Passive aggressive transmisogynists who rag on 'stereotypical tgirls' while gushing about loving transfems remind me of 'I want a freaky goth gf' dudebros lmfao

I found you through your Death's Head Deals comics, but I want you know I'm also gonna be checking out your other stuff.

Also:

Your art style is lovely, and your way of drawing is so expressive! I really appreciate what you'te showing with your comics, and, and as queer bisexual transmasc, I am so, so appreciative of your making Alrick a cishet man. Like, I feel like I can't tell you anything you don't already know, but as a transmasc, seeing such a positive example of a cishet man means...so much to me. In so many progressive spaces there's this sort of idea that anyone who isn't Woman Enough is pitiable at best. And, you know, as someone for whom womanhood was...oh, man. It was awful. I can't begin to explain to you what it did to me. Because it wasn't right. I was never a girl. But other people – cis and trans – look at someone like me and see someone who chose to transition. Who chose to be...a toxic gender, I guess?? Never mind that I'm not a binary man, the fact that my gender is masculine is enough to damn me!

So to see a cis man – a cis man who is also straight! so his gender can't be waved off like it's incidental to his sexuality! a cishet man! who is cis and het and gender conforming and not queer in any way – as something positive?? To see him as someone worth loving?? To see him as an okay way to exist?? To see someone like that, presented in a genuine, joyous way? Without the toxic masculinity one sees so often in popular media?? He's just...a good person? He's just...a person????

I can't explain how much that means to me. I'm queer in every way and reading about Alrick is healing to me. Because you don't present him as a failure because of his gender or sexuality. Because you, as the author, stated firmly that being a man, even a straight one, isn't a bad thing. Because Alrick is good. Because I can also be who I am, and not be lesser for it. I'm not 'joining the enemy:' men aren't the enemy. There's nothing wrong with manhood. There's nothing wrong with heterosexuality. None of these are toxic identities. They're just identities. They're neutral. And I, as a queer person, who is neither cis nor straight, find so much comfort in that. So. Thank you.

And I hope this doesn't stress you out!! Even if the story goes in a way I don't personally like, it won't ever change the fact that this story helped me. I just wanted to thank you for bringing it into the world as it is now, and how much that means to me.

(I had a LOT of limoncello, but I mean everything I said. I am just drunk enough to think you might like to hear what I have to say)

Aaaw, thank you! I read your feedback 8568506 times, seriously! I really don't even have words how to reply to your sweet message.

Your message doesn't stress me out, no sweat about it! All's good :3

Just once more louder to the back if people didn't hear me the last time I spoke about this:

BEING A MAN OR CISHET OR STRAIGHT OR BOTH IS NOT A CARDINAL SIN, NOT EVEN A SMALL SIN!

That's condemning people, judging them based on stereotypes. How well has that worked on you, dear minorities? Have you enjoyed it? Did it make you to like the oppose site even more? Why would use the same tactic towards your enemy - whoever or whatever it is - and expect different results?

Some resistance is always needed when things are being changed as the change does require strength, even positive aggression, but if you take it too far you only create another war.

Everyone wants to be treated with kindness and acceptance. People generally react negatively if you react negatively to them first.

When it comes to positive masculinity, I believe its the true form of manhood and masculinity. The toxic patriarch, man-made system has destroyed so much masculinity, given everyone sick expectations and models of "manhood". The same way as it has tainted true femininity and womanhood. It's not a sin to be a woman either. It's not a sin to be feminine, soft, gentle, sensitive, nurturing, emphatic, like cute things etc!

There are a few positive masculine men in media that I admire and I'm happy that they exist. I keep them in mind when working with Alrick.

Sláine is a feminist barbarian, who is shown in multiple cases to show compassion and kindness towards women without wanting anything in return. Unlike other men who have abandoned the old Goddess, Sláine still serves her and has vowed his loyalty to her till his death. His wife Niamh is shown to be incarnated in many different lives to be together with Sláine, as their souls always find each other. Pat Mills has created Sláine series together with his wife Angela Kincaid.

Ken Kitano (Sun-Ken Rock) is definitely the best positive masculinity examples in any media I have encountered. Here, Ken has just taken by force the whole control all South-Korean's entertainment business after he heard women were sexually exploited and abused in it. He asked nothing in return and sacrificed his possibility to ever leave mafia life - something he had dreamed of since the day one - to achieve the safety of all women. He's very loyal to his sweetheart and always refuses from any other women.

Ken is also extremely compassionate towards his enemies, all citizens and uses all his resources, fame, money and strength for the better of others, unconditionally.

Like “Shit. I have other things to do but there’s this victim of human trafficking, who I already saved once, but the other mafia hunted her down and forced her to work again. Well, better take the whole red light district’s ownership from 500+ member mafia with my less than 10 members mafia so that the girls can have their freedom and be safe for the rest of their lives under my protection”.

The best thing? He's THE mafia boss. The most powerful man in the whole South-Korea, above any law, above any other living person. Ken could do and get anything he wants but he always chooses to use all he's got for good.

Tatsu (Gokushufudou / The Way of The House Husband) left his yakuza life behind and married Miku. He's a most devoted husband and always treats Miku, neighbors, the women of the Housewife Association, all kids and animals with kindness. Other mafia members come to challenge him but he never takes the bait as he's got a dinner to make and laundry to do! He remembers everyone's birthdays, celebrations, is very kind and attentive towards his parents-in-law and always aims to make Miku happy. He's equal to his wife as his wife is equal to him.

I really like this series as it's pretty phenomenal in Japan, where the strict gender roles still sit very tight! Everyone is expected to marry early, and then men are expected to be the breadwinners and women stay-home wives and mothers. Men are above women and women's salaries are still lower than men's.. I've been delighted to see small changes in Japan within the last 12 years I've visited there. Last time I saw many home-stay dads looking after the kids and found men's bathroom with a nursery table inside.

Why Cap Being Internally Closeted Is Not Only Possible, But Valid Representation 

i wrote this to a lot of mitski and onsind, so you can’t blame me for any feelings that bleed through

now i don’t know if it actually exists, but i’ve heard of there being a lot of discourse surrounding the captains story arc regarding his sexuality- i believe the general gist is that having a queer character that remains closeted to themselves is either unrealistic or ‘bad’ representation, and as someone who really treasures the captain and relates to his story so far a lot, i thought i might break this down a bit. 

i’ve divded up every complaint i’ve heard about this into four main questions which i’ll be covering below the ‘keep reading’, because this is gonna be pretty comprehensive. full disclaimer i reference my experiences as an ex-evangelical non binary butch lesbian a couple times, and i spent a year studying repression and the psychological impacts of high demand sexual ethics for my graduating sociology paper, so this is coming with some background to it i swear

the big questions:

can you EVEN be gay and not know it????

but isn't this just ANOTHER coming out arc, and aren't we supposed to be moving beyond those?

but if cap can't have a relationship with a man because he's a ghost, what's the point?

since cap's dead, isn't this technically bury your gays, and isn't that bad? 

1. "but is it really possible to not know? Isn't that bad representation?"

short answer: no and no.

before i get into the validity of the captain's ignorance about his own orientation as 21st century rep, let's break down how the hell the captain can be so clearly attracted to men and still not even consider the possibility that he might be gay, as brought to you by someone who literally experienced this shit.

the captain's particular situation is both a direct result of the lack of information around human sexuality he would have had (aka clear messaging that it's actually possible for him to be attracted to men. i don't mean acceptable or allowed, i mean physically capable of happening- the idea that orientations other than heterosexual exist and are available to him, a man), and a subconscious survival mechanism. the environment in which he lives is outright hostile to gay people, while the military man identity he has constructed for himself doesn't allow for any form of deviation from societal norms, let alone one so base level and major. as a result of this killer combo of information and environment, instincts take over and the mind does it's best to repress the ‘deviant’ feelings until a. one of these two things changes, or b. the act of repression becomes so destructive and/or exhuasting that it becomes impossible to maintain. the key to maintaining a long-term state of repression of desire is diverting that energy elsewhere, and a high-demand group such as the military is the perfect place for the captain to do this (this technqiue is frequented by religions and extremist ideologies worldwide, but that’s not really what we’re here to focus on). 

while the brain is actively repressing ‘deviant’ feelings (aka gay shit), this doesn't mean you don't experience the feelings at all. when performed as a subconscious act of survival, the aim of repression is to minimise/transform the feelings into a state where they can no longer cause immediate danger, and something as big as sexual/romantic orientation is going to keep popping up, but as long as the individual in question never understands what they’re feeling, they’ll be able to continue relatively undisturbed. you know how in heist movies, the leader of the group will only tell each team member part of the plan so they can’t screw things up for everyone else if they get caught? it’s kind of like that.

this is how the captain appears to have operated in life AND in death, and it’s a relatively common experience for lgbtq people who’ve grown up in similar circumstances (aka with a lack of information and in an unfriendly-to-hostile environment), and accounts for how some people can even go on to get married and have children before realising that they’re gay and/or trans. 

personally, while i can now identify what were strong homo crushes all the way back to childhood, at the time i genuinely had no idea. there was the underlying sense that i probably shouldn't tell people how attached i was to these girls because i would seem weird, and that my feelings were stronger than the ones other people used to describe friendships, but like-like them in the way that other girls like-liked boys? no way! actually scratch that, it wasn't even a no way, because i had no idea that i even could. i even had my own havers, at least in terms of the emotional hold and devotion she got from me, except she treated me way less well than cap’s beau. snatches of the existence of lgbt people made it through the cone of silence, i definitely heard the words gay and lesbian, but my levels of informations mirrored those that the captain would have had: virtually none, beyond the idea that these words exist, some people are them, and that's not something that we support or think is okay, so let's just not speak about it. despite only attending religious schools for the first couple years of primary, until i got my own technology and social media accounts to explore lgbtq content on my own- option a out of the two catalysts for change- the possibility of me being gay was not at all on my radar. don’t even get me started on how long it took me to explore butchness and my overall gender, two things which now feel glaringly obvious. 

when shit starts to break down, you can also make the conscious choice to repress which can delay the eventual smashing down of the mental closet door for a time (essentially when the closet door starts to open, you just say ‘no thanks’ and shut it again by pointedly Not Thinking About It). in the abscence of identifying yourself by your attractions, it becomes quite common to identify with a lack- in my case, this meant becoming proud of how sensible and not boy crazy i was, and in the captain’s case, this means becoming proud of how sensible and not sensuous/wild (aka woman crazy) he was, identifying with his LACK of desire for women and partying (which, even in the 40s, involved the expectation of opposite sex romances and hook ups). i’m not saying that’s the only reason he’s a rule follower, but i think the contrast between About Last Night and Perfect Day pretty much support this. (the captain getting on his high horse about general party antics that he inherently felt excluded from because of underlying awareness of his difference & his tendency to project his regimented expectations of himself onto others, vs. joining in the reception party, awareness of how the environment supports difference in the form of clare and sam, and relaxing his own rules by dancing with men- the captain doesn’t mind a party when feels like he has a place there.)

so the captain was operating in a high demand, highly regulated environment (primarily the military, but also early 20th century England itself), with regimented roles, rules, and expectations. working on the assumption that he wouldn't have had out/disclosing lgbt friends, he would have had little to no exposure to lgbt identities, and what information he did receive would have been hushed and negatively geared. while my world started to open up when i started high school was allowed to have my own phone + instagram account, resulting in me realising something wasn't quite 'right' within a few years (making me a relatively early realiser compared to those who don't come out to themselves until adulthood), in life the captain never had that experience. he didn't receive the information he needed, his environment didn't grow less hostile. with the near-exception of havers related heartbreak, his well disciplined and lifelong method of repression never became destructive/exhaustive enough to permanently override the danger signals in his mind and allow him to put his feelings into words. neither of the most common catalysts for change happened for him, so he continued as usual, even after his death.

BUT, and here’s where we come to why this is actually great representation, arrival of mike and Alison represents the opening up of new world. for the first time, the captain is actively made aware of the fact that his environment is no longer hostile, and better than that, it’s affirming. he’s also getting access to positively geared information about lgbtq people and identities, so option a of the two catalysts for change is absolutely present, and resoundingly positive. 

the captain’s arc is also relatively unique as it acknowledges the oppressive nature of his environment, but actually focuses on the internal consequences, and the way that systems like those that the captain lived in succeed because they turn us into our own oppressors. for whatever reason, we repress ourseslves, and often can’t help it, and i find that the significance of the journey to overcome that is often overlooked in more mainstream queer media. perhaps it’s just not very cinematic, or it remains too confronting for cishet audiences, but ghosts manages to touch on it with a lovely amount of humour and hope. Jamie Babbit’s But I’m A Cheerleader is another favourite piece of queer media for the same reasons.

not only does it show this, but as the captain continues to get gayer and lean into some of his less conventional traits (like an interest in fashion and the wedding planning), it shows lgbt people who have been or are going through this that there CAN be a positive outcome. it takes a lot to unlearn all the things that have painted you as wrong, especially when a massive institution is desperate to continue doing so, but you can do it, you can be happy, and it's never too late. (i've been meaning to say that last point for ages for ages, but a mutual beat me to it here)

2. not just another coming out arc

i absolutely support the demand for queer stories that don’t center around coming out (it’s like shrodinger’s queer: if you’re not coming out on screen, do you really even exist?), but i don’t align with the criticisms that the captain should already be out. for the reasons mentioned above, the captain’s particular story is fairly different to the ‘young white teenager who mostly knows gay is fine, it’s just everyone else that’s got the problem, but have a unremarkably straight sounding soundtrack, a trauma porn romance, and a cishet saviour’ that we keep seeing. the captain’s ongoing journey with his sexuality emphasises the overaching theme of the show: recovering from trauma and humanity’s endless capacity for growth, and i think that’s worth showing over and over again until it stops being true.

additionally, while the captain’s journey regarding his gayness is a big part of his character and story, ghosts makes it clear that it’s not the ONLY part, and being gay is far from his ONLY characteristic or dramatic/comedic engine. the fact that i’m even having to congratulate ghosts for doing that really shows how much film and television is struggling huh.

while all queer media is, and should be, subject to criticism, i think if it helps even one person then it absolutely deserves to exist, and i can say i’ve found the captain’s journey to be the lgbt story i’ve found that’s closest to my own, which says a lot considering he’s a dead world war 2 soldier who hangs out with other ghosts including a slutty Tory, a georgian noblewoman, and a literal caveman. 

3. if captain gay, why he no have boyfriend???? 

another complaint that’s been circulating is that since the captain doesn’t, and likely won’t, have a boyfriend, that makes him Bad Representation because it follows the sad single gay trope. i kind of get the logic from this one, and a lot of it is up to personal interpretation, but part of me really enjoys the fact that the captain’s journey towards accepting himself is separated from having a relationship.

coming out is often paired with having romantic/sexual relationships (either as the reason or reward for doing so). my own struggle with repression didn't end the second that came out, and i still struggle with letting myself develop & acknowledge romantic feelings as a result of actively shutting them (and most other feelings in general) down for years, and statistics show that lgbtq youth in particular tend not to live out their 'teen years' until their twenties. by not giving cap a relationship straight away, ghosts separates the act of claiming identity and sexual orientation from finding a partner (two things which are, more often than not, separate), and also provides some very nice validation to folks who have yet to have the relationship they want, especially when lots of mainstream queer media is now jumping on the cishet media bandwagon of acting as if every person loses their virginity and has a life defining relationship at sixteen. it’s essentially a continuation of the earlier theme of “it’s never too late”, and who’s to say the captain won’t get a gay bear ghost boyfriend to go haunt nazis with??? people die all the time, it could happen.

(also, i think him and julian will have definitely shagged at least once. it was a low moment for both of them and they refuse to speak of it.)

lots of asexual/ace spectrum fans have come out to say how much they’ve loved being able to headcanon cap as ace, and while that’s not a headcanon i personally have, i think it’s brilliant that ace fans feel seen by his character- we’re all in this soup together babey (and sorry for cursing everyone still reading this with that cap/julian headcanon. i’m just a vessel)

4. “okay, but cap’s a GHOST- doesn’t that make this Bury Your Gays?”

this is a bit of a complex one, but i’m going to say no as a result of the following break down.

Bury Your Gays (BYG), aka the trope where lgbtq characters are consistently killed off (and often with a heavy dose of trauma, while cishet characters survive) is probably one of my least favourite lgbt media tropes. BYG has two main points:

1. the lgbt character is killed, thus removing them from story entirely- hence the use of the phrase ‘killed OFF’ (killed off of the show/film)

2. the character’s death reinforces the perception that lgbtq people’s lives must end in tragedy, instead of being long and fulfilling, or are inherently less valuable. bonus points if the character is killed in a hate crime or confesses same-gender love right before they die (that one implies that queer love genuinely has no future!)

not every death of an lgbtq character is bury your gays, and i personally feel that the captain is an example of an lgbt death that isn’t. 

first of all, while the captain is dead, so are the vast majority of characters in ghosts. the premise of the show means that death is not the end of the line for its characters- for most of them, it’s the only reason we get to see them on screen at all. as such, the captain being dead doesn’t remove him from the story, so point one is irrelevant.

at the time of posting, we don’t know how or why the captain died, but we've had nothing to suggest his death was in any way related to his latent sexuality, so his mysterious death doesn’t actively play into the supposedly inherent tragedy of queer lives, nor the supposedly lesser value. that’s as of right now- since we don’t know the circumstances of his death it’s a little tough to analyse properly. while the captain’s life absolutely features missed opportunities and it’s fair share of tragedy, hope and growth (which seems to be the theme of this post) abounds in equal measure. the captain may not be alive, but we DO get to see him growing and having a relatively happy existence, that for the most part seems to be getting even better as he learns to open up and be himself unapologetically- that doesn’t feel like BYG to me.

while writng this, it’s just occured to me that death really is a second chance for most of the ghosts, especially with the introduction of alison. from mary learning to read, to thomas finding modern music, they’ve all been given the chance explore things they never could have while they were alive, and hopefully grow enough to one day be sucked off move on.

in conclusion,

i love the captain very much and i hope his arc lives up to the standards it’s set so far. i don’t know where to put this in this post, but i’d alo like to say i LOVE how in Perfect Day, the captain wasn’t used as an educational experienced for fanny at all. i am very tired of people expecting me to be the walking talking homophobe educator and rehabilitator, so the fact that it’s alison and the other ghosts that call fanny out while the captain just gets to have fun with the wedding organisation made me very happy.

here’s a few other cap posts that i’ve done:

the captain’s arc if adam and the film crew stayed

a possible cap coming out 

the captain backstory headcanon

if you’ve read this far,

thank you!

also check out @alex-ghosts-corner , this post inspired me very much to write this

Mister Cavill, your dog is kinda fat - Chapter 2

Summary: Veterinarian Olivia Tran has zero time for bullshit. After becoming a mom at age twenty three, the one thing she wants is a good life for her daughter Vanessa. Her ex didn’t want anything to do with her nor the baby and she decided that man are officially banned out of her life. But then she meets Henry Cavill at her clinic and her ban slowly starts to crumble apart. Henry on the other hand is looking for one thing: a family. And when he meets Olivia Tran, he finds just that.

