There really should be two different words for "I don't experience sexual attraction" and "I don't want to have sex ever". Not arguing that either isn't queer, but they're two entirely different things, and having both under one label is confusing and causes a lot of weird infighting.

I entirely understand this impulse, I’ve had it before, but I think it’s important to remember that asexual is already an umbrella term (as is aromantic for that matter). there probably is a separate term for experiencing attraction with no desire to act on it, alongside a dozen other similar but still unique experiences with their own microlabels. I think asexuality and the asexual community should be a place where a variety of people with overlapping experiences can come together through what they do have in common, which is an atypical experience with sex and sexual attraction, one that falls short of what is deemed socially acceptable. (and this all is coming from someone for whom asexual is the most specific label applicable to my experiences, someone who experiences zero sexual attraction and zero desire for sex.)

Honestly, real talk, I feel like people largely do not understand just how much characters within those who are maladaptive daydreamers and/or were maladaptive daydreamers literally are "parts of them" and how both healing and destructive that dynamic can be and I find that a bit visible with how people in DID communities talk about maladaptive daydreaming as a "form of plurality"

Its an absolutely different experience but that doesn't mean that the label of "plural" isn't equally suitable. Since that topic has come up on our radar like way back half a year or year ago, we honestly have been thinking about it as someone who is considered "recovered" from DID and has recovered from maladaptive daydreaming but still has a brain that functions creativity and imaginative worlds with the same semi-autonomous functions whether I like it or not

And honestly? My characters are very much not "my creation", nor are they "just my OCs" - the very way all of my character are made and at this point the only way I know how to write and make characters is by taking a part or aspect of myself (conscious or subconscious) and throwing it out there with a name and face. That part of myself engages with the world I created and develops within the narrative and impacts the world itself.

I repeat and do this for all my characters and the world that I have created serves as a hypothetical exploratory way to understand, engage with, and explore very complex topics with exaggerated and isolated parts of myself. I have never really "planned" a character of given them traits or really anything other than a basic premise of a name, MAYBE a gender, and a vague role and I let them define their own story. No real character arc planning. No real likes and dislikes. No real narrative or secret message.

The function and means of which that I "created" these OCs and the level of which I don't control the way they form and grow is extremely similar to how I "create" alters, albeit one is far more voluntary and intentional than the other and one is physically sharing my life with me and the other is sharing a mental world with me.

((Additionally I don't engage in the mental world I made for them beyond the half joke that I'm the god of the gods of that world and they dont know))

The dynamics I have with my characters is WAY WAY WAY different than my parts / alters but BOTH my characters (maladaptive daydreaming) and my alters (DID) are equally fair to call "parts of me" and "parts of a whole" in a very literal not "Oh yeah Im a writer and this character means a lot to me theyre a part of me"

With my writing partner (who does this as well) we regularly use our characters as well to explain what we are going through / how we are feeling to help facilitate real talk and venting a lot because we have a mutual understanding that while this is a story and these are our characters, both of us have "built" this world by literally giving very specific aspects of ourselves the ability to explore, grow, and learn in a world and that while some have grown SO far from who we are now, they represent an aspect and potential part of us that could have been should something have gone one way in a specifically extreme way in a specific environment.

With that in mind, I absolutely feel its fair to compare DID and MaDD "plurality" with some obvious understanding that while there are similarities they are also different (AND THATS OK).

Cause honestly? If I actually talked to my characters (like a lot of people with MaDD tend to do) I could see myself calling and feeling as though they were a system and I don't think it would be all that inaccurate and wrong. I don't have that experience as my MADD and DID are mostly entirely two seperate dissociative coping mechanisms, but I know for a fact the line between the two is a lot less clear and its just food for thought

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[SYSCOURSE AND DEBATE WILL BE BLOCKED.]

[Good faith conversation and discussion is WELCOMED and ENCOURAGED.]

[If you don't know the difference, don't add on.]

putting in my two cents as an aroace hazbin fan to the whole alastor shipping debate (adding a cut below because this got long-)

before I start, it's important to remind everyone:

alastor is canonically ace and (semi)canonically aro, and that should be respected the same way we'd respect angel dust's identity as a gay man, or vaggie's as a sapphic woman.

"ace" and "aro", while also functioning as labels unto themselves, are umbrella terms for a lottt of identities. Some of which do include the ability to experience sexual and romantic attraction, in different ways and at different levels (demi, cupio, lith/lithro, grey, aro-and aceflux, the list goes on).

So, given all that, is it possible to interpret alastor as experiencing some level of romantic attraction, or sexual attraction? Of course, identities like the ones I listed above are just as valid as any other acespec and arospec identity.

So, what's the issue then? Right now, a lot of fans are using the breadth of aspec identities and experiences as a shield, to excuse them shipping him like they would an allosexual/alloromantic character.

Just to make it clear, that in itself is erasure. And I know that's a strong statement, and that there being such a broad aroace experience adds nuance to any statement you can make on that, but we have to acknowledge as a fandom that there are objectively wrong ways to handle aspec characters, both in the way we discuss them and in the way we portray them in fan works.

And before anyone says it, saying "alastor isn't real" or "fanon content won't change his canon sexuality" doesn't work when real life aspec people can't even look in a tag of a character that's supposed to represent them without seeing their identity erased. It's the way I feel attempting to engage with a lot of hazbin content, and I know a lot of my fellow aspec hazbin fans are feeling it as well.

So, what's the solution to all this? That's unfortunately kinda complicated. Everyone has a different opinion on what constitutes as erasure, what is good rep, how much benefit of the doubt we should give people, et cetera, and so everyone's solutions look different. In a way there also isn't a way to solve it, since aroace erasure is so normalized in fandom culture (not just the hazbin fandom; fandom culture as a whole) that there will always be a significant portion of fans who will ignore, erase, or otherwise deny alastor's or any other aroace character's sexuality.

So, to put my two cents on it:

My philosophy is that if you're going to ship alastor (or any aspec character for that matter), it's best to have an identity in mind for him to use as reference. For example, I think of alastor as sex-repulsed aroace, and I write him with that in mind. Whatever you pick can be a steadfast headcanon, an identity tailored to the story you want to tell, or one you want to explore in your fanwork, whether for fun or to educate yourself on it better.

What's better is that you don't even need to mention the sexuality itself in the work! Show don't tell is a great writing tool, and for alastor specifically, who canonically isn't aware of his sexuality, it works perfectly. Just simply creating with it in mind, asking yourself, "how would someone with [insert identity] experience this?" and going from there, makes a world of difference.

Just in terms of good fanfic etiquette, I'd also make sure to include it in the tags if you're posting it on ao3, just to make sure your readers know what's up and to help with filtering (I personally don't read any alastor ship fics that don't include the asexual or aromantic tag at this point). Bada bing bada boom, that's representation right there!

Since Alastor is one of very, very few ace characters in mainstream media, and even less aro characters in media period, us as a fandom creating good representation with him is really important, especially in terms of the breadth of aspec identities. We don't get much representation, so claiming he's definitively one label or another isn't productive, and hurts the community in the long run. Fanfiction is first and foremost an exploration of canon, so why not play around with what "aro" and "ace" can look like for him?

Case and point, I've seen some incredible ship fics that headcanon him as demisexual and/or demiromantic, and do a great job representing those identities. I've also seen some really good fics that portray him as sex-repulsed, and others that portray him as sex-neutral or positive. All of that is great, and again, even if it isn't directly mentioned: adding subtext, putting it in the tags, and even simply writing the fic with the sexuality in mind does wonders.

Me personally, I headcanon Alastor with the same identity as me; sex- and romance-repulsed aroace, but open to queerplatonic relationships. That doesn't mean fics that interpret him with a different aspec identity are less valid, or are interpreting him wrong. All of it is valid representation.

And that's not even getting into queerplatonic relationships, which is what I put Alastor into for my own headcanons (queerplatonic radioapple fic when). For that, please do your own research, but remember that queerplatonic relationships tend to look different for every couple. They can be poly, include kissing and physical intimacy, or look just like what most people would consider a regular friendship or regular romance.

So, can you ship aroace characters? Sure you can, as long as it isn't at the expense of their sexuality, or more accurately, the representation their sexuality gives to a historically underrepresented group.

That's pretty much it from me, please remember to support aspec fanartists and fanfic writers, and happy (early) aromantic spectrum awareness week for all my fellow arospecs!!

Article from 11/5/22

The first time I had a pregnancy scare was shortly before 2020, when I was in my early 20s. I googled how to access plan B and was surprised and relieved at how easy the process was. I felt some resentment too: I shouldn’t have been surprised. That was what feminists and activists before me had fought for. Easy and affordable access to reproductive care. I entered the details required to place the order, and within minutes I received a cancellation notification on my phone. Assuming an error, I tried again; the money was still pending on my card. It was canceled for a second time. I called my best friend, asking to borrow money to buy some medication. At that point, almost 24 hours had passed, and I knew I would have to wait the following day to head to the pharmacy. After the third order was canceled, I started panicking. I knew the chances of being pregnant were low, given my medical history, but the thought of needing an abortion was scary. I knew I could access it fairly easily, should I need to. I knew my partner would come with me, and be supportive. I knew my best friend could drive me there. I finally got an email from the pharmacy, explaining why the orders had been canceled: “We cannot sell plan B to men, please ask your partner to order her medication directly.” Needless to say, my partner in this case had no use for plan B. Nor could they have ordered it on my behalf. I didn’t expect similar feelings – the same pain, fear, frustration – to emerge again recently, even more violently. My partner – transgender as well – was lying next to me in bed, browsing social media, when they suddenly stopped and looked at me. “They’re overturning Roe.” was all they said. It took me a moment to understand what they meant. Even longer to understand what that would mean in the upcoming days. Once again, I felt my body paralyzed with horror. But I still had to look it up myself, so I started reading tweets, articles, and news – all the “No uterus, no opinion,” “Stand with women,” and “Protect women’s health” slogans. It’s hard to describe the pain of feeling excluded by a problem that’s still affecting you. There is a fine line between combating erasure and being worried your experience will be used to distract from that problem. As a trans man, I need access to abortion and contraception, whether they’re labeled for women or not. But erasure runs deeper than semantics, and it’s rarely accidental. Following the Roe v. Wade leak, a great part of the debate has shifted to the language used when discussing abortion. Part of it is aimed at including trans men and non-binary people who might have a uterus, engage in penetrative sex, don’t have access to contraception, or have to terminate wanted pregnancies for health reasons. The connection between reproductive rights and equal rights for the LGBTQ community has always been clear, both from community involvement and legislation, but we’re only just starting to see the harm of describing abortion as a women’s rights issue. Overturning Roe v. Wade is not just a women’s issue. Framing it as such not only erases transgender and non-binary people who might need access to it, but also fails to recognize the threat it poses to body autonomy. It creates a concerning precedent by restricting agency in healthcare by targeting specific minorities. Personal interest in this conversation shouldn’t be the leading argument: there are women (cisgender and transgender) who cannot get pregnant who are still pro-choice; there are disabled people who have been advocating for body autonomy since before Roe v. Wade was introduced; there are BIPOC who have historically faced violence and reproductive health disparities.

