling of discomfort by emphasising that she would be cursed by God if it would continue. He then took her to a dukun (shaman), where she was bathed with flowers at midnight in order to cure her. That was apparently successful, for she gave the relationship up. However, even though she had stressed that she was 'normal' and did not respond sexually to her lover's advances, she ended the conversation by saying that she felt lesbianism was a 'contagious disease'. That remark stresses her own internalised homophobia but also emphasises her helplessness and lack of agency--contagion is something that cannot be avoided. It also hints at the strength of the pull she felt for a contagion that apparently could not be easily ignored. The important role of the dukun indicates that she follows the syncretist stream of Islam, mixed with elements of the pre-Islamic Javanese religion--Kejawen. [...]
Women in same-sex relationships [...]
As in India, the human-women's-lesbian-rights discourse is gaining momentum in Indonesia. It could only develop after 1998, when the country's dictator was finally forced to resign and a new climate of political openness was created. The new sexual-rights organisations not only opened a public space to discuss women's and sexual rights but also impacted on the behaviour of individuals within their organisations (as discussed in more detail in chapter 9). Before Lee joined a lesbian-rights group, he had decided to undergo sex-reassignment therapy (SRT) to physically become a man as much as possible. Activists warned him of the operations' health risks and asked whether he really needed such a change in order to live with his spouse. Lee feels secure within the group, and is happy to find like-minded people with whom he can share many of his concerns. Lee actively sought them out after reading a newspaper article about a gay male activist: he tracked him down at his workplace and obtained the address of the lesbian group. Lee is less afraid of what will happen when their neighborhood find out that Lee's body is female--as he says: "I have done nothing wrong, I haven't disturbed anyone, I have never asked anyone for food." However, Lee is worried about the media, where gay men and lesbian women are often represented as the sources of disease and disaster.
Lia had no idea what a lesbian was when she first fell in love with a woman. There were many tomboys like her playing in the school's softball team, and she once spotted a female couple in another school's softball team. Her relationship with Santi developed without, as Lia says, any guidance of previous information. Only at college in Yogyakarta did she start reading about homosexuality on the internet. Through the Suara Srikandi portal (one of the first lesbian groups in Jakarta), she came to know of other Indonesian lesbians. Another website that she frequently visited was the Indonesian Lesbian Forum, and one of her lecturers introduced her to the gay and lesbian movement in her city. In 2004, she publicly came out at a press conference. She first joined the KPI, which has an interest group of sexual minorities, but found the attitude of her feminist friends to be unsupportive and decided to join a lesbian-only group. The women activists only wanted to discuss the public role of women and domestic violence, and told her that lesbianism was a disease and a sin.
Lia wants to broaden the lesbian movement. She feels the movement is good in theory but lacking in practice--particularly in creating alliances with other suppressed groups, such as farmers and labourers. In focusing only on lesbians, not on discrimination and marginalisation itself, she asserts that it has become too exclusive. By socialising with other movements, she argues, they will better understand lesbian issues, and, in turn, that will help the lesbian movement. It is true, she concedes, that lesbians are stigmatised by all groups in society but, since 1998 (the fall of General Suharto), the country has seen a process of democratisation. "We must take up that opportunity and not be scared of stigma," she exhorts her friends in the lesbian movement. Lia herself joined a small, radical political party, the PRD,[33] and faced stigma ("we have a lesbian comrade; that's a sin, isn't it?"), but feels that she has ultimately been welcomed. Now, her major problem is to find the finances to conduct her activism. At the time of the interview, she had lost her job and could not find the means to print handouts for her PRD comrades.
Lia is a brave forerunner. At the time of the interview, her lesbian friends were too scared to follow in her footsteps and told her that she was only dreaming. However, her heterosexual friends (in the labour movement) said that they were bored with her, and found her insistence of a connection between the struggle for sexual and labour rights to be too pushy.
Lia dreams of equal rights for lesbians. First, she would like to see a gay-marriage law implemented in Indonesia, which would ensure that the property rights of surviving spouses are protected in case one passes away. She also would like to set up a shelter for lesbians, as she knows many young lesbians who have been thrown out of their family homes and are in need of support.
Sandy is rather hesitant about the rights she would like to see introduced to Indonesian society. Most of all, she wants to be accepted as a normal human being, where no one says bad things about or harasses lesbians like her. What women do in the privacy of their bedrooms is one thing. Women should have the right to have sex, for it comes straight from the heart--it is pure love. But, in public, their behavior should be impeccable: no kissing, no hugging, no holding of hands. However, Sandy thinks that marriage rights for lesbians will not happen in Indonesia, and are only possible in Christian countries. But, minimally, she hopes to lead a life without discrimination or violence:
"If they see us as normal, they won't bother us. We are human, but if we act provocatively then it is ok for them to even hang us ... [I just hope they] won't harass us, or humiliate us. That is all I ask, that if we are being humiliated there is a law to prevent it. That a person like me is protected. To be laughed at is okay, but it is too much if they throw stones at us and if we are not allowed to work."
Sex workers want the right to work without being harassed, and women in same-sex relationships want to be treated like 'normal' human beings and enjoy socio-sexual rights, such as health benefits or the right to buy joint property. Yet the state does not provide those rights and does not protect its citizens in equal measure. As a major agent of heteronormativity, it restricts its benefits and protection to those within its margins. Couples with social stigma and conservative-religious interpretations, some of our narrators have reached deep levels of depression.
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sourwormsaresour · 3 years
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what are your thoughts on La Squadra's sexualities?
First off, Happy Pride Month! Please have a safe one. Before I start, I just want to let you guys know that I’m a straight cisgender woman so I’m not 100% knowledgeable on sexualities so these are based on my current knowledge of the community. I’m open to all head-canons about La Squadra’s sexualities besides my own :)
Sorbet and Gelato are gay, both using he/him pronouns, and are the most out compared to everyone in the team. Even though La Squadra knew about their relationships, the two themselves aren’t open about it outside of the team and their families. This is especially because relationships can be used against you in the crime world but also because their families rely on them to have a “good reputation” to live comfortably. I head-canon that they are both breadwinners of their families: Gelato has siblings that go to very conservative, academic institutions and rely on scholarships that look into family history for recommendations, and Sorbet’s mother requires medical attention from reputable doctors that also have homophobic biases that can be used against her. They’ve secretly used some of their money to help a street kid or two that they learned was disowned after being outed or assassinated a few people for hurting kids for being part of the LGBTQ+ community or even preying on them. The two men probably both went through phases where they thought they only liked women, tried to be in heterosexual relationships, and their enemies-to-lovers type of relationship had probably stemmed from their inability to properly process their attraction to each other at the time.
Formaggio is bisexual and prefers using he/him pronouns; he has a stronger attraction to women but is unaware that he’s attracted to men as well. A big part of why he’s so unaware or in denial of it came from his conservative upbringing in a working-class family and lack of representation growing up. Formaggio knew that men can be attracted to other men, but other aspects of the LGBTQ+ community is either unknown to him or seen in a negative perception; he’s learning more about the community and how to be a better ally, especially after meeting Sorbet and Gelato, but he’s still struggling to reverse the anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments he grew up believing. As a result of his past, Formaggio assumed that one can only be attracted to one gender and never crossed his mind that people can be attracted to more than one. He often tries to hide his attraction to men via “straight guy who’s unaware he’s gay occasionally spits homophobic jokes and says ‘no homo’ every time he says "I love you" to his friends but he means full homo” approach.
Illuso is pansexual and gender fluid, preferring he/him/they/them pronouns most of the time but also likes using neo-pronouns and occasionally prefers to use she/her pronouns. As a former intern for a fashion designer before he joined La Squadra, he’s relatively more exposed to meeting different people in the LGBTQ+ community through fashion; those who were higher in status and power would be more out about it than those in lower ranking and the community was a huge source for avant-garde, counter-culture influences. Despite getting more inspiration for his designs from his interactions and developing his identity in the LGBTQ+ space, that also led to him witnessing discrimination, abuse, and powerplay caused by the higher-ups; some became victims simply because of rumors that they may be part of the LGBTQ+ community or being forcibly outed, some are forced into relationships in exchange for opportunities and privileges, etc. He remains closeted and part of his arrogance stems from him hiding his sexuality due to the trauma of enduring the abuse and witnessing it as well. La Squadra doesn’t know his sexuality or know that he’s genderfluid, but they’re fine with adapting to his pronouns whenever they change.  
Pesci is unaware that they’re gay and are non-binary that prefers they/them pronouns. Although they try to stick to he/him pronouns to avoid being out, they like using they/them more and get secretly happy when someone refers to them as such. I head-canon that they’re actually younger than Giorno when they encountered Team Bucciarati, which would explain why he never killed anyone up until this point (they’re a literal kid that’s slowly getting involved in the team when Sorbet and Gelato were killed, albeit they’re on the buffer side despite their age), and with their sheltered childhood and Prosciutto’s strict mentorship, they never got to sit down and think about their sexual and gender identity. They often try to pretend they’re a macho straight man alongside Formaggio but they end up feeling bad about it after trying to say a bad comment or joke to fit in. Pesci themselves feel like they’re alone in terms of the emotions of not being able to put your sexuality into words. It doesn’t help that they’re rather isolated compared to everyone except Risotto; they only knew La Squadra as their family ever since they joined the team and they never talk to anyone outside of the group.
Prosciutto is bisexual and genderfluid, preferring to identify with he/him pronouns, but he’s also the most closeted and probably has the most internalized homophobia as well. Growing up in the entertainment industry, especially in acting, means adhering to heteronormative standards; controversies of any kind would make or break a career and he constantly heard homophobic statements “disguised” as critiques around him from all levels of the entertainment industry. The fact that he was overworked up until his “career retirement” also didn’t give him the time to sit down and realize both his sexuality and how fucked up the film industry is in terms of its treatment towards the LGBTQ+ community. With his upbringing of being presentable and hiding his sexuality, he tries to present himself in the most Italian metrosexual straight machismo man he could and uses his “gentleman charms” towards women to avoid people from questioning further about his sexuality. But at the end of the day, he knows he’s lying to himself about his sexuality. And unfortunately, his anger at being unable to express that is often misdirected.
Melone is demi-sexual, though he presents himself as asexual and panromantic, and prefers using any pronouns. Like his teammates, he prefers using he/him for his safety. As a former scientist, he learned and got to know about the LGBTQ+ community through a more scientific perspective, but also knew there are hidden homophobic biases in the science community as well. Still, he does his best to be an ally for his peers before realizing he is demisexual and panromantic. His sexuality allows him to view the incubation and child-rearing aspect of his Stand without emotions or feelings involved and further explains how he views fornication and training his Juniors in a very scientific and analytical way without guilt taking over. Despite presenting himself as ace/straight (mostly for safety and because it’s easier to explain that he has no attraction to people than being a demisexual), I also see someone who yearns to have a strong emotional connection to someone and would give his all to the person he loves most. His overtly sexual nature is more of an act (I've heard that some aces tend to act overtly sexual, either to avoid being outed or as a result of growing up thinking that need to feel an attraction is necessary) and Melone secretly desires being attracted to someone he learns to trust, admire, and love over time. I have a backstory that plays into that but I might disclose it another time. ;)
Ghiaccio is on the same boat with Prosciutto in terms of having internalized homophobia due to his childhood career as a child athlete. At the time he was training to be an Olympic hopeful as a solo figure skater, Ghiaccio was born female and had to remain in the closet due to the conservative nature of the ice skating world and his step-father being notorious for his opinions favoring homophobia and sexism. Once he joined La Squadra, Ghiaccio began experimenting with himself and ultimately came out as transgender, presenting himself with he/him pronouns, and had been using testosterone ever since. Most members that joined after him only knew Ghiaccio as male while the other members are either indifferent about his gender or are involved in helping Ghiaccio transition to be male. Transitioning also helped him realized he was aromantic and gay, which provided him closure from the years of struggle he had trying to fit into the heteronormative expectations he thought he had to conform to when he was female. The effect of testosterone also explains his brash and short-tempered nature, although that stems more from him finally being able to express himself after years of repressing his emotions as a child.