Henry Cavill x Olivia Tran (ofc)

Warnings: Mentions of vomit and blood.

Wordcount: 4.5k

A/N: Yesterday was like a dream, seeing the sweetest comments flood in. A big thank you to everyone xx If you still want to be on the taglist, it’s never too late, just tell me 🤗

Masterlist // Previous chapter // Next chapter

There is one thing that Henry has always wanted in life and that was getting married and having a family of his own. Growing up with four brothers, he always envisioned himself being surround by a beautiful wife, with lots of kids.

But he has reached the age of thirty seven and though he hasn’t got a lot to worry about—his biological clock isn’t ticking—he thought that by now, he’d at least have a wife and one kid.

Now he only has Kal, his loyal canine that he adores with all his heart. He takes a sip of his beer, as he watches some lame romantic comedy. It’s Friday night and as a single man, he could be on a date of course, but his profession as an actor, makes it even harder to date.

Most women are either in it for the fame and his money.

He witnessed his relationships crumble apart and now he is back being single, sitting on the couch with his dog, staring at a television screen. Last year he was thinking about starting a family, but he pushed it aside, enjoying his life as an actor. The movies he did were going great, but after the latest movie he did…

It was kind of a flop. It didn’t meet up to the expectations of the public and since that moment, he has been living a quite boring life, not thinking about taking any other offers. He wakes up, walks Kal and thinks about ways to meet the love of his life.

Henry isn’t so sure anymore about his acting career.

His mind wanders during the movie. He thinks about a future with a wife and kids. He can already see it happening: he would roll over in bed, wrap his arms around the love of his life, to slowly wake her up, before their kids would rush into the room and jump on their bed. He can imagine his beautiful wife sitting on the kitchen counter, with a few mini versions of them sitting next to her, as he is cooking for the entire family.

Henry rubs his face, fatigue kicking in. He shuts off the television and gives the big bear a kiss on top of his head. ‘You want a little something to eat before you go to bed?’ he asks Kal.

Kal wags his tail as an answer, accompanied with a bark.

Henry can’t help but chuckle.

It can pretty hard training Kal, but with the right amount of snacks, this dog can listen to him. Sometimes he even thinks that Kal can read his mind.

They go to the kitchen and he gives him a little kibble before he sleeps. He opens up the newest Doggy Herb bag and notices a slight change in color, but he shrugs it off. He bought Doggy Herb since the day he got Kal, so maybe there is more meat in this one that in the previous ones. He throws some in a bowl and watches as Kal gulps it all up.

The two of them walk up the stairs when Kal is done eating and he gets himself ready for the night. Henry stares at the sink in the bathroom, noticing the space that is left, because he doesn’t have anyone to share it with.

Before he can feel totally sorry for himself, he spits out the toothpaste and walks to his bedroom. He strips down to his underwear and steps into the bed, Kal joining him on the sheets.

He watches Kal falling asleep almost instantly and hopefully Henry can do the same.

But he can’t.

His mind keeps racing, constantly racing. The terrible reviews of his latest movie, the way how women kept saying how they want to have his kids, but none of them is good enough. He wants to fall in love with someone, someone who understands him, who loves him for who he is. A woman that he has an instant connection with. A woman where he can be himself.

When he does fall asleep, Henry dreams about a faceless woman, who holds onto his hand, as they watch their little kids running around in the yard, Kal barking as he runs in between the giggling kids.

That’s all he wants.

Henry is about to give his faceless wife a kiss, when he wakes up from hurling sounds that definitely aren’t his. He opens his eyes, turns on the light on his nightstand, to see Kal puking out his kibble on the new carpet.

Great, exactly what he needs. This is why he can’t have new stuff.

Henry gets out of bed and sits next to his dog. ‘Bud, you okay?’ he asks, but Kal’s legs give out and he collapses to the floor. His eyes are still open, but he whimpers and his breathing isn’t going as steady as it normally is.

‘No, no, no, Kal,’ Henry says, panic dripping through every word he speaks. He tries to find his phone as quickly as possible and Googles ‘Animal Clinics London’. He calls three different clinics, but none are picking up, not even the one that he usually goes to. He sees one that is an hour away, but in all honesty, Henry would arrange a private jet to fly them off to a vet that did pick up the fucking phone and he didn’t even care if he had to travel to another continent.

The phone rings twice, before he hears: ‘Animal Clinic Westside, doctor Olivia Tran, how may I help you?’

The woman sounds friendly, that’s a good start. ‘Hello, I’m terribly sorry for calling at this hour, but my dog is vomiting and I see some blood in it. He collapsed and is breathing really heavily and I don’t know what to do.’

‘Sir, it’s okay,’ she says. ‘Did your dog eat anything out of the ordinary today?’

He doesn’t even know for sure. ‘Not that I know of.’

‘You think it’s possible for you to come to the clinic? I’d like to see the dog.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Henry says.

‘I hope it’s not too much to ask, but could you take some of the vomit with you? Especially the part with some blood. I’d like to check it.’

Doctor Olivia Tran could’ve asked him to bring three human kidneys and he’d bring it, anything for his Kal. ‘I’ll bring it with me, of course.’

‘What kind of breed is your dog, sir?’

‘An American Akita. His name is Kal.’ Henry strokes the fur of Kal, blinking away the tears.

‘I’ll be at the clinic in about forty minutes, mister…’

Henry picks up on what she’s trying to do. ‘Cavill and I can be at the clinic in about an hour.’

They hang up shortly afterwards and Kal lets out a soft whimper. ‘Hang in there, bud,’ he tells the dog. ‘You can’t die on me. You really can’t.’

≫≫≪≪

With a weak Kal in his arms, Henry rushes into the clinic, only to discover that doctor Tran is already waiting for him. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but he certainly wasn’t expecting her. He is mesmerized by her dark brown eyes, her perfect lips and her hair that’s in a messy bun, a few strands framing her face.

This woman is beyond beautiful. He can’t believe that someone like her is even real. The way she tilts her head, while she scans him shamelessly from top to bottom, makes him feel all sorts of things.

He concludes he has been single for too long.

‘Mister Cavill?’ she asks, causing him to snap back into reality.

‘Yes,’ he hastily says. ‘That’s me.’

‘Follow me.’ She walks in front of him, into the first examination room. Her fingers tap on the table and he gently places his dog on the hard surface. She strokes the fur on top of Kal’s head. ‘Let’s see what’s with you,’ she says, putting on some gloves. ‘You brought the samples?’

‘Yes, yes, I did,’ he says, clearing his throat. He shouldn’t be mesmerized by the vet in front of him, but he can’t stop staring at her. He hands her the bag and she sets it aside, while she opens Kal’s eyes, looking into them.

Before he can say something else, he hears small footsteps echo into the room. ‘Can I watch?’

Henry looks up, to see a small girl standing in the doorway. This must be the daughter of doctor Tran, because that girl is the spitting image of the woman standing in front of him. The doctor does look young though, almost too young to have a daughter who is at least five years old.

He needs to shake the thought of the doctor off of him, he tells himself. She has a daughter, so there is a plausible chance she’s taken.

Doctor Tran doesn’t look up from her clipboard, while she’s scribbling something down. ‘If mister Cavill doesn’t mind.’

The young girl looks up at him, two hopeful eyes meeting his. ‘No, of course not,’ he says, his heart melting at the sight of the hopeful look in her eyes.

The little girl walks over to the examination table, dragging a stool with her. She stands next to Henry and even when she’s standing on it, she can barely peek over the edge of the table. ‘Mommy,’ she asks, confirming that the little girl is indeed doctor Tran her daughter, ‘should I introduce myself?’

The doctor nods, while she checks the vomit, scrunching her nose. ‘That’s the polite thing to do, sweetheart.’

The girl holds out a tiny hand and says: ‘My name is Vanessa Tran.’

‘Hi Vanessa,’ Henry says in a soft voice, before holding onto her hand, that nearly disappears in his. ‘My name is Henry Cavill and this is Kal.’

Doctor Tran looks up from the bag of vomit. ‘Henry Cavill?’ she asks. ‘Isn’t there an actor whose name is Henry Cavill?’

‘Yeah, there is.’ Henry chuckles, feeling a bit awkward, but also amused that she doesn’t recognize him. It’s nice to be unrecognizable, even if it’s for a short amount of time. ‘That actor would be me.’

Her eyes widen. ‘Oh,’ she says, but she can’t seem to find the right words to say.

‘Mommy, is this man famous?’ Vanessa asks, while not breaking eye contact with Henry. The little girl blinks her eyes, almost in disbelieve that someone famous is standing next to her.

Doctor Tran pulls herself together. ‘Yes, sweetheart, he plays in some movies. He even played Superman.’

Vanessa widens her eyes as well and yet again she looks just like her mother. ‘Wow, Superman is here.’ She starts to giggle, a sound that Henry already adores. ‘So, if you are Superman, you are really strong.’

‘He is,’ doctor Tran says, placing the vomit samples aside. ‘He carried his dog inside.’ Henry can’t help but beam with pride as he takes in the compliment from the doctor.

‘Wow,’ Vanessa says again. She holds out her arms and asks him if he can lift her up. Henry looks over at the doctor, who smiles and simply nods, a non verbal sign of consent.

Henry lifts the little girl up in his arms and she wraps an arm around his neck.

‘I can’t wait to tell miss Sue that I met Superman.’

He can’t help but laugh, the little girl and her comments already making him feel less scared about what can happen to Kal. ‘Doctor Tran,’ he finally says, ‘is everything okay with Kal?’

‘What kind of kibble do you give him?’ she asks, while she is checking his heartbeat.

‘Doggy Herb,’ he answers, while Vanessa is tugging his curls, pulling on one strand until it’s straight, before letting it go and watching it curl together again. ‘Why?’

She looks up. ‘Well, then the news hasn’t reached you yet. We’ve had multiple cases of dogs who started to vomit after they ate the Doggy Herb kibble, some of them included blood. The manufacturer changed something in the ingredients and now lots of dogs have severe reactions to it.’

This woman demands all of his attention, without even trying. She is absolutely breathtaking and if she wasn’t talking about his sick dog, nor had a daughter, he’d ask her out.

‘Oh.’ Henry feels guilty. ‘I thought there was something different about it. I opened a new bag today.’

‘How much did you gave him?’

‘A little bit, at around eleven,’ he answers.

She smiles and without her telling him something, he already feels more at ease. ‘Then you have nothing to worry about. I’m going to put an IV on him, so he can rehydrate a bit. After that I’m going to give him some medicine and I’ll give you something to give him at home. In about three hours, you can take him home with you again.’

‘Really?’

She nods. ‘Really, sir. If you could place him on the floor? That would be easier for Kal and me.’

‘I’m sorry, miss Vanessa,’ he says, before he gently places the girl back on her feet. He shouldn’t feel this desperate need to impress the doctor. However, he can’t help but flex his muscles a little bit, as he carries the dog to the corner of the examination room.

‘Wow, mommy, he is really strong,’ Vanessa says.

‘No wonder he was Superman,’ doctor Tran says. She looks through some drawers and says: ‘I figure you want to wait here.’

‘I do, I do,’ he says.

‘If you want, you can grab something to drink around the corner. Maybe a coffee will help you stay awake.’

Does he look that miserable? Does he look that tired?

‘I can tell you how the machine works,’ Vanessa says. ‘I know how it works.’

‘That would be nice,’ he admits. Vanessa takes ahold of his hand and tugs him with her. He follows the little girl and he sees himself in the reflection of a mirror that’s right next to the coffee machine.

He does look miserable. His eyes are still red from the bit of crying he did when he drove to the clinic and the bed hair looks like multiple crows have been nesting there.

‘My mommy is going to make Kal better,’ Vanessa says, before grabbing a paper cup. ‘You don’t have to worry.’

‘I wasn’t worried,’ he tells the young girl, but the second it leaves his lips, he realized he only said that to impress the doctor. God, he is lying to a little girl, just to impress her mother, who isn’t even in the same room. For all he knows, the woman is married and the girl’s dad is at home.

But, come to think of it, why would she take her daughter to work then?

Vanessa starts to frown and she takes a step to the side, so she’s standing in the doorway. ‘Mommy, can I tell Superman he is lying and that you’re not supposed to lie?’

He can hear doctor Tran laughing. ‘You can tell Superman that, sweetheart.’

Henry feels a little finger poking his thigh. ‘Superman, you are lying and you’re not supposed to lie. My mommy says that you should tell the truth, especially about your feelings.’

He is genuinely impressed. This young girl is really in touch with her own feelings and can verbalize it. That’s extraordinary for someone her age, he thinks to himself. Doctor Tran is doing a good job with raising her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says to Vanessa. ‘I’ll try to be better.’

‘You should, you are Superman after all.’

He has a paper cup filled with coffee and they accompany Kal and the doctor again. She hands Vanessa a juice box and says she needs to fill in some paperwork, but that the two of them can keep Kal company.

Vanessa and Henry stare at Kal, while Vanessa is slowly stroking his fur. It’s obvious that she’s growing more and more tired with every passing second, but she is desperately trying to stay awake. It’s really endearing, if Henry’s being honest and really not helping with his own baby fever.

‘My mommy is also a superhero,’ Vanessa says. ‘Not like Superman of course, but she always saves animals.’

‘Well,’ Henry says, unintentionally loud enough for doctor Tran to hear it, ‘your mom is an even better hero than Superman.’

That confuses her, because she frowns. ‘Why?’

‘Because I play Superman. It’s pretending. Your mom is not pretending.’

He watches Vanessa nod, as she is taking in what he just said. ‘Yeah, you are right. My mommy is a better hero.’ She sighs deeply. ‘Mister Henry, do you have kids?’

God, the girl is barely five or six years old, but she surely knows how to wrench his heart. ‘I don’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not what?’

She rolls her eyes annoyed, probably thinking he is a slow one for not understanding. ‘Why don’t you have kids?’

He clears his throat. ‘I don’t have a wife,’ he says. ‘And you need two people for that.’

Her mouth falls open. ‘Well, my mommy doesn’t have a husband. I’ve always wanted a daddy,’ she admits with bitter sweet honesty. ‘But my real daddy didn’t want me.’

‘Enough, Vanessa,’ he hears doctor Tran say in a stern voice from the other room.

‘But mommy…’

‘No, enough. Don’t talk about that with strangers.’

‘But this man is not a stranger mom. He is Superman, he can help us.’

Doctor Tran walks into the room, an annoyed look on her face. She doesn’t say anything, just stares at her daughter, raising an eyebrow in the process.

Vanessa pouts. ‘Sorry.’

The doctor leaves the room again and Henry asks Vanessa about school, hoping the kid doesn’t start about her estranged father again, though he wants to know more about that and it is a convenience: doctor Tran is single from what she just told him.

He finds out that she is six and can already read what’s on the posters in the examination room. Even though this kid isn’t his own, he can’t help but feel proud, when she recites the entire alphabet and shows him that she can count to a hundred.

But all while she’s doing that, fatigue is catching up with her and eventually she falls asleep against his arm. He carefully lifts her up, hoping that he doesn’t wake her up and walks to the room where doctor Tran is currently doing some paperwork.

‘Oh, she’s asleep,’ she says when she notices Henry standing in the doorway.

‘Yeah, she was pretty tired.’

She smiles, before holding out her arms. ‘I’ll be right back,’ she says, as she holds her daughter close to her body. She leaves the room and probably will tuck her daughter in somewhere. He sits next to his dog, looks at him, looking less and less fatigued and more like his own happy go lucky self.

‘Kal is looking better,’ she says, while she crouches down next to the dog. Kal stares at her, almost with heart eyes. ‘I recommend you switch to something like Purina One, or something like that,’ she tells him. ‘Doesn’t matter, everything but Doggy Herb.’

‘Is it deadly?’ he asks. ‘The other kibble.’

She shakes her head. ‘Well, no, wait, that’s a lie. If you give him lots of it, it can be fatal.’

‘I feel so stupid.’

The doctor looks at him. ‘Don’t,’ she says. ‘From the looks of it, you are a great owner.’ She checks the bag with fluids and says: ‘I want him on the scale for a second.’ She removes the IV from him, but from the looks of it, Kal is too tired to move.

‘Why on the scale?’

‘To determine how much of the medicine he needs,’ she tells him. ‘We don’t want to OD him, do we?’

It’s almost a cruel joke, but he can’t help but laugh. This woman is quite something and he is seriously intrigued.

Henry is yet again going out of his way to impress the beautiful doctor, but her facial expressions don’t give away much. She turns on the scale and writes down what she sees. ‘You can place him there,’ she says, pointing near the entrance. ‘Maybe the view will help him a bit. He should get moving in about half an hour.’ He places his furry companion near the door and Kal can move his head up, staring to the silent outside world, all still too deep asleep. When he looks at the doctor again, she taps the screen of the scale. ‘Now I know how much you both weigh, but I need Kal’s weight.’

Why is he feeling insecure? She’ll probably know that his weight is mostly muscle, that is shows his hard work. He steps on the scale and watches her scribble something on the paper. When Henry steps off, he notices her frown. ‘What?’ he asks.

‘This only confirms what I thought.’

‘What?’ he asks again.

‘Mister Cavill, your dog is kinda fat.’

She could’ve slapped in across his cheek and he wouldn’t be as surprised as he is now. Kal is fat? ‘Excuse me,’ he says in a defensive tone, crossing his arms in front of his buffed out chest. ‘My dog isn’t fat.’

Doctor Tran doesn’t seem impressed by his facade at all. ‘He is,’ she tells him. ‘An average American Akita weights between the forty and sixty kilos. Your dog weighs seventy kilos, while he should be between the fifty and sixty kilos.’

‘It’s muscle.’ Geez, he never thought he could get this defensive.

The doctor tries to hide a smile and her overall amusement, but she is failing miserably. ‘It’s fat, I already felt that back in the examination room.’

‘But how is he too fat?’

She shrugs. ‘You feed him too much, I guess. I’m not there with you when you feed him.’

‘I give him the prescribed amount of kibble.’ And a bit more, but his dog can’t possible get fat from that, right?

‘Do you train Kal?’

He nods. ‘I do.’

‘And do you give him snacks?’

He searches though his pocket and finds a chunk that he usually gives Kal during training.

‘How many do you give him?’ she asks, studying the snack as she takes it from him.

‘About twelve of those during a training session and I do those about two or three times.’

’No wonder he is fat.’

Does the doctor need to be this crude? His dog nearly died, could she show him some compassion?

‘Mister Cavill, this is the size of a pound,’ she tells him. She breaks it into four smaller bits and adds: ‘Dogs don’t care about the size of their snack. Instead giving him one of those, giving him a fourth, isn’t something he’ll notice.’

Henry sighs deeply, embarrassed of his defensiveness. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

‘For getting defensive?’ she guesses. ‘Oh no, it’s totally understandable. Someone is saying something about someone you care about. But, sir, it’s my job to make sure Kal is the healthiest he can be. Just give him seventy five percent of what you would normally give him, give him tons of walks and don’t give him the entire snack, just a quarter will do.’

He nods, taking the tips in. ‘Thank you, doctor Tran.’

