writing is so funny because i could write nonstop for 9hrs and then hit a block where im like "how do i transition between this moment and the next?" and then i just dont touch it for 6 months
Serious advice tho if this happens, it's likely because you already wrote past the end of the scene and wandered too far from the more logical transition point, and you should go back to the last time the writing felt "unforced" and cut everything after.
You can also just skip the transition. Really good writing can span years in a single sentence, like you can just authoritatively state fact and your reader will go with it.
sometimes i wonder if i'm even really a girl. i think i feel like one but dont know what im supposed to feel if i am. i dont dress like one or act like one, even though i want to and i have the privilege to be able to with a relatively supportive family.
all my transfem sisters have this certain... way of being fem and cute and all that but i feel like im the gray duck even among the gray ducks. did i get it wrong? have i made the biggest mistake of my life? i dont think so, because i know i WANT to be a girl, but everyone around me says that trans girls have been girls their entire lives.
i was pretty clearly a boy growing up. i had mostly male friends, i loved american football and hockey, i wanted to be either a racecar driver or a hockey player. the educated feminist in me says that those things dont make me a boy or a girl, theyre just things. But it's not like I was forced to do them. I chose to be that way.
I came out as transfem in freshman year of high school and all of my other LGBTQ friends were so effortlessly themselves. They all looked how I wanted to look, talked how I wanted to talk, and acted how I wanted to act.
I was the only TMA person in the entire friendgroup, of course, but this was before I knew about the whole TMA/TME framework. I had no way of understanding that there was a difference between the way society treated me vs the way it treated them. We were all just woke trannies that the government hated equally.
Every time the little voice in my head told me that I shouldn't want the femininity that my transmasc friends embraced, I told myself I was a horrible, transphobic, evil person. When I got out of high school, I was going to become a rapist pedophile just like all the other trans girls in the news.
I hated my friends. They had what I wanted, declared they didn't want it, and then just fucking... did nothing. And everyone just accepted them as transmasc or nonbinary even with all their neopronouns and dresses and push-up bras. I knew, I know that if I tried to pull something like that, if I forgot to shave for a day, or if I failed to wear the cold, hard, uncomfortable plastic women's fencing chest protector I used as breast forms, or said that I wanted to be referred to as something other than she/her or they/them, or announced that even though I was a girl, I identified as gay, or raised my voice, or asked people not to use they/them with me, I wouldn't be accepted.
I couldn't make a mistake, even if it was the same as one of my transmasc friends forgetting to wear a binder or intentionally wearing a dress that showed off cleavage, or calling himself a lesbian. But I didn't let myself think that consciously. I just told myself I was a horrible person and slowly ostracized myself from them.
And don't even fucking get me started on the GSA. I told myself I loved it, loved spending time with all the people who saw me as "the transfem". I was the only one who wanted to fight, but I was also the only one who couldn't. Everyone looked down on me, I couldn't speak my mind, I couldn't tell my TMA therapist, I was alone in a group of 20.
I'm not sure I know how to add the cut properly but consider this your chance to pass here. This might read less as supportive and more as discourse, which isn't what you seem to want/need at the moment. I'm hoping that by the time this crosses your path you'll be feeling okay enough either ignore my response at this warning or be at a place where you don't need support as much as just discussion.
The "trans women have been women their entire lives" sometimes sounds like it's just rhetoric. On the one hand there are people who know from a very early age and embrace it and are willing to have that fight their whole lives. On the other hand there's lots of people who just hide. People who conform out of fear or lack of support or just don't know it's an option and treat that part of themselves like some kind of sin. Some people don't have the option to do that and have to come out early because they're intersex. Then of course there's some people who just don't discover themselves until much later in life. For a lot of people the statement in question can be very validating, but like any statement about any group of people, that doesn't make it a universal truth. Not connecting to that doesn't make you less than.
(Personally, I remember having those feelings at a young age and then just shoving them down. I didn't have a GSA or access to any kind of queer media. If I had discovered this earlier it might've helped and I might've come out and started transitioning, but I don't like thinking like that because queer kids growing up were bullied relentlessly and I might've just buried it deeper or kms. I don't think I had any connection to womanhood or girlhood growing up, I don't connect with that statement either. The important thing to remember is that it's not dogma. If it's not useful, then you can let it go.)
The things you chose to do are normal things that girls and women do too. Women's sports my be underfunded but choosing racecar driving or hockey doesn't make you less than. Usually I'd mean that in the way that you mentioned, those things don't have gender, but this time I mean it in the other way. There are lots of women who do those sports and go unnoticed and unrecognized because of misogyny. Being made to feel ashamed or embarrassed by that, from what I've seen, seems to be a pretty common problem for girls interested in those things growing up. At a certain point your fight has to be against those feelings of shame and against the system that instilled that. (Or you know internalize it and suffer, plenty of women do that too...)