Risotto is also aromantic and asexual, preferring he/him/they/them pronouns, although he doesn’t know that he is aro/ace, to begin with. Growing up, he never really cared when he heard his older relatives or adults making comments about how “he’d make a good husband” or “have the girls chase him”, because all he cared about was his family and friends. He just assumes that once he becomes a “big boy”, then he’ll have thoughts of wanting to get married like the fairytales say. Just let his future spouse have children with him in any way and he'll play the role of husband regardless. Since his cousin’s death, he gave up the idea of having any sexual or romantic interest in anyone. Why to go out of your way to find any relationship when they’ll be dead soon enough- that was Risotto’s logic. He’s not aware that he can define himself as aro/ace, he just assumes that the trauma he went through with his cousin’s death stops him from feeling any attraction and doesn’t make an effort to figure out why.  
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lilohno · 3 years
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name: irene glinda pelekai
faceclaim: josie totah
age: 19 years
pronouns: she/her
sexuality: pansexual, panromantic
birthday: december 26th
zodiac: capricorn
abilities: witchcraft
occupation: runs a magic based store with nova
traits: sympathetic, quiet, unbiased, loyal, curious
likes: magic, stevie nicks, candles, people watching, history, autumn, flowing skirts, record players, storms, trail mix
dislikes: loud chewing, sadness, fear, giving presentations, hypocrites, misunderstandings, phone calls, pepperonis, not knowing, alarms
biography --
raised by loving parents that were taken too soon, irene does not remember much of her life before adoption. at times she feels guilty for having no recollection of her birth parents, just pictures and fragmented memories to go by. at times she feels guilty for being so happy with the way her life is now. lilo became her mother when she was five years old, the first and last person to ever foster her, and as far as she is concerned, she is her mother. irene has always been unapologetically herself, and lilo embraced that. she never made her feel like she had to change or put herself in a box. she was a quiet child, not one to use words unless absolutely necessary, but she was not pressured to speak up if she did not feel like it. when she realized through wishful thinking at seven that she could do things others couldn’t, lilo helped her figure out how to control her powers. she would sit up until four am pouring over magic books, researching anything that could help her daughter.
as she grew older, irene began to understand more and more about the spells she could cast and experiment outside of her comfort zone. she fell in love with magic. it was something she refused to hide from the world. she was not going to let the fear of other people’s reactions cause her to put an invisibility cloak on the thing she enjoyed the most. by the time she was a teenager, she knew what she was capable of. she has enhanced intuition. she can tell fortunes, manifest, heal minor wounds, levitate, manipulate her voice, teleport, channel powers, dream leap and hypnotize others. she is still perfecting the craft of telekinesis, and telepathy has proven to be too complicated for her to grasp for the time being, though sometimes she can break through. she can cast any spell she learns, but she refuses to dabble in anything that could be dangerous or harmful. glinda is her middle name, after all. she can’t be anything but a good witch. right after graduation, irene knew she didn’t want to go to college. she would rather be outside among the trees, people watching at the park, even working a 9-5 job. she would rather be anywhere but stuck in a classroom for eight hours. instead of spending her time learning skills she didn’t care about, she and nova decided to open their own business. she reads palms and tarot cards, looks into her crystal ball, casts harmless spells, and answers any questions people may have about what she does. and they sell enchantments. she does not shy away from explaining how her powers work, in hopes she can help someone else who does not realize they’re witches as well. there are a lot of non-believers and that’s fine, she never tries to sway their minds. sometimes people are downright hateful, it doesn’t get under her skin. she’s not in it for the attention. or the money, really, the income isn’t much but it doesn’t worry her, as she is honestly fine living with her mother for the next twenty years.
connections --
childhood friend: sofia paguro. growing up together because of their parents, irene and sofia were close until their teenage years. they had a falling out and they are, painfully so, no longer on good terms. *enemies: any age, any gender. the two of them just cannot get along. irene doesn’t dislike many people, but for some reason, this is someone that she cannot stand. *favorite customer: any age, any gender. a regular. maybe they don’t even pay her to do anything, just like to hang out at her stand. she’s fine with that. good company is always appreciated. honorary friends: the squad’s kids. lilo wasn’t about to have children that weren’t friends with mollie’s, gracie’s, mavis’, logan’s and dani’s. not a chance. magic friend: theo pendragon. she loves scavenging with the other girl. they’re just wholesome magical buddies. mother: lilo pelekai. irene adores her only parent. she’s always been her safe space, and appreciates lilo for the love she’s given her as well as her stance on parenting. she really believes she has the best mama ever. *pen pal: any age, any gender. they’ve been writing each other for years, but have yet to meet (or realize they’ve met) in real life. *role model: any age, any gender. irene looks up to them. they could be a business owner, a wizard, it could be something entirely unrelated. she could just think they’re a cool person. either way, they inspire her to do her best. secret crush: luna silver. one of her closest friends, somehow the lines between platonic and romantic got blurred in irene’s head. there’s just something about luna that makes her breath catch in her throat. she is keeping her lips sealed, though, she can’t risk losing her. sister: jeri pelekai. while the two of them could not be more different, they also couldn’t get along better. irene never cared much about having a sibling, but she’s so grateful that jer came along. *unlikely friends: any age, any gender. differing personalities that get along strikingly. very best friend: nova barthalomew. and business partner! what would her life be like if she didn’t have nova to dance around the bedroom to stevie nicks with? she loves her witchy friend to the moon and back.
* open connection, this could be you !! hmu.
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emersonfreepress · 3 years
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okay so is there content that you had planned for the ROs and story in general but then scrapped cause there wasn’t a good place in the story to stick it in? and if so, can you share what it was? 👀 👀 👀
yes, definitely. *rubs hands together* oh man, you done asked THE question today xD I can't wait to get into this 😁
Academics. I almost decided to have classes and grades be a minor part of gameplay, but the more time I spent designing it the more I realized I wanted nothing to do with it 😂 I haven’t really enjoyed academic gameplay in other interactive fiction because I 1) hate having to choose between studying and interacting with awesome characters, 2) have terrible short term memory, and 3) hate school in general!! So instead I just opted to have the MC be really good at school, point blank period so I could focus on social drama and relationships instead! 😆
Physical skills. I spent literal months crafting the catering scene around setting up stats for stamina/endurance, dexterity, and strength instead of just magnetism, confidence, and persuasion. They had their own backstories with the MC’s parents being overly invested sports parents instead and I think the background choices were like... martial arts, gymnastics, and track? But yeah, I ended up scrapping it all because I was spending hours on research about those individual sports so I could integrate them into the MC’s narrative organically but like... when I tried to think of what use they would be in the actual story, I came up blank. Best decision yet, esp since it means a lot less coding!
Skin tone customization. For one, I noticed that a lot of my favorite IFs don’t offer that customization and it hasn’t impacted my experience at all. For two, I originally realized I might as well not implement it since I am striving real hard not to introduce any customization that won’t actually be mentioned in interesting or meaningful ways in-story. I don’t think it’s really all that common for real life friends (esp in high school?) to comment or compliment each other’s skin and like... when it comes from someone who doesn’t share a similar complexion or ethnic background, that type of commentary gets... d i c e y. So then I wanted to be sensitive to that but what’s the pay-off? An RO mentioning how they love your skin tone once? Awkward sentences with the MC referring to their own skin color? Idk, just wasn’t vibing with it. I’m open to revisiting it in beta or something but for now it’s scrapped.
Singing, Rapping, and Gaming as Hobbies/Talents. I feel bad about scrapping these, honestly 😂 They’re great and I really wanted to incorporate them but it just came down to already having a lot of stuff to code. Plus, I know I can write the Hobbies/Talents I stuck with far better. And for Book 2 purposes, as well!
Leo. as @sourandflightypeaches ​​ asked me about a long while ago, I had to scrap an entire RO 😢 His name is Leo, he was the nephew of wealthy west African diplomats residing in Emerson, and I love him dearly! His backstory was largely based on my mother’s childhood and the circumstances she lived through after immigrating to America. and... ok, i’m about to go on one hell of a tangent so buckle up and bear with me if you can 😅
my intention with this story, aside from writing things that I personally enjoy (graphic violence, spooky woods, social drama, romance, conspiracies 😚), is to explore greed, wealth, and how the ways people and families interact with those two things influence young people and who they grow up to be. here i go sounding pretentious af 😝 and here’s where I apply a cut for those who want to preserve a little mystery to the main characters!
With Gabe, we’ve got someone who grew up with very little stability or financial security but who has found unscrupulous methods to gain status and money, with both noble and selfish motivations.
Kile has some of that childhood experience in common with Gabe, having been in the foster care system since infancy, but they lucked out when they were adopted into massive wealth by a caring, loving couple—a couple that uses their wealth and privilege to be far more lenient and protective of Kile than is actually reasonable or responsible.
Jack comes from a prestigious wealthy family on his dad’s side who he loves dearly but there’s no getting around the fact that they love him back as much as they despise his working class mom.
Jessie is a spoiled sweet heiress (being the baby of her family and the only girl) and while she lives blissfully ignorant of the harmful source and impact of her father's income and career, she bears the weight of the expectation to fulfill very traditional gender roles, including her behavior and appearance, but also extending to her career and life plans.
Rain's wealth led to them growing up sheltered and isolated but also extremely accommodated, giving them maximum freedom and opportunity to discover and develop their personal talents and interests. However, they have almost no positive relationship with their parents who have essentially decided to give up on a kid that couldn't be exactly the accessory they tried to mold them to be—both in terms of their identity and personality.
Rupan/Rohan, at their very core, rejects everything about conformity, self-importance, and excessive luxury—which means they have never, ever truly fit in with their peers. Going full non-conformist, however, has resulted in them becoming alienated from much of their family, as well, despite them all loving each other very much. Their history with false friends and betrayals has led them to over-indulge in their vices and reckless behavior to compensate for that isolation. Sometimes, they just get in over their head and many times, they know better. Every time, it's just that the feeling of finally belonging is utterly intoxicating.