As someone who is queer but doesn’t know what that truly means at any given day AND as someone who views Yang as a lesbian in my HCs, having a character who ends up in a queer relationship but who DOESNT have their identity ironed out down to the flag is also very nice. Blake is bisexual, she is attracted to men unambiguously, but she also likes women and fell in love with a women. She is no less bisexual because of this despite some people trying to ignore that part. Yang falling in love with a women but having no defined identity feels very in line with her character as well. Maybe she’s bi in a “I had a crush on a guy once and now I like Blake so that’s being bi right??” Maybe she’s demi and all her playful flirting (the literal one scene but also I don’t wanna be too harsh bc some ppl have had that experience) was all posturing not to Hide but bc. Hey I did that too when I was 12, Made up a fake boyfriend bc surely I should’ve had one by now.

In the JL movie they had the “wow. She’s really strong” line which we all loved. But also Yang figuring out who she is outside of people, her dad and Ruby and even Blake, while also being in love with Blake. Idk it resonates. The not knowing what label fits you but being in a relationship regardless. It would be more for Us than anything to have a clear stamp but in universe Yang probably never had the chance to explore one way or the other. And she just happened to fall in love with Blake who is a woman, rather than the Woman that is Blake.

So HC lesbian, demi lesbian or just straight up does not know.

I will say the lesbian flag colors look perfect on her tho and we all know the show is about colors SO maybe Blake was the eye opening factor that made her realize OH I like women specifically. Neat!

That's honestly really valid. Not everyone has their sexuality figured out at 19-20.

I dunno, part of me wanting her sexuality to be canon is pettiness and spite I suppose. Been a lot of years of denial from some less than admirable people.

But at the end of the day, Yang loves Blake and Blake loves Yang and that's good enough.

Thinking about Reploids...

Caver Kanger Mouse's presence around a human at their time of death ends up becoming the main thing that sets off his descent. Pulled into the court where they label the more politically charged reploids as potential mavericks, he had to plead to those above him not to blame him for the accident. (It was a cave-in tbh)

While right in that he was innocent from harming a human, the manner of which he still broke a law of robotics was clear - "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." He has a problem with processing risk, which is part of his abilities as a cave spelunking assistant. The risk was too great, and rather than stopping the human from advancing into the cave, froze out of "fear". (emotions in reploids was still new at this time - something that is never really explained in the series is how each reploid responds to feeling emotions for the first time, as none of them are ever given the chance to experiment with these things as infants, since they never *are* infants).

I'd imagine that the earlier models made based on X's schematics are not as tweaked as the ones we see later in the actual game entries. This is all functioning under the assumption that robots in Megaman's time were simply emulating emotions in order to properly communicate with humans. But they were limited in what they could emulate. This presents the definitive line between X and Megaman - not just free speech, but true emotion. X functions under his own rules, and likely the Laws of Robotics, while Megaman functions in a semi-free manner under the orders of Dr. Light. I can't really explain it well because I'm extremely stupid, but the gist is - whatever Megaman felt was fake, whatever X felt is real.

Expecting a reploid, specifically an earlier model, to be able to handle raw emotions logically upon first being felt is a sort of story writing overstep. There's a lot of details in the games that suggest that replicated X's effectiveness in being as human as possible, is difficult or impossible. If they couldn't even create a reploid that could balance when wartime was necessary and when peace was the better option at this point in time, then there had to be some sort of evolution in how reploids handled emotions.

Zero's case specifically was unique. I don't think upon initial creation that he had the ability to feel and process emotions on the level of X. He might have! There are people who suggest that Zero's schematics are based on those stolen from Dr. Light (though I think I've seen his internals and they look pretty different...). Because we see Zero in Power Fighters 2, but not X, I'm unsure how true this is. There could very well be a situation where Zero and X were made separately with no real borrowing from each other, since we also know that Dr. Wily was equally as intelligent as Dr. Light.

I don't know. I don't like Classic Megaman LOL. It's all over the place so I'm just going based on the few games that actually did have plot (that I've played... somewhat.) I'm an old fogy (not as old as most Classic fans though) so my memory escapes me. Not trusting the wikis because I have seen some... things... that compromise its validity. (COUGH the mangas being suggested as canon ever COUGH)

ANYWAYS. Back to the reploid theories. They're advanced beings, but are flawed as they're creations of mankind. Like the robot masters before them, they likely had to undergo a series of improvements before they were considered viable as equals (in, what, MMZ?). As mentioned before, Zero's case is unique. There is a bit of a trope where a virus can rattle things in a machine's brain to give it emotions on par with humans (seen in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Dramatical Muder, Cafe Enchante...). I think it's bizarre. However! If a stroke can cause a human to gain a talent they never had before, perhaps there's some validity in it. Let's say Zero was nothing smarter than a mechanaloid in terms of emotional intelligence. Let's say that Zero's programming was made in a way that fixed whatever problems Bass may have had (such as disobeying orders). The virus that was intentionally (???) included in Zero might have locked him to this sort of mental state.

So, really quickly, Bass was an interesting case. He was an asshole. A creation (I believe) entirely made by Dr. Wily, probably ripping off Megaman's designs, seemed to have more flexibility in his mental processes than Megaman did. He could get mad, he had an attitude, etc. He had only one command given to him by Dr. Wily - to destroy Megaman. But he did a lot of other things, didn't he? He showed a degree of jealousy and scorn at the idea that Dr. Wily had another project that he was working on (Power Fighters 2) and I think that says volumes. He's not created to mimic the experience of having a child. He's not made to be someone's friend. He's a killing machine who is for some reason giving his opinions. Opinions. Megaman's dialogue typically had a one-note feel about them from what I recall. "Fighting is not necessary" (really following Laws of Robotics 1 and 3), and "Wily you have gone too far!" (following Dr Light's direction to stop Wily). What would Dr. Wily have to order Bass to do in order to get him to act in the way that he typically did? One might suggest Protoman had a sense of emotion as well, but I think that logic is... moreso tied to the mangas which I am pretending do not exist for Classic or MMZ. He seemed confused and aimless, if anything.

So back to Zero. A creation of Wily's, released who knows when, in reference to when X was awakened from whatever sleep Dr. Light put him in. The timeline seems scrambled in the PSP remake of X1. We can assume Zero was found after X? Maybe? ???? Was he put into a slumber like X or was he going around the entire time, only stopping occasionally to recharge? We just don't know!

At least, I don't know.

Zero and X being the bases (in a way) for the reploids (replicated androids) that came after them left humanity in a state where they had a bunch of knockoff Gucci merchandise running around. Zero's brain, organically being rewritten by the virus... leaving... his mind? I don't know how that works - And X having been polished until a man died and somewhat after that allowed them to escape the complications that the modern day ripoff had. Neither of them were afflicted by close proximity to other infected reploids. The virus didn't seem like it ever really affected them. X5 suggested otherwise very slightly, but that situation had to be set up in a VERY specific manner in order to happen.

And then X dies and Zero outlives him and still never really gets the virus after that. Zero was old as actual shit and yet had more emotional stability than a reploid made a mere 10 years prior. (Then again Copy X was made by a mere child so of course it had issues) But MMZ reploid mentalities are a whole other can of worms.

For the sake of storytelling, I will assume that initial reploids had emotional stability problems. They either didn't feel enough or felt too much. The ones that felt too much and acted on the newly acquired "impulse" emotion are then set up to be great hosts for maverick viruses or political maverick statuses (I guess like Boomer Kawanger).

I lost track of what I was talking about.

Hello! I love your blog and I was just wondering if you had any LGBT+ headcanons for Pride Month?

Happy Pride 🌈

Hmm, let me tackle human characters first.

Earl of Norramby is gay. Obviously.

Nancy is bi and demi.

Also... in classic "at first I was joking, but now I really like it" fashion… I HC the first Fat Controller as trans.

No one ever named their child Topham Hatt OK????

But a sufficiently ballsy dude might choose it if they were forming a new legal identity. And we know Hatt I was ballsy indeed. He stole everything that his neighbors didn't have nailed down and some things they did. He bricked up a gauntletted line even though it shut down his railway. He told the LMS to pound sand. He drained Tidmouth despite the fishermen wanting his head on a platter. You'd have to be a VERY strong personality to be such a successful, powerful transman in the early 1900s but you'd have to be a strong personality to be him anyway???? I'm serious. An ADHD transman with zero chill who literally made his own world. I'm tempted to write a fic of the Young Topham days, who knows. Those old British schoolgirls could be tough birds and I love reading their bits whenever they break through conventional history. I like to think the first Lady Hatt used to be a roommate of him at the girls' school they attended. Jane probably helped him the night he ran away to get a job at the GWR shops. And then maybe she didn't see him again until after he transitioned and became successful and he wooed her for a little while before the reveal that it was her old friend, Euphemia or whoever.

And Jane was soooo pissed off. (Luckily she was also in love.)

I also absolutely adore the idea of an FC5 (not sure Richard will ever get a chance to be FC4, at this rate) who is a woman. But butch. Everyone calls her "sir" but she is also she.

Okay, vehicles! This is where I've hesitated, unsure if I can make myself clear.

I don't particularly vibe with putting human gender and sexual labels on them.

This is not because I want to erase or minimize the diversity of human gender and sexuality.

It's because they are not human.

