Your new team leader tells you the Furry meetup is mandatory the day it’s scheduled.
“Shark,” Atlas says in the same tone he uses to announce the villain of the day. Ugh, the Ice Twins again. His brown hair isn’t gelled back like usual; it falls over his forehead as he presses his face into his hands. “Please don’t call it that.”
“The anti-Furry meetup,” you say generously. You’re on the bench trying to get at least three more chest presses in with the 250lb weights. Then, with any luck, Atlas will leave and you can go up to 500 without him bitching about how there isn’t a strong enough spotter in San Francisco headquarters for that and you need to be doing your sets on the machines. “And you forgot the The again.”
“They’re not anti either, the Shark,” Atlas says, raising his head. He scowls when he sees you’ve gone on with your workout without him. He adjusts his fitted vest – in explorer khaki today – and places his hands over the bar with you. You would think he’d give up on looking like an intrepid adventurer cutting through fauna while at the gym, but no. He’s even got his machete on his hip. “Hero Force’s official stance on the anthropomorphic community is that it has no opinion on it.”
“The invitation seemed pretty anti to me,” you say. You’ve always had a good memory for jokes. “It’s a support group to navigate the challenges of having unique fans. Aka bad fans. Aka horny--”
“It’s not anti,” Atlas interrupts. This time his voice is calm and even, like it gets when he’s trying not to yell. His white leather gloves squeak as he forces the bar back onto the rest. You make him work for it and you’re pleased to see a bit of red climbing up his neck. “And I thought you said you didn’t get the invitation.”
You sit up and stretch out your arms. The base’s gym is empty at this hour. The famous San Francisco grey is lightening outside, but the sun hasn’t broken through yet. Probably won’t for a few hours if it does at all. “It goes to my spam mail. You know they meet monthly? Who even has time for that?”
“You,” Atlas says. He mirrors you when you cross your arms. “There hasn’t been an aquatic villain in months. You gave your patrol shift to Cypher today.”
“Because I have plans,” you say.
Atlas raises one thin brow.
“Stop asking me about my personal life,” you say.
Like you wanted, Atlas bristles. “I would never—” He takes a deep breath. “Look, the Shark, you’re new to the team so I’ll explain my expectations. Every member of my team is expected to show up for at least one support group and one community function a month. I thought you understood that when you volunteered at the Sharkfest Swim.”
You cock your head. “Yeah. Sharkfest Swim.” Now that Hero Force finally lets you go by the name you chose, you have to make up for lost time. You’ve so far gone to the local aquarium’s shark week celebration, six different showings of Sharknado, and done a Jaws themed bar crawl. People are starting to actually call you by name rather than the new hero on Atlas’ team.
“…It’s a nonnegotiable,” Atlas says at last. He points to his chest. “I go to a support group for Leaders. Cypher is part of Victim’s Anonymous—”
“Nice anonymity.”
“—Zig goes to grief group.” Atlas purses his lips. “We’re a team. We tell each other these things. She wouldn’t mind me telling you.”
“Uh huh.” You turn towards the cubbies. “Is there a My Team Leader Tried to Kill Me Anonymous?”
“That one’s yearly.”
You pause picking up your keys and water bottle. You look at him over your shoulder. “Seriously?”
Atlas rolls his eyes and doesn’t answer which probably means yes. He says, “This one is hosted in Sacramento. If you leave now, you’ll be just in time.”
That’s why he wants you to go. This is an opportunity for him to show off his team on his own turf. You flick open the cap of your water bottle and drink before answering. When you look back down, he’s staring at the gills on either side of your neck. You bare your human teeth at him. “Fine. If my team leader insists.”
“Good that you understand—”
“I’m taking the Charger.”
Atlas at least knows how to compromise. “…I’ll let the parking attendant know to release the keys to you.”
You grin and stride out of the gym, taking the stairs three at a time on the way back to your room.
-------.
Your grin lasts as long as you’re at 100 mph which times out about twenty minutes outside of the city. Rush hour traffic. You kill time by calling your old teammate Angel.