Vivian/Vincent has two extremely successful parents who didn't inherit but instead built up their wealth and they aspire to be just like them, to a degree that is well and truly unhealthy. Their mother specifically is an over-achiever and applies mountainous pressure for them to follow in her footsteps, especially academically. Vi is completely capable of achieving what their mom expects of them, but they were already an extremely sensitive perfectionist so this has made them intensely critical of themself. This is a large part of why they are such a rigid, no-nonsense person and that in turn has made them one of the most disliked people among their peers—which is a huge personal failure to them since their father is a very well-liked and socially successful person in town.
And the Emersons are peak privilege: inherent high social status, brains, looks, charisma, athleticism, and massive wealth. They could never have been anything less than extremely popular, just by virtue of their last name and the nature of the town's social dynamics and politics. And they do enjoy that privilege (esp Curt lol). However, it should go without saying that being so high profile, even (or maybe especially) just in the isolated scope of your hometown, isn't always a boon. Their family's and their own perceived failings are widely discussed and privately mocked and/or celebrated. Real friends are scarce while fake ones and snakes are plentiful. Plus their dad is a gigantic dickhead who sees his kids as extensions of his own status and reputation and not much else. Public shortcomings make for an unbearable time at home and the world outside the estate is at once overly accommodating, full of assumptions, and even subtly hostile at times—all unrelated to their own actions or character.
And with the MC, I think the narrative will make it clear there are several ways that story can go. You start off with irresponsible parents that have lost their wealth due to their own mismanagement and material ambitions—how that affects any individual MC should differ based on choices and consequences!
So why bring any of that up when I was supposed to be talking about my cut OC? 😂😂
Leo was going to be the unwelcome recent addition to his uncle’s household, the son of a brother his aunt hates for (petty af) Reasons, and she took that resentment out on him directly by restricting his access to nearly every aspect of the family's wealth. Especially material goods and living conditions. He was basically treated like the help, tasked with playing nanny for his many younger cousins and burdened with doing the homework and providing academic cover for his dumb as rocks cousin in the same grade as you all. To sum it up, he was basically a victim of trafficking at the hands of his own family with his uncle out of town enough to feign ignorance to how bad his wife was treating his nephew and his aunt going out of her way to keep him busy, at home, and isolated. This is sadly a super common form of trafficking in Francophone African cultures (although I don't think most people view it as trafficking. and I’m sure the same is true of other cultures but I don’t want to speak outside of my purview). And like I mentioned above, it’s how my own mom's (and idek how many cousins') child/teenhood went.
It’s a perspective on modern wealth, privilege and greed that I really, really wanted to tell. I am confident in saying it hasn't been explored in interactive fiction yet (though correct me—and direct me 👀—if I'm wrong) and out of all the wealth/greed explorations I came up with, it's the one I have the closest personal ties to and the strongest feelings about. The characters and plans I had for it were detailed and I'm proud of them but at the end of the day... I just couldn't find a place for Leo in the story at large.
Leo was, in fact, the last main character I came up with, when I had already designed and fleshed out the larger story and started crafting the timeline of major events. I think the worst thing I could have done for a story and perspective that I care about this much is shove it into a plot that didn't have room for it at the very base level, regardless of how well the character or his story is written. Shoe-horned characters always stick out. I didn’t want to disservice Leo by having him be the character that did nothing or could be removed from the main plot without affecting it at all, y’know? That’s so much worse than just forgoing the indulgence, imo :((
ugh.... Leooooo 😭 I'm so sorry bb, I failed youuu 😥
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adventure-hearts · 4 years
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Question: Why is Sora becoming a fashion designer perceived as a “non-empowered” or “non-feminist” choice, in 2020?
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To begin with: this analysis isn’t about if Sora’s Epilogue career choice was foreshadowed or developed enough. That issue belongs in a more general discussion about why some fans felt dissatisfied with the Epilogue, in particular those jobs that were considered to be unexpected or more left-field. 
It also isn’t about individual fans’ personal disappointment with the character’s trajectory. Obviously, there are many factors at play that could lead one to be unhappy with how Sora’s turned out — dub changes, the cultural background information that isn’t always evident, or just personal reasons. No-one needs to agree with Sora’s job or feel compelled to justify their personal dislike.
Nevertheless, I will propose the following four explanatory hypothesis for why people might harbor a negative view of Sora’s career choice:
1. Being a fashion designer goes against Sora’s previously-established personality, interests, and values. 2. Her future career isn’t empowering. 3. It’s regressive, because all the female characters just ended up with stereotypical, traditional feminine activities. 4. Sora stopped being a role model for gender non-conformity in girls.
In this post, I’m going to try and demystify those points of view, in order to try to show that Sora’s career is both fitting and empowering.
***
Hypothesis 1: Being a fashion designer goes against Sora’s previously-established personality, interests, and values.
I believe this perspective is more connected to a general misunderstanding or lack of appreciation for Sora’s character arc.
To make a generalizing statement, many fans felt frustrated when Sora went from being presented as not particularly “girly” (playing football, wearing more practical clothes, being friends with boys) to “suddenly” becoming more feminine post-Adventure (playing tennis, wearing more feminine clothes, being paired off romantically with a boy, doing ikebana). This “dramatic change” culminated in her in her becoming a fashion designer in the Epilogue.
Similar complaints exist about Miyako’s endgame. In both cases, dissatisfaction  is based on the notion that a girl who doesn’t present as typically girly or has “masculine interests” in childhood wouldn’t gravitate towards “feminine things” later on. Some people believe that, in 02, becoming more traditionally feminine was associated with growing up and becoming more mature. Consequently, Sora and Miyako’s Epilogue jobs were a “correction” to their earlier presentation as young girls who challenged traditional gender roles.
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While I think this is an understandable complaint, I must emphasize that a more deeper analysis of Sora’s character arc might help explain her trajectory in a more straightforward way.
Consider: 
It’s clear that Sora is coded as not a "girly girl” in Adventure. Not only does she have a unisex name, but she is often presented as a contrast with the hyper-feminine Mimi. 
Despite of this, I would argue that Sora was never portrayed as a full tomboy. For example, she speaks in a feminine way; her manners are delicate, even dainty; and she undertakes roles that involve being caring and nurturing, such as Big Sister / Group Mom — and, at one point, even damsel in distress —, which are normally associated with femininity. You never get the impression that Sora considers herself to be “one of the boys” or that she constantly struggles against gender expectations. Even her digimon partner is pink!
In Adventure, Sora’s preference for football over ikebana and annoyance when her mother asks her to act more “ladylike” are explained as a being a reaction against the pressure of Sora’s position as heiress to an old Ikebana family. To give the Cliff Notes version of the story: Sora rejected feminine as a way of rebelling against her mother’s perceived lack of love for her, and against the pressures of her position as ie-moto Crown Princess. 
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After Sora made up with her mum, she became more open-minded and gradually began to embrace and enjoy more feminine things, including tennis (it’s weird to me  that people consider tennis “girly”, but I digress), cooking, and flower arrangement. As a teenager, Sora is also often seen wearing skirts and more feminine clothes, suggesting a more ‘womanly’ presentation, and she even ends up becoming romantically involved with a boy. 
I don’t see any evidence in Adventure or 02 that Sora wouldn’t be fond of art, design, or fashion. On the contrary: she practices and enjoys flower arrangement. Sora’s hobbies and personality traits in Adventure and 02 include sports, flower arrangement, resourcefulness, responsibility, sensitivity, and an eye for detail. Is that really incompatible with a future career in fashion design? The fact that she comes from an Ikebana family directly influences her career choice, notably the fact that she uses traditional Japanese elements in her designs. This establishes a strong connection between her Epilogue Job and her arc.
TL;DR: Sora wasn’t really a tomboy to begin with, and her becoming “more feminine” as she grew up is explained in the series as being a direct consequence of her Adventure character arc.
*
Hypothesis 2: Her future career isn��t empowering.
I think this stems from from the belief that being a fashion designer isn’t an important enough career. 
Since Sora is a Chosen Child, fans would expect grown-up Sora to be saving the world or being involved in Digimon issues, instead of doing silly things like making dresses and kimonos. After all, she is supposed to be a Strong Female Character™!
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This point of view probably relates to the perception of creative professions — or anything related to art and culture — as “superficial”, “not serious” or “useless” for society. Fashion design, in particular ,is often seen as vapid or superficial, rather than a legitimate art form that can full of beauty and meaning. It’s the old story that if a career isn’t “powerful” or “useful”, then it’s less valid. (It’s interesting how no-one seems to question if becoming a footballer or a rock star would be “impactful” or “strong” enough for the two male protagonists.) 
This might be also be tangentially connected to fans’ dissatisfaction with Sora’s decreasing importance in the team as the story goes on. Many people would have preferred to see her in a position of leadership, or in the front lines of the battle. In this sense, her career choice could be perceived as the writers sidelining this female character even further.
In short, Sora’s career isn’t baddass enough.
Counterpoints:
There are many reasons why Sora wouldn’t want to be involved in fighting as a grown up. I’ve written about it earlier, but I think nothing illustrates her choice better than the short film To Sora. While it’s fair to question to what extent this decision was linked to Sora’s increasingly smaller role in the team (meta-wise), it’s still based on established character motivations. Sora doesn’t work in digimon business because... she doesn’t want to.
Sora becoming a fashion designer is also a huge step for the character, in the sense that it means that she also does not end up taking over over as Ikebana grand-master. Instead, she forges her own independent path: she does something she wanted to do for herself.
Moreover, based on the little information we have, Sora either works on a relevant position or works in her own name, considering she is able to run fashion shows and make creative decisions. This means Sora isn’t just an artist with a vision: she’s in a position of power within the business. 
We don’t have many clues to estimate how successful she is, but options range from her running her own small independent label, to being head-designer of a company, to becoming a proper superstar designer with her own successful global brand. All of those possibilities mean Sora has achieved considerable career success. If she’s doing some form of haute couture, then Sora’s arguably one the most “career accomplished” among the all group (if you use the usual questionable methods society uses to evaluate “accomplishment”, namely fame, power, and money).
And think of all the skills and talents necessary to be a successful fashion designer! Creativity; innovation; vision; diligence; hard work... to think of fashion design as an unimportant or “minor” profession is really reductive. Don’t you think icons like Valentino, Yves Saint-Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Coco Chanel, Vivienne Westwood, Hanaé Mori or Rei Kawakubo aren’t respected and influential? I’m not saying Sora’s at that level (yet) — I’m just saying she might be.
TL;DR: In the Epilogue, we learn that Sora followed her individual dreams and is triumphing in a challenging and important industry, producing high-quality art in her own terms. She even has the potential of becoming powerful, wealthy, and famous. She’s the definition of an empowered woman.
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Hypothesis 3: It’s regressive, because all the female characters just ended up with stereotypical, traditional feminine activities.
This view is based on the observation that all the boys ended up with “important” careers, while the girls ended up with “feminine” jobs or, in Miyako’s case, not even a career at all. In other words, fans believe that the Digimon Epilogue wasn’t exactly good at providing progressive role models for girls. 
I do have some issues with this view. 
First: Isn’t the idea that traditional “feminine” activities are automatically lesser in itself sexist? 
Why do we assume that a fashion designer or a school teacher is “less” than a writer or a doctor? I’m not saying the Digimon Epilogue is problem-free or that promotes gender equality (it is, after all, a Japanese children’s cartoon from 2000), but considering the reality of working women in Japan, is the Epilogue that bad and regressive? 