≫≫≪≪

Kal is finally feeling better and Vanessa has woken up again. She is hanging around Kal’s neck, giving him tons of kisses. Kal doesn’t seem to mind, because he continues to lick Vanessa’s face when he gets the chance. Henry knew that his loyal dog was good with children, but this is on another level.

‘I’m sorry that I called,’ he says to doctor Tran, who is leaning against the counter, her white coat hanging open, revealing a thick looking sweater.

‘Why? Your dog was sick and you called a vet. It’s okay, I knew what I was doing when I sighed up for the job.’ She looks at her daughter and adds: ‘Besides, I think I have a very tired, but very happy six year old for the weekend. She got to pet a lovely dog and met Superman. Honestly, I should thank you for calling our clinic.’

Henry lets his gaze drop on the petite doctor that is standing next to her. He doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but he certainly does believe in attraction at first sight. It has been a long time since Henry met a woman like doctor Olivia Tran. She blatantly told him his dog was fat and told her daughter that she could say to “Superman” that he was lying. She is definitely something else and he hates it that he has to leave now.

‘Well, thank you,’ he says, ‘for helping out Kal. I don’t know what I would’ve done if he didn’t make it.’ He holds out his hand and the doctor leaves him hanging for a good second, before she places her slender hand in his, adding: ‘It’s my job, mister Cavill.’

‘Henry, please, call me Henry.’

She nods. ‘Okay, Henry, I’ll see you in a few weeks, for his yearly shots he needs to have according to his passport and we have to check if you are a strict enough owner, because this little fatty needs to lose some weight.’ She lets go of his hand, before scratching the Akita behind his ears.

‘Mommy, can we have a dog?’

‘No, angel, we can’t,’ she says. ‘So give Kal one last kiss and say goodbye to Henry, okay?’

Vanessa does what her mother tells her to do, because she gives Kal a kiss on his nose and walks over to Henry, who crouches down, so he is about the same height as the little girl. ‘It was very nice to meet you, Vanessa,’ Henry says.

She wraps her arms around his broad shoulders. ‘It was nice to meet you too, mister Henry,’ she whispers, still a bit groggy. She lets go of him and walks to her mom, holding onto her hand tightly.

‘Thank you, again.’

‘Of course,’ doctor Tran smiles. ‘And I’ll see you in a few weeks.’

He steps out of the clinic with Kal and sighs deeply. This was quite something, he thinks to himself. As he walks towards his car, he looks over his shoulder, only to see Vanessa being picked up by her mother, balancing on her hip. The two of them wave to him and he smiles, holding out his hand and waving back.

When he gets into his car, Kal sitting next to him, he lets out a groan. He shouldn’t have a crush on this vet, he really shouldn’t.

But Henry keeps thinking about how doctor Tran stared at him, how Vanessa hugged him and how his dog seemed to be at ease with them, loving the doctor from the looks of it and adoring the attention Vanessa gave him.

He forces himself to stop thinking about this, because for all he knows, this is the last time he would see either of them. He doesn’t even know if his favorite veterinarian will be helping him when he gets back in a few weeks for Kal’s shots. ‘Forget about it, Henry,’ he tells himself sternly. ‘You’re not a teenager anymore, with a crush on someone he can’t date anyway.’

Taglist: @thelastsock​ // @flhorah​ // @sausagefest1996​ // @laufeysodinson​ // @xxxkatxo​ // @memoriesat30​ // @henrythickcavill​ // @crimsonrae​ // @henryobsessed // @madbaddic7ed​ // @summersong69​ // @lyrafraiser​ // @peakygroupie​ // @coldmuffinbanditshoe​ // @mary-ann84​ // @thereisa8ella​ //@crazyandanonymous4u // @xuxszx​

Not to be that person but if someone doesn't want to date anyone, for whatever reason, they don't have to, you're not discriminating against anyone because they happen to not be part of your dating pool as far as you respect their rights and identities

Bluuuuuuuuh okay so this may or may not be a longass post depending on how coherently I can translate the concept in my brain into English words, so apologies in advance.

Okay, so if a dude comes up to me and asks me out, I can say 'no thank you'. That's a thing I am 100% within my rights to do. It doesn't matter if I'm attracted to him or if I'm not attracted to him or if I think he smells bad and it turns me off, it's not important. I am allowed to say no to the king of France, I can say no to Joe Shmoe at the liquor store.

A step further is HOW I say no. Do I say, "no thank-you", or do I say, "ew, no, your face is gross"? One of these answers is polite and concise; the other, no matter how true to me, is something they're going to have to live with. 

For the rest of their life, every romantic interest they pursue, they're going think of that person who told them they were too ugly, and they're going to be ashamed or insecure or embarrassed. Maybe they'll shrug it off eventually, but maybe they won't. Either way, is that the impression of yourself you want to leave on people?

Now the fun question: what if he's a trans guy?

Once again, you can say no. For any reason at all, you can say no. Maybe you aren't attracted to him, maybe he has bad breath, maybe you're new to the concept of gender identity and your fear of somehow fucking up and hurting him is getting in the way right now. For any of these reasons you can say no! But you DON'T GET TO MAKE IT THEIR PROBLEM. 

Saying no-thanks to a trans woman because you aren't attracted to her? Totally fine. 

Telling her "NO, I DON'T LIKE DICK"- that's real sweet. That's something she has to walk away with, now- every time she meets someone she likes and wants to get to know, that person's first thought is going to be about her genitals. She'll never be good enough for anyone because all anyone cares about is her junk.

You're not interested in a trans person? Cool, you don't have to be.

You're not interested in a trans person because you haven't made peace with the reality of trans identities? Obviously not great, but sure, take the time to figure things out.

You've never been interested in someone you knew to be trans, and announce "I NEVER WANT TO DATE A TRANS PERSON"? That's a different statement. That's saying, "There is one defining characteristic that makes all trans people the same, and it's something I find repulsive!" And- Surprise!- THAT is Transphobic. Which is, at it's barest bones- say it with me now- MAKING IT SOMEONE ELSE'S PROBLEM.

And imagine, if you will, dating a lady for a few weeks. She's clever, funny, beautiful, kind- you're head over heels for her, until the very first time you have sex, and you see her vagina. And you think to yourself, "that's an ugly vagina", and break up with her.

If that was a deal breaker for you? Who gives a shit. Some would say it's a bit shallow, but so.long as things break off amicably, life will move on without anybody getting hurt.

Same situation, but you tell her "I can't be with someone who has an ugly vagina!"... Jesus fucking Christ, my guy. What the Fuck. Why the fuck would you tell her that? What on earth made you think your personal aesthetic preferences were more important than her sense of self worth? You entitled jackass. Who died and made you Empirical Minister Of Visually Pleasing Hoo-Has? Why would you SAY that to someone??

Same situation, but she's trans. "This isn't working out for me"? Sure. "I don't know anything about this subject, I don't want to move forwards until I know more"? Hard, but not cruel. "Bye honey, shlongs gross me out"??? WHAT KIND DICKBAG ARE YOU????

And that's kind of what gets me on "Can I say I'm not attracted to genderfluid people?". Because, like... I'd never tell a lesbian, "oh, you aren't attracted to men? Have you met every man on the planet? Sure, sweetie" because, like... Cis men are men all the time. You're attracted to women, whatever. Cool.

But someone who DOES experience attraction to men tells me, "Oh, I'd never DATE one!"- Then I'm sketched out. Because, like.... Why? What do you think all men have in common? You didn't say you weren't attracted to them, just that you'd never date one.

"Oh, I could NEVER date a trans man!"... Why...? The only thing I can conclude is that you're boiling down everything they are to a set of genitals, at which point, fuck, they're probably happier without you.

And by the way, how often do you hear, "UGH, I could NEVER date a CIS woman"? Think about that one for a sec. How does that one feel to a cis lady? Probably pretty shitty. Imagine hearing that from someone you have a crush on. Do you feel outraged? Embarrassed? Maybe you feel disgusting, like someone you admire is repulsed by your body.

Fucking *Ouch,* huh?

SO. Easy rules for not being a dick:

1. If you want to turn someone down, you can, no matter what your reasons are. BUT YOU DO BOT HAVE TO SHARE THOSE REASONS.

2. Their hang-ups are not your responsibility, but YOURS AREN'T THEIRS, EITHER. DO NOT tell someone you can't date them because they look like your mom, just say no and move on! DO NOT tell someone you don't want to have sex because you think their feet are gross, just say no! DO NOT bring up someone's voice or hair or eyes or genitalia, JUST SAY NO! TELLING SOMEONE YOU LIKE THEM IS HARD. BE POLITE, MOTHER FUCKERS.

3. Maybe you're already dating someone you like, and you discover new information that you weren't expecting. Maybe they're trans, maybe they had a hysterectomy, maybe they have a tattoo or a kid or a criminal record, maybe they wear a wig or have a disability or have a rubber duck fetish. Whatever it is, it's an emotional topic and you need space to process. Good! Think things out! If that ends it for you, okay, but none of these things makes someone a bad person or an ugly person or unworthy of love! Don't make them feel that way. Again, your hangups are on you, not them.

4. The next time you go to say something like, "I'd never date a trans guy", or, "I'd never date a black girl", or, "I'd never date a disabled person"- Stop, and think about why you feel that way. What is it about this group of people that you don't like? Is it a real reason, or a stereotype? Is it an aesthetic reason, and if so, don't try to dismiss is as "that's just how I feel". There's a reason. Keep digging for that reason, and once you find it, figure out if it's a belief you want to hold onto. Always ask yourself "why?". Never let yourself fall into the belief that any group is worthy of wholesale dismissal.

5. Breathe. Stay calm. You're not a bad person. Society has programmed us with a lot of biases- it's not your fault you have them, but it isn't a free pass to remain ignorant and hurt others. Be gentle with yourself, but be willing to reflect on your feelings and behaviors and rein in the ones that are harmful. No matter your feelings, at least be kind. We're all trying our best, and we all just want to be loved. Keep that in mind.

Anyhow, that's just my two cents. I hope this wasn't too winding or rambly, I'm still working out my thoughts on the matter myself. Being genderfluid doesn't make me an expert on trans issues, and I certainly don't have the experience to speak further.

If there are any corrections to be made, please let me know. Always learning!

Please take care.

My Poem for Pride Month

My Name is Rage

When I was born,

The world had already made plans.

Ideas, hopes, dreams,

None of which were my own.

My progenitors churned and churned the milky oceans of their minds (1),

The poison of disappointment and delusion choking their dream-clouds like the dragons’ breath of modern industry.

They had no Eshwar to swallow down their sadness (2),

And I was too young to help.

I was only a baby, after all.

A helpless little larva with no wings to bedazzle them.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I was young, I took their hopes and dreams and ideas and coiled them around my mind.

I was too young to have ideas of my own.

But I didn’t mind or care. It wasn’t my job to.

So I let those creations marinate,

Swallowed by the spice and savory and sweet of my childhood.

And I hoped that I hadn’t dreamed in vain,

Even though I had.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As an adult now,

I realize my faults, and my hopes.

My fault lay in not allowing myself to want.

My hopes are that I can be happy.

But I’m not allowed either of them.

Because I decided I wouldn’t let expectation rule my feelings.

And my family couldn’t understand that.

And so they chained my mouth shut, cut away the ribbons of my poetry and cried Culture! Tradition! Heritage! without letting me speak.

Because I cannot anger, I cried.

I cried for a love,

The love that broke my heart three sep-ar-ate times.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And I wailed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And I screamed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In u n e n d i n g s i l e n c e . . .

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I screamed for Mother Marsha and her beauteous riots (3).

I screamed for Sappho and her new-age romances.

I screamed for Evan, that wonderful twink-ling star from my high school’s choral group (4).

I screamed for the Holy-est of Hijras (5), who don their hate-worn and war-torn faces, smiling still.

I screamed for my siblings of color, their skins and hearts burning because others can’t handle the flame of their love.

I screamed for myself. Because every time I tried to tell myself I’m right, someone else screamed that I was wrong. Because I wanted someone to love, and the world denies me that every day.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What right have they, to tell me I’m wrong? Who are they to tell me who I am?

Why do they get to decide my love for me?

But I’m not allowed my rage. I’m not allowed to scream.

The world expects a brown mouth to keep quiet.

My brown country expects a woman’s mouth to keep quiet.

What can I say? The white-hot invasion by the Isles (6) probably made it that way.

But I have no choice.

Keeping quiet isn’t in my nature.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So I’ll scream.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not into the open air, like I want to.

Not in the shower, which made me feel freed every time I had a panic attack in the bathroom.

Not in my parents’ house, where they’d just get mad.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’ll scream into a pillow and into the void.

Because that’s all I can do. That’s all I can do.

And you do what you can. Because that’s what you deserve.

So I’ll keep screaming.

Screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming…!!!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I never introduced myself, did I? Sorry about that, friend.

Hello. I am lonely. And sad. And hurt. And bent out of shape. And confused.

I am an adult.

I am irritated.

I am angry at the world that won’t stop hurting itself and its weakest.

I am infuriated at the people at the top who love squishing the rest of us under their heel.

(Hah. A Bug’s Life was not that accurate a revolutionary tale, to be honest.)

I am so so hurt that my people, of all kinds, are not permitted to love.

Hello, I am me.

And my name is Rage.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This poem is intended to be an explanation of my feelings and thoughts as an LGBTQ person of color in the US, trying to navigate the expectations of my family and community while still making my own way and learning about who I am. I have made a lot of personal references in the poem, and I will explain them now.

The “milky oceans” I mentioned refer to the Hindu belief that the sustainer of the universe (the god Vishnu) lives with his wife Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth) in an ocean of milk beyond our human world.

Eshwar swallowing the sadness of my parents is a reference to the Hindu god Eshwar (also known as Shiva), who swallowed the poison that killed many gods and demons when the two factions were trying to churn the ocean to retrieve the elixir of immortality.

Mother Marsha is actually Marsha P. Johnson, the black trans woman who worked with other trans women of color in the Stonewall Riots in New York to spark the movement for LGBTQ+ rights in the US.

Evan was a classmate from high school, who was in the choral ensemble with me, and he was my very first introduction to the LGBT community in high school because I’d never actually met an openly gay person before.

The Hijras are the trans women of India, who have really struggled to make their way in modern India, despite the transphobia and homophobia, and they’ve come a long way from their suffering.

The Isles refers to the British Isles and the occupation of India by the British Empire until 1947.

LOVE DOING - The Analysis

Intro:

I try to never analyse my work while still working on it, because I believe that the painting must be born from an image in your head, or a feeling, and not from a concrete idea. That is the foundation of abstractionism. Then when you’re finished and you are kind of star-gazing your own work, you try to find what made you create all that, what made you use that colour or this shape. I did that and I saw that all the dots were connected in the same theme: Love.  

Love as a broad concept and my experience with that. I think love is a very liquid sentiment, like water, it takes the shape of its every container you put it, but pretty much it’s still love. That same impulse is there. It can be like water also in the way it reflects the sun light, how it changes colours and distorts shapes. Love can be illusory; it can be lysergic but it can also be the answer to many simple questions in life. In its gas form it can be contagious and performative as it inhabits imagination, but it can also become solid when under pressure, just like water becomes ice under high pressures. In difficult situations, the love you feel for that person may be the only thing that keeps you going. I experienced that, and I think many people did too with so many people getting ill and dying during the Covid pandemic.

Like water it nurtures, like water it drowns. Love can be represented as a substance, like it just did, but also it persists as an action, an abstract action at so, an actual verb. In abstractionism, it’s to be said that colour is verb while shape is noun (I won’t remember to said that), for that reason I focused in this collection mainly in two colours in their variations, red and blue. Without the political branding aesthetic, red is seen in psychoanalysis as a active colour, the colour of human blood. Blue could be described as a “calmer” colour, but not so lacking in action. As Rebecca Solnit said, I quote:

“Water is colourless, shallow water appears to be the colour of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance.”

So I dedicate this four paintings to the people I love and whomever loves things, but also to all the feelings that come about with love. Some of these paintings are capable of calming me and I could keep looking at them for hours, forgetting about myself. Others make me feel angsty, uncomfortable and looking at them oblige me to think about my own existence and fear my future.

I really hope you look at the paintings before you read the whole thing, and suffer through the same. Thank you.  

Love Escaping Into the Blue:

This one was the first painting I made, before I imagined it to be a collection, and it was born from the experience of decompressing love from a place of deep passion; where you are taken by this sudden and enormous sadness but also relief. I felt free, really. I read this biology paper from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, called “Light in the Deep Sea”, and it explains that there’s some uniformity of colour in the ocean animals according to how deep in the water they inhabit. Animals living in the great depths of the sea, between 6,000 and 11,000 meters deep, have commonly a very vivid red colour, but closer to the surface of the water, between 200 and 1,000 meters deep, most animals are silver and grey. That’s because in this depth the brightness of sunlight is fragmented into a blue colour, and grey reflects the blue light creating the illusion that the animal is, in fact, blue. A Blue Whale is actually grey, not blue.

[Seadevil Fish (Cryptosaras couesii), left. Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus), right.]

The painting shows a leak of red coming into blue and bluer space, which is this feeling of infatuation and selfish desire, possession, fear and jealousy that is very red in colour and has connotations of violence and anger, moving into a place that is not so deep in the water but clearer and wider as the open sea, illuminated by this navy-blue light. It’s like you can finally breathe and see that your love is still there, but it has changed. In hope by being closer to the atmosphere it is also somehow closer to the divine. I imagine some people might feel lost when love escapes into the blue, and I get this sensation too, but it’s about loving freely, learning how not to feel love so deeply into ourselves, but widely like the ocean.

Love Growing in the Pit of the Stomach: 

When I looked at this painting in particular after it was done, I had this sensation of angst that was difficult for me to name. It’s about desire, it’s about this feeling growing inside of you that you know it will be something more than what you want, but what you need. I’ve become obsessed with the image of holes, looking like they are piercing the canvas; I think they show this emptiness I feel, like a window showing how hollow I am inside, but also, they give me this satisfying feeling by looking at them, like opening a wound and poking a bubble. I think this emptiness comes from the idea most trans women cannot take away from the back of their heads, which is if you do or do not have a “female genitalia”. Gender in our culture is very centred around genitals and biological sex, for centuries being a woman has been defined by the person who’s able to carry a man’s child. There is this little fantasy of mine where women have this little hole in them that can swallow the world. The idea of it, for me, has grown into a very real desire very much like the desire for sex. Actually, very close to sex too. But the roots growing out of the hole, in green and blue, represent pain and fear, because I’m not sure if I’m okay with the idea of having to undergo a surgical procedure to fulfil this fantasy, neither I am sure if it is a fantasy or a need.

Most of my work resembles yonic shapes (resembling the form of a vulva), either in this work or in former ones, and it’s never intentional, it sort of just slips from my subconscious. I believe that the vulva, as well as the womb, are under-shadowed symbols of power. Phallic shapes are very common in art and what-not, they are usually associated with offense and aggression. Like when school boys draw a dick on the toilet stalls as if marking their territory. The vulva, however, is never quite portrayed like that.