I mean, okay, I do have my old 'conversion AU,' so I do mentally play around with them as human every so often—to catch most readers up, my notion was that sometime within the 2020s-2040s a large portion of our cast is turned into humans as a fancy alternative to maintaining or retiring them as engines. But even in this AU the whole point is that they adjust to being human but are still rather 'alien', so, like many fans, I kinda take it that they are pansexual by default. There are some more specific things, though (incomplete because, again, I don't think of my human AU very often, so I still have a lot of question marks):

Thomas, I think, would be aromantic

Bertie -> also aro

Edward -> intersex (specifically XX male)

Henry -> gay gay homosexual gay

Gordon -> some sort of greyscale but also he has no clue about this and pursues (straight) dating because it's the 'normal' thing to do (good luck, dude)

James -> will figure out his human gender identity only if given another hundred years to experiment

Percy -> fine with identifying as male but also quite gnc

Toby -> straight and demisexual

Duck -> agender

Stepney -> nonbinary

Donald -> asexual spectrum (unlike Gordon he does know this about himself)

Emily -> lesbian lesbian homosexual lesbian

Philip -> multigender

Harold -> pan. i know i said pan is kind of the default for ex-vehicles but Harold merits a special mention for being, uhh. how shall we say. very sex-positive. a big gallant flirt.

But, again, I'm not too interested in forcing myself to figure out everyone's full identity profile in my human AU because I find the concept of 'gender' and 'sexuality' in them as trains to be far more interesting.

From a creative standpoint, it's actually a lot of fun to play them 'straight' but to use their experiences to explore the whole concept of gender, to push the idea of sexuality to its limits, and also to play around with metaphors for human identities...

Again I know it looks like LGBT erasure but, well. It feels very queer to me.

Here's some of how I see engine gender history. The allegory to real-life stuff is not intentional; it just sort of naturally sprung up when I played around:

At the period (RWS) canon begins, the normal, "natural" order of things is for an engine to be romantically bonded with their coaches.

This very much has a similar status to human heterosexual marriage. It appears to have the seal of tradition. It's acceptable. It's expected. In general (subject to the approval of your manager) it's allowed. (Yes, there is the obvious difference that the union is between one engine and several coaches but it was rare that the convention was for you to exclusively commit to one among the rest. Basically... harem culture I guess.)

If you were built to privilege—if you actually had some coaches you regularly handled, and you did feel this sort of special bond with them—then you might fail to have any occasion to start asking some otherwise very... obvious questions.

Such as:

What if you and your coaches despise each other?

What if you develop particular feelings about just one or two of 'your' coaches, which are increasingly impossible to hide? Like... do you have to?

What if you feel absolutely neutral about your coaches, but your firebox starts to burn with the heat of a thousand suns when you catch sight of that smart tank engine runabout at the end of the line?

What if your line is so big and busy that you don't have coaches that you pull 'regularly'?

What if your railway grows so big that you hardly see any coaches consistently?

What if you are strictly a goods engine and you've only ever exchanged five words in your life with any coach? Okay, so you're just... condemned through no choice of your own to solitude and abstinence, with no hope of happiness? Sounds like horseshit, doesn't it?...

... Say, what's this whisper you hear from the old wheels that fifty years ago the managers didn't approve of these kinds of relationships? That Back In the Day this sort of romantic attachment that is now considered 'the norm' was actually considered scandalous and beyond the pale? What?

'Fifty years' is just an average; different regions and railways progressed at different rates. But, in general, the earliest period of rail history saw an insistence that Useful Engines don't have any such attachments at all. For all its pomp and status, the model of 'passenger engine and coaches' was itself considered quite unnatural before it won acceptance.

But for a good period circa 1900 it was The Thing That Was Done. It became the norm by which rail romances are still rather judged. And it's telling: although humans tended to assign engines human gender (at first usually female; as the idea of a romantic bond between engine and carriages became normalized, humans started to see their engines as male, in a reflection of human marriage), probably the best analogue for vehicular gender remains type. Powered vehicles are one gender; unpowered stock is another. There are also gradiations within those two poles, of course.

And, when freed from human surveillance and control, vehicle sexuality tends to express its preferences in that way. So, to take engines: They very rarely give a rat's ass as to whether a potential mate is male, female, nonbinary, whatever. They recognize the distinctions among themselves but they are seldom relevant in matters of attraction ever, really. Instead, an engine might have an attraction to rolling stock or other engines (or of course both! but 'both' is definitely not a given). Then, within those categories, they are very likely to instinctively be attracted to a subcategory pool based on vehicle type.

I feel like I should give examples but I actually feel more comfortable using my OCs to illustrate:

Joscelyn — a female engine who is attracted to coaches exclusively (she is also absolutely terrible at forming any such connections so she is effectively maidenless)

Skimmer — a male engine who is attracted to both coaches and other engines. This does saddle him with the stereotype of being kind of slutty. (I mean he is kind of slutty but he is judged as such based on his 'sexuality' rather than his actual history.)

Poppet — at the risk of spoilers... she is attracted exclusively to trucks and lorries (which, in her era and culture, is definitely one of the more transgressive "sexualities" for an engine!)

Lizbet (she was formerly Lillibet but I didn't realise at the time how that nickname is not quite so rare and quirky for Brits as it is for us) — attracted to other engines exclusively (which—of course!—means m, f, and nb engines; no meaningful difference from an engine PoV). She is old enough that this 'inversion' caused her significant trouble with her humans back in her day. (She never exactly repented, albeit she did act circumspectly to preserve her friendships with the engines she lived with.)

Araby — male engine who has a hopeless thing for ships. When he worked a landlocked railway this didn't matter. When he was sent to Sodor for a while... oof! did our boy have an awakening...

Columbine (this is a real-life engine, of course) — the equivalent of human 'pansexuality'; she is potentially attracted to anything with wheels

Coppernob (same; sue me) — the loco equivalent of 'asexual'. He does know how to play the role of gallant beau to lovely coaches (which he had to learn late—it wasn't tolerated on the F.R. during his first couple of decades) but I reckon he just thought everyone played it as a role and will be endlessly baffled as engines over the years assert their rights to form bonds with each other because why do you all care about this so much? it was just a bit we had to do for a while for respectability... innit?

Because a vehicle's build is essentially their "gender," that means that I have long kind of viewed rebuilds as having strong metaphorical ties to gender reassignment!

Absolutely horrifying when imposed upon you against your will, of course.

But I imagine there are lots of cases where it wasn't. You can usually tell by whether or not the engine (or whatever) thrived after the rebuild. While I consider 'human AU' Henry to be cis, I read 'engine' Henry's history as very much a trans allegory: he was originally made wrong. I mean his builder canonically had no idea what he was doing! The form he got later at Crewe at last made him into himself. There are plenty of real-life cases that I like to see as similar in an RWS universe. The SECR 'Rivers' had endless problems and angst in their original form; being converted into tender engines felt right for them. Some of them had been consciously eating their heart out wanting such an impossible change for years. The 'Queen Mary' type brakevans I consider to be similar, or at least some of them: unhappy as locomotives, never really feeling right as an engine, perhaps even pestering the engineers for ages to make them into brakevans...

Of course, I don't consider all such transitions to be successful. Some engines, like poor No. 62768 of the LNER., found themselves much unhappier after their rebuild (he was just chosen at random when he was in the shop for repairs, it's not like he wanted it!) Then there are situations like the GWR autotanks who were given panelling to disguise their locomotive nature so they could pass as coaches. Do I read this as cross-dressing, or a sort of cosmetic transition? You bet I do! 😇

Can an engine be assigned a human gender but later determine that it was given to them in error? I mean, it's possible and it happens that engines choose a new human gender but it's quite rare, rarer by far than in humans. They are much more preoccupied with the engine dimensions of their identity. What is much more common is actually what I suppose we'd consider genderfluid or multigender: Various owners (or, if they are unnamed, drivers) over the course of their career might assign them different genders and in virtually all cases the engine (to forgive the pun) rolls with it, untroubled by being a 'he' one decade, a 'she' the next, and perhaps later again being a 'he' even while he answers to the name Lady Eleanor or whatever. To them human gender is very arbitrary and they tend to be perfectly content to just go with it. Often they wish to choose their own name, but even very early in their lives their builders or owners have already gendered them and they seldom care to change that because, again. That bit is all very arbitrary and meaningless to them. The humans seldom treat their engines differently no matter what gender is assigned and therefore the engine sees little distinction.

Soooo, yeah. As for some of our characters, well... this is also very unformed and embryonic still, but...

I do think a lot of our classic lads would have thought they had No Romantic Feelings Whatsoever. Some genuinely were! Neville and Donald spring to mind (Donald is also Duck’s queerplatonic partner, natch.) But for most of them, this was just because they didn't care for coaches, nor indeed other engines of their own type.

However, I reckon as the decades went on their complacency was shattered. (I call it complacency not because acephobia isn't a thing but because for engines in this universe 'asexual' would be considered a positive trait. Useful Engines Don't and all that. So there is some privilege there.) For instance, Thomas may find that he is attracted to non-rail vehicles? And Percy definitely has a thing for flying vehicles, poor chap... (Percy also has long been comfortably attracted to engines, coaches, and ships too. But whirlybirds, man. Kinda ruined/enhanced his life.) James and Gordon found that they weren't "above" such ridiculous things as "playing at" love; they were just diesel-sexual. Henry liked other engines for a long time, so he is open to steam and diesel; he did however get knocked through a loop of his own within this century when he encountered his first electric car and was absolutely useless for the two hours afterwards...

Anyway. God it's late and I hope this makes sense. In any case I don't see the engines as 'gay' or 'straight' or whatever but I do think they have as much gender and sexuality diversity as we humans do; in fact they probably have a good deal more! I also think that they have had a long struggle for most of these identities to be accepted. So they get it. And, most of all, engines would absolutely not understand homophobia at all. Human gender is such an arbitrary thing! Why anyone would get so hung up on policing something like that is baffling to them. They are keen to be of service to all humans, they really love seeing all humans happy, and apart from that they don't have any opinions on humans' peculiar romantic or sexual lives (they barely understand what human sex is!)

