Jesster

A proof of concept for the flag i want in my dorm

This speech is inherently atheistic to me. Firstly, “before what god?” can be interpreted to call into question the existence of a god to oppose or offend. Or it could be interpreted to question which of the many possible deities Francesca would be referring to. This acknowledgment of polytheism would invalidate her implicit use of "blasphemy" as a universally recognized wrongdoing under a universally recognized, capital G, christian "God." Though most obviously the line just exists to introduce the rest of the speech, like "Okay, lets examine the figure you're basing your morality off of here."

Then, yes, he acknowledges the existence of that god. But he is likely doing so in much the same way that I acknowledge the existence of Herbert West from classic 1985 horror-comedy Re-animator. That is, as a fictional character. Even then he refers to Him hypothetically, saying "a god" instead of "God" or "the god" (capitalizing the H, not in a reverent religious way, rather because I respect His neopronouns).

As he continues in talking about the failures of this god, I read it as him simply entertaining the idea of a higher power to criticize it. And I think we can be pretty sure he doesn't actually believe in that god since he exclusively refers to Him as "your god."

Furthermore, yes i said furthermore, I imagine Herbert as a very purposefully atheist character since I believe in the original books he was intended to juxtapose Dan/the narrator's religious viewpoint with an analytical and scientific one

Also, since “god” is used here as a class of deity and not as a name, I feel it should technically not be capitalized. But I tried it that way and I felt it removed a level of drama.

Mr Boss is a seahorse dad who chooses to chest feed, good for him.

If you had to pick, what's the ONE trait in a fictional character that makes you immediately go "oh this one's mine"

Wow! Here’s something incredibly personal.

This is Good Bi Gender. A comic I made to express some feelings I have about my gender. I don’t really have that much else to say about it. Here it is.

[Image Description: A digital comic made with sharp, angular abstract lines and only the colors white, blue, pink, and black. The featured character is all white, except for facial features and hair colors, which changes from panel to panel. The comic reads: Cover Panel: The text “Good Bi Gender”, the words colored with the trans flag. It shows a glitchy person’s face, half pink and half blue. Panel 1: White text reads: “Hello. My name is apparently irrelevant. And my pronouns are he/him and she/her. But you can’t call me she/her. And here’s why.” Someone with a half-pink and half-blue shirt looks to the side. One eye is covered with hair, and the other eye is pink while the iris is blue.

Panel 2: The character sits happily, imagining facial hair and a masculine voice. “I don’t want top surgery. I love my chest. And I dream about being on testosterone someday soon.” The character looks at a phone, frowning. The phone shows the male symbol with an “X” through it. Text next to it reads: “People don’t seem to think that the features I dream of are very pretty though… Or they think even worse of them than that…”

Panel 3: The character’s features are all pink, and sits in a blank frame. The character reaches over to a blue frame, frowning. “I don’t like the animosity. I really despise it.” A photo of the character shows an all-blue frame and blue hair, with pink outlines and facial features. “To be a boy… I aspire to be one. I aspire to be masculine in all its handsomeness. All its prettiness.” Panel 4: The character sits in an all blue panel, but reaches back out to the pink panel. “And I’m still a girl too. I was so excited to have both. To love both. To have handsome femininity. Beautiful masculinity.” The frames break and connect, and pink and blue swirl together. The character smiles in between the frames, with one pink eye and one blue eye. “So excited. And yet I get asked…”

Panel 5: Two hands hold out two different pills to the character, one blue and one pink. They ask “Male? or Female?” using the male and female symbols.The character, facial features an array of pink and blue, looks between the two hands, distressed. “It’s both! I’m both! They’re not opposites. Not narrow boxes. I say I’m both despite the insistence that I can’t be. And I know what I look like. I know I look like a girl to most. I know that if I say people can call me she, that’s all I will get from most. Because it’s “easier”. It “makes more sense”. To have my masculinity, I am often forced to be unflinching in it and it alone. To never use she. Because if I don’t, I will never get to have he.” [The words “she” and “he” are italicized.] Panel 6: Text reads: “I’m still very happy to be so comfortable in my identity. To know, despite all that, that I am indeed a boy and a girl and both. But you know. Telling people to only use he/him for me. Guarding my masculinity all just to have it. All at the expense of the part of me who is happily and unashamedly a girl.” The character cries from one pink eye, the other hidden. The character holds a pink girl in a sea of blue, the girl crying out. In the midst of the blue, text reads: “Well, it fucking breaks her heart.” End ID]

Edit: @starberry-skies wrote an ID for the comic, so I added it to the og post with its permission!

