women with beards get behind me, I won't let the world destroy you the way it craves to, it doesn't deserve your misery but instead should tremble at the sight of your defiant, unadulterated joy also you are so fucking beautiful oh my god
Please don't call yourself a tranny you know that word isn't meant for you
Well who is it meant for, then? The cross-dressers? The kinksters? The ones who don't pass? The sex workers? The "ugly" ones?
Maybe it's for the rude ones, or the "loud" ones, or the ones who never came "out", past their middle-aged years and slipping on nice stockings under their khaki trousers, putting on a bit of blush in the bathroom mirror and then quickly washing it off again before anyone can see?
Maybe it's for the "traps", the beautiful ones who keep it secret and don't tell you until after the third date, when you can stab them to death for the crime of being human and plead "Gay Panic" at the trial to get off scot-free?
If we're going to call people "tranny", but not the ones like me, then who exactly are you thinking of?
If anyone is going to be called a "tranny" then I'm sticking with them, and I'd sure as hell rather be on our side than yours
this post is inspired in part by this one by @cheshirepirouette and sponsored in part by convos w @asteriis and @indouscurse here’s to y’all!! this post also goes out to my brothers, who are pale as hell for reasons unbeknownst to all of us (this is a joke).
like any good headcanon, this started as a joke because i thought to myself: Ryland sounds like the type of name that somebody’s Black child would have and only use on church sundays. nobody actually has ever called him that in his whole entire life, except maybe his mama SOMETIMES and that’s why he doesn’t remember it right away. i feel like every Black person knows somebody who is called literally anything except their god given name. people call him lil r, lil grace, gracie, ry, ryry, riri, RG, lando, mr. grace, dr. grace, but nobody calls him Ryland, which is part of why he Can’t Remember for so long.
so of course i went back to the source material to see if he ever actually mentioned being white anywhere and unfortunately it is very much at the beginning of the book. so THEN i started to think about how i could get around that while remaining at least largely canon compliant (as a little treat for myself). what i came up with is what i have affectionately dubbed my “litebrite baby” headcanon.
grace was not particularly dark skinned to begin with, and then spent years in a coma with literally no sunlight. he is downright vampiric by the time that he wakes up, and upon seeing his white ass skin, assumes that he is in his own words, a Caucasian male.
unfortunately for him, this fits in really well with his theme of lack of identity and lack of connection. i think for most Black people it would be extremely hard to forget that we’re Black regardless of how light or dark our skin tone is. but throughout the book, even when Grace is thinking about his old, slowly resurfacing memories, he never thinks about family, he never thinks about friends. except for his students and Project Hail Mary, he is completely unmoored.
i’ve seen a few different headcanons for why this might be: he was an only child whose single parent died young, he was cut off by his parents for some reason or another, he just isn’t ever triggered to remember. but no matter the reason, grace is disconnected from crucial aspects of himself. i think that by making him Black, and his Blackness something he can’t remember, it add an extra heartbreaking layer to his characterization. Blackness is such a communal experience, and when it’s not, it leaves behind an ache. growing up Black in White Suburbia i know well both the experience of clinging to one’s own in a hostile world AND the hurt that comes with being severed from one’s community. grace loses so much of himself with the amnesia, unable to recall who he is at the deepest of levels, and i think if he could remember to grieve it, it would devastate him.
i do think he would remember eventually, either when his hair starts growing out (because in the book Armando shaves him iirc), or when he can finally catch a glimpse of his reflection clearly, or when he has a memory of someone in his family. my personal belief is he has a memory beamed directly into his brain of asking “Mama, am I white?” and his poor, long-suffering mom saying, “Now who the hell told you that?”
and then it still never becomes relevant because he has negative desire to explain the nuances of human racial categories to an alien who quite literally cannot see color.
Drugs are morally neutral. Doing or not doing drugs is not an indicator of how good a person is. There are addicts who’d give you the shirt off their back, and sober people who poison the homeless for fun.
i think avoidance is such a little-recognized ocd compulsion. all the time i talk to people with ocd who are like "i was always having intrusive thoughts about using kitchen knives and harming myself or others but i'm okay now because i just stopped using knives ever 👍 so i'm good now"
heyyy that's an awesome avoidance ritual you got there. i think we should chop carrots together and yes you might stab me to death and kill me and the police will take you away and your mom will cry in the court room asking why and you won't know what to say and your life will be ruined forever. but that's just a risk we have to take.
Remember when joining fandom as a younger person meant lurking for a bit and figuring out the vibe and etiquette instead of coming in on day one and calling people weirdos for liking weirdo shit in the weirdo factory.
origamiaround
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
dededos
gummygunk
areudirty
pixelskylines
kaledo-art