“You’re going to the Furry thing?” She sounds appalled. In the background you can hear the sounds of an office – keyboards and copiers and ringing phones. When your last team disbanded, the auditor who caught your old team leader also caught the both of you with active plans to go rogue. While you ended up passing your psych evals after, it was decided Angel needed some desk time before going back into the field. “Really?”
“Thank you!” You knew she’d understand. “I don’t think I—”
“There aren’t any shark furries,” Angel interrupts.
You falter. “Tons of people are into sharks—”
“Maybe.” She sounds doubtful. “But you don’t even look like one usually.”
You prod at your flat teeth. “You think I should transform before I go in?”
“I think you should wait outside, honestly. You’re just gonna ruin the vibe.”
“The vibe?”
“The furry vibe.”
You’re offended. You’ve never ruined a vibe before. “That’s so messed up to say. You know that’s not true.”
“It totally is. There’s gonna be Lynx there, and maybe Dragonfly, for sure Canine, that werewolf guy from Kentucky, and then there’s gonna be you. The big asshole in the muscle tank who just looks like a total normie.”
It’s not a muscle tank. It’s an athletic skin that keeps the combat belt you wear from chafing. “Angel, they’re not furries. They’re there to complain about furries making their jobs harder.”
“Everyone is a furry,” Angel says knowingly. “Deep down.”
“This is why you failed your psych eval.”
“I’m still convinced they just mixed up our names on the test forms.”
“It was in person.”
“The examiner seemed tired.”
“You vandalized our leader’s car.”
“I took out the spark plugs.”
“Yes. Vandalized.”
“Maybe desk work would do you some good,” Angel says. A keyboard clacks authoritatively. “If you did, you’d know that vandalism is intentional damage to property. What I did was theft.”
“…did you just look that up?”
“I hate talking to you,” Angel whines. She doesn’t hang up. “I’m just trying to help you. I was just messing with you about there not being shark furries.”
You perk up as traffic starts moving again. “There are?”
“Yeah.” She types something on her computer. Pauses. “Oh my god, you have a tag on this furry blog.”
“Hell yeah,” you say. “What does it—”
Angel bursts out laughing. “Oh my god. You have to watch this.”
There’s a ding as her message arrives. You scowl. “I’m driving.”
“You know how when a shark attacks, you’re supposed to push on its nose and turn it away? It’s a compilation of Atlas redirecting you by touching your shoulder or back. And it’s so true. The vacant look in your eyes is exactly the same.”
“Hey--!”
“The first comment is The Shark has one braincell and leaves it at home regularly.”
Your grip tightens on the steering wheel. “I thought furries were supposed to be, like, rabid fans. Not fucking bullies.”
“There’s that too,” she assures you. “They think it’s hot how empty your head is.”
“Does anyone have anything nice to say?”
Angel hums as she types. “This one says they want you to eat them.”
You feel relieved. “Like sexually, right? That’s more like—”
By the time you arrive in Sacramento, you know too much about your furry fandom and their terrifying vocabulary. You’re also aware that while some members of the community are horny internet fucks, a lot of them aren’t. You’re also aware that no matter which category a furry falls into, that doesn’t make them safe.
You kind of do need a support group as it turns out.
You burst into the meeting room without introducing yourself to the guard standing in front of the cafeteria-like doors. Judging by how his eyes widen behind his standard-issue black mask and how he leaps out of your way, he knows who you are.
“These disgusting rats have to be stopped,” you announce to the people sitting in a circle in the center of the room. You pause as you take in the folding chairs, the red solo cups, and the table set to the side piled high with donut boxes and finger sandwiches. “Wow, this is more depressing than I expected.”
“I take offense to the rat comment,” Panya says. His heavy brow descends as he frowns and he rubs one of the rounded ears sitting on top of his bald head. A long prehensile, fleshy tail twitches behind him. “Rats are actually pretty clean.”
“I think I speak for the room when I take offense to the rest of that,” Lynx says. Unlike Panya, she still has her mask on. Besides how the fake fur shines under the artificial lighting, it’s a perfect match for her own tail which she has curled in her lap. “Canine finally let us bring booze.”
“Wow,” you breathe. You stare as you walk up to the circle and take one of the empty chairs. There are eight set up, but only four are filled. “You can really tell powers are mutations, huh? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have two sets of ears.”