(Also, there are twice more men in the team than women, so there’s more room for wider representation on the boys’ side. The four girls in Adventure always carry the burden of having to stand for half the population. As I mentioned in section 1, the fact that Sora was perceived as a “tomboy” means her career choice receives even more criticism.)
Second: Is being a fashion designer truly a “traditional feminine activity”? 
I would argue that considering fashion designer (especially in the “higher ranks”) as “woman’s job” is both stereotypical (“clothes are a woman’s thing!") and historically inaccurate. 
Here’s a fun fact: As of 2018, only 40% of womenswear fashion brands are designed by women and only 14% of the 50 major fashion brands are run by women. 
Think of the most famous fashion houses you know; you’ll find that the majority are almost all founded and/or lead by male designers. Looking at the list of Japanese fashion designers on Wikipedia, just over half of them are men.
In other words, the fashion industry was and continues to be overwhelmingly dominated by men, it’s plagued by lack of diversity and opportunitues for women, and women fashion designers a lot of obstacles and discrimination. So much for Sora having a “woman’s job”! 
And don’t even get me started on how difficult it must be to conciliate this career with being a mother of two.
TL;DR: Sora is working in a male-dominated field were being successful as a woman is still incredibly difficult. Not that different from playing in the boy’s football team!
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Hypothesis 4: Sora stopped being a role model for gender non-conformity in girls.
I think the previous sections have already negated this to some extent.
First, Sora was never that gender-conforming to begin with and she began embracing femininity long before the Epilogue. Also, the two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Liking football and wearing jeans doesn’t mean you can’t like fashion and wear dresses.
Second, being a fashion designer is a respected, demanding, and possibly lucrative career. Sora is both an artist and a successful businesswoman in a leadership role she chose for herself.
Third, fashion is a male dominated industry and fashion design isn’t “a feminine occupation”. Sora is still going to have to break barriers and face a lot of obstacles based on the fact that she’s a woman and a working mum.
TL;DR: Sora’s challenging of social expectations, her “less typical” childhood presentation and hobbies, and her being a source of inspiration for little girls isn’t invalidated by her becoming a fashion designer.
Conclusion
Upon reflection, Sora’s career not only makes sense for the character, but it’s a very empowering one. 
Sora Takenouchi remains a feminist icon, thank you very much.
PS: I’ve always suspected that, on a meta level, Sora’s Epilogue career was very loosely inspired by Stephen King’s IT, which was listed by director Hiroyuki Kakudou as an influence for Digimon Adventure/02: more, specifically, the character Beverly Marsh is a red-haired girl who grows up to be a fashion designer.
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vixeyfoxworth · 3 years
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this ain't for the best my reputation's never been worse, so you must like me for me.
we can't make any promises now can we, babe? but you can make me a drink
BASICS
Name: Victoria Grace Foxworth Nicknames/Alias: Vixey, Vix, occasionally Tori. She really hates being called Vicky and though she’s nice about it if it happens she does address it and ask if they not call her that. Face Claim: Emma Stone Age: Twenty-nine Gender/pronouns: Cis woman / she/her Sexuality: Pansexual. Vixey’s never really felt like she develops feelings based on gender, it’s always based on the human and their connection and character. Date/Place of Birth: June 6th / New York City Currently:  Avonnola Occupation: Actress, previously performing on Broadway
HISTORY
Childhood/Family Life: Vixey grew up in an incredibly loving and supportive home. Her father’s a veterinarian, primarily serving exotic animals, while her mother, a veterinarian primarily serving farm and domestic animals. Her father spent a few years working around the world before her parents met and then after they met they were able to do a bit of traveling thanks to his job. From day one Vixey was taught to love and care for animals always. She was raised vegetarian, using locally sourced animal products. Growing up Vixey thought her parents may push her to pursue their dreams for her but to her surprise they were fully supportive of her little girl as she pursued choir and the theatre clubs in school. From a young age Victoria loved to perform, commanding a room when she walked in without effort, sometimes due to her striking red hair, but most of the time it came naturally thanks to her personality. Due to her parent’s jobs, and her dad eventually opening his own practice, Vixey’s always lived a very comfortable life. Though Vixey was born in New York City, her parents are both from small towns in Tennessee and made sure to expose Vixey to more than just the fast paced city life.  Education: In high school Victoria was a big of a teacher’s pet. She got her undergraduate degree in theatre performance and went on to get her MFA in acting and most of the time questions if she even needs it. Accomplishments: Pursuing her dream of becoming an actress and performing on Broadway. Being nominated for a Tony Award and being nominated and winning various other drama related awards. Completing her master’s degree as that was one of the biggest headaches of her life. Regrets: Vixey isn’t very big on actively regretting things, mostly because she knows if she does she’ll dwell on things and it’ll only make her feel worse. She tends to be incredibly impulsive and can also be jealous so she doesn’t like to give herself time to think too much about actions. She certainly regrets things she’s said to people in the past, especially when she’s been upset. Secrets: tbd.
PERSONALITY
Positives/Virtues/Skills: She’s kind, loving, empathetic, a team player, self-confident, a good listener, and very efficient when it comes to completing a task. Victoria learns fast, she’s a visual learner and loves to collaborate with others. One of her favorite things about performing on stage is that yes, it’s important to pour everything you can into your character for yourself but also for the sake of the show. Unless it’s a one woman show, you’re never truly alone on stage - and even then you’ve got a tech crew truly making you shine. Vixey’s always been very complimentary of her off stage coworkers. She’s reliable in a way but also unreliable in others. If you want someone to help you, she’s your girl, but if you want to go out on the town with someone who will stick by your side the whole night no matter what, she’s probably not because she’s been known to disappear for the night with a partner or with new friends she’s made.
Flaws/Weaknesses/Negatives: Vixey can be jealous and is often stubborn, wanting to make decisions and do things on her own terms, and it isn’t always to her benefit or the benefit of others. Though she can be patient, she tends to have a short fuse and can go off about little things, though she tries to apologize and own up to her mistakes in that regard and has gotten better. She tends to act impulsively, especially when it comes to somewhat non-life altering decisions. Vixey knows if she thinks too long about something she’ll overthink it so she tends to act without thinking. She’s working on it but it still happens.
Personality Type:
ESFP - Entertainer
Likes & Dislikes:
Vixey’s favorite color is red, she loves anything that sparkles, her music taste varies on the day, she’ll listen to almost everything. She took dance classes as a kid and kept up with them through college. She loved playing the piano as a kid and though she doesn’t play anymore she could if she had to. She loves shopping and thanks to her comfortable life has never really had to worry about treating herself every now and then. She’s not necessarily one for designer brands, unless it’s for a special event or she finds them at a discount. Vixey loved a good bargain but often comes across as materialistic thanks to her hobby. She actually doesn’t like going into designer stores, they feel more like a museum than a store to her. She likes to pick up and try things on before buying them and she doesn’t feel super comfortable doing that in those stores. She likes to be in control of a situation, she’s not necessarily bossy and she doesn’t always like to be in charge or in a leadership position but she definitely likes to be in control of her own thing. She loves plants and comfy beds and naps in the afternoon. She hates phone calls and rude comments on her instagram. 
Dreams/Ambitions:
She’s already achieved her dream of becoming an actress and she only hopes to continue that. She’d love to open her own dance studio someday to help others pursue their own dreams. She figures in another life she’d work in a bookshop or library but she isn’t so sure her own need to constantly have something to do would serve her well in a job like that.
Fears:
Abandonment or being left out. As an only child Victoria had a difficult time connecting with other kids right away until her parents finally enrolled her into a preschool program. That didn’t last long, though and it wasn’t until Vixey was in school that she finally had proper interaction. She was often left out of games early on and a lot of kids made fun of her hair, saying he looked like a fire engine but eventually she just focused on the fire part. Later when she began to date she dated.. a lot, but was either left or left before she could be left.
RELATIONSHIPS
Parents: Katherine and Jeff Foxworth Siblings: Victoria is an only child. Children: None, and though she may not admit it, she wouldn’t mind having a big family someday. Spouse: n/a Current Partner: tbd Ex-Partners: tbd Friends: tbd! message me for wanted connections :) Enemies: tbd! message me for wanted connections :)
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Build: 5′6″, slender, loves to wear heels to appear taller than she is, especially around men who are taller than her. Hair Colour: Red Eye Colour: Hazel Green Distinguishing Marks: Victoria has a tattoo on her left side just under her breast, two butterflies, that she got on a whim after college.
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star-anise · 5 years
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why would your social environment affect if you identify as a woman or nb?
I don’t know if you meant it to be, but this is a delightful question. I am going to be a complete nerd for 2k+ words at you.
“Gender” is distinct from “sex” because it’s not a body’s physical characteristics, it’s how society classifies and interprets that body. Sex is “That person has a vagina.” Gender is “This is a blend of society’s expectations about what bodies with vaginas are like, social expectations of how people with vaginas do or might or should act, behave, and feel, the actual lived experiences of people with vaginas, and a twist of lemon for zest.” Concepts of gender and what is “manly” and “womanly” can vary a lot. They’re social values, like “normal” or “legal” or “beautiful”, and they vary all the time. How well you fit your gender role depends a lot on how “gender” is defined.
800 years ago in Europe the general perception was that women were sinful, sensual, lustful people who required frequent sex and liked watching bloodsport. 200 years ago, the British aristocracy thought women were pure, innocent beings of moral purity with no sexual desire who fainted at the sight of blood. These days, we think differently in entirely new directions.
But this gets even more complicated, in part because human experience is really diverse and society’s narratives have to account for that. So 200 years ago, those beliefs about femininity being delicate and dainty and frail only really applied to women with aristocratic lineages, and “the lower classes” of women were believed to be vulgar, coarse, sexual, and earthy, which “explained” why they performed hard physical labor or worked as prostitutes.
Being trans or nonbinary isn’t just or even primarily about what characteristics you want your body to have. It’s about how you want to define yourself and be interpreted and interacted with by other people.
The writer Sylvia Plath lived 1932-1963, and she said:
“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars–to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording–all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery.”
She was from upper-middle-class Massachusetts, the child of a university professor. A lot of those things she was “prohibited” from doing weren’t things each and every woman was prohibited from doing; they were things women of her class weren’t allowed to do. The daughters and sisters and wives of sailors and soldiers, women who worked in hotels and ran rooming houses, barmaids and sex workers, got to anonymously and invisibly observe those men, after all. They just couldn’t do it at the same time they tried to meet the standards educated Bostonians of the 1950s had for nice young women.
Failure to understand how diverse womanhood is has always been one of feminism’s biggest weaknesses. The Second Wave of feminism was started mostly by prosperous university-educated white women, since they were the people with the time and money and resources to write and read books and attend conferences about “women’s issues”. And they assumed that their issues were female issues. That they were the default of femaleness, and could assume every woman had roughly the same experience as them.
So, for example, middle-class white women in post-WWII USA were expected to stay home all the time and look after their children. Feminists concluded that this was isolating and oppressive, and they’d like the freedom to pursue lives, careers, and interests outside of the home. They vigorously pursued the right to be freed from their domestic and maternal duties.