People mistaking Jon Matteson for a lesbian woman is simply my favorite thing

It’s very validating for me when one of my favorite cis men gets mistaken for a lesbian cause it happens to me so often

Wow. The patience, kindness and calm communication skills. Outstanding.

From raindovemodel

This made me cry. I wish all situations could be handled as perfectly as this

I just want to point out the core of what the diffuser did in this conversation

They recognized that the mother was also expressing a vulnerable truth about herself - that she felt like a bad mother because her child was expressing gender feelings she wasn’t equipped to help with - and met her where she was, a concerned parent with limited information - to point her where she should be heading, research and resources.

Im going to make more of an effort to stop reflexively pushing people away when they express biases and make more of an effort to hear the underlying fears when i can

“it’s easier to love ourselves when we feel loved as ourselves”

damn that is so  powerful though

“it’s easier to

love ourselves when we feel

loved as ourselves”

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Holloweane is so t4t it’s insane

YES EXACTLY THANK YOU!!!!!!!

they’re the t4t-est couple in all of hatchetfield. and maybe the world

So much dude, the aesthetics, the hair, the witchcraft, “Hiya Duke” and “Heya darlin,” the experience of trading your ability connect with other and to discuss your past for the life you want and the ability to protect others (especially kids) from the things that you had to go through,,, uh, rock music,, being attractive, coming back from the dead, changing your name, being named “Duke”????

I can go in depth about how each of these things are trans as hell. Holloweane is THE t4t couple. Dare I say, they’re even t4t-er than Lexthan

god you’re SO RIGHT!!!! and listen bro you don’t even wanna get me started i could go on and on about them

the way miss holloway does regular name changes and takes on new identities. that’s so similar to the trans experience. also this ties in to coming back from the dead

and like you said, how they BOTH help others to try and protect them from what THEY had to go through,,,, oughhh i felt that so hard, i love them so much. and again, that’s another very trans thing

duke, and how we see him acting with rose in the beginning. he’s so considerate and doesn’t push. and when hannah talks to him about nightmare time. he listens. he doesn’t understand but he LISTENS. maybe i’m projecting but it’s almost like he knows what its like to be a kid and have adults not listen to you. that’s not an inherently trans thing but it IS something a lot of trans people have to deal with

and GODDD like you said, the hair!!!! duke being the stereotypical transmasc with fluffy hair (and as you said the name duke lmao) and miss holloway with her big and bold ‘80s hair. like that’s SO trans

honestly, just her entire aesthetic really!! and how committed she is into it. honestly i feel like holding onto her aesthetic even through different personas and eras of herself helps to keep her sane. it gives her a constant to hold on to. but that’s slightly off topic. the point is, she’s cool and hot asf which. trans.

how they interact with each other. it’s a very specific kind of like lighthearted teasing and just. pure genuine love and care. they’re THE couple ever fr bc GOD they’re so honest and pure and loving. and like sue me but i think some of the purest love is t4t love. saw a post a while ago talking about the beauty of being t4t and nearly cried bc GOD ITS SO TRUE AND SO BEAUTIFUL!!!! i love the trans experience and t4t is just such a beautiful form of trans solidarity and community. i myself am in a t4t relationship and i really believe there’s truly nothing like it. the sheer love and support for each other. the way that they just Get It. and i really feel like holloweane has that kind of love. there’s so much that must be left unsaid when they interact but they just love each other SO deeply and unconditionally that it isn’t as important. yes they’re a heartbreaking tragic ship but also. the love they have is so REAL and tangible. holloway feeding duke pie and hotcakes. duke doing his best to understand and go along with things even when they make absolutely no sense to him. he would follow her to the ends of the universe and back, even if he never got why she was going there in the first place. and miss holloway’s devotion to him. despite knowing that she can never talk about her past, every time he asks she tries. EVERY TIME. because MAYBE this time it will work. despite her knowing deep down that it won’t. she’d tell him time and time again no matter how painful it is for her. because she LOVES HIM. and when they have to start over, she still seeks him out in her new persona. even though it would be easier to try and keep her distance, she STILL comes right back to him, over and over and over again. sorry but if this love isn’t trans then what is