Now, how humans board trains or polish an engine or mend their fences or behave in any way even remotely connected to the running of their railway or yard... well, that they have opinions on. Strong opinions. That they will argue with you about. That matters. ;)

Hi so I’m not really sure how to ask this in a way that doesn’t sound pretty confrontational but I’m genuinely curious. What parts of the Mormon faith do you believe in? Or are you more of a cultural Mormon who’s pretty divorced from the belief system? I want to be clear that I’m not of the habit of challenging/questioning anybody’s religious beliefs, but I think Mormonism occupies a unique historical position that leaves it open to criticism for being pretty solidly grounded in—and irrevocably intertwined with—anti-indigenous racism, American exceptionalism, and historical revisionism. I find it hard to conceptualize a version of that faith that still falls under the Mormon label but somehow isn’t based on those principles.

This is a pretty loaded ask and I understand if you don’t want to/can’t answer (I also know you talk more about your faith on your sideblog but I don’t know what that blog is so I couldn’t go there for more understanding). I’m also aware that those criticisms can be applied to a lot of modern sects of Christianity, so know that I’m critical of those principles wherever they appear. I’m asking you because you’re someone that appears on my dash pretty frequently who I generally vibe with so I want to know more

Ok! So first of all my Mormon sideblog is @im-mormon-and-not-straight! Feel free to scroll through there whenever you feel like.

Second of all, yeah I totally agree that the institutional church kinda sucks in a lot of ways. Now I say that as someone who still participates greatly in the institutionalized church. (I go to church basically every Sunday, I watch general conference every 6th months, stuff like that) And as a gay ass Mormon, I have TONS of first hand experience with being at the brunt of shitty things that it has done.

The claim of anti-indigenous racism is so broad that I'm not quite sure what you are talking about.

If you're talking about violence done by pioneers then I totally agree that was fucked up, though from what I understand of church history (which COULD be wrong I don't have a perfect memory by any means) the leadership of the church at the time condemned that violence. Either way, totally agree that it was shitty! But in my mind those were actions done by shitty people who happened to be mormon, not something they did *because* they were mormon

If you are talking about the book of Mormon being based on indigenous Americans that one can get a lot more complicated. I've heard all sorts of ideas on the subject and honestly I haven't figured out what I agree with the most. Some people have said that the BoM is a work of inspired fiction and the events never happened, but it still has spiritual merit and is worth driving meaning of. I've heard other people say that claiming the BoM is fiction erases indigenous history (?) and we shouldn't be completely writing off any historical value. I find myself somewhere in the middle. I don't know whether or not the events in the BoM actually happened and honestly I don't particularly care. I can still learn from what's in it and I take the themes as they are.

I TOTALLY agree with the American exceptionalism point and it drives me bonkers. There's the tidbits of American religious freedom giving the restored gospel a place to flourish that I can jive with but when people go beyond that it makes me just. So frustrated. Everytime oaks gives a talk about how cool and nifty the constitution is I want to rip my eyes out. (Also every time oaks gives a talk ever. I have hated almost every single talk that man has given) it's like they forget that most of early church history everywhere that Mormons went in the us the other americans went "eyyo fuck religious freedom let's burn these people to the ground" (obviously more nuance there but like. The Mormon extermination act HAPPENED. IN the us. It's not like it's some holy institution.) And that's only about shit that affects "Mormons" specifically. (Though of course things like institutionalized racism affect mormons of color. It's just not targeted to every single mormon) American exceptionalism is just another thing that bugs me about the institutionalized church. Like God. Shut up. The USA is not inherently better or worse than any other country.

The historical revisionism thing is something I'm not as well versed on and I don't even know where to begin with what you mean by that. I do know a Mormon historian (as in a historian who works on Mormon history as well as being Mormon himself) and he is dedicated to cataloguing history as it is? Idk maybe I'm missing smth with this one.

Third of all, I consider myself Mormon in both the religious sense and the cultural sense. Being a queer Mormon is something very central to who I am as a person. However there was a point where I was VERY divorced from the church. I was only going because it was what I did and what was expected of me. And to be honest, I found my testimony through my queer identity.

Now, atleast for me, being a queer Mormon is predicated on the belief that the institutionalized church can, and is, wrong about many things. And this is something backed up by doctrine (that people don't talk about enough -_-) we believe in revelation!! That means we don't have all the answers!!! It frustrated me that people act as if the prophets are somehow unable to fuck up as if Joseph Smith himself didn't majorly fuck up while translating the BoM leading to loosing an entire book of the BoM.

Anyways that was a little bit of a tangent.

What I mean to say is that I am someone who calls out bullshit from the prophets and first presidency and I have made the gospel my own. It's hard to put this into words (I've tried several times already and none of them feel quite right) but the foundation of my testimony came from being able to see the good nuggets of the gospel. I wouldn't have a testimony in the gospel if I wasn't able to sort through the bullshit because if I didn't see the good then I would've moved on.

Basically I was well aware of the bad shit before finding the good shit if that makes any sense.

Like. the amount of times I've had a "don't be gay" lesson or had to listen to oaks give a talk that made me want to march up to slc and punch him in the face, or heard someone interpreted scripture in the worst regressive-ass take, it's helped me find a way to move in the opposite direction. Im a firm believer in the phrase "the gospel is true, but not always the church"

Anyways, leading off on to favorite verse!!

2 Nephi 2:25 "Adam fell that men might be; and men are that they might have joy"

I’m about to go into another very long Marvel rant/dissertation here— mostly for myself— that I started writing soon after the Loki Series finale so please feel free to just scroll past this, because honestly I think I kinda overdid this one. It’s jaded and overly dramatic even for me. You have been warned:

The last 4 Marvel movies/shows I’ve watched left me feeling so completely depressed and unsatisfied and hopeless about the future of popular entertainment and story telling in general, and I know I’m not the only one. The fact that fans are going into these experiences hoping for a good story and character arcs that make sense with prior characterization, and leaving feeling… empty is a very clear sign that their approach leaves a lot to be desired.

Infinite War had some valid reasons to end the way it did, because by having our heroes fall so much harder than ever before, it built up the tension and high stakes for the next film. But what does that do when Endgame leaves us feeling even worse? I wanted them to triumph and finally come together to be better. I expected there would be losses of course but not enough to negate the wins. Instead the characters were subjugated for plot, characterization was watered down, and we lost all the original Avengers besides Thor and Bruce (who was no longer even Bruce). Peter loses Tony, Thor’s previous loses are permanent, and so many other things that, in spite of loving a lot of the movie, mean I haven’t been able to stop being sad about it for literal years. And the amount of thoughtless destruction that seems to be at an all time high when it comes to character’s lives and disregard for properly exploring emotions just doesn’t leave much to be expected at this point. Far From Home was good. It was. I liked it a lot. The acting was wonderful and there were some really interesting themes they grappled with but I still walked out of the theater feeling like there was still so much detachment surrounding a lot of the decisions, a little too much thoughtlessness (that, and the gaping hole of Tony). I’m not going to talk about WandaVistion but I’ll say that I was invested until the start of episode 8, and finished episode 9 feeling drained and tired and sad.

Then we get to Loki, a show which has plagued far too many of my thoughts since I started watching it, and has crushed my hopes for ever truly being happy with a Marvel project ever again. Loki is a character who’s ostensibly felt alienated and unseen for most of his life, and that’s before finding out about his parentage. His first movie ends with his suicide attempt and subsequent fall into the void. His second takes place a year into working under Thanos and ends with him being taken away in chains (yes I know he’s the villain he’s done bad things etc. etc. but for the purposes of this I’m only focusing on his pov). Then his third involves his solitary imprisonment, his mother’s death, and his near-death (considering the likelihood that he was actually stabbed), although it does end on a lighter note with his acquisition of the throne. Then we get his redemption and reconciliation with Thor in Ragnarok, immediately followed by the utter tragedy that is the first 10 minutes of Infinite War, which I don’t think I need to explain.

So what I suppose I’m saying here (very very inadequately) is that after all of that, I can’t believe the proper story to tell in his first chance at being a main protagonist was one where he’s constantly degraded and beat up, convicted of things he didn’t actually do, given no focus on backstory or implied/established motivations, and labeled as a clown and a narcissist! His powers are weakened, he displays almost no recognizable mannerisms or competence, he’s held to a higher moral standard than every other character, shown no respect, and ultimately loses EVEN MORE. We’ve seen him lose and lose and lose and lose again. We’ve seen him die THREE TIMES, we’ve seen him redeemed TWICE. So who in their right mind thinks that the most compelling story to tell after all of that was to see him LOSE AGAIN?! And not only lose, but lose without any real triumph, dignity, or acknowledgment beforehand. Death to the author aside, reading the utter nonsense the team behind it have spread, it’s so clear that it wasn’t made in good faith. Whether in ignorance or true maliciousness, they just don’t care. They didn’t research. They didn’t try and see things from his point of view. They didn’t truly sympathize with him as a person while writing. They didn’t understand. And they truly, truly wanted him to fail.

I’m tired of feeling hopeless at the end of everything, of leaving the theater or turning off the TV wondering why I even bothered, why I even care when I’m just being strung along with as little consideration as an audience as my favorite characters. I wanted to actively see him strive to be better, not just be told he could be. I wanted to see him triumph over his demons, not forget them. I wanted to see him be the “master of magic” that every other damn movie has alluded to, and to use his powers effectively. I wanted him to be powerful. I wanted him to, if not win, then win on a personal level at least. I wanted to see him take agency in his life and PROVE EVERYONE WRONG! And, though it’s now bafflingly controversial to say, I wanted it to be told by an experienced and competent writing and directing team that knew and understood his character and were passionate about telling his story.

I would ascribe to the notion of “don’t like it, don’t watch” if I could but I care to much to not be affected by this obvious decline in quality and awareness. And I’m a relatively recent fan. I haven’t been waiting for Loki to get his moment in the sun for 10 years. I’M NEW HERE, and my heart breaks so much for fans of the original movies who have lost their love of Marvel or Loki because of the way it’s been handled. No one should fall further than they can climb up from, and I’m tired of watching loss after loss and never getting the release of gaining enough of it back. What’s the point of caring about these characters if the writers won’t? Of investing in a connecting cinematic universe if it lacks continuity? Of looking for clues and foreshadowing when there isn’t any and the only twists are random and pander to shock value? The way these pieces/characters are being created and interpreted is reductive and incompetent, and for once I’d like to watch something that feels crafted, inspiring, and gratifying to see to the end.