But in their society, these experiences were not generally shared by Black and/or poor women, who, like their mothers, did not have the luxury of spending copious amounts of leisure time with their children; they had to work to earn enough money to survive on, which meant working on farms, in factories, or as cooks, maids, or nannies for rich white women who wanted the freedom to pursue lives outside the home. They tended to feel that they would like to have the option of staying home and playing with their babies all day. 
This is not to say none of the first group enjoyed domestic lives, or that none of the second group wanted non-domestic careers; it’s just that the first group formed the face and the basic assumptions of feminism, and the second group struggled to get a seat at the table.
There’s this phenomenon called “cultural feminism” that’s an attitude that crops up among feminists from time to time (or grows on them, like fungus) that holds that women have a “feminine essence”, a quasi-spiritual “nature” that is deeply distinct from the “masculine essence” of men. This is one of the concepts powering lesbian separatism: the idea that because women are so fundamentally different from men, a society of all women will be fundamentally different in nature from a society that includes men.
But, well, the problem cultural feminism generally has is with how it achieves its definition of “female nature”. The view tends to be that women are kinder, more moral, more collectivist, more community-minded, and less prone to violence. 
And cultural feminists tend to HATE people who believe in the social construction of gender, because we tend to cross our arms and go, “Nah, sis, that’s a frappe of misused statistics and The Angel In the House with some wishful thinking as a garnish. That’s how you feel about what womanhood is. It’s fair enough for you, but you’re trying to apply it to the entire human species. That’s got less intellectual rigor and sociological validity than my morning oatmeal.” Hence the radfem insistence that gender theorists like me SHUT UP and gender quite flatly DOESN’T EXIST. It’s a MADE-UP TERM, and people should STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. (And go back to taking about immutable, naturally-occuring phenomena, one supposes, like the banking system and Western literary canon.)
Because seriously, when you look at real actual women, you will see that some of us can be very selfish, while others are altruistic; some think being a woman means abhorring all violence forever, and others think being a woman means being willing to fight and die to protect the people you love. As groups men and women have different average levels of certain qualities, but it’s not like we don’t share a lot in common. The distribution of “male” and “female” traits doesn’t tend to mean two completely separate sets of characteristics; they tend to be more like two overlapping bell curves.
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So, like I said, I grew up largely in rural, working-class Western Canadian society. My relatives tend to be tradesmen like carpenters, welders, or plumbers, or else ranchers and farmers. I was raised by a mother who came of age during the big push for Women’s Lib. So in the culture in which I was raised, it was very normal and in some ways rewarded (though in other ways punished) for women to have short hair, wear flannel and jeans, drive a big truck, play rough contact sports, use power tools, pitch in with farmwork, use guns, and drink beer. “Traditional femininity” was a fascinating foreign culture my grandmother aspired to, and I loved nonsense like polishing the silver (it’s a very satisfying pastime) but that was just another one of my weird hobbies, like sewing fairy clothes out of flower petals and collecting toy horses.
Within the standards of the society I was raised in, I am a decently feminine woman. I’m obviously not a “girly girl”, someone who wears makeup and dresses in ways that privilege beauty over practicality, but I have a long ponytail of hair and when I go to Mark’s Work Wearhouse, I shop in the women’s section. We know what “butch” is and I ain’t it.
But through my friendships and my career, I’ve gotten experiences among cultures you wouldn’t think would be too different–we’re all still white North Americans!–but which felt bizarre and alien, and ate away at the sense of self I’d grown up in. In the USA’s northeast, the people I met had the kind of access to communities with social clout, intellectual resources, and political power I hadn’t quite believed existed before I saw them. There really were people who knew politicians and potential employers socially before they ever had to apply to a job or ask for political assistance; there were people who really did propose projects to influential businessmen or academics at cocktail parties; they really did things like fundraise tens of thousands of dollars for a charity by asking fifty of their friends to donate, or start a business with a $2mil personal loan from a relative.
And in those societies, femininity was so different and so foreign. I’d grown up seeing femininity as a way of assigning tasks to get the work done; in these new circles, it was performative in a way that was entirely unique and astounding to me. A boss really would offer you a starting salary $10k higher than they might have if you wore high heels instead of flats. You really would be more likely to get a job if you wore makeup. And your ability to curate social connections in the halls of power really was influenced by how nice of a Christmas party you could throw. These women I met were being held, daily, to a standard of femininity higher than that performed by anyone in my 100 most immediate relatives.
So when girls from Seven Sisters schools talked about how for them, dressing how I dressed every day (jeans, boots, tee, button-up shirt, no makeup, no hair product) was “bucking gendered expectations” and “being unfeminine”, I began to feel totally unmoored. When I realized that I, who absolutely know only 5% as much about power tools and construction as my relatives in the trades, was more suited to take a hammer and wade in there than not just the “empowered” women but the self-professed “handy” men there, I didn’t know how to understand it. I felt like I was… a woman who knew how to do carpentry projects, not “totally butch” the way some people (approvingly) called me.
And, well, at home in Alberta I was generally seen as a sweet and gentle girl with an occasional stubborn streak or precocious moment, but apparently by the standards of Southern states like Georgia and Alabama I am like, 100x more blunt, assertive, and inconsiderate of men’s feelings than women typically feel they have to be.
And this is still all just US/Canadian white women.
And like I said, after years of this, I came home (from BC, where I encountered MORE OTHER weird and alien social constructs, though generally more around class and politics than gender) to Alberta, and I went to what is, for Alberta, a super hippy liberal church, and I helped prepare the after-service tea among women with unstyled hair and no makeup  who wore jeans and sensible shoes, and listened to them talk about their work in municipal water management and ICU nursing, and it felt like something inside my chest slid back into place, because I understood myself as a woman again, and not some alien thing floating outside the expectations of the society I was in with a chestful of opinions no one around me would understand, suddenly all made sense again.
I mean, that’s by no means an endorsement for aspirational middle class rural Alberta as the ideal gender utopia. (Alberta is the Texas of Canada.) I just felt comfortable inside because it’s the culture where I found a definition of myself and my gender I could live with, because its boundaries of what’s considered “female” were broad enough to hold all the parts of me I felt like I needed to express. I have a lot of friends who grew up here, or in families like mine, and don’t feel at all happy with its gender boundaries. And even as I’m comfortable being a woman here, I still want to push and transform it, to make it even more feminist and politically left and decolonized.
TERFs try to claim that trans and nonbinary people reinforce the gender identity, but in my experience, it’s feminists who claim male and female are immutable and incompatible do that. It’s trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer people who, simply by performing their genders in public, make people realize just how bullshit innate theories of gender are.. Society is going to want to gender them in certain ways and involve them in certain dynamics (”Hey ladies, those fellas, amirite?”) and they’re going, “Nope. Not me. Cut it out.” I’ve seen a lot of cis people who will quietly admit they do think men and women are different because that’s just reality, watch someone they know transition, and suddenly go, “Oh my god, I get it now.”
Like yes, this is me being coldly political and thinking about people as examples to make a political point. Everyone’s valid and can do what they want, but some things are just easier for potential converts to wrap their minds around.. “I’m sorting through toys to give to Shelly’s baby. He probably won’t want a princess crown, huh?” “I actually know several people who were considered boys when they were babies and never got one, and are making up for all their lost princess crown time now as adults. You never know what he’ll be into when he grows up.” “…Okay, point. I’ll throw it in there.” Trans and enby people disrupt gender in a really powerful back-of-the-brain way where people suddenly see how much leeway there is between gender and sex.
I honestly believe supporting trans and enby people and queering gender until it’s a macrame project instead of a spectrum are how we’ll get to a gender-free utopia. I think cultural feminism is just the same old shit, inverted. (Confession: in my head, I pronounce “cultural” with emphasis on the “cult” part.) 
I think feminism is like a lot of emergency response groups: Our job is to put ourselves out of a job. It’s not a good thing if gender discrimination is still prevalent and harmful 200 years from now! Obviously we’re not there yet and calls to pack it in and go home are overrated, but as the problem disappears into its solution, we have to accept that our old ways of looking at the world have to shift.
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homenum-revelio-hq · 3 years
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Welcome to the Order of the Phoenix, Bailey!
You have been accepted for the role of ROSLALIA CLEARWATER with the facelaim change of Im Jinah! We were so excited to see someone interested in Rosalia. We think she’s such a multi-faceted character and you really brought her in life in your application. We cannot wait to see how her appearance back to the Order will change the dynamics here! Welcome to the roleplay!
Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours! Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!
OUT OF CHARACTER:
NAME & PRONOUNS: Bailey - she/her
AGE: 26
TIMEZONE: CST
ACTIVITY LEVEL: I work full time so usually I’ll be on in the evenings and weekends. If I had to wager a guess, I’d say I should be able to get on around 3 times a week.
ANYTHING ELSE: triggers - animal abuse/cruelty/torture.
CHARACTER DETAILS:
NAME: Rosalia Clearwater
AGE: 30 - December 12, 1951
GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Female | She/Her | Bisexual
BLOOD STATUS: Half-Blood
HOUSE ALUMNI: Gryffindor
ANY CHANGES: Requesting a FC change from Jamie Chung to Im Jinah
CHARACTER BACKGROUND:
 (tw: minor self harm)
PERSONALITY:
You know those girls you hear about - the ones that grew up with scrapes on their knees and branches in their hair, with wild smiles and honey sweet laughter? No concept of fear, the kind of girl who embraced everything the world threw at her with her feet planted firmly on the ground. Rosalia was once that girl - always ready to speak up and defend those that need defending, quick to fight and just as quickly settle down into a discussion.
She liked to have an understanding of those around her, how they thought and what drove them. It was maybe a more Ravenclaw trait but she found most confrontations didn’t escalate to the same extent if she heard someone out.
Not that she didn’t have opinions - she knew what she believed in and would do research to help support her ideas. Sometimes she’d get fixated on one idea and hold fast to it, that Gryffindor stubbornness settling into her veins. It would take examples and sources to change her mind at that point, not just an opinion. Of course, when it’s the minority (half-breeds and muggle born) there aren’t always the official resources to back up their experiences - biases run rampant throughout history.
She is a natural born leader and teacher - being the eldest of 4 definitely helped her develop those skills. It showed in her classes too - the ease with which she answered questions and how she would help others around her who were struggling, usually regardless of house. The Slytherin’s usually didn’t ask for help from her but if it happened, her answers were usually a little more clipped and there was a distrust in her eyes that wasn’t present with other houses.
Rosalia could definitely be rash in her decisions, jumping into a fight or conversation without knowing all the details. Most of the trouble she landed in was because she didn’t look before leaping.
She has learned over time to not only listen to what people are saying, but what they are not saying. Gaps in information and missing links usually mean something is fishy and she will never hesitate to prod a little if she feels there’s more to be said.
What do they struggle with?
As a child, she would ask question after question, regardless of how appropriate they were and without any regard for tact. The teachers in her muggle schools tried to train her out of it but it wasn’t until she went to Hogwarts that she truly began to see people from all walks of life and how her questions might affect someone. It was also the first place where her punishments stuck - detention in the muggle world would never compare to scrubbing out cauldrons for hours on end or polishing trophies until her hands were red and raw.