I know how you feel about about being jealous for other people's success in this. If other wonder if I'm going to keep progressing or if my transition has plateaued. It takes a lot to remember that nothing is effortless, even if it seems it is. If it's not something people had to work for to look that way then it's something they were made to suffer or suffer for.
This one is the hard part. It's feels like such a core experience to me that I still don't have any coping mechanisms that might help. After all, it's one thing to know what the right answer is, and entirely another to actually feel it. And I'm sure you know it, but let me explain as a reminder to myself, this mostly has to do with our own insecurities. The feeling of being pushed away and not accepted is a terrifying feeling, but in trying to avoid it we grow weaker to it, part of those feelings we have to fight is loneliness. Maybe you hadn't found a community that is as supportive of transfems as you thought you had. If that was the case and you did get rejected by slipping up and getting pushed away maybe now you wouldn't feel like it's you're fault, maybe you would've persevered and educated them and maybe they would've listened, maybe you'd have left and found a new community that is properly accepting. When some people deal with insecurities they only have to fight themselves. You have to struggle against society as a whole (and apparently your own community).
Yes it sucks, and yes it shouldn't be that way, but that's really the only path forward as a transfem. I know this probably isn't much help, but if it is and you want to talk with more about this you can.
(also maybe you need a new therapist or should examine why you don't feel comfortable talking about this with them. If they are TMA then I'm not sure I see what's wrong or bad about these feelings. (May be totally off base there, but if so then please think about how safe you feel with that therapist).
easy to miss that one of the reasons maternal mortality is diminished so extremely by modern medicine is that modern medicine makes it so much more possible to identify the pregnancies that will die and take you with them, or are otherwise unacceptably high risk. and then discontinue those ones safely, before it's too late.
thought about this because it's so frustrating when people argue that 'dying in childbirth' is a historical sort of event that doesn't happen nowadays (false) and therefore is irrelevant to the legal status of abortion, since it's not a real danger.
except it super is, and i think a lot of people haven't noticed that this argument in addition to simply being incorrect is basically the same as when people say we don't need vaccines for deadly diseases because no one gets those now anyway.
like yeah one reason for that is we vaccinate everybody ffs.
Note: after the end of Roe v Wade in the US, the maternal mortality rate (and the infant mortality rate) are showing clear increases in the states with the strictest anti-abortion laws.
Forcing people to carry high risk or non viable pregnancies to term kills.
A new brainworm! What if Zelink met as kids first 🥺?!
It'd be so cute if little Link was temporarily assigned to guard & watch over little Zelda ahhh
And then they meet again 7 years later when Link gets re-stationed at the castle!!
Height difference reversal yipeee
No calamity in this AU I think!
Link is slightly older than Zelda, but not by much. I just imagined little Link trying to mother hen little Zelda and it's so cute! He tries to get her to stick to her proper bed time and prayer time, but Zelda is too good at sneaking around😂
Link is probably a bit of a stick in the mud in this AU, but tbf he is responsible for the safety of the kingdom's darling little princess. He takes his job very seriously (as seriously as a 12 year old can lmao)
They become besties eventually, Zelda dragging him around all over the castle causing mischief and shenanigans!!
But then Link pulls the Master Sword after a few months, so he's relieved from duty of being Zelda's guard & gets sent out to train / eradicate monsters all over Hyrule. Zelda loses her friend :(
And then the reunion happens 7 years later!!! Zelda remembers Link being so much taller than her back then, always nagging her like a mother hen, chasing her around the castle court whenever she skipped prayers, etc. He got riled up so easily it was kinda cute. She looks forward to meeting her childhood bestie again...!!
But the Link she reunites with is quite different. For one, he's smaller than her now (cute). But he's also gotten so serious and quiet. When Zelda suggests mischief to get a rise out of him, he just quietly nods and follows behind her silently, like a guard that he should be... How boring! He must've gone through quite a lot to have changed this much.
Now Zelda is on a mission to get past Link's serious mask and befriend him again!