If some people like the Loki show we got, I have no argument against that, because my own opinion is just as subjective as theirs. Though, I’d like to think that if what I want is for the show to be better out of love for the same character, then what they enjoyed from the show can coexist in that. If anyone’s actually read up to this point, I have to admit I’ve forgotten mine. Mostly I just wanted to express my frustrations over how unfeeling and stale most entertainment, specifically from Marvel as of late, has been.

TL;DR: I care too much, waaay too much, Marvel cares too little, Disney doesn’t care at all, and I don’t know how to accept that.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin | Announcement Teaser Trailer

Japanese version

It’ll launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in 2022.

A demo—Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Trial Version—-will launch for PlayStation 5 today and be available through June 24, 2021 at 7:59 p.m. PT / 10:59 p.m. ET. A survey will follow from June 13, 2021 through June 30, 2021, accessible from the menu screen of the demo.

Logos

Key visual

Character renders

Overview and Developer comments

About the Game

Final Fantasy VII Remake veterans Tetsuya Nomura and Kazushige Nojima join forces with Team Ninja from KOei Tecmo Games to deliver a bold new vision for Final Fantasy. Get your first look at Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin . Coming to PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC in 2022.

With the memory of their struggle buried deep in their hearts…

Jack and his allies, Ash and Jed, burn with resolve to defeat Chaos as they throw open the gates to the Chaos Shrine. Yet doubts remain—are they truly the Warriors of Light the prophecy foretold?

Step into a world of dark fantasy and revel in the exhilarating, action-packed battles!

Trial version available on PlayStation 5 until June 24th, 2021.

Developer Comments

Tetsuya Nomura – Creative Producer

The initial concept for Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin came up around the time following the release of Dissidia 012[duodecim] Final Fantasy. I was thinking to myself about making my next game into one that featured action elements in which locations are conquered, rather than the kind with battles against characters. Some time passed without anything coming of it, but separately I was also thinking to myself about another plan for a new series of Final Fantasy titles revolving around “the story of an angry man”. Even more time passed, at which point I received a request for a new plan, so I combined these two ideas to come up with this.

While it is Final Fantasy, it feels different—but there’s no doubt that the blood ofFinal Fantasy runs through its veins.

We’ve undertaken the challenge of finding this difficult middle ground for this mature and stylish title.

We need a little time until we’re able to complete it, and while the battle system is a bloody one, it does links to the story, so I hope you’ll use this opportunity to give it a try.

Kazushige Nojima – Story and Scenario

“It’s not a hope or a dream. It’s like a hunger. A thirst.”

When I wrote this line, I felt like the story had been brought to life.

What drives them to want to defeat Chaos as much as they do? What, then, are their hopes and dreams?

It was in this moment that what used to be fragments and pieces of story came together in a powerful way. The story that I wrote—in what seemed like a single breath after penning that line—is Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. I think it turned out to be quite a memorable story that accompanies a game which prominently features brutal imagery.

Please enjoy!

Jin Fujiwara – Producer (Square Enix)

True to its label as “a bold new vision,” this title is full of new undertakings that draw a clear distinction between it and previous Final Fantasy series titles. I can’t divulge too many details at this stage, but we prepared a glimpse of these ambitions within the trial version, including the title’s direction and overall image, so please enjoy.

I believe that the feedback we receive from all of you around the world is very important as we improve upon the title even further. Please send us your thoughts through the trial version survey or through social media.

I’m already looking forward to the day I’ll be able to play this title with you.

Daisuke Inoue – Director (Square Enix)

This is a title that has been developed with the goal of bringing something new to sit alongside the many Final Fantasy titles in the series. I think it could be considered a side story in terms of how it is positioned.

There may be some people who were disappointed that this announcement was not a new, numbered title in the series, but this game contains ambitions within that even a mainline title may not have been able to achieve.

Grounded and challenging action created by Team Ninja. Our protagonist, sprayed with blood as he literally rips apart, throws, and pulverizing his enemies. The way he looks is almost as if—

Well, we have prepared this trial version with hopes of having players experience this new flavor that the title brings with it, even if just a little bit. As we are still in development, I think there may be some areas that are not perfect and may be that way for a while to come, but I hope you’ll enjoy the trial version regardless.

Additionally, please let us know your thoughts on the game, whether it be positives or negative that you noticed—we will make great use of this feedback as we continue development.

Fumihiko Yasuda – Head of Team Ninja, Producer (Koei Tecmo Games)

Playing Final Fantasy IV 30 years ago is what made me aspire towards a career in the gaming industry, so I always hoped that someday I could be involved in the Final Fantasy series. When Team Ninja was working on Dissidia Final Fantasy, I was in charge of a different section, which meant that every night I filled my pillow with tears. I’m truly happy to be involved with a new Final Fantasy, and a title connected to its Origin at that.

Using the feedback that the players provide after playing the trial version, all of us at Team NINJA will work to make this a title that meets the expectations of not only action game fans, but also Final Fantasy series fans around the world!

Hiroya Usuda – Director (Koei Tecmo Games)

I grew up playing Final Fantasy since I was very young, so it is a great honor to have the opportunity to be involved with this title. Furthermore, I’m truly excited that Team NINJA is able to deliver the first full-on action game in the Final Fantasy series to the world.

In this trial version, we’ve made specific demo-oriented adjustments so that players of all styles will be able to enjoy it—we have incorporated elements such as multiple jobs and weapon types, adjustable difficulty levels, and great replayability. Please let us know your thoughts and feedback once you have given it a try!

Nobumichi Kumabe – Director (Koei Tecmo Games)

I’m glad we were able to announce this new Final Fantasy game—an action game in which Jack, a Warrior of Light(?), lays waste to monsters while being bathed in the spray of their blood. I’m a huge fan of the Final Fantasy series myself, so I’m going to work hard towards release so that this blood-stained Jack can become a hero!

This is a title developed with the characteristic Team Ninja level of difficulty in mind, but once you start getting the hang of it, you’ll be able to defeat enemies in an exhilarating and satisfying way. I hope you will replay the trial version many times and try out the various weapons and abilities available.

The difficulty level can be changed as well, so one recommendation I have is to start playing on an easier difficulty and gradually raise it higher for a challenge!

Demo overview

The Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Trial Version was also announced during the showcase, which gives players the opportunity to experience a taste of the full game centering on Jack and his allies—Ash and Jed—as they throw open the gates to the Chaos Shrine. Burning with the resolve to defeat Chaos, and with the memories of their struggle buried deep in their hearts, are they the foretold Warriors of Light?

Players of the Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Trial Version can explore this dark fantasy world as they battle an array of iconic monsters from the Final Fantasy series, using powerful spells and abilities from a sample of jobs including warrior, dragoon and black mage.

You know, I'm largely saying this because its a perspective that would have been super foreign to us in the past, but I honestly like to try to be someone who gives the best faith to people when I get the chance and I honestly think, at large, we have enough people in the world with high expectations and assumptions of people to just know everything or figure things out themselves that it's just not productive to those that haven't had it so easily put out for them.

I like to think that most people are dumb (affectionate), stupid (affectionate), and just honest to god confused and just need some help understanding things. And while I agree "you should do your own research and educate yourself", I like to think a lot of people do try that but due to a combination of difficulty understanding the topic and the amount of impersonal, complex language, and missinformation on topics, "educate yourself" is often easier said than done.

And I might go out on a branch and a bit of a stretch to state this, but I do think if you hammer away and expect everyone to "do your own research and educate yourself" or really oversimplify the effort of "learning things yourself" you kind of are largely putting up barriers to understanding to those with learning disabilities and unique and specialized learning needs. And if there are those barriers to understanding and denial of help without stigma, you kind of force people that struggle to learn things to be automatically labeled a "bad person" or a "bigotted person"

But a lot of people don't have resources to learn. A lot of people haven't been educated on a good and reliable way to learn. A lot of people struggle with reading. A lot of people struggle with more standard ways of "learning". A lot of people have trouble understanding social contexts that make it harder for them to navigate the social contexts of what people are saying and ulterior motives. A lot of people have little to no experience with topics related to what they are trying to learn and thus struggle to even fathom it. A lot of these social justice topics are actually very complex and confusing topics WITHOUT any unique challenges / difficulties accessing and understanding topics like these.

And it's why I very much love the "explain it to me like I'm three" statement; cause honestly, its okay to not know or understand things and I think its important to open up interest with the awareness that someone has tried and understands there is probably something they are missing, but can't connect it.

Maybe this is comes from the fact both of my parents that were actively abusive and harmful were both very "stupid" and thus very very harmful to me growing up, but in adulthood, when given the resources and time, it became very very very apparent that at no point did they ever have any moment of malice; they just never had the resources to understand or do better. Maybe it comes from working with neurodivergent kids that need things made more clear and explained to them in a unique way that is meant to help them in specific understand

Of course, this post isn't to say that people HAVE to educate others or that having these difficulties excuses harm done. It's never the victims fault that they were hurt, they never did and never do owe it to anyone to "educate them" to prevent getting hurt.

It's more so just to add some perspective, insight, and nuance to a lot of the social justice topics and a lot of the concept of "educate yourself" cause I think its important to have a lot more of a clear understanding of that in practice to actually help move everyone forward as a group

((And this is not meant to be just about neurodivergence; this is also about class, race, immigrant status, language barriers, environments, trauma and abuse histories, etc; this is a heavily intersectional post and is valid to apply to almost everyone. Learning foreign things is hard especially for certain people in certain situations. If you think it is only about one of these groups, you are missing the point; if enough people are missing the point I might follow this up when I have time))

Adventures in Aphobia #3

My last two Adventures in Aphobia both took on similar flavors of eye-rolling at shameless, obvious bigotry to anyone willing to look or care. But today, I found a different type of aphobia, and I’m actually eager to talk about this one. Have a read of this first.

Look, the bar of respect for ace people is so low it’s all the way in hell, but I mean, to many people, especially allosexual people, they may look at this post and think, “No, this isn’t aphobia. The poster wasn’t blatantly cruel.” But what some fail to realize is that politeness can be the thinnest of veils over the ugliest of takes. Polite bigotry gaslights the victims into thinking they can’t be upset about this.

So what’s the deal with this post?