I read about this Japanese visual artist, Megumi Igarashi, who made several pieces of art shaped after her own vagina, including a yellow vagina-boat (which I absolutely loved) and she got arrested and fined for “obscenity”. I think that for her subversive art-form she should be considered a national hero. Many man-made constructions are phallic images, look at the Washington Obelisk, or the Eiffel Tower, but in nature we most commonly find yonic shapes, like the Grand Canyon.

There is a profound violence in desiring this, feeling as if a part of your own anatomy is lacking, but you can’t grow it naturally, you can’t do it in a god-intended way. The bright red colour represents violence and sex, and in this case both. It’s way more complicated than the concept of having kids and being a mom, it’s a lot more than to be seen as sexual beings, and sexuality, and to feel loved; it’s about symbols of power and somehow getting that denied. It’s about learning how to love this new body, a body that is foreign, infertile, obscene and unconventional. That love is hard to achieve and it is violent because women, and especially trans women, have been taught to hate their bodies.  

Love Falls In The Bathroom:

This one took the longest to finish and left me with the most unsure brush-strokes, much perhaps because it isn’t based off on an idea but on a memory, on dream. In three more years I’ll be the same age my mother had and she had me, 29 years old. Somehow it feels like a looming date. Having kids and getting pregnant, specifically, have been sporadic subjects of therapy sessions – the antithesis is always the same: you are not lesser of a woman for not being able to get pregnant, you can still be a mom through other means, you are not even sure if you want kids or marriage, you can always adopt – Those answers feel reasonable, but none of them ever could appease the deep feeling of something missing in me, like something is perpetually wrong with me. Then I understood that in this painting, I was trying to evoke these feelings. Love and grief.

[My mother, pregnant with me, in the 90s.] 

My friends tell me I seem to be older than I actually am, and sometimes I wonder if that’s not because I had never been a happy child. I feel like I had my childhood robbed from me. I mean, I had an okay, comfortable childhood, and a problematic teenage-hood, but I never had a girlhood. I am still grieving it. I had been assigned male at birth, I’m still grieving that too.

In July of this year, I experienced a very vivid dream, in which although short all the images and the sensations were, felt very real. I was taking a shower in my bathroom, I close off the water, wrap myself around a towel, my usual pink one, and when I’m stepping out of the shower stall I fell. I hit my right elbow against the toilet lid as I fell with my legs open in opposite directions, a sharp pain struck me under my thighs, close to my groin, and a light string of blood followed right after that. It wasn’t menstruation blood, thin and clear red, but thick and dark. It was all very quick but I knew, right then, right there, exactly everything that was happening. I was pregnant, 13 weeks, alone in the bathroom floor, surrounded by blood. I wonder how many days of my recent life, how many hours a day, I am really just sitting down alone on my bathroom’s floor surrounded by blood. I woke up and it still felt very real. I had spent the next two days very quiet, not wanting to speak to anyone. I wanted to tell someone as soon as I was back from the dream, but I couldn’t do it. I wanted to call someone, a friend, anyone, and say “I lost it. I lost my baby”. I realised then, in that post-dreamy state, that I have been silently grieving for a lot of things, things I haven’t yet allowed myself to grieve for. Things I still did not have a chance.

Love Lost In Imagination:

This one is the only one what doesn’t forecast red and blue colours, but instead in red and blue paint mixed together in a royal purple colour. It was the last one I made, and it’s the one that differs the most in shape. I like to imagine it was love in it’s gas form, vaping inside your brain like Nitrous-oxide, with white-coloured cloud shapes and yellow peacock eye-feathers. It’s about how sometimes love can only exist in imagination, how we often elaborate better scenarios in our heads, and we think “what if things were different?”. I believe to be okay to fantasize, anyway the utopia is what moves us towards a reality, but sometimes we can get lost in imagination, and in questioning the same questions over and over. “What if I hadn’t done this and done that?”; “What if I hadn’t said no?”; “What if I had stayed longer to watch that movie?”; “What if had come out as trans earlier?”; “What if I had become a professional writer?”; “What if I had born a woman?”. Is love real if it perpetrates only in thought?

I would be more than happy to quote some of Saint Augustine here, and his theological virtues, love being one of them, but I wouldn’t like to make this essay even longer and complicated.

I think to myself sometimes, when was it that I started to prefer having peace then pleasure. My head has always been very noisy, very noisy, and I wanted it to stop. Now it feels like I’m constantly too quiet about everything. That somehow, like the Little Mermaid by Hans Christensen Andersen, when transitioning into a woman I exchanged my legs (my body) for my voice, and now I can’t voice or even pinpoint what I want. I’m just so tired. So, so tired. My mental health hasn’t been great for more than one year, and the pandemic didn’t help. I’m constantly anxious around people, even the closest ones to me (especially the closest ones to me), I’ve been eating like a bird and sleeping like a cat. Still, sometimes I imagine what future I would like, and I imagine myself living somewhere with open space, trees, breeding horses just like my grandfather did, space for dogs, musical instruments and the kids. Space for being big.

The painting makes me think that sometimes I can only love myself in this imaginary place. Otherwise, it just looks slightly like a chicken’s head. You decide.    

- Original work, G.L. Alódio.

Now that I'm once again committing to being openly #trans, stepping out of the rain and under the umbrella that used to keep me dry, I wrote something up for family, friends, and followers who may have questions:

Dear family, friends, and Holograms: Thank you for your kind messages. Even though most of you already knew this about me for so long, it feels so good to be more public, to be a voice just by being me, and to have your support. It's amazing to me to see that many of you have stepped into the role of an ally and are willing to learn more.

I'm writing this up to maybe offer some clarifications on things relating to trans identity in general but mostly my personal experience with gender. It's my hope that this will give you a template to work from. I don't want anyone to be so worried about offending me that they don't know how to talk to/about me. I want this to be comfortable for all of us. This is only my experience of gender at this time, so please remember that if you meet another trans/nb person, they will likely have a completely different experience than me.

Let's start with queer, which is an umbrella term for anyone who is not cisgender and/or heterosexual. It can be a useful label for someone who is not interested in having to spell out both their sexual/romantic orientation and their gender identity every time (it can get complicated even for us). Some of us might not fit neatly into the letters of LGBTQIA (notice it contains Q still) so this is the reason some people are comfortable with the label. Sometimes we do fit into the acronym, but queer is inclusive and we like it. It's also what's often used in academia. Queer history, queer literature, queer art, etc. Freddie Mercury is often referred to as a queer icon for example. Now, it can be a regional thing, as in some parts of America, queer is not considered a reclaimed slur (since it means "weird") like it is for say, a lot of Californians. While some of us feel empowered to own being "different" or "weird" while fighting for representation and rights, others may object to being called "not normal". Ultimately it's always up to the individual to decide what they are comfortable calling themselves, not what other people should be allowed to call themselves. I was always the weird kid and I have so much trauma around that and as an adult I'm like... yeah, you know what, I'm queer and proud. Now onto gender which is the focus of this post: transgender is an umbrella term. Trans as a prefix means "across" or "beyond", so transgender people have experiences and identities across or beyond gender. Non-binary is a gender identity under the trans umbrella. It refers to identities that are not strictly within the binary of man or woman. Non-binary itself is another umbrella term for many different genders such as agender (without gender), pangender (all genders), genderfluid (gender that shifts and changes), and many more. Gender is complex and varied across cultures and societies, so that's why there are so many different ways to describe it. Some may feel that not just one word works for their experience, so they may choose multiple labels or maybe even none at all. AFAB (assigned female at birth) and AMAB (assigned male at birth) is a way to describe what our assigned sex is without using "biological" or "born a (sex/gender)" as this is often used to invalidate trans experience --however, a lot of trans people who have transitioned may find it helpful to describe their experience as "born (and raised as) a girl" (again, up to the individual). We are all assigned sexes at birth but this obviously has no bearing on our gender identity or expression.

When I was a teen, "transsexual" was commonly used to describe a transgender person who transitioned, but this has fallen mostly out of use by now--But remember that being trans is not just about medically transitioning to another sex. There are many trans/nb people who do not transition, or who may make changes here and there to make their bodies more comfortable and fit their identity without necessarily transitioning. Whether or not this is a transition is going to be up to the individual. The social transition of coming out as trans/nb can be just as drastic as anything medical. (For those wondering why it even matters when celebrities come out as trans/nb if they aren't going to "change their bodies"--Visibility and authenticity. Just like I'm doing.)

Now on to me: I cannot accurately or concisely describe my lived experience of gender since it's informed every other experience of my life, but I will try. I'm NB and I definitely don't feel like a woman, but this doesn't necessarily mean I feel like a man either. "Boy" and "girl" do feel more relatable and accessible for some reason. I feel simultaneously and alternatingly like either, both, neither, all, any, and also just me.

Like I said, I can't really describe it. But for whatever reason, "boy", especially "feminine boy" has always felt more like my default energy. Don't ask me why, it is what it is. When I put on makeup, I never feel like a girl doing it even if I'm consciously exploring an archetype like "flapper girl" for example. It has always felt like princess drag to me. People were clocking me on this even when I tried to be a normal "girl". I often wonder if this is why I always felt so ugly before and now when I fully embody my gender as it is, I suddenly feel beautiful and comfortable. I feel closest to feminine or fluid archetypes, it's just how I express myself. This would not change if I were AMAB, I'd be just as feminine. I'd still be the same me.

Pronouns, for me: I can't say that my feelings on this will stay the same forever, but for now, I'm okay with any and all pronouns. I have some longtime followers who refer to me as he/him and that's amazing and so affirming!! *chef's kiss* But it's totally okay to use she/her with me too. Because I am aligned with feminine archetypes, I can't resist using she/her for myself often especially if I'm all dressed up in kawaii drag. They/them is also acceptable. This also goes for it being okay to refer to me as either a girl or a boy (or gendered family relation terms. But like, I'm Mommy to my cats, not Daddy xD)--Even though I'm not strictly one or the other, I feel all genders. While I agree with the common AFAB feeling of it being frustrating that she/her/girl/woman is always going to be considered my default by most people, and that this is/was a source of a lot of my gender dysphoria, I promise you won't offend me by referring to me as such. Often when speaking out my experience of being perceived as a woman, I might refer to myself as such because I'm talking about the way I am interacted with. (ie, it's okay to DM me like "HEY GIRL:･ﾟ✧ but the only way you’ll actually offend me is to insist I am “just a girl”/invalidate my lived experience/try to dictate my identity and labels)

It's still hard for me to share this very vulnerable part of my identity, even after having talked about it for 10 years online and with friends already. I'm probably going to keep having waves of anxiety over this as I shift into living daily life from the truest expression of myself. It really is enough for now to have you recognizing and acknowledging this very special big part of who I am and how I live. To be able to say it now everywhere and not just on my blog feels like a new universe being born. In closing, here are examples if that was too much information to ingest and understand all at once and you're not sure what words to use when referring to me: "This is my [family member], she's queer." "This is my friend New's page, he's non-binary." "This is my coworker's art, she's genderfluid." "This is a blogger I follow, they're pangender." "New is a trans model, this is his latest work." These labels and pronouns are all fine! :> I love you all. Thank you for letting me shine.

fun fact fucko no one cares that he’s trans, gnc, or autistic. all they care about is that he said someone wasn’t bisexual all because they hate them. thats fucked up no matter who you are. being austistic isn’t an excuse to be an utter dick hole.

alrighty folks strap in because we are in for a long one today

to start off i will begin by saying that i care about the identities of people i like and call friends i care enough to listen and learn from them because they have different perspectives on issues that i as a person who is none of the things that this person is will ever understand

it is important to listen to people and learn from them not just shine a light out of your ass for someone out of a weird place of blind worship thats honestly so cringey but that isnt what this is about this about you and likely others harassing ad sending death threats my friend and comrade betel bitches

i will now be going under a readmore to spare the dashboard

so lets recap what exactly is he being harassed for

as you all are no doubt aware there is a blog called nether receipts where a certain user we shall not name catalogs instances where members of the beetlejuice fandom are harassed correction its a blog where this person catalogs instances where flaws in their character as well as the characters of the people around her are highlighted and critiqued with the occaisional off color remark and threat which i obviously do not approve of who would

anyway following reading some ill-informed and not-so-well-phrased comments from a certain narcissistic user about their sexuality my friend had this to say

this was the post that got them put on this receipts blog which really exists as a source of people for a certain cluster of the beetlebabe fandom to harass and try to drag or cancel 

this is the post that has made people call him biphobic and here is why thats wrong and stupid

you said in your ask that he only is saying that this icky person is not bisexual because there is malice between them and while yes its true that there is malice orion never once said that this person wasnt bisexual

i took the liberty of sifting through the harassment asks he received yesterday because you all love receipts so much i took the liberty of grabbing a few and adding some highlights so you dont miss the important bits

orion never once said this person isnt bisexual he stated that equating doing femme on femme  pornography to bisexuality is a biphobic statement and is in fact a problematic thing to say

there may be crossover between bisexual people and people who do femme on femme but they are far from the same thing doing pornography is a choice you actively make and you do it for compensation however being bisexual is simply part of who you are it is something you dont choose 

although this person would perhaps disagree

and before you come for me this person posted these for the world to see and obviously i have as many receipts as my drive can carry furthermore how does this argument make sense why would you care so much about heterophobia if youre not heterosexual why are you so pressed oh wait is it perhaps

because this person is using the split attraction model for woke points like this screams that this person sees women as sex objects or perhaps this person is comphet and is denying themselves because heteronormativity is so deeply ingrained in their being that they wish to cling to heterosexuality to keep up their squeaky clean white feminist woman persona or maybe theyre just not well informed on lgbt+ issues

editors note the editor is an ace person who considers using the split attraction model is situations like this isnt exactly helpful like i cant stop you from doing it but you shouldnt have to say im a bisexual heteromantic person you can just be a  bisexual woman and keep dating men you dating men doesnt erase your bisexuality saying that you would have sex with a woman but not romantically be involved with them makes the editor think woman = sex object and as a feminist the editor has to say thats fucked up

i will reiterate implying that doing pronography of any kind is equitable to a human sexualty is harmful to bisexual people and if youre like uhhh im bi and i think its okay guess what you do not speak for every single bi person so you should try harder to be compassionate for other peoples level of comfort

in any case statements like these are hurtful to bi people equating voluntary sex work to a sexuality isnt okay and its something that person should maybe address and consider apologizing for but since this person only listens to people in their inner circle and they dont even really listen to them its unlikely that this person will ever make amends for past biphobic tendencies because as everyone has been so quick to point out being bi doesnt excuse biphobia or homophobia or anything of the sort editors note heterophobia is not a legitimate issue im sorry if you feel oppressed for your straightness but really thats a you issue 

here is one more screenshot where my friend basically covers what i have just said as well as reminding the world that the owner of nether receipts is a narcissist 

being a bisexual person does not excuse you from saying biphobic things and there is literally no identifier you can use for yourself that exempts you from criticism for your actions and it doesnt mean that people cant demand that you address the wrongs youve done or said

you dont have to listen you dont have to do anything but dont be surprised if you say something shitty to a group of people and they get mad at you

also all that being said what orion said was not biphobic if anything he is raephobic but lets be honest who isnt ok there thats my one funny haha for you

we have every right to criticize someone who creates simulated cp and shares it with minors in 18+ servers or someone who equated bisexuality to voluntary sex work or someone who accuses people who disagree with them of being fascists or nazis or someone who goes out of their way to repost and edit art in a mocking manner or someone who actively claims to own a fandom like these are all critique worthy behaviors that all come from the same person who never explains their actions never holds themselves accountable for the shit they cause like we as people who share the same space as this person have every write to call bull roar when we see it

it is no secret that i dislike his person and it is also no secret that i will not hesitate to the the opportunity to drag them for being a shitty person whenever the opportunity arises and since their most recent beef with me was about how i was a bad friend i guess i figured this would be a good time to come forward for one of my friends who received dozens of harassment messages and several death threats over his commentary on the actions of this one vile individual

and i am addressing them now if they ever end up reading this or when it is inevitably sent to this person 

if youve got a problem with the way he and i or other antis critique you maybe come out from behind your wall of dipshit cronies and talk to us your damn self i am very sick of having to deal with nasti or morgan or that one minor or suz or that person that runs the rp blog or any of the others in your little hoard im tired of them trying to be slick like we see you we see all of you

all of your simulated cp aside youve said some really shitty things that you could easily amend since youve likely learned more about what it means to be lgbt+ since it is now a community you see yourself being a part of 

part of being human is learning from your past and making a better version of yourself for tomorrow and although i think you are a really awful person i dont think youre above self betterment and self reflection and self awareness 

also you dont seem to care at all when threats are being tossed around by your buddies but no matter how much me or orion or any of the others dislike what you do no person in their right mind would be okay with sending death threats and you shouldnt either you should at the very least extend that courtesy 

anyway

fuck you asker youre full of trash garbage and i hope you have a not so good day like i hope it rains or something invalidate my friends identity and ill yell at clouds

The Flood and its Aftermath

Fandom: Supernatural Pairings: N/A Word Count: 1861 Summary: Sam had always thought that coming out would be the hardest thing. Note: I set out to write what was meant to NOT be a coming-out fic. Then it turned into a coming-out fic. Turns out writing what you would have wanted coming out to feel like is really therapeutic? Who would have guessed.Anyway, Sam Winchester is a non-binary lesbian in my heart.

Read it on AO3.

Sam had always thought that coming out would be the hardest thing.

The silver lining being that, with the lives they lived, there was really only one person she needed to come out to.

Dean.

Dean Winchester, the manly man who thought he was making fun of Sam by calling her a girl. The kind of guy who would refuse a good drink if it came in a pink bottle.

But Sam wasn't stupid and they knew better. Dean wasn't as much of an asshole as he made himself out to be, not really. That kind of bullshit was just the best way that Dean had found to protect himself.

Still. The hypermasculine posturing hadn't exactly been reassuring to Sam considering that he needed to tell his brother he was trans.

He'd thought that coming out would be the hardest, because it was the first step, the one that was supposed to open the floodgates.

In the end, it had been relatively easy. The anticipation had been awful, a crawling feeling under his skin where guilt and fear mingled.

People could argue all they wanted that lying by omission wasn't technically lying but it sure felt the same way to Sam. She wasn't sure what telling Dean would change, which was perhaps what made it so scary. She knew, however, that she couldn't physically keep it a secret anymore, that it was making her sick inside.

Besides, secrets had nearly ruined their relationship many times over.

She was sick of that too.

So there came a day, in the bunker, in front of a dinner Dean had lovingly prepared (because he cooked now, more than spaghetti-Os and PB&J sandwiches) where Sam told their brother that they were trans.

Dean's first reaction was confusion. His second was awkward laughter. Which was followed by more confusion. Sam let him work through it, knowing Dean needed to get past his surprise before they could really start talking.

Sure enough, Dean frowned deeply before asking : “When you say you're transgender, you mean you feel like a woman?”

“No. Well, not exactly. It's more like... Like there's a spectrum between being a man and being a woman and I'm somewhere on that spectrum. It moves around a lot. Most often these days I feel closer to womanhood, I guess, but it's never really one or the other so it's hard to tell.”