Over time, those relentless questions turned into a love of debate and she would eagerly
argue wixen politics or the rights of certain people or why the colour purple was clearly superior over all other colours. It was fun and it always felt like a contest and she did have a love of winning.
Her biggest struggle came around after she was hit by the curse. It wasn’t like breaking a bone, where the pain was immediate and overwhelming and recovery was slow going but the healing was obvious. No, this curse was more insidious - a dark mark forming on her bicep and over time spreading down to her fingers until her veins were dark and her fingertips black.
Slowly losing the mobility of her wand arm was debilitating - the magic thrummed in her veins but she wasn’t able to cast it, to release it to the world. And then one day, she woke up and couldn’t feel anything where the darkness was - no fizzy thrum of magic, no pinpricks of her sewing needles, not even the sensation as she dragged her sharpest knife along her forearm.
After fleeing Britain and the war, it took a very long time for Rosalia to be able to sleep through the night without dreaming of the night that sent her life into a tailspin. Even now, after all the work she put into her rehabilitation, a big part of her still doesn’t believe she will be able to be of use to the Order. What good is a wix with one good arm and unresolved trauma to an organization that is trying to save the wixen world?
BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY: 
Growing up, she never knew her father. Her mother, Vanessa Clearwater, rarely talked about him other than to say that he was a muggle and they were better off without him. It was the same with the rest of her sisters - all of them had a different father, always muggle, and never present. Any time they would ask after any of their absent fathers, Vanessa would snap and send them off to do chores until they were exhausted.
It was a strict upbringing but not unpleasant by any stretch of the imagination. Vanessa instilled in each of them a sense of worth and confidence that would be hard to shake. Magic was intermittent among the girls: Rosalia was magical from the age of three, Violette didn’t manifest anything until her 8th birthday, Alysum was the late bloomer of all of them - her letter came as a surprise and her first year was a struggle, but she did manage to manifest magic. Her magic was always the weakest. And Poppy never showed any aptitude for magic. This meant that her entire family doted upon her and did their best to include her whenever they could, but there were some times that Poppy was excluded despite their best efforts.
Vanessa Clearwater: Mother
Rosalia Clearwater: Eldest
Violette Clearwater: 2nd born
Alysum Clearwater: 3rd born
Poppy Clearwater: 4th born
OCCUPATION: 
Rosalia doesn’t currently have an occupation. Before she fled Britain, she was a full time member of the Order and devoted all her time to the cause. Once she was set up in Brazil, she picked up a waitressing job in a muggle restaurant to pay for her rent and food. Now though, as she steps out into the familiar gloomy atmosphere of London, she has nothing. No occupation, no home - she’s not even sure if she’s still a member of the Order.
ROLE WITHIN THE ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER: What is their purpose in the Order? How do they feel about the organization within a failing war? Remember, the Order is also an illegal vigilante organization and that can be difficult for characters to navigate.
It was her home. She was a defender, a light against the evils of the world and now she was nothing. A burden to the people she once called family and a liability if she were ever caught. The guilt haunts her - knowing the risk her actions and memory could have.
And still…some part of her wants to be welcomed back, to rejoin the people she loves. Time is short and survival isn’t guaranteed - the gut wrenching article she read in the Prophet confirmed that. The darkness was spreading and she had to get back out there on the front lines…even if it meant her death.
Penance by sacrifice - could she ever make it up to the Order for leaving? If not..she would give her life for those that hadn’t fallen. She would do all she could to pass on what she’d learned to other members of the Order but, as far as she was concerned, her life was tainted and although she was ready to fight, she knew that her life wasn’t worth the same as someone like James Potter.  
SURVIVAL: 
She fled to Brazil and for a while, could not practice her magic at all. Each spell was a fight and every time she reached for it, it felt tired and lethargic. She got set up in a muggle beach side town and started working in a restaurant to make enough to live. She’s going back to Britain now and to be honest, doesn’t intend to survive. Her survival is no longer on the table - the survival of the Light is all that matters now.
RELATIONSHIPS:
Fragile, non-existent, shattered - coming back, she doesn’t expect any sort of warm welcome. She misses them all though, her heart aching every time she thought of back home, thought of sending another owl, of just picking up and going back to the friends and family she once knew. But her dreams are haunted by their scorn, by their betrayal and she finds herself cowering away in her small bachelor room.
Moody - he was her friend, suspicious and rough and always on edge but someone she could trust with her life. And now….well, if he didn’t hex her on sight, she would think it was a miracle. If she could just talk with him, explain why she left how she did…maybe he’d at least give her the time of day.
OOC EXPLORATION:
SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS: 
Note that there are no planned endgame ships set in this roleplay. There are a few characters who are in romantic relationships at the start of the game, but it will be up to players to decide if those relationships can survive the war. This question does not guarantee that any ship will happen, it is merely for fellow players to see where your interest might lie.
Really, anything organic. Will have to work through trauma - doesn’t intend to survive war - why make long term commitments? Open to old flames/exes as well, if we want to establish something from Hogwarts time or from before she fled the country. Could be almost anyone in Hogwarts time and after that time, anyone who was part of the Order. Would never have a relationship with a known death eater - I am down for twists and subterfuge and betrayal though along those lines.
WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE?
Rosalia definitely has some biases that she got while attending Hogwarts. Competitive by nature, it only made sense to her that of course Gryffindors were better than Slytherins. You only had to look at how the Quidditch games went or where the Slytherin common room was located - the dungeons were creepy and gross and those thoughts just translated over to the students who lived there.
As time went on and she slowly had smaller courses with more classmates from different houses, her immediate disgust and distrust began to go away. She was more likely to treat her fellow Slytherin classmates with respect and even joked around with them, but if she ran into unfamiliar Slytherins in the halls, her gaze would harden and that suspicion would filter back in.
She’s grown a fair bit since her school days and having travelled, does understand that you can’t judge someone based on how they were sorted or who they were at a young age. Still, there are some microaggressions she can’t shake and it takes a purposeful thought process to correct herself when she notices them.
Muggles - Rosalia has two different trains of thoughts when it comes to non-magical folk. The first one is based on Poppy - the baby of the family and someone who needs to be protected. She doesn’t have the luxury of magic to rely on and she struggled a little more compared to the rest of her family. If Rosalia had to compare, she would say it was most similar to seeing a puppy on the side of the road in a box that needed a home.
The other train of thought stems from what Vanessa has told her about her father. How he didn’t want to be a part of her life, how unreliable he was, how much better off they are without him. It’s normal for muggle parents to be absent from their child’s life and Vanessa didn’t want that for any of her kids.
Living among muggles hasn’t warmed Rosalia’s heart to them. If anything, the resentful side of her has grown - working in a customer service role has shown her the worst side muggles have to offer.
WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? 
Honestly, I was looking around different roleplays on tumblr and I really loved the premise of this group. I also liked how the plot drops really incorporated all characters involved and seems to include everyone.
I’ve also kept thinking about this group after I messaged the main a month ago about the potential FC change. I literally couldn’t get Rosalia out of my head.
PLOT DROP IDEAS:
I really like the idea of exploring the trauma and PTSD that Rosalia has and how this will affect her return to the Order. I also like the idea of her not succeeding when she initially returns and forcing her to deal with some of the trauma she’s been avoiding.
I also love the idea of getting her to a place where she can produce a full bodied patronus again as she hasn’t been able to since she was hit by the curse.
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alternislatronemhq · 4 years
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Congrats, May, you have been accepted to AL for the role of Poppy Pomfrey (FC: Naomi Watts). Ahhh, May, I am SO excited that you are bringing us Poppy. We so rarely see her played in the RP community, and she’s just such a fascinating character. It’s obvious that you’ve written her before and have such a good grasp on her character as well as how she fits into this world. I’m so excited for my Minerva to have her best pal! Please send in your blog (no sideblogs for first characters, please) in the next 24 hours and be sure to take a look at our new player checklist.Welcome home, we’re so excited to have you join the family!
OOC
name — may
 age — 21
 pronouns — she/her 
timezone — GMT+1
 activity level — will probably be available for a few hours every day; will very rarely take more than 24hrs to respond any questions? — when do we start?
IC Overview
name — Poppy Pomfrey age — 48 
gender — cis-female, she/her
 sexuality — homosexual

patronus — a white swan, which often belongs to a highly emotional owner. unfortunately for her, this description fits poppy particularly well; she is a woman known for her bursts of hysteria and her strong emotional core. in particular, like a maternal swan, poppy’s protectiveness (of friends, family, and patients) borders on frighteningly aggressive — but you’ll get used to it!

boggart — what an outsider might perceive to be a fear of loss is in fact intrinsically linked to a fear of failure; poppy’s boggart is indeed death, but specifically preventable death. in other words, she will see those she cares about in mortal peril, but she is powerless to save them.
IC in depth
personality traits —
+benevolent - above all else, poppy is an intensely kind-hearted individual. though first a healer by family trade and intellectual interest, she nonetheless passionately ties herself to the welfare and safety of her charges.
+intelligent - she might not be minerva mcgonagall in the duelling department, but poppy excelled in all core subjects at school (as well as astronomy and muggle studies) in order to train as a healer. she is often found reading medical journals of the muggle and magical kind in her spare time — and if you call her ‘nurse’, when she is quite aware that a healer is the muggle equivalent of a doctor, she is very likely to show you her extensive knowledge of gruesome hexes.
+perfectionist - though there’s a valid argument for obsessive compulsive tendencies, poppy believes she’s merely a perfectionist. it’s not often problematic, though her excessive tidying and cleaning can become a tad time-consuming for her, and in fact ensures the best possible care for her patients.
+-protective - linked to a desire for regular company, which she sometimes lacks in the hospital wing, poppy is protective of her patients to the point of trapping them in her sights if an ailment stretches beyond the minor kind. nonetheless, she’s soft enough that she might allow the occasional visit, even if they are short and watched with a careful eye.
-aggressive - whilst not perhaps the most natural of fighters, the aforementioned fierce protectiveness goes hand in hand with an aggressive streak. poppy will shout when the safety of a patient is compromised, even if it risks said patient’s hearing. she has no qualms about angrily tackling those who would dare question her, which can cause various problems.