And ofc they eventually get together! Don't mind the alpha/omega assignment in the 2nd pic hehe I just thought younger Zelda topping older Link would be sooo cute, ok I'm done rambling thank you for coming to my tedtalk
one thing that i find interesting is that even though we never get to interact with Marika directly, only knowing her via obscure cutscenes and other characters' dialogue... she actually displays a wide range of emotions as much as any other NPCs.
her statues depict her as having a warm, gentle smile:
the Mimic veil description points to her playful, mischievous side:
(it's a popular theory in the JP/Asian side of the fandom that it's sth from her childhood - hence the "Marika's Mischief", not "Queen Marika's", and she used it to escape the grisly fate befalling her family.
additionally, its equivalence in Dark Souls is also something described as "the mischief of a young girl who sought relief from the solitude of the woods at dusk", aka Princess Dusk who hails from "Oolacile, land of ancient golden sorceries", but i digress)
her portrait, the story trailer's "Queen Marika was driven to the brink" and Gideon's dialogue after the player defeated Malenia pointed out her sorrow:
(back when i first played the base game, this is the portrait that drove my eyes most in Roundtable Hold. i kept gazing at her - the Queen with permanently lowered eyes, and thought "there is a girl in there")
The bat lady's song, Messmer's entire Crusade, all those conflicts to establish the Erdtree, shows her anger, and the cruelty she's capable of:
Then there's Shaman's village, the clinic underneath Shadow Keep, the golden braid, the Minor Erdtree, the sealing of Death - that points to grief, trauma, survivor guilt, kindness, and the ruinous drive for revenge that results in the above path down hell:
(there's also a theory for the Crusade's headless statue being a reminder for the Hornsent of what they put Marika's mother through, but it's not concrete canon so here is the link if you want to check it out)
The fact that all of Erdtree's incantations are heal and protection spells (with only one exception of Wrath of Gold spell which was found after the Elden Ring was shattered), the Capitol's Perfumers originally being blessed healers, and that all Erdtree blessings come in the shape of tears give the picture of Marika's gentle wish at the beginning: to heal everything and everyone.
(and to me personally, there's a kind of vulnerability and honesty in showing your tears to the world and let it be your power to heal at the same time.)
the eye she blessed Messmer with (i do think the Eng translation at some part lost the sentiment of the JP text - that the eye is always referred to as a blessing)
the blessing flask that - unlike its Dark Souls equivalent (which ranges from 6-13 flasks), only have 4 available to us player, heal all ailments and status effect, and specified as sth made for Messmer.
the Marika's soreseal in the Haligtree + the waterfall near Godwyn's final resting place
the Regal Omen Bairn (that was fashioned after the Jizo statue - sth made by grieving parents wishing for protection for their deceased child in the afterlife)
the blessing, gifts, equipment that Messmer and Godwyn's personal knights all get
the fact that Marika's bedchamber and the Impaler's Catacomb (which is the only catacomb in the base game to have the spike trap mechanic used in catacombs in the DLC) remain the proof of Messmer's existence in the base game
how Godwyn's ending is the only ending where the mending rune is placed on the position of Marika's womb (the lower arc or the Elden Ring - also referred to as the basin in which its blessings pool)
that's a whole barrage of motherhood. the love, the fear, the postpartum depression, the guilt and anxiety, (the occasional scheming for revenge with her son). and despite how flawed and tragic that love ends up being for all of them, it is there.
(there's a whole subplot about how Messmer is the only demigod to be called ugly in-game (Hornsent npc dialogue) while Boc's questline is about how his mother being the only one to always assure him he's beautiful, despite everyone else calling him ugly. and how each NPCs questline does reflect a wider theme seen in Marika and her children. but again, i digress)
every time i think of her, Marika is a constantly shifting kaleidoscope, holding everything from within (the beauty and the malign, light and dark, birth and death, she's warm and gentle, she's cruel and unjust, she's strong and kind, she's weak and resentful, she's sweet and she's bitterness made flesh)... and i could only stand there and admire it all.
Y'all better quiet down! I've been trying to get up here all day for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail that write me every motherfucking week and ask for your help! And you all don't do a goddamn thing for them! And they write STAR, not the woman's group! They do not write women, they do not write men, they write to STAR! Because we're trying to do something for them! But you all tell me to go and hide my tail between my legs! I will not put up with this shit! I have been beaten, I have had my nose broken, I have been thrown in jail, I have lost my job, I have lost my apartment for gay liberation, and you all treat me this way?! What the fuck's wrong with you all?! Think about that! I believe in the gay power, I believe in us getting our rights, or else I would not be out there fighting for our rights, that's all I wanted to say to you people. Come and see people at STAR House on Twelfth Street, the people that are trying to do something for all of us, and not men and women that belong to our white middle class club! And that's what you all belong to! Revolution now! Gay power! Know the gay power!
This is actually a heavily edited version of her speech, cutting out all of her focus on the sexual violence that she and other queer folks, especially trans and GNC folks experienced at the time. She was angry that all of the white middle class queers that were managing and primarily attending the March were ignoring the massive amounts of state supported violence being directed towards lower class queers and especially queer POC. Cutting out her repeated mentions of rape to make the video more palatable is continuing to erase that violence. Watch/read the full version instead and acknowledge that this violence has barely slowed down today for trans folks. That our president issued an order to imprison trans women in men's prisons, directly ordering our justice system to ignore the Prison Rape Elimination Act as part of ensuring that those sexual violence against trans folks was perpetuated. Don't you fucking dare cut her words in the topic.