“So... what, you don't feel like a guy, but you're not a woman either?”

“Yeah. Something like that. Non-binary is the term. I guess technically I'm genderfluid, but I like non-binary.”

“How long have you...?”

Sam shrugged. “Depends on what you mean. I only put a word to it maybe... a year ago? Two years? But looking back... I think I might have felt this way for a long time. Especially in college. I was just... curious. About gender, queerness. I thought I was a straight guy, though, and it felt... I don't know. Voyeuristic? So I didn't really explore it. And there were times, then and later, when something didn't feel right, but I just blamed that on everyrhing else that was wrong with me.”

“You know that's not true, right?”

“What?”

“That there's something wrong with you. There's not.”

“Dean-”

“I mean it. This isn't wrong. And all the rest of it...” The demon blood. His psychic powers. The memories of a body without a soul and of a soul being tortured. “It's all stuff that was done to you. It's not who you are.”

Sam wasn't sure he wholly agreed with his brother. He wasn't convinced you could separate the essence of a soul from all that had shaped it throughout the years. That particular line of thinking had backfired every time he had tried it. But this wasn't the time to have that conversation.

“I know it's not wrong,” Sam said, only addressing one part of Dean's argument. “That's why I'm telling you. Being non-binary... It feels right. It feels like me.”

“Okay,” Dean replied. Then, with slightly more assurance: “Okay. So... what does it change? Do I call you like... my sister? Or... my sibling, I guess?”

Sam smiled. The apprehension they'd been feeling for almost an entire days was quickly dissolving, leaving behind relief and a fierce kind of love.

“Yeah. I'd like that. Either of them. I mean... It's fine if you don't, I get that it's-”

“Dude.” Dean winced right after interrupting them. “Not-dude. Whatever. I'm probably gonna mess up. A lot. Like I just did. But you've got to let me try. You told me this because it's important to you, right? So you need to let me know how I can make you more comfortable. Not just what's okay or what's easier but what you actually prefer. Okay?”

Sam held up her hands. “Yeah. Okay. Sorry, it's just... It's complicated. I'm not actually planning on transitioning medically. Can't really afford to, not with the risk of someone looking into one of our fake IDs. And before you suggest black market hormones – I know that look in your eyes, don't deny it – I just don't want to. This is the body I've got. It took me years to stop feeling like there was something wrong with it, but I'm finally getting there. I don't wanna change it. But that means... I'm always gonna look pretty masculine, okay? Even if that's not how I feel, I get that that's what other people see. And that's... okay. It's how it is. I don't want to come out to everyone I meet, there's no point and it's just none of their business. So sticking to masuline language is better. It's not just easier, although that's part of it. It's more comfortable than always being put on the spot.

“Okay. That... It sucks that you even have to think like that, but I get it.”

Sam shot her brother a grateful look. She doubted whether he really did get it, whether he understood how painful and frustrating it had been to come to these conclusions after finally finding ways to explore her gender identity. But all that mattered was that he was trying.

“What about when it's just us then?”

“You could... switch? Pronouns, I mean. Sometimes he, sometimes she. Singular they. Same with gendered words, when there's no neutral way to say something.

Dean stayed silent for a few seconds. He nervously ran a hand through his hair, not looking at Sam when he finally spoke. “Tell me if I say something fucked up, okay? I know I'm not always the most... sensitive, when it comes to those things.”

Sam nodded in what he hoped was a reassuring manner.

“From what you said about-” He made a vague hand gesture. “- fluid genders, I get that it makes sense to switch pronouns. But you also said you felt more feminine, right? And I... I'm so used to seeing you as my brother and as a guy, so...”

Dean paused, as if waiting for Sam to tell him off for what he'd just said. But they wouldn't do that, because they knew it was true and that Dean wasn't saying this to prove a point about who Sam really was.

“I just think that if you let me call you he, I won't actually be able to switch to thinking of you as anything else.”

A bittersweet emotion bloomed under Sam's tongue, making him choke and his eyes water. Sam had argued with himself, again and again, and he'd figured it was easier to give his brother an out. It would hurt less like this, he'd thought, less than if he'd asked for more and had had to face his brother's failures full-on.

But Dean was flat-out refusing to take the easy way out.

Sam knew his expression probably looked ridiculous, but he smiled. Wide and bright, and with his eyes still prickling.

“She and they work, then. Thank you.”

Dean looked embarrassed. “Sure.”

He wasn't looking at her, but Sam didn't mind. She was happy. She basked in the silence between them, silence that was no longer heavy with secrets.

“Hey, Sam?”

“Mmh?”

“Is it still funny if I call you Samantha?”

Sam laughed, despite themself. Dean's grin was shy in return.

“It was never funny, jerk.”

“Bitch.”

So that, it turned out, had been the easy part.

The hard stuff came after.

The hard stuff was finding a way to get Dean to stop walking on eggshells around her everytime he had to correct himself on pronouns. The hard stuff was learning to correct Dan herself, forcing herself to stop letting it slide despite every part of her that screamed it wasn't a big deal and that it was safer to say nothing. The hard stuff was learning to know herself and then have that knowledge be stripped away by the gaze of strangers every time she and Dean went out in public.

Sam had learned to love his body out of necessity. Because they knew how easy it was to lose control of it, and because most days it was the only thing they could rely on. Years of living amongst demons and angels had taught them that the physical form was only a vessel. And so it hurt when other people couldn't understand that.

There was another thing that the hunter's life had taught Sam. Pain was easier to deal with when you were used to it. But it didn't take long to lose that habit.

And so the sweetest moments, the euphoria of knowing and of feeling known, they made the other times even more difficult. They made the casual assumptions and the well-meaning but off-track comments feel like a constant weight over their shoulders.

The hardest thing, in all of this, was that Sam couldn't get angry. He couldn't fault people for not instinctively realizing what had taken them 30 years to figure out. He couldn't complain about people using the wrong pronouns, not when he used them himself. He couldn't begrudge people for not seeing him for who he was, not when he didn't know how to make that person intelligible in any sort of language.

And so Sam couldn't get angry. They got tired instead, the kind of fatigue that settled into their bones like it had in the first few months of that year when Dean had been in Purgatory and Sam had been driving because he didn't know what else they could do.

On those days, Sam kept going because she knew there was no better option. And she knew, in her heart, that this was only a matter of having lost the habit. She knew that it only hurt so bad because the ache wasn't constant anymore, because there were moments (with herself, then with Dean, then with Castiel and Jack and Jody too) where she could be herself without it being a question, where she existed not only in translation but in the glory of her own tongue, and when she didn't have to try.

The wise man asks the fool:

Why do you hurt yourself so?

Because it feels so good when the pain stops.

52 Project #6: Birds

(I am not 100% positive that this is a story per se, but it’s as much of a story as China Mieville’s “The New Death” and other such “new weird” stories, so... here you go.)

***

One day all the men in the world woke up to find that they had been turned into birds.

It began in New Zealand, where a day is first born on the planet Earth. By the time that women were waking and going into hysterics because the men and older boys in their lives had all turned into birds, the men of Central Asia, India, and the middle of Russia had already gone to bed. It was late enough in Europe that many men were getting ready for bed; a large number of them missed the warnings. Not that the warnings helped; men who tried to stay awake all night stayed human, but sooner or later, they all had to sleep.

In Western Europe and the Americas, there was an idea that maybe if someone would keep waking a man up, he wouldn’t turn into a bird, so many women kept watch by their husbands’ bedsides. It didn’t help. No one was able to see the transformation; they’d blink and a human lying in bed would suddenly be a bird. Even with high speed cameras, it proved impossible to catch the transformation. One frame, human man; next frame, bird. And they were many different kinds of birds – pigeons and roosters and peacocks, ostriches and starlings and falcons, flamingos and penguins and seagulls. Practically every kind of bird you can imagine, including some extinct birds – at least two men became dodos and one became a passenger pigeon.

Fortunately, it turned out that the birds could still talk, and sounded exactly like the men they used to be. This was helpful when linking birds to their former identities, because of course, none of them matched the pictures on their ID cards. It took a little bit longer to convince everyone, closer to a week, but eventually it was proven that the birds all retained every aspect of their former intelligence and personality.

Birds argued that this meant nothing should change significantly; birds could still go to work at their old jobs. This was true of birds who worked in banks and in IT and in management, for the most part, but any jobs that required physical strength, dexterity, or simply having a human-sized body? Birds couldn’t do those jobs. So for a while there was a severe shortage of plumbers, electricians, construction workers, garbage collectors, and bus drivers. Some New York city pigeons argued that if people with no legs could drive cars, surely adaptive equipment could be built to let pigeons drive the buses, but it was easier to get women to do the job than to build such equipment. Birds either lost their jobs entirely in those kinds of industries, or were kept on the payroll to teach women how to do what they had been doing when they were men.

For a while it was thought that there were occasional anomalies – men who didn’t turn into birds, women who did – and this gave people some idea that the situation could be reversed, but this proved to be a false hope. To a man, everyone who didn’t turn into a bird was not in fact a man; anyone with a penis who didn’t turn into a bird was either a trans woman or a nonbinary person. Likewise, trans men did turn into birds – male ones. All the birds were physiologically male even if they had seemed to be women when they were human. This was a stressful situation to be sure, since all the trans women had just been forcibly outed, but on the other hand, it was fairly good evidence for their contention that yes, they really were women, that whatever force had transformed the men hadn’t touched them.

After an initial difficult adjustment period, birds who’d been men were soon flying, or in the case of penguins, swimming. Some domestic geese and roosters, too heavy to fly, hit the gym to train their wings and lose weight. Personal trainers who were now birds devised regimens that other birds could follow, to strengthen their wings, and personal trainers who were still women helped birds to do the regimens, since there weren’t yet gym machines designed for birds. Birds discovered, to general happiness on their part, that whatever special ability the bird they had transformed into had, they now had it. So pigeons could always find their way home, and roosters could crow. Roosters in fact were very, very fond of crowing. Owls could see very well in the dark and eagles could see tremendous distances and parrots could imitate any sound they heard and pelicans could stuff their beak full of whatever they wanted to carry.

In addition, the birds they’d become seemed to have some connection to the personality they’d had as men. Men who’d thought there was no place like home became pigeons. Men who’d been models or actors who’d loved to show off their handsome bodies became peacocks. Men who were short and aggressive and always on the go became hummingbirds. The species was usually appropriate to the location as well; birds of wild, native species always turned out to be living in the area that species was native to. Temperature and environment seemed to also be a factor; the only men who turned into penguins had been living in cold places, near water. Since the entire Southern Hemisphere was having winter at the time, this might have resulted in a disproportionate number of penguins in Africa and South America, but it was more common for birds who weren’t penguins, who’d loved Polar Bear Challenges and skiing and cold weather sports, to regret the fact that they weren’t penguins because it was too hot for penguins where they lived when the change came, than for penguins to regret their penguin identity.

This was all quite nice and a boon for the birds, whose lives had been so very disrupted by their transformation, and many argued that in fact they had the far better deal than the women who’d gotten to keep their humanity; they had their intelligence and their speech but they could also fly. How awesome was that? Women generally responded to such comments either with amused tolerance, or with an obscene gesture that involved the use of an opposable thumb, because of course that was the main thing the birds had lost. Many bird talons were very dexterous and had opposable thumbs, but they were feet, and the birds couldn’t use them for the same tasks that had been easy for hands. Deaf birds were devastated; by losing their hands, they’d lost speech. They could type notes to their wives or mothers or other birds in their life, but it wasn’t the same. Groups of deaf people, both birds and women, gathered to discuss and work out signs that birds could make, but this was essentially telling birds that they needed to learn an entirely new language to translate their own into.

Plus, there were certain biological realities that had upended the order of things that humans had grown to expect. Now, aside from a few ostriches, cassowaries, emus and other very large birds, every human woman was bigger than most of the birds. Birds who’d been abusive men found themselves in cages, and when policewomen and policebirds came to do wellness checks and investigate why a certain bird hadn’t been seen in a long time, those cages often ended up in closets or the basement or the attic, and were never found by the police.

It wasn’t all that suspicious. Many birds, especially ones who’d lost their jobs, had decided to give up on running the human rat race, and had abandoned their human families and flown off with a flock of like-minded birds, usually of similar species. Why not? Birds could forage for food on their own – they didn’t need to go grocery shopping. Why did they need money, or jobs? They could live like the wild birds did!

A lot of these came back, injured by predators or far too thin, because they didn’t know nearly as much about getting the available food as the never-human birds did.

Many birds died in the early days – cancer patients couldn’t get chemo that would work on birds, but they still had cancer. Men who’d needed open heart surgery became birds too small for anyone to safely operate on. Also, there weren’t nearly enough trained bird doctors. Most veterinarians knew dogs and cats; bird specialties were rare. And obviously, human doctors knew nothing about birds. So there was a massive shortage of doctors who could do anything about the problems birds suffered, and half of the few doctors there were, were birds themselves.

Birds who were vets with a specialty in birds were shadowed by women who were vets, and sometimes women who were human doctors, trying to learn all they could about care for birds. Women and birds in veterinary colleges elected to learn about birds, and the same professors who taught bird specialties to veterinarians were called in to teach med students. Most countries allocated huge amounts of money to getting bird doctors trained up and ready as soon as possible.

The balance of power shifted. In the United States, several female senators argued that birds had no business being allowed to make laws for humans. What if all they did was vote for free birdseed and the extermination of cats? The bird senators argued that the United States was now a country for both humans and birds, and needed to be represented by both. The women pointed out that there were far, far too few women for that to make sense; birds should represent birds and women should represent women, and since every senator here had been voted for by humans, and now only women were humans, all the existing seats in the Senate should be taken by women, and birds could go have their own Senate. Some human senators from states where gun rights were important showed up to the senate exercising their Second Amendment rights to carry weapons… which, of course, birds could not do. In response, a falcon insisted on reading the entire script of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds into the senatorial record. In the end it was decided that the states would vote on a constitutional amendment to set aside one seat per state for a bird and one for a woman, and in the meantime, a lot of senatorial birds got female aides or proteges to speak for them in the Senate, so anything the bird wanted to say went through the human first.

Many other countries went through similar experiences. In countries where women had been virtually or entirely shut out of power completely, birds found that their expertise in rule was not desired, thank you, and many, many birds found themselves in birdcages. Large numbers of women objected to this, arguing that if it was the will of God for women to rule, God would have already allowed this. Other women retorted that what better evidence did you need that God wanted women to run things than that God had turned all the men into birds? More egalitarian countries generally had more peaceful agreements between women and birds as to how to split up leadership roles.

The President of the United States – the new one; the old one had been tragically killed when he’d transformed into a house wren, a very small bird with a very loud mouth, and the First Lady had accidentally rolled over on him in the middle of the night – agreed to abdicate in favor of the Speaker of the House, who was a woman, if the House would pass an emergency resolution that there would be a new election as soon as possible and that birds and women should both be explicitly authorized to vote for any candidate of either type, bird or woman. Birds were suddenly very much in favor of gun control, and while many women had been in favor of total freedom to use guns, more women in general favored gun control as well, so the United States finally got sensible gun laws.

In Great Britain there was a kerfluffle – Queen Elizabeth was ancient and her heir was a bird. It was argued that birds, no longer being human, could not possibly still be part of the royal bloodline. Birds, of course, argued against this proposition, and women in Great Britain didn’t generally have guns. They did, however, have rocks. It turned out that the remarkable human ability to throw rocks was now a problem for birds. Her Majesty ended the conflict by demanding that Parliament pass an emergency amendment allowing birds to serve as King so long as there was a woman of sufficient rank and bloodline standing as his Queen.

Of course, all of this was going to be moot very soon if humanity didn’t confront the elephant in the room – sex and reproduction.

The sperm banks were going to deplete within a generation. Trans women and nonbinary people born with penises could make a great deal of money selling sperm, if they still had the equipment to make it with, because women still wanted children. Immediately after the change it had seemed that perhaps the human race would be spared after this generation, because baby boys hadn’t transformed – boys as old as 4 had remained human. However, within two weeks, the news went around the globe that a little boy had just turned into a bird, and it continued to be the case that as boys aged, they would transform into birds too. The population of humans who still had testicles that worked was very, very small, and scientists warned that there would be unacceptably high risks of massive interbreeding if every cis woman who wanted a baby was buying sperm from a trans woman. Fertility experts worked day and night on finding a way to either cause a somatic cell in vitro to undergo meiosis, or to permit two eggs to be merged into a viable zygote.

Birds had lost all sexual interest in human woman. Many birds still had lingering romantic feelings for the women they had loved, but it wasn’t sexual. Instead, they were sexually attracted to other birds of their species. The gay and bi birds were widely considered to have gotten the best of it, since while many male-male couples were broken up by the two birds being of different species, at least some got to be two birds of the same kind, and they could continue to be lovers. And some couples made it work even when they were different species of bird. Obviously, nearly every single heterosexual couple – with a few kinky exceptions – lost their sex lives completely. Birds who’d been straight men would mate with never-human birds, and while many women, and some birds, argued that this was bestiality and it was repulsive and should be against the law, most birds felt that it was necessary. What other options did they have?

Meanwhile the sex industry was turned upside down. Prostitutes and porn stars and other sex workers suddenly had no clients interested in what they had to sell. But they knew the truth – human women were horny, and desperate for sexual contact with human men, which could no longer happen. Straight-up porn of the wham bam thank you ma’am type was not appealing to most women; whether having been raised to think Good Girls Don’t, or having some biological predilection, none could say, but the truth remained that women wanted their porn in context, with men who had strong emotional bonds with the people they were ostensibly fucking. Lesbians had no trouble finding porn in the new world, but it was heterosexual women who were starved for sexual attention, and they were the new big market.

Different strategies for creating porn with men in it were used. Some dead men or former men were resurrected on film by the miracles of CGI. Women with strap-ons could be rotoscoped into handsome men. The biggest new market, however, was animation. Birds still sounded like men – their voices tended to be tinny, lacking the full timbre of a human voice, but this could be fixed by a good sound mixer – so voice acting became a very popular profession for birds. Some birds went into doing phone sex; they weren’t interested in human women anymore but they were interested in fat paychecks, and they remembered what it had been like well enough to act.

Similar transformations encompassed Hollywood and in fact the entire entertainment industry. Rock stars who’d been famed for their voices could still sing, but they couldn’t play guitar, or keyboards – some birds managed to keep up with drums – so birds who could sing ended up making albums with women who could play instruments, and the stars who’d been famous for their virtuoso skills with their instruments… either went into singing also, learned how to program synthesizers to sound like the instruments they’d once played, or took advantage of their ability to mimic noises to be their own instrument, singing like a bird instead of like a human. Or left music entirely. Theatre, for the most part, dressed up women to play the parts of men, although some more avant-garde productions kept birds in some important roles. Movies and TV became dominated by CGI and traditional or computer-assisted animation, although some television shows set in supposedly modern times just rolled with it and incorporated the bird transformation into their storylines, so they could keep their bird actors.