-emotional - some have termed her ‘hysterical’ which, with her muggle medical understanding, poppy deems highly offensive. she is inclined to tearful outbursts, though is usually able to maintain composure if her skills are required — even if she is found to be a sobbing mess shortly after saving a life. students are more likely to see the stoic side of her, which certainly exists in equal measure, but this is her way of maintaining order in her infirmary; besides, she doesn’t find fixing broken bones and the like to be particularly upsetting.
character biography —
born the second daughter of liberal, magical parents, poppy has been surrounded by witchcraft and wizardry her entire life. her mother, a hufflepuff healer, is her antithesis in many ways; perpetually calm and eternally warm, she is a creature of comfort for her own patients, whereas her daughter’s bedside manner tends to have a firmer, anxious edge. poppy’s father, a ravenclaw, is an alchemist of considerable ability and, like his younger child, more of a highly strung, intellectual character. completing the family is violet, a far older sister, who still delights in reminding poppy that she was an (‘unhappy’) accident. being the youngest, by a fairly considerable gap, poppy grew quickly in her youth, taking to her mother’s books and her father’s journals to seek ways to converse with her family without dragging them to her childish level.
sorted into ravenclaw at the age of 11, poppy discovered both age-appropriate friends and an identity of her own, though her love of healing and her passion for potions did not fade in her new verdant home, away from the london smog. she never discarded her maturity even during her earliest years at hogwarts, but she was certainly truer to herself without a family to please so directly. to this day, she credits minerva mcgonagall with the oft bolshy courage she carries around the infirmary.
at 16, poppy was alarmed to realise that boys had begun to notice her. a relatively popular girl, well-presented and quick to help others with their work, she wasn’t entirely surprised at first to spot a few extra faces in her study group. it was minerva, with all her non-existent tact, who leaned over to comment on certain growth around the bust; the illusion that she was being genuinely helpful quickly came crashing down. she knew how it all worked from her books, and even had a niece to coo over during the holidays, but the relationships that stole her free time for a while after that were peculiar and dissatisfying. it was down to minerva once again, aided by alastor moody, to inform poppy that her sexuality was very much up for debate. suddenly her fascination with watching minerva’s frankly dangerous quidditch tricks made an awful lot of sense…
after graduating from hogwarts, poppy trained at st mungo’s under her mother’s watchful eye, choosing to focus her talents on paediatric healing. once again suffocated at home, as well as at work, she grasped the opportunity to fill the post of hogwarts matron with both hands when it was mentioned to her. she has been happily there ever since, largely contentedly alone and perfectly comfortable with a continuous stream of children to mother — without the horrific remnants of labour on her body and memory.
in war, poppy made her association with the order of the phoenix clear to the right people, but never formally joined their ranks. in her mind, as dumbledore agreed, she was better without the recognisable connection. nevertheless, her days spent treating students bled into nights aiding order members in her personal quarters. if she ever has to house mr sirius black, or some other poor soul, in her spare bedroom with a nasty wound again, she is sure she will lose her mind. but, if the darkness comes knocking once more, she will gladly take that risk.
plot ideas —
- poppy absolutely has an unreciprocated crush on minerva, long since weaved with friendship and familial love, which i could certainly see as a point of contention between the two during heated moments.
- entirely open to romantic subplots, but poppy will always focus on her patients first!
extra —
headcanons:
- poppy heads the unofficial ‘ban the house system’ group, which she attempts to force on her colleagues every so often. she is not a fan of the division it creates, nor the rigid expectations, and has never been one to encourage prejudice against slytherin house (or any house, for that matter). this tendency towards prejudice is the one thing she dislikes in minerva.
- likewise, poppy has a small campaign to restrict quidditch players to fourth-years and above. she knows that minerva and the other house heads probably despise her for it, but her good friend’s dangerous school experiences have helped to create this intense loathing.
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sloanepearson · 4 years
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A more in depth look at Sloane Pearson
The Basics
Name? Sloane Pearson
Age? Twenty six
Approximate height? 5′2″, but usually in boots that make faer 5′6″
Hair colour? Brown
Eye colour? Dark Brown
Do they speak with an accent? There are hints of a Boston accent
Where are they from? downtown Boston, MA
Where are they now? Pelican Town
Backstory
Who are their parents?  Patricia Kendrick & Anthony Pearson
What is their earliest memory?  Faer earliest memory was the sight of faer mother running up to faer crying because fae had fallen off of the jungle gym and hit faer head. Fae was four at the time and had to get stitches.
What did they want to be when they grew up? Sloane loved the stars and wanted to be an astronaut.
What did/do their parents want them to be? Faer parents never pushed faer into one field, more so discouraged pursuing the arts/non-lucrative fields. They thought fae were good at math and did encourage more mathematical fields of study.
Do they have siblings? Older or younger? Brothers or sisters?  Yes, fae has an older brother (Marcus) and a younger half-sister (Caroline)
Do they have or have they ever had children? How many? No children, not sure if fae wants them.
Do they or have ever had a significant other? Are they still with them? Why? Why not?  Yes, fae has had a few partners. Most noteworthy was the man fae was dating shortly after dropping out of college and becoming homeless. It was a friends with benefits situation at first (largely the benefit of having a home), but the relationship turned sour due to how much Sloane relied on him and him exploiting that position.
Up until now, what’s the most noteworthy thing they’ve done? To them? To the people around them?  Right now, fae thinks that being able to get faerself off the streets and make a business is the most noteworthy thing fae has done. Yet, Sloane has avoided telling family/people fae grew up with what fae has been up to for years. Fae is waiting until fae feel content with how the business is prospering.
Tastes
What’s your character’s favourite colour?  Shades of purple, especially those leaning towards the pink spectrum, like mauve.
Do they/would they choose to wear a scent? What would it be?  Yes, quite frequently. The scent changes, from lavender to cinnamon.
Do they care about what things look like? All things, or only some? Sloane does have a huge dedication to making things appear like a certain aesthetic. But only faer own possessions. 
What’s their favourite ice cream flavour? Fae likes most sweets, but fae often goes for either mango/raspberry flavors or chocolate
Are they a tea, or coffee drinker? Or soft drinks, or do they drink a lot of alcohol? What kind? Tea and coffee. Tea more often than coffee, especially faer own blends, but fae won’t turn down coffee on mornings where tea won’t do it. No soft drinks. Alcohol is an infrequent thing these days. But fae will occasionally drink some red wine,
What kind of books do they read? What TV shows and movies do they watch?  Fae reads a wide assortment of books in faer downtime and listens to different educational podcasts. A lot of poems, but several about spirituality or fantasy. Fae does not watch TV or movies on faer own, but will watch any with friends.
What kind of music do they like? Do they like music at all?  Fae loves music that is very lowkey. Indie folk music is faer favorite.
If they were about to die, what would they have as their last meal?  Ooof that’s a hard one. Fae would probably want a sample of all different foods, but fae does love different curries and tacos...and baked goods.
Are they hedonistic? In all cases? Or does practicality sometimes/always/often win out?  Sloane used to be much more of a hedonist. Fae still does things that bring faer joy, but tries to be more practical about choices fae make.
Do they have any philias or phobias?  No philias, perse, but fae does have a phobia of heights and clowns.
Morals, Beliefs, and Faith
Do they have an internal or an external moral code? Now as an ‘adult’, faer moral code is mostly internal, but it was shaped by an external moral code.
To what extent are their actions dictated by this code? Almost entirely. There have been circumstances in faer life where choices were made that fae knew were against faer own code.
Do they believe in a God or Gods/Goddesses/Higher being of some description? Yes, fae believes in Yoba and that there are spiritual forces guiding humanity
Are they superstitious? To an extent. Fae does believe in spirits and ghosts, but not in old wives tales...not most of them
Do they believe in an afterlife? If so, what’s it like? Yes, but fae are not sure what to believe it will be like. There are so many theories, that fae tries not to get ‘lost in the sauce’ and focus on the present.
Do they have any specific beliefs that manifest obviously? There are not religious principles that manifest obviously, but fae does wear religious symbols
Are the respectful of the beliefs of others? To what extent? Sloane keeps an open mind and respects others beliefs, until that belief leads to scapegoating others or disrespecting faer own.
Have they ever had to stand up to criticism for being religious? Or not being religious? Sloane has had people criticize faer beliefs and say faer involvement was only superficial or to ‘seem unique’.
Would they be more likely to act for the good of the one, or the good of the many? It would depend on the circumstance. If the one was someone fae knew and cared about, fae would likely act for the good of one. But under other circumstances, it would be for the good of many.
Relationships
Do they make friends easily? Yes, at least, fae thinks so
Do they have a best friend?  Several close friends, but not a best friend. Fae has never liked the term ‘best’ friend because it infers a hierarchy 
Can they get people to do what they want them to? If so, how?  Sometimes. Fae is very good at compromising. And has pretty decent puppy dog eyes that some are weak to.
Do they have a lot of romantic relationships? Serious, or short term?  Fae has had experience dating. Most short term with people of all genders, one long term.
Do they fall in and out of love easily? Fae falls in and out of lust easily. Love was quick the first time and has since been a drawn out process.
Do strangers and acquaintances actually like them when they meet? Sloane thinks so, fae has an alluring, mysterious vibe.
Do they have a network? Fae does - a network throughout the Ferngill Republic for selling and buying unique objects. But also in the valley, fae’ve grown close to Henry, Ben, Alex, Gabby, and Finley
What is their relationship like with their family?  Strained. Largely due to faer own self-inflicted distance. Fae doesn’t want to disappoint them, so fae has not seen them since faer grandmother’s funeral and only gives vague updates. Fae is more open with faer siblings but hasn’t seen them in person in a few years either.
Are they still in touch with non-family people they were in touch with a year ago? Five years? Ten? More? A handful of people from faer days in college days, and faer days travelling a few years ago but none from Boston.
Do they like children? Do they want children of their own? Sloane enjoys children in small doses. They are so receptive to believing in magic which fae enjoy, but fae is unsure if fae wants one of faer own.
Physical Appearance
How does this character dress? How would they choose to dress, if all options were open to them? Vintage bo-ho style. Faer closet is full of cheap finds from thrift shops. Fae would get some clothes that were a bit nicer if fae had those options, but similar style.
Do they have any tattoos? What do they mean? Yes, fae has a rose tattooed on their left shoulder blade, but doesn’t talk about the meaning.
Do they have piercings? How many? Yes, both ears, faer right cartilage, and faer septum
Do they have scars? Where did they come from? Fae has a scar on faer ankle from falling out of a tree as a child.
Do they alter their appearance in some way on a regular basis? Not really
Is there something they’d choose to change about their appearance if they had the opportunity to? Not anymore, fae has grown content with faer appearance
Is there something about their appearance they’re particularly proud of/happy with? Sloane likes faer jawline
Objectively, are they physically attractive? Fairly plain? Unattractive? OP would say so, Sloane would probably give a shrug.
Do they have an accurate mental picture and opinion of their physical appearance? Yes
How much time do they spend thinking about their physical appearance? Less since moving into faer van, but still a little bit of time.
General Knowledge
Can they navigate their own local area without getting lost? To what degree?  Yes, Sloane is pretty curious and loves to explore where fae lives. Could probably navigate the town with faer eyes closed.
Do they know who the top politician or monarch is where they live? What about elsewhere?  Where fae live, definitely. Outside of the US? Just a handful.
Do they know if/where there are any major conflicts going on right now?  Yes, fae keeps up to date on major news events, but does not keep tabs on every issue/bills, laws currently being voted on, unless they are something major.
Do they know the composition of water?  Yes! Any chemistry beyond that, likely not.
Do they know how to eat a pomegranate? Yes, but questionable if fae are willing to undergo the effort. Fae loves pomegranate flavored things, however.
Are they good with the technology available to them? Average? Completely hopeless?  Below average for faer age. Fae used to be fairly good at digital software, but the only technology fae owns is a smartphone (that is several generations old).
Could they paint a house? Without making a mess of it?  Paint a house, for sure. Make a mess? Depends on if that is requested. Fae may make a mess out of spite, or to get a smile out of someone.
Could they bake a cake? Would you eat it if they did?  Ish, fae can bake cookies and muffins, but faer cakes don’t turn out quite the texture of a cake. But they do taste good.