Panya – formerly known as Rat to you before you bothered to read his file – bears his teeth at you. You smile back at him with all four rows of yours.
“I told you it was good they declined,” Flare tells the hero sitting in the only wheely chair in the circle. Her dragonfly wings are out which means she has to hunch forward to keep them from hitting the back of her chair. Her icy blue gaze cuts. “The Shark doesn’t have a filter.”
“Nice to see you again,” you say. Flare had been one of the instructors at the Hero academy when you were a student. You turn your attention to the last hero. “Thanks for inviting me, Canine.”
You know which side of your bread is buttered.
Canine looks less dog-like without the muzzle and vest that make up his normal uniform. His quick brown eyes remind you more of a fox than a dog. Unlike the other mammals in the circle, he’s able to control his transformation enough to hide his ears. He’s one of the older heroes you’ve ever seen, easily the oldest in the room by a decade.
Which, considering he looks like he’s pushing his mid-forties, is depressing.
“We might as well get started,” he says. There’s a rasp in his voice that sounds like it comes from vocal damage. His file says his bark is way worse than his bite. “Boar won’t be able to make it to the west coast and Pretty Kitty once again sends his well wishes.”
“He should only be invited if he changes his name,” Flare says waspishly. She picks her red cup from the ground and takes a healthy sip. Purple stains the corners of her mouth which she wipes off with the back of her hand. “He’s feeding into it with a name like that.”
“Wait, he’s actually named Pretty Kitty?” you ask. You know of the feline hero from Angel. Apparently most of the blogs are dedicated to him. “Seriously?”
Canine misreads why you’re upset. He holds up one hand. “I know, it may feel disrespectful, however it’s important to remember that, as heroes, we need to respect each other’s choices—”
“I had to petition for a year to be called The Shark,” you say, “and this guy gets to call himself pretty? That’s favoritism.”
“Allegedly,” Panya says, rolling his eyes, “it’s because Pretty Kitty operated as a vigilante before making a deal with Hero Force. So he was already known by that name.”
“That’s just encouraging vigilantism,” you say as if you weren’t planning to become one yourself less than 6 months ago. “We shouldn’t be encouraging rogue agents.”
Flare, who knows your history, glances at you askance.
Lynx has no prior bias. She throws her hands up in the air. “That’s what I said! I wanted to be called Feral but noooo the connotations—”
Panya snorts. “Connotations? Man calls himself Kitty which is basically infantilization. Cat would have been—"
“—if I’d gone vigilante instead of to the Hero Academy, I could’ve—”
“—adding to the fire, really, normalizing the general infantilization for all of us—”
“—not too late, we could do it now, all of us—”
“Since the Shark is new here,” Canine says loudly, “why don’t we have them share first?”
You lean back in your chair and it groans. You’re fascinated. “No, no, don’t let me interrupt.”
But it’s too late. Lynx and Panya are already looking at the ground guiltily, children caught in the same fight again. Flare gets up to pour herself another glass of wine.
“Introduce yourself, your power, and then share what brought you to group,” Canine says. He throws a longing look at the snack table and the bottles of wine adorning it. When Flare raises a second cup with one brow raised, he regretfully shakes his head. “This is a safe place.”
“The Shark, super strength and amazing teeth,” you rattle off. You lean forward. “What I wanna know is what I gotta do to get more thirsty fans and less bloodthirsty ones, if you get my drift.”
“I do not,” Flare says, looking disturbed.
“You know,” you say with a wink. When she continues to stare at you blankly, you open your mouth and point to your teeth. “They want me to—"
“Not going to happen,” Panya says. He uses his tail to snag a donut from the table. “You don’t get to choose who likes you or how.” He sounds like he’s quoting someone.
“That’s why we’re here,” Canine agrees. He spreads his hands. “We’re public figures. We can’t control how people react to us. We can only control how we react to that attention.”
“I run away,” Lynx says. She picks dust from her tail. “Up the side of buildings usually, or by jumping up to fire escapes that I know a regular person can’t reach.” Her ears droop. “There’s a new compilation of it on YouTube.” She buries her face in her hands. “It’s called Kitty Parkour. Pretty Kitty is in it too.”