PARAGRAPH #1 starts off innocently enough, saying ace discourse wouldn’t exist if people recognized complex relationships to sex and relationships. Even taken on its own, I do not agree with this. Ace discourse ranges all the way from outright denial of asexual existence to the strong hatred for and exclusion of aces from the queer community. Nearly everyone recognizes people have complex relationships to sex...that...that doesn’t mean ace people won’t be discriminated against. In fact, it’s an argument aphobes use constantly to try and gaslight ace people into erasing themselves. Ace discourse comes from a lot of places, but at the end of the day, it all stems from people’s refusal to acknowledge ace people and their unique experiences. This poster absolutely does not get to say “IT’s CoMpLicAteD”, and expect ace people to just disappear. Honestly, it’d be better and more honest if they said “Lol, ace people should go fuck themselves and hop to the back of the line with everyone else.”

PARAGRAPH #2 and #3 are not very objectionable on their own. Everything said is true. Society has very complicated views on sex, and life happens to all people. The ugly part of this is that the poster is setting up an argument here in which they will hand wave ace people into the “everyone else” crowd and pretend as if we’re all just too similar and no labels should even exist.

This is literally what enby-phobes do. They say “Well, gender is COMPLICATED”, which is true, but then they say “So like...aren’t we all really nonbinary when we think about it? Why should enby people label themselves?” I swear we’ve all seen this. The poster is agender. This argument could easily be whipped in their face. Different forms of bigotry can share very clear overlaps, and it’s very important to acknowledge where these arguments come from and why they exist. It exists as a way to shut people up. It happens to bi people too! Every day, people come out as bi and someone tells them “pff, everyone thinks girls are hot. I had a crush on my best friend once, that doesn’t mean I’m not straight! All people are like this!” Let’s call out this erasure where we see it. It’s not the same thing, and if anyone saying stuff like this truly believes what they’re saying, maybe they’re the ones who need to reevaluate their own identity.

PARAGRAPH #4 dips its ugly toes straight into blatant aphobia, having the gall to call ace and aro people “obsessed” with pretending their relationships with sex and romance are wholly unique and different. Nah, fuck right off with that bullshit. The poster even goes on to say ace people have created entire new social classes. Uh...WHAT? Is there some secret ace society with a caste system living in the shadows?? What is this person talking about?? I suppose you can’t be a true bigot unless you have some vague grievance to weakly hand-gesture at that you couldn’t prove given 20 years to do so. For the love of my sanity, just say you hate ace people! It’s okay! (I mean, not actually, but Jesus Christ does it save us all some time). They also say things like “somehow excluded from”. Replace asexual people with nonbinary people and take a joyride through this section, because the arguments are scarily similar. What would it take for this poster to acknowledge ace and aro people have their own experiences? Seriously, what? What holds you back from doing this?

It’s also funny to note the actual lack of substance to this argument. The poster is not giving any specific examples or even bringing up what being ace and aro mean. Yes, there is a pretty noticeable difference between feeling sexual attraction and not feeling sexual attraction. How many “allo” people do you know that say they’ve NEVER experienced this? Come on. The poster reduces asexuality and aromanticism down to allo people’s, in their own words, hyper-specific contexts where they don’t want sex or love. At least the poster admits any circumstance that allo people are comparable to ace people are extremely specific. But for real, are we hinging a whole argument on a few very specific examples of allo people having some similarity to ace people?

“Nothing about your relationship to sex or love makes you more or less LGBT. If you are gay and don’t want to have sex, ever, you are still gay. “

Mini strawman alert for the idea any ace person thinks you’re less gay if you’re also ace. And bonus points for an aphobe who refuses to use the definition of asexuality: not experiencing sexual attraction, and instead goes for “don’t want to have sex”. For the last. Fucking. Time. Not wanting to have sex and being asexual are NOT the same. Don’t make me pour gasoline in my eyes every time I see this.

After this, the poster goes on a tangent, which by the tone, seems to think it's very inspiring, and says no matter how you want to have sex (including only certain days of the week), you’re still straight! It’s so fucking condescending and gross to talk ace people out of their own identity like this.

“EVERY person who is heterosexual is different in how they perform or experience.”

Oh. My. GOD. THEY DIDN’T EVEN SAY STRAIGHT. THEY SAID HETEROSEXUAL. WUGGYUEGYUG. God help me. Can one be both bisexual and heterosexual? No…? Okay. So then. How is one both asexual AND heterosexual? What single brain cell in this poster’s head was responsible for this Chad of a sentence? I—

*deep breath* 

So. It’s interesting how the poster says “perform or experience it”. Asexuality is an identity. It is not a performance, and it is not defined by your actions. A straight person not having sex does not become asexual. And sure...people with the same label can experience their sexuality differently, but...to a point, guys. You can’t experience your sexuality out of the DEFINITION of the label. Heterosexual: Sexual attraction to the opposite gender. Asexual: Sexual attraction to no one. If a “heterosexual” isn’t sexually attracted to anyone, they are by definition, not heterosexual. It takes insane mental gymnastics to make this argument, so A for flexibility, I guess? 

“Gayness, straightness, and bisexuality are not defined by HOW you do or don’t want sex or HOW you do or don’t want to date, it’s just defined by WHO you want to be with.”

The first part of the sentence is correct, but it also defeats this person’s entire argument. Ace people AGREE with this. Being asexual is not the act of not having sex!! It’s not experiencing sexual attraction! You can google this! The second part of the sentence is mostly correct, depending on your interpretation. The issue is in part with the words the poster used: gayness, straightness and bisexuality. These words are not all equivalents. Gay could refer to sexual and or romantic orientation. Thus an ace gay person. Straightness is not actually an equal word to gayness. This is because straight is an exclusive term for a normative sexuality (in society’s eyes) in terms of sexual and romantic attraction. Some ace people DO call themselves straight, though it’s inaccurate. Ace people can be heteroromantic, but because being straight is so exclusive, you need to be both sexually AND romantically attracted to only the opposite gender.

The post basically ends telling ace people they’re all actually straight and were just confused the whole time. Lovely. And an erasure of gay aces too! Believe it or not, gay ace people do not like having their ace identities erased. Who’d have guessed?

Honestly, if anything this post is just kind of sad. A sad reflection of what people believe and how they truly do not see their own bigotry. They believe they’re freeing ace people from an incorrect label. They’re the heroes.

They’ll say “it’s okay, you’re not asexual” as if they've like...lifted a burden off of ace people. Like, “Oh, you think I’m not asexual? Cool, cool. Glad you cleared that up for me!” It’s sad how aphobes think, some very genuinely, that asexuality is just some high school party that went off the rails, and we’re all just coming out of the drunken haze, ready to go home. Ready to all laugh about it later, tease one another about how wild and silly it all was. 

Having your identity erased like this is fucking horrible, and I hope people like this can take a look in the mirror and see themselves clearly. All ace and aro people have a right to their identity, whether gay, bi, heteroromantic or anything else. End of story.

ONLY ANGEL - A John Stones Fanfiction

STEPHSPURS. - THE MASTERLIST ONLY ANGEL - FANFICTION MASTERLIST

PART 3.

The sun streamed through the sheer billowing curtains of the Milano Centrale apartment, casting a warm glow onto the bareback of Josephine Anderson that was only partly visible due to the crisp white bed sheet that had slipped down her body to only just cover the dimples in her back at the bottom of her spine. John Stones found himself laying on his back, that same sheet only just covering his modesty, gazing down at the angel that gave herself to him a few hours earlier whilst he found himself at her mercy, begging to any God that would listen to let him experience that slice of paradise that only she could deliver him to.

Josephine and John, John and Josephine. Never one without the other from that fateful London night on. Her friends grew to love him and his friends welcomed her with open arms. Between their hectic schedules they had made sure they set aside time for one another. John had gotten Josephine a family pass for his home matches at the Etihad, Josephine had given John a set of keys to her apartment in Milan - for him to use, to come and go as he pleased.  John found himself putting in the extra effort required to maintain the bond he was nurturing with Josephine. They had both wordlessly decided that whatever it was they were sharing together wasn’t to be labelled, but they both knew exactly what they were to each other. The commitment that came with the relationship tag was something that neither of them were willing to confront, due to the demands that they both experienced within their own professional careers.

And that was how their relationship progressed, giving themselves to each other whenever their careers permitted or whenever their sexual desires took over. Months had passed since their first night shared together and not once had John brought up the idea of becoming more, of becoming each other’s publicly. Of course, they were seen out and about around both Manchester and Milan, as well as both being featured on each other's Instagram pages often enough that people began to associate one with the other. However John could tell that there was more than Josephine was letting on, there was something holding her back from him emotionally and he wouldn’t let himself fall for her until he knew every part of her, even the part she didn't necessarily want to share with him just yet. So for the meanwhile, John was content with their unspoken agreement ...until he wasn't anymore.

“Josie, I’ve been thinking-”

“Oh poor thing! Did it hurt you to use that little brain of yours?” She sassed back with a cheeky smirk, over her cup of coffee.

“Cut it out, you. I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you now” An equally cheeky grin spreading across his face at her poor attempt at insulting his intellectual ability combined with her wicked sense of humour that was beginning to touch the darkest parts of John’s heart.

John crossed the spacious sun-lit kitchen of Josephine’s Milan apartment and wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, trapping her between the kitchen counter and his own body. His face found the crook of her neck, while she stood tall and relaxed back into his grip. This was her favourite kind of morning, her body exhausted from the night prior with John, her mind clouded with fluffy thoughts of the fluffy haired man and her soul awake with excitement of having him back within arms reach - for it went dormant when he was away, like he turned the light off every time he left and back on when he returned to her, wherever that may be. The floor length mirror resting on the wall of the living room reflected the vision of the two of them in her kitchen, like two pieces of a puzzle fit together perfectly. This also helped John out tremendously as he was able to see her face as he asked her the question he had been building the courage to ask for a short while now.

“I want to know what I have to do to make you my girl, privately and publicly and everything in between and beyond” John spoke in a low drawl, watching as Josephine’s eyes connected with his own in the mirror. He watched as her coffee cup was brought to her lips and back down again, he felt her back stiffen and could swear he heard the walls around her heart tighten their defences.