Things settled down after it had been a year or so since the transformation. Birds still worked in entertainment and in professions where their minds were their greatest assets – writers, professors, researchers, programmers – and in most countries, were guaranteed all the legal rights they’d had as humans, though some countries had adopted new rules regarding bird representation in their government. Women did everything else. This left a lot of unemployed birds – they couldn’t all do phone sex – and many of these either opted out of the human race, joining in flocks of like-minded birds, or they stayed in their homes all day, surfed YouTube, and played video games with controllers that had been designed for birds.

It was around that time when scientists made a tremendous breakthrough. Sperm from birds, if collected rather than deposited into another bird’s cloaca, would, after two or three days in a refrigerator, spontaneously transform into human sperm. The human race was saved. Birds still didn’t have any sexual interest in human women, but many birds were definitely interested in the ability to father human children; their bird children were ordinary never-human birds, unable to speak. Fortunately, birds who’d been romantically interested in women back when they were men were often still romantically interested in women, and women found that they were entirely capable of falling in love with birds. For sexual release, birds needed to be with birds and women usually turned either to vibrators or to women (or sometimes nonbinary people with penises, but many of those felt uncomfortable in relationships with average women, feeling that most women saw them as men even though they weren’t), but women could pet birds, and birds could preen women’s hair, and birds and women could still join finances and households and raise children together.

The killing of birds was outlawed almost everywhere, since how could you tell the difference between a never-human bird and a bird who was just tongue-tied? Some argued that the killing of female birds should still be okay, but others pointed out that birds could father never-human female birds, and that even though their children couldn’t talk and had animal intelligence, they still loved them. The poultry industry was devastated. People discovered that lizards tasted just like chicken, and soon breeding lizards for food was a new norm. Unfertilized eggs were still considered edible, so hens were still raised for eggs, but never-human roosters were often dumped in the woods because they couldn’t be killed and they weren’t useful to egg producing farms. They usually ended up feeding some creature who wasn’t a human. Sometimes those creatures were formerly human birds of prey like falcons or eagles, who knew it was illegal to feed on other birds, but knew they’d probably get away with it because no one cared about the never-human roosters except some animal rights activists. Roosters who had been human were not legally allowed near the egg farms; no one wanted them to mate with hens and perhaps produce rooster chicks who’d eventually be abandoned in the woods. It was, however, perfectly legal for a rooster to buy hens and keep them in a coop at his home, as long as he understood that he had the obligation to protect and provide for any offspring from such a union.

Eggs being breakable by rooster beaks, very few roosters actually ended up having to support chicks of their own.

Before long, things had settled down into a new normal. “People” now consisted of human women (and non-binary people, but they were a small enough part of the whole that sadly, people kept forgetting they existed) and talking birds. In addition to having a birthday, boys got to celebrate their bird-day, the anniversary of their bird transformation, and All Birds’ Day – the anniversary of the day the world changed -- was an international holiday. Girls and non-binary children – basically, all the kids who remained human – would study “humanity” between the ages of five and seven in preparation for their “confirmation”, an official recognition of their human status. While humanities, plural, had once meant the study of art, literature, history and languages, “humanity” was a class aimed at children that focused on human history (with rather more emphasis on the contributions of women than their parents remembered from their schooldays), and at teaching skills that were specific to being human, or at least, to not being birds. Throwing balls. Playing musical instruments. Endurance running. In rural areas, shooting a gun. In coastal areas, swimming. This wasn’t technically unique to humans – penguins could swim underwater, and many birds could swim on the surface – but it was true that most birds couldn’t do it. Sometime between a human child’s seventh and eighth birthdays, they would usually have their confirmation ceremony, affirmatively declaring their humanity, and then they’d get to celebrate their “human-day” like the boys got bird-days.

This was done as late as it was because of the trans boys. Most trans boys didn’t change as young as the cis boys, but almost all of them had changed by the age of seven. A rare few wouldn’t change until they were teenagers; this was thought to be the result of the hormones of puberty hitting the brain and finalizing the child’s gender. This didn’t happen the other way around; birds had much shorter childhoods than humans, so little boys would always change into adolescent birds. The lifespan of formerly-human birds seemed to equal to the lifespan of humans, not the species they’d turned into – at least, so far, although at this point no one could yet tell if maybe the parrots might have been shortchanged a bit -- but the boys got through adolescence and into physical adulthood long before their skills at navigating civilization were solid. High speed cameras left focused on apparent boys successfully, once or twice, caught a moment where a child became a bird and then immediately turned back into a human, and after this they were always certain that whatever they were, they weren’t boys, even if they’d seemed to identify as boys previously. So trans girls and nonbinary children with penises were never birds for longer than half a second, because when they changed into birds, the hormones that finalized their gender were already present and said that they weren’t male. However, these cases were very, very rare – in general, a child of seven was either a bird or a human and would remain so for the rest of their lives.

It was somewhat more than two years after the transformation when a new phenomenon was discovered. Fledgling birds would wander into cities or other human settlements, go to sleep on the ground even if they were a bird species that normally roosted up high, and then they’d turn into toddler girls. Invariably, when it was possible to figure out where they’d come from, it turned out they were the result of formerly-human birds mating with the female offspring of other formerly-human birds, so in a sense, these birds were three-quarters human to start with. It didn’t seem to happen to all of them – in a clutch of four eggs, all of which hatched female, maybe one would be strongly attracted to humans, and the ground, and would then turn into a human child. Generally, when birds saw female fledglings on the ground near human habitation, they would bring it to the attention of women, who would often scoop up the bird and keep her in a human crib for a while. If she didn’t change, she’d eventually fly off. These bird-girls didn’t know human speech, obviously, when they first transformed, but they caught up and were usually fully verbal to the expected level for their development after a year or so. They tended to be more independent than human children of the same apparent age, but also very sociable, craving the presence of humans. Some longed to fly and begged their adopted mothers for hang gliders and zip lines; some were very happy with being grounded. Egg-clutch-sisters of the human bird-girls remained non-human birds, unable to talk, but were often far more intelligent than their species would normally suggest, as were their brothers.

Humans worried about what might be happening out in wilderness where humans rarely went, and where a fledgling bird would have a hard time finding a human habitation, but no one ever found a child, alive or dead, in those circumstances. Perhaps whatever compelled the bird-girls to seek the ground and the presence of humans wouldn’t allow them to transform if they couldn’t find those things.

Life returned to normal. Bird boys went to school beside human girls. (And nonbinary children. They weren’t common, but they existed in large enough numbers that there was usually at least one in a normal-sized school at any given time.) Boys who couldn’t find a profession that was open to birds that they would enjoy would graduate and then, often, fly off to spend a few years in semi-wild flocks of formerly human birds. Very few girls ever had trouble finding a job, given that all the jobs that birds could no longer do fell on them. Both were encouraged to get a good education to ensure they could get a job they actually wanted.

It was very useful for humans and birds to live together, if the bird wanted to live as part of civilization and have access to internet, television and refrigerators for their bird food. Birds and humans could pool their income, raise children together, and compensate for each other’s species-based inabilities; among the things birds could do that humans could not were environmentally friendly bug extermination (many birds loved to eat bugs, and with human intelligence, it wasn’t hard for them to seek out and destroy anthills and wasp nests), alerts for potential dangers (bird hearing and eyesight were often better than human, and prey birds, with eyes on either side of their heads, could see a wider range than humans with their stereoscopic vision), and early detection of noxious gas (when a bird in your house complains that he’s dizzy, you grab him and run.) And of course there were many, many things that the women could do with their height, strength and opposable thumbs, that the birds could not. Because of these advantages, and because birds and humans could be romantically attracted to each other, birds and humans began to date, just as they had when the birds were men, but without any expectation that they would have sex (aside from formerly mentioned extremely kinky couples.)

Birds who resented the lack of opposable thumbs or human size learned to pilot robot drones that had such things; humans who resented the lack of flight took up ballooning, small aircraft piloting, hang gliding, bungee jumping, and every other thing that humans had always done to get as close to flight as they could. Oddly enough, almost everyone was happy with what they were. Little boys would eagerly share with their preschool playmates what sort of bird they hoped to be, but whatever they got, they usually found they were satisfied; little girls might initially be upset that their playmates got to be birds and they didn’t, but by a girl’s confirmation she’d been taught all the advantages of being human and usually thought it best that that was what she was. Birds and humans might be somewhat resentful of the other’s abilities, but in the end most of them agreed they wouldn’t really want it any other way.

Aside from the deaf birds, who had to completely reinvent sign language for talons and wings, accommodating disabled humans’ needs became much, much easier in a world where companies and governments had to accommodate birds of various sizes, abilities and needs; at least usually the disabled humans were roughly within the same size and shape range, in comparison to the diversity of birds. Racism remained, but was much harder to act on; while white women often continued to be racist to black women, they couldn’t tell what race a given bird had been unless his accent or his speech patterns gave it away, and birds mostly got over racism because they were too busy being prejudiced against other bird species. The idea of discriminating between humans on grounds so tiny as skin tone and hair consistency became ridiculous when you could be a chicken and have to deal with other roosters ranging from tiny gamecocks to giant Oshamu roosters, not to mention, every other bird in the world that humans had turned into. Religions had turned weird because they all had to take into account the concept of a God who’d turned all the men into birds; birds tended to think that God was probably a bird, and women tended to think that God was probably a human and either female or genderless, so most religions split in at least two, notwithstanding the ones that had multiple schisms because birds of different species all wanted to imagine a God that favored their species. Polytheism came back.

Sometimes there were still wars, flocks of birds viciously pecking and slashing at each other in the air while women on the ground shot at each other, and at birds wearing the enemy colors. It didn’t happen as often as it used to, though. Terrorism continued, and even got worse at times, because security measures designed for humans couldn’t keep birds out, but the disaffected young men who had no jobs and no futures, that had usually supplied the backbone of any terrorist movement, just weren’t there anymore. They were out flying in flocks with their friends, enjoying the freedom of the air and hunting for food. And environmentalism became a deadly serious issue; birds were more likely to be negatively impacted by any drastic change to the environment, so most of them were strongly in favor of reigning in the excesses of capitalism and cleaning up the planet. Who wanted to fly in a cloud of smog?

All in all, it was surprising how much better the world built by birds and humans, working together, was than the world that had been before. It was far from perfect, and there were many new problems that hadn’t previously existed – women’s near-universal sexual frustration, birds being unable to get jobs, the high cost of having children in a world where artificial insemination was the only means by which all but a tiny number of the women could get pregnant, plus the phenomenon of birds having ridiculous prejudices against other birds, as well as many others. But other problems that had plagued humanity for centuries turned out to be very easy to solve once all the men were birds. And so the people of Earth stopped looking for a cure; they were happier in the world where half of them were birds than they had been before, overall.

🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊

Y'think thats enough pens? Either way I don't expect you to do somethin for aaaaaaaaaall of em lol

Gsudkblbzysuv hun, this is so beautifully chaotic!

🖋 Ginger's a vampire but both of her dads (Lee Grimm and Glenn Grimm) are werewolves (Mist Walkers). Both are trans men.

🖋 Jelani uses male, neutral or female pronouns. Has no preference to which ones someone should use.

🖋 Trevor knows ASL. His little brother was deaf and in his memory he learned ASL.

🖋 Angelus sorta, kinda had a daughter. Ok tl;dr back in the late 1800s he ran into this little girl that was living in the street and tried to steal some money off him but she got caught. He gave her everything he had on him and then she ran off and he lost track of her. Much later he found her again but this time she was a bit older, like 11 years old. They recognized each other and they both went to get a bite to eat and she told him she ran away from home because her parents were abusive. Obviously coming from a similar background he heavily sympathized but he didn't know the first thing about kids but he still took her in. She grew up, married and had kids of her own and those kids grew up and eventually his adopted daughter (her name was Alice) grew old and died of old age. He kept in contact with his sort of grandkids obviously but as his great grandkids grew older and had families and kids of their own Angelus distanced himself. How the fuck are ya gonna explain your sort of adoptivr great grandfather looks like a 20 year old twink? He's kept an eye out on them as a "friend of the family".

🖋 AJ introduced Angelus, Mahmud, Tre and Madison to his favorite hobby: parkour. The five of them regularly get together to free run in places they think would be both challenging and fun.

🖋 Madison introduced Mahmud, AJ, Tre and Xiomara to spelunking and scuba diving as a hobby.

🖋 Sanaa loves and collects windchimes. So Ingvarr modified an alarm clock to make any chime she puts on it chime whenever she sets the alarm. So instead of some jarring alarm she wakes up to a windchime.

🖋 Angelus has an abnormally high tolerance for pain to the point where he won't react to most injuries. This was due to years of having to learn to control his cries of pain because the more he cried out the harder he'd get beaten.

🖋 Trevor holds the world record for longest confirmed sniper kill. Can't be found in any public record but it's in Oracle records and that's good enough for him.

🖋 Jelani (Loke and Jela's grandad, not J lol) and Subira made a spell called "Bright Light". Basically a faint little orb of light that when cast makes anyone near it calm down. It works for regular nervousness, anxiety, panic attacks, anger and so on. It's one of those beginner type spells that barely requires any energy and it can either hover over the caster's palm or it can be "attached" to an object.

🖋 Sunniva (she was Ingvarr's first wife and the woman who gave birth to Loke) is still alive. After she became pregnant she heavily regretted it so that's why as soon as Loke was born she ran away without telling anyone anything. Loke was always told that she disappeared but honestly speaking he never knew her so he has no attachment to her. To him Sanaa is HIS mother and only her.

🖋 Latoya was what you would consider a sickly kid. Someone in another country sneezed and she got sick. Her colds and flus lasted longer than usual and she was a super skinny little girl. When puberty hit she took up sports and when she was 18 she started lifting weights, blew up in terms of muscle tone and got laser eye surgery. Now she's like Rambo in his prime but pretty.

🖋 Abigail is constantly coloring her hair different colors but her favorite is any hue of green since that's her favorite color. She'll also help and color anyone else's if they ask her for help.

🖋 Ginger and Abigail got married on October 13th. Yes, the wedding had a Victorian goth theme to it. Even though they couldn't eat it the cake was red velvet with black frosting and everything. It almost looked like a funeral 'cause everyone was wearing black. I hope to doodle Ginger and Abby in their wedding dresses someday.

🖋 Haakon had a habit of collecting leaves from different countries he visited and kept them safe. Ingvarr and Jørgen both keep journals with leaves of different countries they've visited. They write down the tree the leaf came from, country where they got it from and date.

🖋 Anette can't drive until she's 21. When she was 14 she took Jelani's car, drove her and a bunch of her friends super late at night in winter (from what I've read driving in Norway during winter is horrible), crashed into another car after she lost control, totalled both Jelani's car and the other car and severely injured some of her friends and the other driver. The funny/not funny part is Jela was planning on giving her that car when she got her license but she totalled it. It was BMW by the way. Fuckin' teenager driving around in a 2 year old Beemer lol.

🖋 Speaking of cars. Grete (Anette's mother and Loke and Jelani's aunt) is horribly afraid of driving. She can't get behind the wheel of a car without freaking out. Anette crashing made the fear 10x worse. She can be in a car as long as she isn't driving and the car isn't going too fast.

🖋 During a visit Anette convinced both her parents and Jelani to let her stay with him during the summer. She also convinced both Leah and Xolani to stay over as well. So for a whole ass summer Jelani had three teenagers staying over as a kind of sleep over vacation. It actually turned out fun in the end, the kids had fun and Anette and her rebellious attitude kinda softened.

🖋 Anette, Xolani and Leah have one defining thing in common. None of them know what to do with the rest of their lives. Thing is Leah is very nervous about it, Xolani is kind of aloof about it and Anette is kinda of frustrated about it. Anette is frustrated which leads her to act out and cause trouble. Xolani just looks like they don't care but they do. Leah is super nervous about it. Another thing they got in common is the three of them tend to look up to Loke and Jelani 'cause they feel both understand them better than their parents do.

🖋 Ginger is kinda very obsessed with portals. She's fascinated by them but also respects them as they are incredibly dangerous and unpredictable. She is basically the only person in the world that managed to control portals even if it's for a short amount of time.

🖋 Shaine got really into explosives when she was just a kid. After an accident with a dozen cherry bombs she was left partially deaf, now has to wear a hearing aid and is the explosives expert.

🖋 Before joining Oracle Katya financed her transition by making fake IDs and passports. She also doxxed corrupt government officials and ransomed vital information she got off them.

🖋 Loke is allergic to bird dandruff but would love to have a pet pigeon. At least he can have dogs which is his other favorite animal. His favorite dog is the pitbull.

🖋 Until he got together with Jelani all of Angelus's previous relationships were short and ended in kind of disaster because he constantly compared them all to Jelani and to him they didn't measure up. He ultimately said no to relationships around the 1930s and just fucked around. Obviously until he got shit faced once and confessed to Jelani he was in love with him and the rest is history.

🖋 Tre is one of the super rare seers that can see and feel visions. He's so sensitive that merely standing in an area with a lot of energy could affect him.

🖋 In Oracle there is a head of the organization and two leaders. Current head is Aleksey with Jelani and Angelus as leaders. There's always three as kind of a callback let's call it to when Oracle was started. Aleksey and two close friends started it so from then on there's always 3 leads. When Aleksey steps down Jelani will be head, Ginger will be the second lead and Angelus is the third lead, however he plans on making Trevor the third lead. The reason is because Angelus is fully aware of what he can and can't do and he knows damn well that he isn't lead of an organization material. When he steps down he'd be the Trickster team leader, that he can handle, and since Trevor left a vacant spot Loke would take that spot.

🖋 There is a place called Kironia. It's theorized to be a sort of epicenter for portal activities. Angelus and Ginger have been tasked with keeping an eye on it but it's shrouded in so much mystery most people don't think it's real.

🖋 Despite the fact that Trevor personally knows a Maker and a goddess (Jade, Latoya's girlfriend) he's still an athiest.

🖋 Trevor didn't have a name growing up, he chose the name Trevor because it sounded pleasant. He took his surname, Ravencroft, from a woman he'd heard of from other Oracle agents. He eventually got to meet Morgana Ravencroft, she thought it was flattering he took her name.

🖋 Speaking of Morgana Ravencroft, Angelus was first introduced to the concept of magic because of her. He went with Trevor to help him with some supplies and after being completely hypnotized by some illusions she gave him a book on the basics and helped him get started.

🖋 Loke stopped aging and it's something of a weird occurrence that is brought up every so often. When he was 28 years old he and Jelani (who was 15 at the time) were delivering some supplies to another village. They ran into bandits and as usual Loke was trying to protect Jelani and in doing so he was fatally wounded. Of course Jelani freaked the fuck out and his "fail safe" kicked in. Jela doesn't remember but Loke does, he saw Jelani change form and after dealing with the bandits he turned his attention to Loke and stopped him from dying. He was rusty as fuck so he put a little more oomph behind it and a tiny portion of his energy slipped into Loke. Neither of them know but Loke is basically kinda frozen in time when it comes to aging. So because of this Loke can't die unless Jelani dies.

🖋 Loke has a black feather that's warm to the touch and small embers can be seen floating out of it. He's never mentioned it to anyone and keeps it close to him. The feather came from Jelani when he changed form to fight off the bandits. After he blacked out and changed back Loke found the feather on the ground. He knew where it came from that's why he kept it. He's never told Jelani about that day because he doesn't know what it means and he thinks telling him would only serve to confuse him further.