You who also has a compilation of yourself featuring one of your least favorite people is sympathetic. “Mine is called Atlas redirecting the Shark for 10 minutes straight.”
“I love that one,” Flare says. She doesn’t flinch when you glare. “Also The Shark not knowing how big they are. It’s you trying to fit in a cable car.”
It’d been during the Jaws bar crawl and you’d already had a little too much to drink. When your new shark fan friends got on to get to the next bar, you didn’t think twice following. Everyone was cheering for you as you tried to fit your shoulders through the antique wood door.
You’d ended up having to jog alongside it up the hill when the conductor ran out of patience.
“Flare,” Canine says. If he had a tail, it’d be drooping. “You know better. We don’t feed into that content. We don’t make fun of each other.”
Flare winces. “Sor—”
“I really like all the fancasts of you as Tinkerbell,” you say. You squint at her. “Didn’t realize you’d be short enough for it too until today though.”
Flare’s mouth drops open.
“But now I know,” you say and smile.
The silence is brutal. Panya and Lynx have frozen in the way only an animal can. Complete stillness from ears to tail, eyes fixed into the far distance, peripheral vision fully activated so they can keep an eye on both you and Flare.
Even Canine seems like he’s at a loss for words. He crosses his legs. Clears his throat. Opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. “Okay, Shark, that was—”
“The Shark,” Flare and you correct at the same time.
You never stop smiling. “Aw, thanks.”
“That was funny,” Flare says. She raises her cup. “But the last time you bring up the fancasts, yeah?”
You can agree to that. “Fair enough.”
The vibe eases.
“My fancasts aren’t funny,” Panya says. “They just want me to be Peter Pettigrew.”
Lynx scrunches her nose. “Who?”
“Rat man from Harry Potter.”
“Gross.”
“Also weird considering that guy’s like five foot and white.”
The group studies Panya who, even not counting his tail, is almost as tall as your seven feet. Combined with his dark skin, he couldn’t be further from the description.
“What the fuck?” you finally say.
“Yeah,” Panya says. “Though I’m mostly at group because of the people who want me to live in their walls.”
“What?”
Panya nods sagely. “And chew on their wires.”
You think you’re going to have a great time at support group.
---
Thanks for reading! Raise your hand if you also want Panya to live in your walls and chew on your wires!
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Next week's story is already up:
Summary: You’re excited for your first day as a Hero until you discover that anybody can be a hero if they have a superpower and lie on the application
A quick guide for trans people who are using/ forced to use the disabled toilet due to transphobic bullshit in the UK when you wouldn’t otherwise need to do so. From a transgender wheelchair user who has given this topic a lot of thought.
Remember you are a guest in this space. I don’t know a single person who would rather you shit yourself or get assaulted than use the disabled toilet, but please remember that these toilets are built and designed for disabled people after a huge amount of campaigning and activism.
Don’t touch or move things you don’t need to. If you’re not familiar with how things work or why they are where they are just leave it be. The position of a bin might not mean anything to you but it could be really important to a wheelchair user who needs to change their tampon. Don’t touch things like grab rails either – while they’re fairly tough and you’re unlikely to cause any damage it’s not impossible and if you don’t touch it, you can’t break it.
Related, but important enough to have its own point: please don’t touch the red cord. Do not tie it up, do not wrap it around anything, don’t tuck it behind a bin. Don’t touch it (The only exception to this is to untie a cord that’s been tied up) If the cord doesn’t fall freely to the floor it could prevent a disabled person calling for help in an emergency. If you’re worried about accidentally pulling it there’s almost always at least one reset button in there with you. Press that and it cancels the alarm.
If possible allow other people waiting to go first. A lot of disabilities, both visible and less apparent, can cause problems with incontinence, urgency or pain that make it difficult for someone to wait to use the toilet. If there’s someone else in the queue and you are able to do so, offering to let them go first might really help them out.