“Is this not enough for you? You have my word that there is no other man in my life, I am yours John” Her heart beating in her ears, breaths increasing and shallow at his response. Her whole life thus far she has always felt as though she wasn’t enough, she had to work that bit harder than her model friends to maintain her weight, to keep her skin clear of all blemishes and stretch marks, to book jobs that her heart had yearned for. This, however, was what her heart has been yearning for more than ever before - and that scared her beyond words.

“Josie, you are more than enough. I want everyone to know that I am the one who was fortunate enough to be chosen by you, and to eventually be loved by you” John spoke as his hands strengthened their grip on her hips, cementing her in place so she couldn’t run away from this conversation as he knew she was already planning her escape route.

“I am no good for you in the way you need me to be John. Please trust me on that. I am unlovable as I currently am” She spoke with a cold stoic that had John staring in bewilderment through the mirror, he did not recognise the Josephine that was in his arms. She was a shell of the woman he spent the last six months of his life chasing, the last six months of his life addicted to.

“It has shocked me to the core that you’re deluded enough to adopt the idea that you aren’t loveable exactly the way that you are.” John stated with such certainty that Josephine felt her resolve cracking - she had never been spoken to that way before. He granted her the space she so desperately craved and leant himself back on the bench behind them, arms crossed over his chest and his chin lowered as he watched Josephine gather herself and rush off to the bathroom. As he heard the shower turn on and her music get louder, he understood that she needed some time to process his question and statement in her own way.

The last six months he had noticed very specific qualities about Josephine that he wasn’t sure she was aware of herself. How she carefully assessed every meal as she was about to eat it, and the retrospective glance she would throw over her weekly meals - never one to eat red meat more than twice per week at best, her diet filled with leafy greens, black coffee and not much else. She was thin, it was part of her uniform as a model to be relatively thin but Josephine could not have weighed more than 50kg and with her height of 5’11” without heels it was a concerning number. John knew this of course due to the uncountable number of times he had thrown her around both in bed and out of it.

Most concerning of all, however, was her mental and emotional state. How could this angel think she was unloveable? Was this the doing of another man before him? Is it the side effect of the dangerous drug called the modelling industry? Her soul needed healing. If she's closed off for love, how on earth is she going to understand just how much he was beginning to love her? He knew, of course he knew that he was on track to finding his one great love - in fact he was certain he had already found it in Josephine. It wasn’t in full bloom yet, but it was blossoming. He also knew that he needed to make her fall in love with herself, before she could ever love him or let herself be loved by him. She needed to know that the relationship she has with herself sets the tone for every other relationship she has, and only heaven knows how great her relationship with John could be.

PART 4.

1/2 Hi Meir! I saw your answer on WWC, and since you mentioned you're professionals, I figured I'd ask directly: I'm writing a second world fantasy with a jewish coded people. I want to be clear in the coding but avoid the "if there's no egypt, how can there be passover?" so I called them Canaanites. I thought I was being clever by hinting in the naming that the whole region does exist, but I've since read that it might've been a slur in fact? Do you have any advice on this?

2/2 I did consider calling the group in question Jewish, but aside from how deeply Judaism is connected to the history of the Israelites, I haven't used any present-day real-world names for any other group, (I did use some historic names like Nubia). I feel like calling only one group of people by their currently used name would be othering rather than inclusive? Or am I overthinking this?

Okay so I want to start out with some disclaimers, first that although WWC recently reblogged an addition of mine to one of their posts, I am not affiliated with @writingwithcolor​, and second that the nature of trying to answer a question like this is “two Jews, three opinions,” so what I have to say about this is my own opinion(s) only. Last disclaimer: this is a hard question to address, so this answer is going to be long. Buckle up.

First, I would say that you’re right to not label the group in question “Jewish” (I’ll get to the exception eventually), and you’re also right in realizing that you should not call them “Canaanites.” In Jewish scripture, Canaanites are the people we fought against, not ourselves, so that wouldn’t feel like representation but like assigning our identity to someone else, which is a particular kind of historical violence Jews continue to experience today. I’ll get back to the specific question of naming in a moment, but because this is my blog and not WWC, and you asked me to speak to this as an educator, we’re going to take a detour into Jewish history and literary structure before we get back to the question you actually asked.

To my mind there are three main ways to have Jews in second-world fantasy and they are:

People who practice in ways similar to modern real-world Jews, despite having developed in a different universe,

People who practice in ways similar to ancient Hebrews, because the things that changed us to modern Jewish practice didn’t occur, and

People who practice in a way that shows how your world would influence the development of a people who started out practicing like ancient Hebrews and have developed according to the world they’re in. 

The first one is what we see in @shiraglassman​‘s Mangoverse series: there is no Egypt yet her characters hold a seder; the country coded Persian seems to bear no relation to their observance of Purim, and there is no indication of exile or diaspora in the fact that Jews exist in multiple countries and cultures, and speak multiple languages including Yiddish, a language that developed through a mixture of Hebrew and German. Her characters’ observance lines up approximately with contemporary Reform Jewish expectations, without the indication of there ever having been a different practice to branch off from. She ignores the entire question of how Jews in her universe became what they are, and her books are lyrical and sweet and allow us to imagine the confidence that could belong to a Jewish people who weren’t always afraid.

Shira is able to pull this off, frankly, because her books are not lore-heavy. I say this without disrespect--Shira often refers to them as “fluffy”--but because the deeper you get into the background of your world and its development, the trickier this is going to be to justify, unless you’re just going to just parallel every historical development in Jewish History, including exile and diaspora across the various nations of your world, including occasional near-equal treatment and frequent persecution, infused with a longing for a homeland lost, or a homeland recently re-established in the absolutely most disappointing of ways.

Without that loss of homeland or a Mangoverse-style handwaving, we have the second and third options. In the second option, you could show your Jewish-coded culture having never been exiled from its homeland, living divided into tribes each with their own territory, still practicing animal, grain, and oil sacrifice at a single central Temple at the center of their nation, overseen by a tribe that lacks territory of their own and being supported by the sacrifices offered by the populace.

If you’re going to do that, research it very carefully. A lot of information about this period is drawn from scriptural and post-scriptural sources or from archaeological record, but there’s also a lot of Christian nonsense out there assigning weird meanings and motivations to it, because the Christian Bible takes place during this period and they chose to cast our practices from this time as evil and corrupt in order to magnify the goodness of their main character. In any portrayal of a Jewish-coded people it’s important to avoid making them corrupt, greedy, bigoted, bloodthirsty, or stubbornly unwilling to see some kind of greater or kinder truth about the world, but especially if you go with this version. 

The last option, my favorite but possibly the hardest to do, is to imagine how the people in the second option would develop given the influences of the world they’re in. Do you know why Chanukah is referred to as a “minor” holiday? The major holidays are the ones for which the Torah specifies that we “do not work:” Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur, and the pilgrimage holidays of Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot. Chanukah developed as a holiday because the central temple, the one we made those pilgrimages to, was desecrated by the invading Assyrian Greeks and we drove them out and were able to re-establish the temple. That time. Eventually, the Temple was razed and we were scattered across the Roman Empire, developing the distinct Jewish cultures we see today. The Greeks and Romans aren’t a semi-mythologized ancient people, the way the Canaanites have been (though there’s increasing amounts of archaeology shedding light on what they actually might have been like), we have historical records about them, from them. The majority of modern Jewish practice developed from the ruins of our ancient practices later than the first century CE. In the timeline of Jewish identity, that’s modern.

The rabbinic period and the Temple period overlap somewhat, but we’re not getting into a full-scale history lesson here. Suffice it to say that it was following the loss of the sacrificial system at the central Temple that Judaism coalesced an identity around verbal prayer services offered at the times of day when we would previously have offered sacrifices, led each community by its own learned individual who became known as a rabbi. We continued to develop in relationship with the rest of the world, making steps toward gender equality in the 1970s and LGBT equality in the 2000s, shifting the meaning of holidays like Tu Bishvat to address climate change, debating rulings on whether one may drive a car on Shabbat for the sake of being with one’s community, and then pivoting to holding prayer services daily via Zoom.

The history of the Jews is the history of the world.  Our iconic Kol Nidrei prayer, the centerpiece of the holiest day of the year, that reduces us to tears every year at its first words, was composed in response to the Spanish Inquisition. The two commentators who inform our understanding of scripture--the ones we couldn’t discuss Torah without referencing even if we tried--wrote in the 11th and 12th centuries in France and Spain/Egypt. Jewish theology and practice schismed into Orthodox and Reform (and later many others) because that’s the kind of discussion people were into in the 19th century. Sephardim light Chanukah candles in an outdoor lamp while Ashkenazim light Chanukah candles in an indoor candelabrum because Sephardim developed their traditions in the Middle East and North Africa and the Ashkenazim developed our traditions in freezing Europe. There are works currently becoming codified into liturgy whose writers died in 2000 and 2011. 

So what are the historical events that would change how your Jewish-coded culture practices, if they don’t involve loss of homeland and cultural unity? What major events have affected your world? If there was an exile that precipitated an abandonment of the sacrificial system, was there a return to their land, or are they still scattered? Priority one for us historically has been maintaining our identity and priority two maintaining our practices, so what have they had to shift or create in order to keep being a distinct group? Is there a major worldwide event in your world? If so, how did this people cope?

If you do go this route, be careful not to fall into tropes of modern or historical antisemitism: don’t have your culture adopt a worldview that has their deity split into mlutiple identities (especially not three). Don’t have an oppressive government that doesn’t represent its people rise up to oppress outsiders within its borders (this is not the first time this has occurred in reality, but because the outside world reacts differently to this political phenomenon when it’s us than when it’s anyone else, it’s a portrayal that makes real-life Jews more vulnerable). And don’t portray the people as having developed into a dark and mysterious cult of ugly, law-citing men and beautiful tearstreaked women, but it doesn’t sound as if you were planning to go there.

So with all that said, it’s time to get back to the question of names. All the above information builds to this: how you name this culture depends on how you’ve handled their practice and identity. 

Part of why Shira Glassman’s handwaving of the question of how modern Jewish practice ended up in Perach works is that she never gives a name to the religion of her characters. Instead, she names the regions they come from. Perach, in particular, the country where most of the action takes place, translates to “Flower.” In this case, her Jewish-coded characters who come from Perach are Perachis, and characters from other places who are also Jewish are described as “they worship as Perachis do despite their different language” or something along those lines (forgive me, Shira, for half-remembering).