Here's the full transcript and an unedited video or her speech. Also, don't forget in your transcript that she spoke through boo's and jeers and that's why she had to tell them to quiet down to start. Those boo's died down as her speech continued and the crowd felt shame.
Sylvia: "Y’all better quiet down. I’ve been trying to get up here all day for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail that write me every motherfucking week and ask for your help and you all don’t do a goddamn thing for them.
Have you ever been beaten up and raped and jailed? Now think about it. They’ve been beaten up and raped after they’ve had to spend much of their money in jail to get their [inaudible], and try to get their sex changes. The women have tried to fight for their sex changes or to become women. On the women’s liberation and they write ‘STAR,’ not to the women’s groups, they do not write women, they do not write men, they write ‘STAR’ because we’re trying to do something for them.
I have been to jail. I have been raped. And beaten. Many times! By men, heterosexual men that do not belong in the homosexual shelter. But, do you do anything for me? No. You tell me to go and hide my tail between my legs. I will not put up with this shit. I have been beaten. I have had my nose broken. I have been thrown in jail. I have lost my job. I have lost my apartment for gay liberation and you all treat me this way? What the fuck’s wrong with you all? Think about that!
I do not believe in a revolution, but you all do. I believe in the gay power. I believe in us getting our rights, or else I would not be out there fighting for our rights. That’s all I wanted to say to you people. If you all want to know about the people in jail and do not forget Bambi L’amour, and Dora Mark, Kenny Metzner, and other gay people in jail, come and see the people at Star House on Twelfth Street on 640 East Twelfth Street between B and C apartment 14.
The people are trying to do something for all of us, and not men and women that belong to a white middle class white club. And that’s what you all belong to! "
REVOLUTION NOW! Gimme a ‘G’! Gimme an ‘A’! Gimme a ‘Y’! Gimme a ‘P’! Gimme an ‘O’! Gimme a ‘W’! Gimme an ‘E! Gim me an ‘R’! [crying] Gay power! Louder! GAY POWER!
For those of you who are unaware, the "STAR" she is referring to is the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. A short-lived group she founded with Marsha P. Johnson, which sought to organize lumpen-proletarian trans women along a similar model to that pioneered by national liberation groups like the Black Panther Party. Rivera, as a representative of STAR, even attended the BPP's People's Revolutionary Constitution, where she advocated for the inclusion of trans women in the wider revolutionary movement
@solpuff would lov to hear those if youve got anything on hand. also ive been procrastinating adding to this post foreverrrr UM
but damn yeah thats true! do remember that now! and other than that one staff the carians gifted some queens, nobody really touches on the crazy fact that demihumans ARE capable of magic. huh!
and a magic type that (afaik) only marika is mentioned to have utilized, and subsequently morgott. makes me wonder if its a shaman thing, or something that came about later? actually shaman may make sense. what if you could just turn into a tree to hide from getting shoved in a jar
anyway thats more for demihumans of course being more intelligent than theyre given credit for. and more for some parallels with marika re: the queens at least! which also parallel rennala! its mothers all the way down
If Grace could not fully get out of teacher mode even after being in a coma for years (the Rocky my hand is up scene), I can not even think how much worse it would get after he actually takes up teaching again at Erid.
I can imagine Grace, still in that "has been teaching for five hours" haze, trying to have a conversation with Rocky like:
"That's a great answer, buddy, you have earned yourself a sticker... Oh shoot Rocky I'm so so..."
"Yes, yes, Grace very sorry for speaking to Rocky like child, Grace brain thinks Grace still in classroom, apology accepted now where is my sticker question"
Unrelated. (DNI if you don't want something not connected to op)
Every time I see a post like this my first thought is The Grace of Gold and Marika's empire crumbling under the weight of its own banished Destined Death. Reforge the Elden Ring, Tarnished, tell the story in the fallen leaves. I don't know what OP's post is about. I don't know why I keep seeing stuff from this mysterious fandom. All I know is that I will likely once again be disappointed by once again not seeing more Elden Ring content.
Sorry I fucking hate these condescending ass posts. How dare the poor get uppity at people. Meanwhile half of the middle class is voting to eradicate homeless people off the streets.
They're okaying means testing because of racism and are fine with anti-homeless architecture because homeless people are dirty and scary and want candidates who are "tough on crime" I really do mean it. The people you need to convince of that are the middle class.
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