If you want to get a radar key, get it from disability rights UK or give a small donation to a disability charity (again only if you’re able to). I’ve seen a couple of trans orgs giving away free radar keys and it’s unclear how they are being sourced. Knockoffs are common but only “real” RADAR keys are from Disability Rights UK and any profits help fund their charity work. Bear in mind that most disabled people also have to pay for these keys which are about £5. (Disability Rights UK say their keys are to be sold to disabled people or organisations only, this is a legal thing they have to say about VAT relief. There is no real way of following up how disabled someone who buys a radar key is because you don’t need to claim any benefits to be eligible for VAT relief and keys are a low value item that isn’t worth anyone looking into when things like adapted cars exist. Be gay, do crime, support disabled people having rights.)
Know the difference between a standard accessible toilet and a changing places toilet. Don’t use a changing places toilet if there is any other safe option. These have a different symbol and are bigger and fitted with extra equipment for severely disabled people and our carers. That equipment is more sensitive than anything you’ll find in a standard accessible toilet so if you do find yourself in one touch nothing. Especially don’t move the hoist (lifting equipment) as it can cause it to run out of power and make the whole space functionally useless if it’s not in the right space on the track. (To be fair this is an unlikely scenario as there aren’t that many of these toilets, but just in case)
Don’t suggest renaming accessible toilets. They’re primarily there for disabled people who can’t use an alternative, and disabled people will be looking for an accessible toilet. For most spaces you can look for an accessible toilet and have a good chance of finding a gender neutral space, but that doesn’t work the other way around. Calling it an “inclusive toilet” or “gender neutral toilet” tells me absolutely nothing about whether my wheelchair will fit.
^ great advice - especially getting to know the different kinds of access for changing places (which are rare and people plan their whole trip out round) and how we need them to stay called accessible or Disabled toilets to give anyone wanting to use the aids in them any chance of finding them or knowing what to expect.
I see so many ads for Radar keys saying they are special type or whatever on Instagram and always think jeez they must be making a large profit skimming money off disability rights uk to pay for those posts - like Echo says always buy from Disability Rights UK.
Disabled people and trans people have many struggles in common and this is great info if you only belong to the trans side.
Thought this was one of those artifacts they use to try and prove that aliens exist and built Machu Picchu but it's very clearly concrete and not sedementary stone.
Wyland has said any financial recovery from the suit would support public art, ocean conservation, and environmental education through his foundation.
"This should have been an opportunity to show the world that global sports, public art, and environmental stewardship can stand together," he said. "Instead, a landmark was painted over. We want to do our part to make sure that what happened here does not become the standard for how public art is treated in cities across America."
Summary: It’s unusual for a villain of Jimena’s caliber to be nameless. It’s not that she doesn’t want a villain name. She’s waiting to find the right one. Unfortunately, other things take priority.
Villain Jimena's first story (X)
The press doesn’t know what to call her. She’s hardly ever seen in person – the most that Hero Force has been able to release to the public is a blurry 8 seconds of bank vault footage. She wiggles through a weak spot in the wall, her head turned back towards the library she’d started her passage in. Her hair is tucked under a swim cap and her leather jacket is zipped all the way up so that the collar forms a protective ring around her neck. The camera can see the curve of her jaw. A flash of wrist as she grips the closest safety deposit box for leverage. A sliver of skin as her leather pants catch on a crumbled edge of sheetrock and nearly pantses her. Another stretch of skin along her cheek as she squawks and instinctively twists to make sure her bare ass isn’t hanging out of the wall. She pulls up her pants. Then she’s twisting away from camera view and she disappears entirely.
It had been an interesting mission. The bank’s security is (was) one of the best in the world. The client and the complexity had both intrigued her. A weeping widow asking her to return a family heirloom from her late, cheating husband’s safety deposit box, and a vault built like a mousetrap, deemed to be impenetrable. The planning had taken her weeks, even with her power. The execution had taken minutes.
Returning the heirloom…that’s taking a little longer.
Jimena considers the necklace sitting on the duvet in front of her. She’s cross legged in bed, arms folded across her chest, flannel pajamas nearly as red as the central ruby in the pendant. Yeah, she said central. Because this thing is made of a half dozen rubies, all the size of her thumbnail. The diamonds interspersed through the piece would overwhelm her if she thought about their value. So she doesn’t think about them at all.