anyway sorry for the rant i just love them so much skfjskjdskc

HELL YEAH. Thank you for the rant! you’re so so right. Okay im going to keep talking because you’re enabling me so here are a few more things

First off I need to unpack “Hiya Duke” and “Heya Darlin’” cause it means so much to me (It’s so cute they’re so cute). greetings like hiya and heya feel so queer-culture to me, I don’t know why, but I don’t feel as though I’ve never heard a cishet say them with such regularity. “Darlin’” is queer too, we love cowboy words, I will not elaborate. But I also find that hiya and heya have a slight feminine and masculine connotation respectively, which a cis person just wouldn’t care enough to pick up on, I specifically remember getting into a habit of greeting folks w hiya and then consciously changing it to heya to be more masc. I bet Duke picked up the habit of saying “hiya” from Ms Holloway and then got dysphoric and switched it. Also by using Dukes chosen name immediately upon seeing him Ms Holloway is making a very clear and upfront gender affirmation. It’s pretty common in my experience to -upon meeting another queer person- look for the quickest and subtlest ways to say “I understand and you’re safe with me” and consistently using the chosen name in the greeting is the perfect example of that. I also think Duke is using the feminine term “darling” to the same effect. And then they got into a pattern of saying it every time they see each other so that theyre always making each other feel understood and respected and oh my gosh im gonna cry I love them so much.

And yes absolutely Ms Holloways 80s aesthetic and the way she commits to it is so trans!! Like something about not being allowed to like certain things or certain styles for a portion of your life and then surrounding yourself with it later, because you finally can and because it is something that consistently brings you joy. Committing to being perceived as strange because you are perceived as strange by default. The obsession with different time periods and their highly gendered aesthetics (plus the jokes that tend to stem from that about being immortal (and Ms H actually is)). The concept of designing yourself!?! I mean she just gives off the vibes that her gender solely existed in a pinterest board for a period of her life and now she’s finally using it

And YES Duke’s ability to connect with young girls who are scared and confused and don’t expect to be believed is so real. He understands them and he knows that they won’t be expecting him to understand them. And like ik it’s a trope but it’s true that afab folks are often raised with a higher emphasis on emotional maturity and respect for women which tends to give transmascs a better sense of perspective on how to treat women and people in general. And the way he’s so defensive of Hannah when he’s talking to her mother.

And yeah the way they talk to each other is so pure and wonderful. I don’t have any real frame of reference myself about cis and trans relationships to personally attest to that part of what you said but I totally get that understanding of each other that they have and there’s also that metaphor of always being willing and ready to listen and to explain their experiences to one another but knowing that complete understanding isn’t possible, and them loving each other so completely despite that. I just. RAHHH <3333

I am not sorry for the rant. thank you for being insane about them with me :)

Holloweane is so t4t it’s insane

YES EXACTLY THANK YOU!!!!!!!

they’re the t4t-est couple in all of hatchetfield. and maybe the world

So much dude, the aesthetics, the hair, the witchcraft, “Hiya Duke” and “Heya darlin,” the experience of trading your ability connect with other and to discuss your past for the life you want and the ability to protect others (especially kids) from the things that you had to go through,,, uh, rock music,, being attractive, coming back from the dead, changing your name, being named “Duke”????

I can go in depth about how each of these things are trans as hell. Holloweane is THE t4t couple. Dare I say, they’re even t4t-er than Lexthan