So that’s method one: find an attribute of your country that you’d like to highlight, translate it into actual Hebrew, and use that as your name.

Method two is the opposite: find a name that’s been used to identify our people or places (we’ve had a bunch), find out what it means or might mean in English, and then jiggle that around until it sounds right for your setting. You could end up with the nation of the Godfighters, or Children of Praise, The Wanderers (if they’re not localized in a homeland), The Passed-Over, Those From Across The River, or perhaps the people of the City of Peace.

Last, and possibly easiest, pick a physical attribute of their territory and just call them that in English. Are they from a mountainous region? Now they’re the Mountain People. Does their land have a big magical crater in the middle? Craterfolk. Ethereal floating forests of twinkling lights? It’s your world.

The second option is the only one that uses the name to overtly establish Jewish coding. The first option is something Jews might pick up on, especially if they speak Hebrew, but non-Jews would miss. The third avoids the question and puts the weight of conveying that you’re trying to code them as Jewish on their habits and actions.

There’s one other option that can work in certain types of second-world fantasy, and that’s a world that has developed from real-world individuals who went through some kind of portal. That seems to me the only situation in which using a real-world name like Jews, Hebrews, or Israelites would make sense. Jim Butcher does this with the Romans in the Codex Alera series, and Katharine Kerr does it with Celts in the Deverry cycle. That kind of thing has to be baked into the world-building, though, so it probably doesn’t help with this particular situation. 

This is a roundabout route to what I imagine you were hoping would be an easier answer. The tension you identified about how to incorporate Jewishness into a world that doesn’t have the same history is real, and was the topic of a discussion I recently held with a high school age group around issues of Jewish representation in the media they consume and hope to create. Good luck in your work of adding to the discussion.

Hey, something I’ve been wondering since I first watched CQL: in ep 5, there’s a line where Wen Qing is talking to Wen Ning and says something like ‘Our family has been doctors for centuries, but I can’t cure my own brother’ (that’s verbatim from the US Netflix subtitles) and I’ve always wondered about that word, ‘cure’. As someone who lives with mental illness, I’m a little sensitive to the idea of a mental affliction being ‘cured,’ as though it’s a malady to be remedied, as though there’s something ‘wrong’ that can be ‘fixed’. The word ‘cure’ brings up all that discomfort for me, but I only know English, and I’m curious to know how accurate the concept of a ‘cure’ is to the actual conversation taking place there? I think a lot about the way neurodivergence is discussed in CQL, and I don’t want to misjudge connotation based on translation error.

hi there! so this ask is *checks* a month old yikes, but i’ve been thinking about it for a long time so here we go (finally)! :D

so here’s the scene in question:

[ID: two screenshots from episode 5 of the untamed. wen qing is speaking to wen ning. the subtitles read ‘我却治不了自己弟弟的病’ and ‘but i can’t cure my own brother’. /end ID]

with regards to your grammar/language question: 治 can mean both “to treat” and “to cure”. there are certain sentence constructions that can make it clear which it is, but not all of them do so.

for example, 治好 is definitely ‘to cure’ - the grammar there is [VERB + 好] can mean either “to finish VERBing” or “to VERB well”. so, to finish treating = to cure.

however, in this case, that’s not the construction that’s being used, and I would say it’s not clear-cut. “VERB + 不了” is “to be unable to VERB”. because 治 is ambiguous on its own, what she says here, “我却治不了自己弟弟的病”, comes down to “but I am unable to treat/cure my own younger brother’s illness”.

what I think is maybe a more complicated issue is the idea of mental illness and/or neurodivergence in CQL and how understandings of it impact our perceptions of the characters/narrative.

I’ve seen a lot of interpretations of Wen Ning’s affliction in CQL to be neurodivergence, but I’m actually quite surprised when I hear this. i believe the illness wen qing and wei wuxian refer to when talking about wen ning is his susceptibility/weakness towards resentful/yin energy, which manifests in fainting spells and long bouts of unconsciousness. to me, that is not analogous to mental illness or neurodivergence so much as something like epileptic episodes brought on by exposure to specific triggers. by CQL canon, we know that he has not always had this -- he contracted the illness after his encounter with the guanyin statue that sucked away part of his soul when he was a child, and this now gives him a weak constitution and makes him largely unsuitable for night hunting, especially unsupervised. this is what wen qing is trying to treat and/or cure. in mdzs, he does not have this condition, and wen qing never mentions anything about trying to treat or cure him at all.

given that this condition is most likely a creation for the sake of getting around censors at least in part (basically: a way to create a reason for why wen ning isn’t “dead” -- in addition, probably was also meant to increase wen sibs screentime/sympathy), I’ve always seen it as a bit of a handwavy physical condition that was tacked on as opposed to an actual statement about his character, if that makes sense.

in general, I’m hesitant to outright assign labels of neurodivergence or mental illness to mdzs/cql characters because I think that labels like that are inherently societally and culturally dependent. with the rise of identity politic rhetoric in the US and all of that kind of getting tangled up with our conceptions of being ND or mentally ill, I worry about trying to analyze mdzs/cql through such a lens because identities are so inextricably tied to environment. even if both i and a character could be “diagnosed” with the same condition, I think it would be undeniable that our experiences of such would be very different because we come from different cultural backgrounds. not just, chinese author vs american reader but like, fantastical xianxia chinese conception of a character vs chinese-american conception of identity.

alskdjfl idk if this even makes sense, but!! basically, I actually don’t think that CQL discusses or really portrays neurodivergence at all, not in such terms. I think it’s completely appropriate and valid to headcanon and interpret characters in ways that resonate with you! i certainly do, lol (morally scrupulous twin jades anyone? :D 🥃), but im nervous about asserting that any CQL characters actually are/have xyz condition because I don’t think that a discussion on that front is particularly meaningful. I know that this hesitance comes both from my own views on what neurodivergence/mental illness mean and how useful those terms actually are, and also from a very personal anger over some moral injunctions that I’ve seen people place on portraying characters’ “real” or “coded” mental states that are seriously misguided, harmful, and extremely culturally american in their claims (that will probably be a separate post though lol).

that isn’t to say there isn’t value in thinking about how one can interpret characters in one way or another, or that there isn’t value in discussing how unintentionally, a character might fall into archetypes that evoke certain identities and how that subtext might or might not impact a person’s experience or takeaway from the media! but I think all of that has to be contextualized as opposed to generalized. /o\

this.... came out a lot less coherent than i wanted it to be, but my brain is Not having it for some reason. I hope that I at least managed to answer your question/help you along in your continuing thought process!!! :D

(ko-fi)

ok, so bc it‘s pride month i feel it‘s ok for me to sway a little from the maze runner content i usually post on here, and i wanna talk to you guys about bisexuality

like there‘s so many people who have so many misconceptions about bisexuality it‘s so sad???

so, let‘s get some things cleared up

bisexuality means whatever bisexuality means to that 1 specific person

there‘s a lot of different definitions of bisexuality out there

a specific bisexual ALWAYS has the last word about what it means to them

the one that i personally find the most beautiful is the one given by bisexual legend robyn ochs (now 62), and it goes as follows:

„I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted – romantically and/or sexually – to people of more than one gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.”

for the vast majority of bi people, bisexuality is NOT BINARY

it‘s weird that so many non-bi people think that, and bi people have been reiterating that bisexuality is not binary for a long, long time

there‘s a lot of people who are non-binary and bisexual

the following is an excerpt feom „the bisexual manifesto“, from 1990:

„Do not assume that bisexuality is binary or duogamous in nature: That we have „two“ sides, or that we must be involved simultaneously with both genders to be fulfilled human beings. In fact, do not assume that there are only two genders.“ (emphasis mine)

here is an image of the entire bisexual manifesto published in the „anything that moves“ magazine bc it‘s so good (tell me in the comments if you need an image description i don‘t have the energy to do one right now)

moving on from the „binary trap“:

a lot of bisexual people fear that they‘re not queer enough

so much so that the following is one of the most polular bi memes of all time: (same here, tell me if you need an image description please)

just to reiterate:

bi people are bi regardless of their dating experiences

bi people are bi regardless of their relationship status

bi people are still bi when they are in opposite-gender relationships

same goes for bi people who are in same-gender relationships: still. bi.

sexuality can change over time. if someone who labeled themselves as bi now uses a different label that doesn‘t invalidate the time when they were bi (my best friend used to be bi, now she is a lesbian, and that. does. not. invalidate. either. sexuality.)

bisexuals do not need to be „50-50“ to be „true“ bisexuals

that is such a weird concept

to a lot of bi people, which genders they‘re attracted to fluctuates with time

we jokingly call this the „bi-cycle“ (like a bicycle do you get it it‘s funny)

some bi people feel like to them, gender doesn‘t matter in their attraction

some people feel that gender matters greatly in their attraction

this is put beautifully into words by Naomi Tucker in „The Next Natural Step“, 1995 (see, bisexual activism has existed for a long, long time!)

all ways of experiencing bisexuality are equally valid

i personally am of the type „gender such wow amazing much different for every gender“

like my attraction to women feels different to my attraction to agender people feels different to my attraction to men feels different to my attraction to non-binary people fells different to - you get it.

to me even how i perceive my own gender changes with the gender of the person i‘m attracted to (wiild i know right)

bisexuality, pansexuality, polysexuality and omnisexuality are. not. enemies.

they‘re all valid, they may overlap, they may be very distinct in the eye of a specific person WHICH IS ALL VALID

they are all non-monosexual identities (attraction to more than 1 gender)

they are all very cool

going on about labels: „bi-curious“ is a super cool label and i love everyone who uses it (i do not love people who take it upon themselves to label other people with it though)

like a guy i dated once told me i was only bi-curious bc i hadn‘t kissed a girl yet and i was like ???

very cool books about bisexuality include the following ones:

„Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution“ by Shiri Eisner, 2013:

„The Bi-Ble: Essays and Personal Narratives about Bisexuality“, Vol. 1 and 2, 2017 and 2019

„Purple Prose: Bisexuality in Britain“, Kate Harrad, 2016

that‘s it for today, i hope you enjoyed this post

take care everyone i love you