There is no way the weeping widow’s departed husband gave her this necklace. Jimena’s power never fails. She found the ancient passage between the library and the bank scribbled on a scrap of paper in a box of ephemera nearly a hundred years old. She found the one hour the librarian and his assistant snuck off without telling anyone. She even found the exact slim-fit carjack needed to lift the collapsed beam between the two buildings that blocked the passage from reaching the vault. Hell, she found the fucking crack in the vault’s impenetrable walls, hidden under layers of insulation, that she’d barely managed to squeeze through in that video.
She knows her power to find is unbeatable. Which means she also knows that if she’s not finding a flaw in any of the stones in this necklace, there isn’t one. Which means this necklace isn’t just jewelry – it’s more than likely history.
To her left is her tablet. It’s open to her client’s Facebook. The story it tells is one of decline. The woman goes from jet skiing in the Maldives to selfies of wine tasting in the same, dark bar. Every picture used to feature a different set of earrings. About a year ago, they started to repeat. The woman is good at keeping up appearances, but Jimena can read between the lines.
The adventures had to stop. The money ran out.
Jimena releases a breath. Closes her eyes. There’s a clip of her out there now. A real picture outside of the terrible police sketches Hero Force has in her file. Her client isn’t paying her nearly enough for that. Nor is she paying Jimena enough to overlook being tricked into stealing a national treasure.
You don’t know that. Jimena snorts at the thought. The whine in it reminds her of her henchman, out for the week on vacation because she’s not a monster who overworks her people. Normally, she’d leave the googling to him. It takes longer that way, but she also likes to make sure he feels like he contributed. Not only is it good for his morale, but it also helps her convince him that his minimal help makes him an accomplice. Accomplice can’t betray her. Ratting on her would be just like ratting on himself.
She sighs. A quick google search later and she has all three Wikipedia articles on the necklace up. Conspiracy. Murder. Divine rule of Kings. The thing belongs to a private collector who is definitely not the woman’s departed husband. Partly because her husband isn’t departed – he’s in jail for tax evasion. More because the owner of the necklace is the woman’s brother.
It doesn’t take Jimena long to find the brother’s number. He’s got some sort of private militia working for him, according to her sources. She is not getting on his bad side, especially when she’s been caught on camera stealing his stuff for his loser sister.
“Who is this,” the man on the other end says immediately. It’s not a question. “Only three people in the world have this number.”
Jimena could explain to him that she found it by narrowing down the three closest friends to him through his online socials and then using her powers to find a moment one of them called him. And, because her power is excellent, that moment happened at a basketball game and the friends’ team scored while they were talking. The friend raised his arms in victory and inadvertently flashed this man’s number to 1.1 million people.
She could but she doesn’t want to.
“Your sister hired me to steal your necklace,” Jimena says. She picks up the necklace and twirls it around her fingers nervously. “Sorry.”
There’s a long beat of silence. “Name your price.”
“What your sister owes me,” Jimena says quickly. Maybe it would be smarter to wave the fee entirely, but she doesn’t have that luxury. If she doesn’t pay her henchman, he’s going to put his ad back up on craigslist and find a new villain to serve. “Protection from your sister’s retaliation.” She licks her lips. “And…”
“And?”
“You scrub the video of me off the internet.”
“No one’s been able to identify you from it.” The man’s voice is dark. “Yet.”
“And you won’t be able to,” Jimena says. Of that she’s confident. She’s aware of her painful average looks. There are a million women out there who look like her. “It’s not even a decent resolution.”
“Then it sounds like you only need money and to avoid my sister’s wrath.”
“I don’t need to explain my reasoning to you.”
“You do. I need to know what part of the video you want scrubbed to make sure it doesn’t pop up later down the line.”
Jimena narrows her eyes. “It’s eight seconds.”
“And every frame of that 8 seconds costs more than your retaining fee to hunt down and delete.”
“I just need the end part deleted.” Jimena flushes. “The…um…the moment where…”
“Where you give the camera a full moon?”
Jimena squawks. “It was a partial moon! If even that! A crescent!”
“You realize I could give you anything. A commensurate piece from my collection. Revenge on my sister. A yacht.”
“Delete the video,” Jimena says. She’s horrified at the thought of her henchman seeing it. “Then I’ll send the necklace. Then you send the money.”
The man is amused. “Deal.” He pauses. “It’s a cute butt. If that makes you feel better.”