🖋 Continuing with Loke, he's your average run of the mill berserker. That means he cannot use magic while in berserker mode or even with his weapons. The only ones that can do that are arcanist berserkers (the Nyota tribe). Sanaa is an arcanist berserker, she can use magic while in berserker mode. However, through years of practice Sanaa managed to teach Loke one spell that her people are really fond of. Falling Stars is a spell that has the user charge a single arrow. The arrow is shot upwards and as soon as it reaches high enough it splits into hundreds of arrows that rain down on the target. Loke started practicing when he was 8 years old and by the age of 30 he managed to pull it off making him the first berserker to use magic.

🖋 Jelani and Leah are two of the extremely rare and fortunate people that have gone through a portal and have returned. Whether their return was sheer luck or the fact that he's a Maker is something I'll elaborate on later.

🖋 Haakon knew Jelani wasn't a berserker. Haakon himself had a feeling that his grandson was something far more, if that makes sense. The day Jela was born Haakon had a dream but instead of fear he just felt an insurmountable amount of wonder. He's only ever told his wife, Eli, who in turn believed him. Both always made sure Jela didn't feel out of place and Haakon frequently encouraged him.

J/H 4-27: Love, Wisconsin Style

And here we go - Season 4 finale!

I didn't know when I started this project just how I'd end Season 4, and it was tricky to figure out. The goal was, without changing anything about the end of Season 5 (there will be a few Season 5 scripts coming, but none past the halfway point of the season), to make the ending of Season 4 give more weight to Hyde's insecurity and paranoia about Jackie and Kelso there. Feedback on how well that goal was met would be most welcome.

(I should say that I like the end of Season 5 quite a bit as it is. But, this being a project all about finding connective tissue between two different points in the show's run, I went a little further with that here.)

FF.Net AO3

***

SHOW TITLE   MUSIC NOTE: “Whatcha Gonna Do” by Pablo Cruise.   INT. HUB - DAY   A sunny afternoon, but the Hub is almost empty – it’s still school hours. But there are two customers – ERIC and KITTY. Eric leans against the counter as he talks with his mother. “Whatcha Gonna Do” plays on the jukebox.   ERIC: So Mr. Hammond said it was fine for me to miss class, ‘cause I’m already getting an “A.” So just as you suspected, Mom, I am better than everybody.   KITTY: All I know is that my little boy was very brave at the dentist today. Wasn't he? Yes he was, my widdle snickelfritz.   ERIC: Okay, Mom, when a man reaches a certain age, the baby voice no longer comforts him. It urges him to kill.   The door opens. In walk DONNA and CASEY. Well, Casey walks; Donna nearly falls over her feet trying to get through the doorway. She’s giggling fit to burst, and a large cup is in her hand. As she stumbles, she knocks over a chair.   Casey rights the chair, steadies Donna, leads her toward the nearest table.   CASEY: Okay, let's get you some coffee. Nobody pukes in the Trans Am.   As they walk, Donna finally notices Eric and Kitty.   DONNA: (gasps) Mrs. Forman! Uh-oh, you look mad. What did Eric do? (to Eric) Bad Eric!   KITTY: Donna, why aren't you in school?   CASEY: No worries, I called her in sick. Told ‘em, “lady troubles.” No questions asked.   Donna starts to giggle again and loses her balance. Casey and Eric money to steady her.   ERIC: Hey, easy there, wobbles.   KITTY: (to Donna) Have you been drinking?   DONNA: I hope so. 'Cause if not, this whole place is a-spinning! Hang on boys, it's a twister!   She twirls her finger around and pivots on her feet, rocking back and forth between Eric and Casey as they try to get her upright.

MAIN CREDITS   BUMPER   INT. FORMAN BASEMENT - DAY   THE CIRCLE. “Bad Time” by Grand Funk Railroad plays on the record player in the background. Eric is related the events of the last scene.   ERIC: So, my mom and I were at the Hub getting ice cream, and we caught Donna with Casey, skipping school. And she was drunk. In the middle of the afternoon. It was like Sue Ellen on Dallas!   Pan to Hyde.   HYDE: (to Eric) You went to the Hub for ice cream with your mommy? (laughs) Why would you tell me that?   Pan to Fez.   FEZ: Hyde, the point is he went for ice cream. Without us! (to Eric) You cannot pick up a phone?   Pan to Kelso   KELSO: Hey, if we’re gonna burn Forman, can we hurry it up? You guys know I’m hiding from Jackie. The longer I stay in any one spot, the more likely she is to catch me, and then I gotta deal with her wanting to get married. TO ME!   The record player skips. Kelso jumps at the noise and bolts for the stairs.   Pan to Eric, who watches Kelso run upstairs before turning back to the Circle.   ERIC: Guys, my mom's over at the Pinciotti's right now telling Bob about Donna being drunk. You can't do that kind of stuff in the middle of the afternoon. It'll mess up with your... your... your thinking thing.   Pan to Hyde.   HYDE: Yeah, you gotta stay sharp, man. That's why I keep myself pure until 3 o' clock. (checks watch) Two o'clock. That's why I keep myself pure until two o'clock.   He lifts up his hand; his watch isn’t even on.   HYDE (cont’d): I'm not wearing a watch.   CUT TO:   EXT. FORMAN DRIVEWAY - DAY   A short time later. Hyde, Eric, and Kelso play basketball as best they can with the El Camino in the driveway. Kelso keeps shooting nervous glances down the street in both directions.   ERIC: (to Hyde) Hey, you know what? Donna getting busted is actually great for me, because now she's gotta realize what a jackass Casey is. And when she dumps him, I'll be standing right here with open arms and a gentle “I told you so.”   He mistakes Hyde’s frown for agreement.   ERIC (cont’d): Oh yeah, that could happen. After all, I made that girl a woman.   Kelso, dribbling the ball, bounces it into the hubcap of the El Camino. The clang makes him jump back and look around frantically. Eric puts a steadying arm on his shoulder.   ERIC (cont’d): Kelso, you know you can’t hide from Jackie forever. Shouldn’t you just talk to her about this?   KELSO: Eric, marriage is not a “this.” Marriage is not even an “it.” Marriage is the death of “it,” as in “doin’ it,” and me and my lightning rod in the pants have a lot more doin’ it to do!   Hyde takes the basketball from him, starts to dribble, looks down the road toward the Pinciotti’s house.   HYDE: (to Kelso) Hey, man. Here comes Jackie.   KELSO: RUN!   He shoves past Eric, rounds the El Camino, and cuts through the garage.   Once he’s gone, Eric and Hyde share a laugh; it was a false alarm.   ERIC: So, Jackie wants to marry Kelso. That’s gotta hurt, huh? Say, when you get them back together again, maybe you should offer to perform the ceremony.   HYDE: Not this time, man. I mean, marriage in high school? That’s too weird, man. I’m staying out of it.   Something over Hyde’s shoulder catches Eric’s eye. He strains to get a better look.   ERIC: Here comes Jackie.   HYDE: (scoffs) Come on, man. I’m not falling for that.   But it’s no false alarm this time: JACKIE marches right up behind Hyde.   JACKIE: Where’s Michael?   Her shout makes Hyde jump and drop the ball. He turns to look at her; she is one pissed off girl.   HYDE: He’s not here.   JACKIE: Oh, don’t you give me that! I know that idiot still thinks the upstairs hall closet is a good hiding place!   ERIC: (nods) Every game of hide-and-seek, ages 5 to 12. And he managed to get stuck under the bottom shelf every time.   JACKIE: Look, he can’t blow me off like this! He proposed, I heard him. (holds up left hand) And he is putting a ring on this finger even if I have to chase him all the way to Minnesota!   She tugs on Hyde’s arm.   JACKIE (cont’d): Steven, I need you to help me look for Michael.   HYDE: Excuse me?   Jackie nods to the El Camino.   JACKIE: He can’t go far on foot and his van can’t outrun your car. Come on, let’s go!   HYDE: Jackie, I’m not driving you all over town looking for Kelso. I don’t even wanna look in the hall closet.   JACKIE: (pouts) Fine!   She elbows past Hyde, goes around the El Camino.   Hyde shakes his head, turns to Eric. Before either of them can speak, they jump back at the revving of the El Camino’s engine. Jackie’s head sticks out from the driver’s side window.   JACKIE (cont’d): Move it or lose it!   ERIC: (to Hyde) Did she lift the keys to the El Camino off you?   Hyde pats down his pockets. His jaw drops.   HYDE: I taught her that move!   ERIC: You’ve created a monster.   HYDE: I know! And the worst part is, that was kinda hot!   Eric throws his hands up, shakes his head, and turns to go inside.   Jackie honks the horn. Hyde frowns at her, she scowls back, and he slowly makes his way around to the passenger’s side door.   CUT TO:   INT. DONNA’S BEDROOM – DAY   The aftermath of Kitty’s news relay. Donna sits on her bed, arms crossed, as BOB and JOANNE loom over her. Bob is in a rage.   BOB: (to Donna) What the hell’s going on with you? You’re grounded! No arguments!   DONNA: Dad, I’m not grounded.   BOB: Okay, well, then whatever you think is best.   Joanne rolls her eyes.   JOANNE: No! Not whatever she thinks is best. (to Joanne) You are grounded!   DONNA: Hey, You're not my mother! You have no say in what I do.   She stands, storms out of the room.   BOB: (to Joanne) Well, she’s got you there.   He shrugs and leaves Joanne shaking her head.   CUT TO:   INT. HUB - DAY   Late in the afternoon. The sunlight coming in through the window is starting to turn to evening gold. “More, More, More” by Andrea True Connection plays on the jukebox.   Fez and Kelso sit at a round table near the center of the floor, Kelso’s head jerking this way and that as he scans the crowd.   FEZ: Kelso, you seem tense. I think living in a home with so many siblings does not provide you with enough privacy to relieve yourself – if you know what I mean.   KELSO: It’s not that kind of tension, Fez. Being a one-woman man is one thing, but – but I can’t get married! I’m 18 years old, and way too hot!   FEZ: So just say so. Go on, be a man!   KELSO: That’s just it. I’m not a man. Which is why I don’t wanna get married! But... well, a lot of people don’t know this about us, but Jackie’s pretty much in charge.   Fez raises his eyebrows; Kelso doesn’t notice.   KELSO (cont’d): If she says she wants to get married, then it might happen! The only way it won’t happen is if I’m not around when she does.   Something out the window catches Fez’s eye; he leans for a better look.   FEZ: Here comes Jackie, driving the El Camino.   KELSO: RUN!   He throws himself out of his chair, sending it flying back to the door. He scrambles on all fours to reach the bathroom door, and we cut to:   INT. HUB BATHROOM – DAY   Kelso hurries inside, throws open the bathroom window, backs up just enough to get a running start, and launches himself cleanly through the window.   KELSO (v.o.): (laughing) Man, that was awesome!   CUT TO:   INT. FORMAN KITCHEN - NIGHT   An emergency confab. As Kitty ices a cake at the stovetop, Bob talks with RED and Eric by the island. BOB: And then I told Donna she was grounded, and she said no!   KITTY: (looks up) She said no?   ERIC: Can you do that?   RED: No.   BOB: I need your help, Red. I gotta get Donna away from that guy!   ERIC: Oh, Dad, you know what's good? Threaten her with the old foot in the ass!   KITTY: You know, that Casey. How could such a bad influence live in such a handsome package? Bad people should have a big scar and an eye patch so you could recognize them!   BOB: The problem is, you know, there's a point where your kids realize you can’t do nothing to control them.   ERIC: There is?   RED: (to Eric) No! Now stop listening. (to Bob) Bob, I don't wanna get involved. I've got enough problems with the fourteen kids who think they live here now.   CUT TO:   EXT. FORMAN DRIVEWAY - NIGHT   Immediately following the above. The El Camino pulls into the driveway. There is a dent and a long, red streak across the passenger side.   Hyde exits out the driver’s side door, and Fez and Jackie exit out the passenger’s side. Jackie immediately crosses to Hyde.   JACKIE: Steven, you get back here! We aren’t done yet!   HYDE: Yes, we are. When you ruin the paint job and take out a fire hydrant, that’s the end of El Camino privileges for you, young lady!   Something down the driveway catches Fez’s eye.   FEZ: Someone’s coming.   They all turn to look. It’s Donna and Casey, out for a walk-and-talk.   CASEY: So the guy’s trying to tell me that his Z28 is the same car as my Trans Am except for the decals.   DONNA: How can people be so ignorant?   The patio door slides open. Bob marches out, followed by Eric, Kitty, and Red.   BOB: I see you Donna! I see you!   DONNA: Dad!   BOB: Don't you “dad” me. You're not going anywhere, not with this guy. You're grounded again!   Hyde, Jackie, and Fez huddle together. Fez brings out a box of chocolate-covered raisins.   FEZ: (to Jackie & Hyde) Candy?   JACKIE: Please.   She helps herself to a piece.   DONNA: Dad, I'm gonna do whatever I want with whoever I want whenever I wanna do it!   BOB: We have to have a talk right now, Donna!   CASEY: Mr. Pinciotti, sir, let me just say you're making a lot of sense here, and I think that when I bring Donna home tonight, you two ought to sit down and really hammer this thing out.   Everyone’s on bated breath as they look to Bob.   BOB: (beat) Okay, that sounds fair.   Everyone but Donna groans together.   ERIC: What? You're just gonna let her go off with him?   BOB: What else can I do?   RED: Oh, good God, that's it! Everybody in the living room. (no one moves) NOW!   That does it. Everyone moves to enter the house. Red holds up a hand to block Jackie, Fez, and Hyde.   RED: Not you.   He enters the house. Bob, having been behind Fez, stays out with the kids. He takes a raisin that Fez offers.   Red sticks his head out the patio door.   RED: Bob, get in here!   He heads back inside, Bob in tow.   CUT TO:   INT. FORMAN LIVING ROOM – NIGHT   Tough love time. Eric stands by the front door with Bob. Donna and Casey are on the couch, the reluctant center of attention. Red stands behind his chair, leaning on it as he yells.   RED: Donna, what has gotten into you? Skipping school, showing no respect for your father -   BOB: That's right!   RED: Shut up, Bob.   Kitty hurries in from the kitchen with a big snack bowl.   KITTY: Okay, here's snacks!   She sets the bowl down on the coffee table.   KITTY (cont’d): So, anybody need a drink?   CASEY: I'll take a rum and coke for the road.   ERIC: Hey, hey, buddy? A little tip? I think booze is what got you in trouble in the first place!   RED: (to Casey) How could you take this girl out drinking in the middle of the day!   CASEY: You know how it is. All the older girls were at work.   He chuckles at his own joke and jostles Donna with his shoulder. She doesn’t look amused.   ERIC: Can I say - this guy is not boyfriend material.   BOB: I agree. You're not going out with him anymore. You two are done!   DONNA/CASEY: No!/Alright.   They look to each other.   DONNA: What?   CASEY: You gotta admit, this has been a real hassle. I mean, it was fun, and you're a great girl, but let's just call it a day.   ERIC: Wait... you're breaking up with her?   DONNA: Casey, I thought you said you...   She looks around the room. She leans in close to Casey and drops her voice.   DONNA (cont’d): You know... you said you loved me.   CASEY: I have this thing where I say stuff I don't really mean.   DONNA: Casey...   CASEY: Look, Donna, I see what you're getting at, and I'm not that type of guy.   He pats her knee.   CASEY (cont’d): Mrs. Forman, let's say we rain-check that rum and coke.   He stands, pats Eric on the shoulder, and walks out the front door.   Eric looks to Donna.   ERIC: Donna, I'm... I’m really sorry.   DONNA: You're not sorry. You got exactly what you wanted.   She stands, moves to the kitchen door. She throws it open, knocking into an eavesdropping Hyde, Jackie, and Fez. They fall back toward the fridge as Donna runs from the house.   FADE TO BLACK   COMMERCIAL   BUMPER   INT. FORMAN BASEMENT – NIGHT   Eric is alone, brooding on the couch. He stands when he hears the door open. Kitty enters, with Donna.   KITTY: Eric, there's someone here to see you.   ERIC: (to Donna) Hi.   DONNA: Hi.   KITTY: Okay, can I get anyone a snack?   ERIC: Mom.   KITTY: Right, right. Have to stop doing that. (laughs)   She makes a quick exit. Eric and Donna look to each other.   ERIC: (beat) So, um... how are you?   Donna crosses to him.   DONNA: Humiliated. I'm such an idiot. I got dumped in front of the whole world. I don't... I don't even know what I said to your mom at the Hub and I hate that she saw me like that. What is wrong with me?   ERIC: Hey, nothing. Look, your mom left. Come on – you’re allowed to freak out.   DONNA: Everybody warned me about Casey and I fell for him anyway. He's such a jackass!   ERIC: I really, really wanted you to figure that out. Just not like this.   DONNA: Eric, I'm just... (sniffs) I'm so sorry.   ERIC: Hey.   He pulls her into an embrace. Donna nestles her head into the crook of his neck as she breaks into tears.   DONNA: I was so stupid!   As they pull apart, Donna brings Eric into a deep kiss. He just starts to give in when she pulls back and gives him a desperate look.   DONNA: Eric, we should be together.   ERIC: Wait, what?   DONNA: Let's just, like, forget all this other stuff happened.   She embraces him again.   ERIC: Wait...wait.   Eric pulls away.   ERIC (cont’d): Donna... I mean, if you come running back to me now, I... Donna, I can't be your second choice.   DONNA: But you're not! Eric...   He bows his head. Even as her tears come again, he won’t look up.   Donna turns, runs to the door. As she opens it, Kitty spills into the basement. She quickly stands and feigns confusion.   KITTY: Oh! Where am I?   She zips back out the door, and Donna follows.   BUMPER   EXT. FORMAN DRIVEWAY - NIGHT   Hyde and Fez inspect the damage to the El Camino. Fez’s candy box is balanced on the rim of the flatbed. Jackie paces up and down the driveway, her eyes fixed on the road. Behind his shades, Hyde rolls his eyes.   HYDE: Jackie, just go home.   JACKIE: No! I know Michael has to be here some time. This is the only place he can get popsicles without one of his brothers trying to push the stick up his nose.   FEZ: (nodding) It’s true. And believe me, that is unpleasant.   Hyde sighs, crosses to Jackie.   HYDE: Jackie, this is nuts. Shotgun weddings are for rednecks who knock up trailer trash and then get caught by her dad. Look, man, whatever you thought you heard, Kelso doesn’t want to get married. He’s not around because he doesn’t want to see you.   JACKIE: Yes, he does, Steven! He told me that -   HYDE: That he wanted to get married? Kelso? Michael “I didn’t know that firecracker would blow up the toilet” Kelso?   Jackie’s eyes begin to water. She searches for words and can’t find any. Finally, she shakes her head.   JACKIE: No. No, he didn’t. I got carried away, and I tried to control him, like I always do. (begins crying) But he wouldn’t even talk to me about it?   She rushes to Hyde and throws her arms around his neck. Hyde throws his own hands up in the air.   HYDE: Every time.   FEZ:  (to Jackie) Hey, he got the last two break-ups! Give someone else a chance!   Hyde gives Fez a warning look.   FEZ (cont’d): I know, I know. “Go home, Fez.”   He begins slinking away, makes it halfway down the drive, then doubles back for his box of candy. He shoots Hyde one last dirty look before taking off.   Hyde holds Jackie loosely by the arms and gently pushes her back.   HYDE: Jackie... come on, man.   JACKIE: (through tears) What kind of relationship is this when he tells me he wants to be together forever, then runs away as soon as I want a commitment? And after everything I put up with because he couldn’t get over that one kiss, when I never made him go through anything like that when he cheated on me. Well, enough is enough. I’m over him for good.   She wipes furiously at her tears. Hyde shifts on his feet; he’s skeptical.   HYDE: What did you want that kind of commitment for, anyway? You’re in high school.   JACKIE: You wouldn’t understand. Steven, you’ve only ever had meaningless flings. I’m not like that, okay? I want love. True love. And Michael and I have been together so long, that I just thought -   HYDE: Jackie, you’ve never been with anyone else. Even after the last time you two broke up, you didn’t see anybody, not really. Now, come on, man. You’re young and free now. Play the field. I told you before, you can find someone better than Kelso.   JACKIE: But Steven, I’ve never felt anything for anybody else.   HYDE: Anybody?   Jackie looks up from wiping her eyes. She sees Hyde standing right in front of her. We cut to:   JACKIE’S POV. She looks at Hyde’s chest, showing through the open buttons of his shirt...   At his mouth as he smacks his lips...   At his shades, as one eyebrow goes up...   END POV. Jackie grabs Hyde’s head in her hands and pulls him down into a rough, deep kiss. Hyde gives in, snakes his fingers through her hair as Jackie runs her hands up and down his body.   They break apart. Hyde coughs, adjusts his shades.   HYDE: Huh. (beat) Jackie, you’re on the rebound, and this didn’t take the last time we were here. If you’re just looking to get back at Kelso -   Jackie throws down the door to the flatbed of the El Camino and points.   JACKIE: Get in.   Hyde looks from the flatbed to Jackie. She holds up his keys in her free hand.   HYDE: Hey, you keep stealing my keys, it’s gonna stop being a turn-on.   Jackie gives him a look.   HYDE (cont’d): (laughs) No it’s not.   Jackie throws herself at him. Her weight sends them crashing back into the flatbed.   CUT TO:   INT. FORMAN KITCHEN - NIGHT   Eric is in a chair from the kitchen table, turned to face the living room door. Red and Kitty stand over him, both furious.   RED: Let me get this straight: Donna wanted to get back together and you said no?   ERIC: I said no.   RED: You said no!   KITTY: (beat) Dumbass!   ERIC: Look, I have my reasons, okay?   KITTY: What could they be? What could they possibly be?   ERIC: Casey dumps her and she comes to me? Okay, I'm not a rebound!   RED: So you're too proud to take her back? And what do you have to be so proud of? You're not an athlete. The only smart thing about you is your mouth. And look at you!   KITTY: Red, Red, he looks fine! He's just so darn stupid! I'm very upset.   ERIC: Well, stop, okay? Because I already feel bad enough as it is.   KITTY: Well you should!   ERIC: Well, I do! I love her.   He stands, starts to pace.   ERIC: God, why do I always have to screw these things up, you know? Why does everything always have to be my way? That's why we broke up in the first place.   KITTY: Well, we've all known that for a year!   ERIC: Okay. Okay, I have to tell Donna how I feel.   He doesn’t move at once.   RED: Then go!   Eric nods, heads out the patio door.   Kitty leans on Red, and he puts an arm around her.   KITTY: Oh, Red!   RED: I know. We're never gonna get him out of the house.   CUT TO:   INT. DONNA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT   The lights are off, but the door is open. Eric runs inside.   ERIC: Donna?   No one answers. Eric steps inside, looks around.   Bob and Joanne enter. Eric crosses to them.   ERIC (cont’d): Oh, hello, Mr. Pinciotti, Mrs... I'm sorry, Joanne, I don't know your last name. I have something to tell you guys. I love Donna.   JOANNE: Well, she isn't here. We don't know where she is. (beat) And it's Stupack.   ERIC: Well, if it's okay, I'll just wait.   He sits down on the bed. Bob crosses to him, pats his shoulder.   BOB: Sure. I always liked you.   ERIC: Oh, thank you, sir.   BOB: But do me a favor. Don't play with her undergarments.   He and Joanne exit as Eric settles in.   CUT TO:   EXT. HUB PARKING LOT - NIGHT   Past closing hours. Kelso’s Samba slowly pulls into the lot. Kelso sticks his head out, looking left and right. He brings the van into park, gets out, and stretches.   Donna walks by, a knapsack slung over her shoulder. Kelso crosses to her.   KELSO: Hey. Where are you going?   DONNA: Bus station. I'm going to my mom's in California.   KELSO: Oh, my God. You're running away.   DONNA: I don't know what else to do.   KELSO: No, I know how you feel. I feel trapped in this town. There isn’t any place I can go where I’m not gonna eventually run into Jackie. And when that happens –   He hums a few bars of the wedding march, then mimes hanging himself.   KELSO (cont’d): Hey... hey, you know what? I'll drive you. We'll both go to California!   He slaps Donna on the shoulder and goes back to the van.   DONNA: Kelso, are you up for this?   KELSO: Hey, if the Beverly Hillbillies can do it, so can I.   Donna chuckles and nods.   DONNA: Great, let's go.   They both climb into the van. Kelso starts ‘er up, and they take off.   CUT TO:   INT. DONNA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT   Eric lies back on the bed. He plays with the pillows, twiddles his thumbs, and checks his watch.   FADE TO BLACK   CREDITS   EXT. COUNTRY ROAD - DAY   MUSIC NOTE: Theme from “The Beverley Hillbillies.”   On the road for California. Donna sleeps while Kelso drives. Kelso glances over, sees that Donna is asleep. He reaches a hand back for her chest. She wakes up just in time to smack him away.   DONNA: Kelso! I'm not gonna tell you again!   KELSO: I was just reaching for my soda. Damn!   DONNA: I should have taken the bus.   END.