Do they know how to perform basic maintenance on the common mode of transportation? Fae knows how to change a tire, jump-start a car, change the oil, but that’s about it.
Do they know the price of a loaf of bread? All too well.
Specific Knowledge
Do they have a specific qualification in a narrow area? Sloane has good instincts for making faer way without many resources, and, as such, is skilled in bartering and haggling, as well as making cheap fixes. But faer other ‘skills’ are less practical.
Is there something they do or know exceptionally well that most other people don’t? Fae gives great advice on self care. Often is good at practicing what fae preach in that regard as well.
Do people often comment on a particular skill or area of knowledge to this character? Behind their back? People in town often recognize faer connection (realized or imagined, depending on who you ask) to faer spiritual side
Is there an area this character could be considered top of their field or a genius in? Not at all, but fae does have more knowledge on divination than anyone in the area
Have they deliberately sought to gain knowledge in a specific area? If so, why? Yes, fae frequently seek out knowledge about the spirits. Fae feels as though connecting to them will bring more peace to faer live and a sense of ease knowing what else is out there.
Do they speak more than one language? More than two? Why? Yes, Sloane speaks English and Spanish. A lot of faer friends spoke Spanish as their first language, so fae learned as a kid growing up. It would take a little re-immersion to pick it back up though.
Does their cultural background effect what they would be expected to know? Not really.
Have they ever been publicly acknowledged for being well-versed in something? Yes, fae was sent to the principal’s office for their knowledge of the ‘occult’
Have they ever been bullied for knowing a lot about something? Sloane has been picked on for faer strong faith and former beliefs in fairytales.
Do they actively seek new knowledge, or let it come to them naturally? Fae gets a lot of knowledge through faer travels, but fae does listen to podcasts and such to learn things fae may have missed out on in the past.
Miscellaneous
What did they have for breakfast this morning?  Fae had some baked goods courtesy of Henry, and a cup of tea
What ridiculous belief/s did they have as a child? That fae could speak with the animals if fae imitated the noises they made and just inflected like a person would.
Do they like marshmallows?  Only in s’mores or hot chocolate. On their own, they are bland.
Do they sleep on their side, front, or back?  Fae is a side sleeper.
Do they work better with sound or silence? Sound. Lo-Fi hip hop is where it is at.
Do they have a strange obsession with something minor?  Sloane spends hours obsessing with how the shop appears. Now, fae has it down to an art, but fae put a ridiculous effort into the aesthetics of it all.
Do they like art?  Fae adore art and collect anything eye-catching. If fae could affored it, fae would own a gallery.
How fast can they run?  A decent pace, but fae hate running. Yoga is preferred. 
Do they prefer to sit on the floor or on a chair?  Fae loves a comfortable armchair to drape faerself on but will otherwise sit on the floor because fae tends to fidget a lot.
What do they want, right now?  Sloane desires financial stability of faer own means.
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vampireacademysims · 5 years
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So, I got tagged for this 50 OC questions meme by @blackswan-sims, thanks girl (B&W squad!) :D I asked her whom should I do it about and she said Rose, although she also gave me the liberty to do about someone else. Well, Rose Hathaway is NOT my OC, she belongs to Richelle Mead, but I will do this one at the best of my knowledge, bits of headcanon might have seeped in, it’s only my opinion after all, so bear with me. If you have different view, post them bellow, I’m curious.
Tagging, @in-sempiternam, @grecadeasimsstudios, @moocha-muses, @fannycandysims, @mdpthatsme, @yandereplumsim, @ilikefishfood and anyone else. I really love reading OC stuff, so poke me if you do.
01. How old is your sim? Recently turned 18.
02. When is your sim’s birthday? March 21st.
03. What is your sim’s zodiac sign? Aries.
04. What is your sim’s ethnicity? Scottish - Turkish.
05. Does your sim have any nicknames? Everyone calls her Rose since her full name is Rosemarie. As for special nicknames, Adrian called her Little Dhampir and Dimitri calls her Roza when he’s being affectionate.
[More under the cut]
06. Do they have a job? She just dropped out of school, so no. She’s going rogue while being financed by Adrian.
07. Where does your sim live? She lived most of her life at St. Vladimir’s Academy before she left. She’s currently on a personal mission in Russia and she’s constantly moving, so she lives nowhere right now.
08. Who does your sim live with? In St. Vlad’s she lived in the Dhampir dorms and had no roommate.
09. What environment did your sim grow up in? (strict, loving, cold etc.) She grew up with the other Dhampir and Moroi at St. Vladimir’s Academy, a boarding school for both species. She was treated like every other Dhampir, so I guess… itty bit strict for being a boarding school? Other than that, I guess it was an ok environment, she must have had some perks for being Lissa’s best friend, with Lissa being a Royal.
10. What is your sim’s favourite food? Pizza, brownies… Rose can eat about anything (except Borsht apparently XD) she loves sweets and junk food.
11. What is your sim’s favourite drink? Not really sure? I know she dabbled with alcohol in the past… but Russian Vodka (the one really produced in Russia) is like rocket fuel for her.
12. If they have one what is your sim’s favourite color? Red?
13. Does your sim believe in any clichés? (love at first sight, etc.) I don’t think so? She’s quite skeptic.
14. What is your sim’s sexuality? Heterosexual.
15. What is your sim’s gender identity? Female.
16. Is your sim type a or type b? Definitively Type A.
17. Is your sim introverted or extroverted? Very Extroverted.
18. What is your sim’s favourite woohoo position? Rose has done the Devil’s Tango only once (up until now) and there wasn’t much information about it. I guess Rose would fallow any instructions Dimitri gave off, being her first time, but I envision her liking to experiment in the future.
19. Is your sim a pet person? If so what is their favourite animal? Not a pet person. Apparently animals don’t take well to Dhampirs, Lissa had a cat once and he and Rose only seemed to tolerate each other.
20. Does your sim have a best friend? Vasilisa “Lissa” Dragomir, more than her best-friend, she’s her bond-mate.
21. What is/was your sim’s favourite school subject? Rose is not very… scholarly. Dhampirs have specific classes to learn to act like bodyguards - known as Guardians when they graduate, before that they are Novices - besides more mundane stuff like pre-calculus or Slavic-art. I’d gather she liked combat lessons the most (even better when they were with Dimitri).
22. Is/was your sim a high, mid or low achiever in school? I gather she was a middle achiever on non-combat stuff. On Dhampir related subjects like combat and such I’d say she was a high achiever, she learned fast when she wanted to.
23. Are they planning to go or have they already been to college? If so, what would be or what was their major?  I don’t really think it passed through her mind in the past. Dhampirs are raised, educated and trained to solely be Moroi Guardians. Their moto is “They [Moroi] come first” after all. But now that Lissa is finishing school and she wants to go to college. As her Guardian Rose would go with her, enrolling and having classes, but mostly because it’s part of the job to protect her, not because she personally wants to. 24. What are your sim’s political beliefs? Human politics don’t matter to her. Moroi politics, she’s starting to pay attention as she learns how Guardians are treated by Moroi, she sees things that need to change. But she isn’t all that political.
25. What is one thing your sim wants to do before they die? Right now, free Dimitri’s soul from being a Strigoi. But other than that and be Lissa’s Guardian, I don’t think she has a bucket list (or I can’t really remember right now).
26. Does your sim have a favourite TV show (cable) and/or movie? I don’t think St. Vlad’s allowed TVs and right now even if she had time to watch some TV, it’s all in Russian and she barely understands it lol
27. Is your sim a Netflix viewer? Netflix didn’t exist at the time the books are set in, and for the reasons explained previously, I’d say no.
28. Does your sim like books? Nooooope!
29. Does your sim enjoy video games, if so what is their favourite one and do they play on PC or console? Goes the same as TV. Not allowed in school, no time for it currently.
30. What is your sim’s personal style? Rose likes to be comfortable, but if she can go for sexy, she will do it. She knows she’s pretty and that her body attracts attentions, so she will flaunt it given the opportunity.
31. Does your sim have a lucky charm? A Nazar necklace that her mother gave her for Christmas, which was given to her mother by her – for now – unknown father. Lissa gave her a family heirloom Chotki bracelet meant for the guardians that served the Dragomir family, but Rose gave it back when she left.
32. Is your sim religious? Not at all. 
33. What kind of music does your sim listen to and who is their favourite artist? There isn’t much information about what she likes, but there is about what she doesn’t like: 80’s music with a focus on 80’s European music. She always complain when Dimitri is listening to that type of music, which is his favorite.
34. Is your sim a festive person? If so what’s their favourite holiday? Don’t think so…
35. What is your sim’s favourite type of weather? Sunny warm weather, since she rarely gets to experience it. Although Moroi don’t die with sun exposure, it’s uncomfortable for them (because vampires after all). So they work on a nocturnal schedule and thus so do the Dhampirs.
36. Does your sim prefer to start fights or finish them? Both!
37. Does your sim have a dream job? To be Lissa’s Guardian, she won’t take anything else.
38. Does your sim have any siblings? She’s an only child.
39. Does your sim get along with their family? For a long time she resented her mother a lot for not raising her and choosing to be a Guardian full time, meaning she left Rose at the care of St. Vlad’s since an early age. It’s complicated, female Dhampirs that choose to stop being Guadians and choosing to raise a family and looked down upon and a few have the ugly nomenclature “Blood Whores” attached to them for choosing family. She has been coming to terms with her mother and coming to admire her and having a friendlier relation. She doesn’t know who her father is.
40. What is your sim’s favourite hobby? Fighting? She doesn’t have the time to go partying anymore.
41. What does your sim look for in a romantic partner? Someone that respects her and treats her as an equal, mutual understanding.
42. What is a secret about your sim? She and Lissa are Bonded. During a car crash that killed Lissa’s family, Lissa brought Rose from the brink of death using her Spirit element and it created a bond between the two, making Rose Shadow-Kissed. Rose can see through Lissa’s eyes and feel what she feels at any given time, although Lissa doesn’t have these perks. This is not much of a secret anymore, ever since it became known that Lissa is a Spirit user. The current secret would be is that she is in love Dimitri, who is her 7 years older mentor, and that both did the Devil’s Tango once.
43. What is a wish your sim has? Becoming Lissa’s Guardian and having an accepted relation with Dimitri. You see, Dhampirs having relations with other Dhampirs is frowned upon.
44. What is a flaw your sim has? Rose is impulsive, fight prone and known to hit first and ask questions later.
45. How do others generally perceive your sim? Same as above. Not someone you want to cross.
46. Does your sim have a greatest achievement? Coming back from death. Sure, she had help, but she did it. Taking Lissa from St. Vlad’s and running away, living amongst humans for 2 years before Dimitri tracked them down and brought them back to school.
47. If they have one, what is your sim’s greatest regret? “Allowing” Dimitri to be taken by Strigoi. She was held back, but still. On top of that one, having left Lissa behind when she embarked on this possibly suicidal mission to Russia to find and kill Dimitri.
48. Does your sim have a favourite emoji? No idea lol
49. Does your sim use simstagram? At this point she doesn’t even own a phone.
50. What is the last text your sim sent (and who did they text)? See above, so no texts.
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