“Do not make me find you,” Jimena hisses.
“So you are —” He pauses. “What even is your villain name? They’re calling you Lady Find—"
“Delete the video,” Jimena interrupts. She hangs up in irritation. She’ll give him 24 hours. After that, she’ll show him she’s a lot more creative than Hero Force.
---
Thanks for reading! Always love coming back to my Superverse. Next week's short story is already up (as well as the next part of Cinderella) on my Patreon (X)!
Next week's based on this prompt from writing-prompt-s: The imperial army attacks your village, on a dark moonless night, the time when you, the strongest Solar Mage, would be powerless. However, you are a Star Mage actually.
Analyzing the politics of a work that's meant to be apolitical is actually a really interesting exercise because it asks you to critically examine what the creator considers to be "political" in the first place. Which ideas are just How Things Are, and which ones are Political, and how is that influenced by the creator's beliefs?
Angrily lashing out at the suggestion that it's possible to do basic media analysis was foundational to the ragebait ecosystem of the 2010s, from which we got basically the entire culture of modern far right politics, btw.
I went outside and got an education, that's where I learned that you can obtain knowledge and insight through analytical methods, then noticed that some people who sit on the internet yelling at strangers get really mad about that constantly.
So actually if you really wanted to use your analysis skills you'd realize that what people are annoyed about is the implication that there's never a story or creative work they can create that can escape people like you attempting to assign political meaning to it when they just don't want that. That in fact people's presumptions about life are not, in fact, political (at best they are cultural, which is not an inherently facet of politics). And that by you people arrogantly pushing this idea you are intruding on the fact that a lot of people use fiction as escapism from politics and insisting that "urm no actually your favourite cartoon actually has politics cause no human being is 100% unbiased" is in fact, supremely fucking annoying
"Stop having fun wrong, it ruins my fun when you have fun wrong, it's not enough for me to just scroll past the analysis I don't like, if anyone anywhere is saying that the cartoon exists in a political context that's undermining my enjoyment of it!"
really really really detest it when (usually older millennial and genX) cis women say shit like "welcome to being a woman!" or "that's how you know trans women are women!" and so on in response to hearing about instances of catcalling, sexual assault, workplace chauvinism etc. directed at trans women. in the first place it's blisteringly patronising, as if transfems are not and have not been constantly subject to misogyny throughout their lives both pre and post transition, but in the second it perpetuates this vile mindset that somehow receiving misogynistic abuse is validating of your womanhood. it's a head on the very same hydra that makes girls shamefully privately feel that they must ugly and undesirable if they're not catcalled or objectified or 'chosen' by sexual assaulters.
your identity, your dignity and your worth as a woman have absolutely nothing to do with how or why abusive people lash out at you. the insidious narrative that survivors should feel special on some level for having been worthy of their abuse is battered wife rhetoric. it's the perpetrator-system of violence grooming you to accept, and even shamefully yearn for, violence it always intended to inflict. and women are so often complicit in repeating the narrative back to each other. sometimes it's very well meaning and springs up out of the solidarity of shared experience, trying to reclaim power from situations where power was wielded against you, but sometimes it's lana del rey sadgirl coquette I need a man who'll slap me around so I know he cares. sometimes it's eating disorders and self harm. the twinning of femininity and female worthiness with suffering, associating the scars of misogynistic violence with acceptance of one's femininity by somebody who hates you, is profoundly unhealthy and profoundly unfair.
bottom line: trans women have never needed to be identifiable by their abusers at a glance to be subject to misogynistic violence. they have never even needed to be out. remember the early days of the internet when online culture was so outspokenly misogynistic as a baseline that most women just never disclosed their gender, never went on mic, never posted pictures? would anyone ever seriously argue that women weren't subject to misogynistic abuse online until they broke anonymity? and that being the case, would it ever ever seem appropriate to hear someone had been doxxed or sexually harassed for disclosing her gender and respond "heh, proves you really are a woman"?
womanhood is not contingent on suffering. womanhood is not contingent on suffering. womanhood is not contingent on suffering. the cart does not define the horse.
2087
jbbartram-illu
kianamaiart
tangentwithtanner
blakekathryn
dededos
germansingergirl