1083.

Do you have a vlog? If not, have you ever considered starting a vlog? >> I don’t have a vlog and I’ve only considered it as a humorous thought exercise, not seriously. My own mannerisms and facial tics embarrass me when I’m aware of them or can see them on video, so I’d rather not put myself through that.

Did you go to AM or PM kindergarten? >> I don’t remember. Edit: I think at one point I was going to pre-K in the morning and kindergarten in the afternoon, because they realised I was precocious or whatever, but they didn’t want to just fully skip me to kindergarten (idfk, man, teachers are weird). So I went to both at the same time, and graduated from both at the end of the year.

What are your favorite youtube channels to watch? >> Wisecrack, Overly Sarcastic Productions, The Take, Philosophy Tube, ContraPoints, Ethys Asher, MTQCapture (just for FFXIV dungeon guides, but hers are the best), Final Fantasy Union, Implicitly Pretentious, NakeyJakey, Ask a Mortician... those are all the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I’m always looking for new channels, but it’s hard to find consistently interesting and well-made content that isn’t about things I just don’t particularly care about.

Which relative(s) do you look the most like? >> ---

Have you ever watched a live birth video? >> No.

Have you ever given birth? >> Heavens, no.

Do you remember when the Internet was a new thing? >> I vaguely remember when Internet for the casual at-home user became a thing. The Internet as a whole is a bit older than me, and I was very young when things like IRC came out.

Do you remember Y2K? >> Yes!

How old were you when the year changed to 2000? >> I was 12.

What was your favorite childhood vacation? >> ---

Have you ever wished you were born the opposite gender? >> I did think I was binary trans for a few years. Now I’m completely off the gender axis and floating in todash space somewhere. As intended.

What’s your birth order: oldest, middle, or youngest? >> I am the youngest of my father’s offspring.

Do you fit the stereotype for whatever birth order you are? >> I think if there’s any stereotype I’d be liable to fit, it’d be only-child stereotypes, since that’s how I was raised (my father’s other children were decades older than me and I barely knew them).

Have you ever worn overalls? >> Yeah.

If you’re a girl, how old were you when you started your period? >> I’m not a girl, but I was 11 or so.

Do you get cramps? >> I did. Awful ones, too, the kind that would incapacitate me (sometimes in public...). Which is the primary reason why I started taking the Pill -- I didn’t dare to hope that it would get rid of periods altogether, but I was very relieved and happy when it did.

Is your mom mentally stable? >> ---

Is your dad a complete jerk to you? >> ---

Where do you want to go on vacation next? >> I would love to go on a vacation to anywhere, but that’s not feasible right now.

What is one place you want to visit before you die? >> *shrug*

Has anyone ever committed suicide in your town, that you know of? >> I mean, I’m sure someone has, but I don’t know anything about it.

What’s your favorite type of crackers? >> Oh, god, I forgot what they’re called. But they’re long and thin and rectangular and they come in flavours like garlic and rosemary. Also, matzo. Love matzo, particularly the egg and onion kind.

What’s your favorite spice? >> I really couldn’t say.

Are you sensitive? >> Way more so than I’d thought I was. Turns out a complex system of protections and defense mechanisms was shielding a very soft core. (Thank god. As much as they can and do backfire and cause their own problems, can you imagine how much worse off I would have been without those mechanisms?)

Are you intuitive? >> I don’t know, really. How does one measure that?

Are you spiritual? >> Maybe. I don’t really know what people mean when they use that word, so I’m hesitant to say one way or the other.

Do you wish your life were easier? >> My life isn’t particularly difficult at this juncture. I just have... a very small window of tolerance and take things a lot harder as a result. I don’t wish my life was easier, I wish my brain was less on fire.

What color hair did your first crush have? >> ---

What was the name of your first crush? >> ---

Did you ever play on Mamamedia.com? >> No.

Do you remember your first email address? >> Yeah, it was [email protected].

Did you name your lego characters? >> I didn’t have LEGO. I had Tinker Toys and an Erector set, neither of which came with little people iirc.

What was/is your high school’s mascot? >> ---

What is/was your favorite class in high school? >> ---

Is college an adventure? >> ---

Do you take medication for anxiety or depression? If so, does it work? Does it help you? Or does it make you feel worse? >> I do not.

If applicable, what form of birth control do you use? >> The Pill. Not for the birth-control function, though... not having sex covers that pretty well.

Who is your favorite cousin? >> ---

Do you look your age? >> According to other people, who apparently care about that sort of thing, no.

What’s your favorite flavor of frosting? >> ---

Do you like toe socks? >> No.

Muffins or cupcakes? >> Cupcakes, but rarely. I just don’t like muffins period.

Have you ever had a bag stolen? >> Probably.

How old were you when you got your first phone? >> Seventeen.

Are you ready for summer?!?! >> I will be in a couple of months, you can guarantee that.

Is winter your favorite season? >> No.

How many people do you know who’ve said winter is their favorite season? >> Quite a few, actually. I feel like I’ve encountered far more winter people than summer people. I see people complaining about warm weather constantly. I will never understand (even as a person who runs hot, I will still never understand). Even with the side effect of getting SAD in the winter, I love being solar powered.

Are you unique in any way? >> I mean, probably.

Do you have any hidden talents? >> No.

Has anyone said you and your mom look like sisters? >> ---

Who was your best friend in high school? >> ---

What book or movie gave you nightmares as a child? >> None.

What song makes you cry? >> Plenty, but I can’t think of one right now.

Does anyone know who your first crush was besides you? >> ---

How many teachers have you had crushes on? >> I was thinking about this last night. Calling the obsession I had with that one teacher a “crush” is erroneous because... the reason why I felt the way I felt about him is because he was nice to me. Literally, that was it. I was freshly traumatised (and being in and out of the hospital was just re-traumatising me), had an attachment disorder and was emotionally neglected, and was used to being treated poorly. When I told That One Teacher that I cut myself, he gave me a hug. Like... groundbreaking! No one else had responded that way! Of course I was attached to him, he actually treated me like someone who deserved kindness and care. It’s really hard not to feel crushingly sad for teenage!me (and, as an extension, current!me, who is still bearing the effects of the past) when I think about that.

Did you make your Barbie dolls get crushes on each other? >> I don’t really remember what I did with Barbie dolls.

Did your Barbie dolls go on dates? >> ^

How old were you when you had your first kiss? >> ---

Do you like church? >> Eh. Depends on the church, I guess. I’ll always have affection for Black Church(tm).

Do you have scars from self-harm? >> Yep.

Do you have cellulite? >> A little, I think.

How old were you when you started getting zits? >> I had them through my teenage years.

Did your hair change at all when you went through puberty? >> I don’t think so.

Are you taller, shorter, or the same height as your mom? >> I’ve been taller than that woman since I was 12.

Would you ever consider adopting a child? >> If I was ever going to raise a child, this would be the only way it’d happen.

Who was your first roommate? >> ---

Have you ever had a teacher who was rude? >> Yup.

Is your mom paranoid? >> ---

Do you trim your own hair? >> I buzz my own head, yeah.

Did your mom read you bedtime stories as a child? >> I was not read bedtime stories as a child. I made up my own in my head instead.

What are all the things you remember being for Halloween? >> ---

What was the name of the first pet that you loved? >> Roxie.

Did you have your own room as a child? >> I did.

What color was your nursery? >> ---

Did your parents know your gender before you were born? >> I don’t know.

What is your name (first and middle)? >> Mordred Shadow.

What would you have been named if you had been born the opposite gender? >> My name isn’t related to what my parent named me, and I have no idea what he would have named me if I was born the opposite sex.

Do you like your name? >> I like the one I gave myself, yes.

What would you name your children? >> ---

Do you exercise regularly? >> I’m again trying to do the take-a-daily-walk thing. Again. I fail every time, but I keep trying. Can Calah says there’s something good about that, better than failing and giving up on ever doing it again. I don’t know, but I’ll trust him on it.

Do you have a healthy BMI? >> I don’t know.

What is your favorite season? >> Spring.

Do you look like your mom? >> ---

What is the origin of your last name? >> I have no idea. I assumed that in this world, Stephen King made it up, but maybe he didn’t. The “canonical” origin of my last name is Gilead-That-Was.

What is the meaning of your first name? >> It’s unclear.

What month were you born in? >> May.

Do you share a birthday with anyone in your family? >> ---

Do you have a sweet tooth? >> Nope.

What photo editing software do you use? >> I either use Paint to just resize or crop an image, or Pixlr if I need extra editing tools.

Where do you buy most of your clothes? >> There is no place where I buy the majority of my clothes. They come from all over.

Let us take a moment, in these dark times, to laugh at how out of touch JK Rowling is.

This tweet: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269389298664701952?s=20

No one is saying sex isn’t real. Sex is a medical construct, the same as blood type. Your doctor is the only one who really needs to know it. If some rando on the street walked up to you and asked what your blood type was that would be real fucking weird. Same if some rando walked up and demanded to know you’re chromosomes. It’s kinda weird.

Gender is a social construct, which also means it’s real but not intrinsic to humanity. It’s just something society came up with to help organize. Seeing as reproduction isn’t nearly as crucial and surviving is a lot easier now, the construct of having the population that has to carry children and nurse them separate from the part that doesn’t have to do that isn’t really necessary anymore. It’s like an old filing system, still usable, and many people still love it and are attached, but it isn’t wrong for some people to start using the newest model.

Tweet: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269401983095648259?s=20

You... you wrote a series... you wrote a series where you called every woman a witch...

Also I call myself way worse words than bitch. I can’t speak for anyone else but bitch and cunt have lost all effect on me. Like, thanks for the giant red flag Mr uncreative, I’ll be leaving now. Has anyone heard the word ‘feminazi’ used in the last, what, 4 years? It seems to have died with gamergate.

Tweet: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269406094595588096?s=20

“The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades”

Hahahahahahahahahahaha! Tell that to Rita Skeeter! Did you even read the books you wrote??????

Article: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

“accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline“

Stop listening to Twitter! It’s a dumpster fire! Twitter is not real life!

“I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.“

I don’t know if this is a joke or not. But I really hope someone composted them. The image of someone chucking all 7 books onto a compost pile is fucking gold. Can the next brand boycott be a composting one? I want to see angry fanboys fucking composting their nikes! I can’t stop giggling, it’s like 1am.

“because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender”

I don’t have a joke for this one. She never says what she thinks gender is, so I have no concept of why this would be a bad thing seeing as she’s been conflating the two in every post.

“The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.”

ThInK oF tHe ChIlDrEn!!!!!!

“The third is that, as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it”

People being mean to you on twitter is not an affront to your freedom of speech. Freedom of speech protects you from the government not the internet. Why is this such a hard concept?

“I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition ........ Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.”

... do you think transphobia is easier than homophobia???? You’re more likely to face a hate crime if you’re not cis than if you’re not straight.(both are high, but non-cis is higher per capita than non-straight)  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/06/28/anti-gay-hate-crimes-rise-fbi-says-and-they-likely-undercount/1582614001/

“Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.”

Now, is this 5 close friends realizing at the same time that they are all binary trans people, because that would be statistically weird. Or, is this a group of children where one of them realized strict gender performances are kind of pointless and a pain, explained it to their friends, and they didn’t have the words to describe it other than ‘trans’. The second scenario sounds much more likely.

“The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves.”

Well that’s simplistic, but even so google the suicide rates. It’s that simple. They are very fucking high. All this takes is one google search. Also, you don’t have to medically transition right away. Puberty blockers won’t hurt you, and buying a teenager a binder or a packer really isn’t that hard. Some trans people never medically transition.

“When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’”

Maybe... that’s cause... you know... you’re human. There’s not much different between male and female. one chromosome, three hormone differences, and like four genes. That’s it. That’s not really enough to make differently functioning brains. The only differences are learned ones.

“As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s”

Yes you did. There were plenty of trans men in the 80s. Trans women were the ones who led Stonewall! A nonbinary person is the hero of a Babylonian(?Sumerian?) myth that’s several thousand years old! This is not a new thing! Pick up a book!

“A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law.”

What country are you living in cause it’s not England! I follow a trans youtuber and he started sobbing when he got the sex on his birth certificate changed to male because it had taken years and he had had to jump through so many hoops. It’s not even legal to change a many documents in several US states.

“We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced.”

Ah yes, gaining the right to vote doesn’t hold a candle to the evil trans women who want to *checks notes* live peacefully. Doctors diagnosing women with hysteria and giving them lobotomies is nothing against people wanting to go about their day!

“Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now.”

I remember the day when my father sold me off to my husband for 20 goats, 5 cattle, and a magnificent draft horse!

“None of the gender critical women I’ve talked to hates trans people;”

...Sure... they just “don’t agree with the lifestyle” don’t they?

Anyway, I read her entire essay. There’s nothing interesting in it. I dug through the poop to find the gold nuggets for you. That rest of it is just the standard “But predators in the little girls room, think about the children” shit we’ve heard for years. I also recognized a lot of conservative talking points and gotchas which surprised me for a moment, but after thinking about the two positions it made sense.