This is an open journal entry. Just thinking my thoughts, and sharing in case someone benefits. I’m not, like, disavowing anyone or anything, not a callout post, or anything like that. It’s not at that level to me. I don’t hate any of those people, i continue to have a parasocial love for a number of them. I still have a subscription, and there’s shows I’ll probably keep watching. for now.
But gosh how fast the magic of dropout is fading for me. I always had critiques, but a few months ago, I still breathed dropout. D20 was my favorite show, period. Going back to previous seasons was an easy comfort. Now, it’s like, whatever, idk. Some of those stories are still close to my heart, but it’s not a cozy ride for me anymore.
There is a certain level of acceptance trans girls do for everything, where the world isn’t built for us, and we accept it. Almost all media isn’t for us, and we kind of turn off parts of ourselves to watch it comfortably. If we didn’t, we’d have, like, five books and ten web comics to read and no television.
It wasn’t until a bunch of girls on here turned themselves back on and complained that I had to look at how much empty air was in this pillow. How part of the reason I am so eager to see Evan Kelmp as a trans woman is because there are no trans women with lines in misfits and magic. Nor in most of the seasons. There’s been one (I think 3-4 of the questing queens are non-binary, but I don’t see anything anywhere that any of them call themselves women) at the table in d20 history.
And that wasn’t a huge problem! After all, we’re just one kind of person. One kind of person that’s like in the top 3 targets for fascists, but just one of the three (barring intersections of course…) Until we got a mis mag season 2, the show that is ostensibly a fuck you to terfism and a revision of some painful stuff for girls like me, and there’s even less tgirl content than last time (unless—no, stop it. Not now). And I was like “yeah, this is getting…uncomfortable.” And I know, they plan these things out in advance, pre-taped, but on the tails of this discourse, this discourse of “why are there more drag queens than trans girls on dropout?” we go…back to dungeons and dragons queens for a season 2. Like the best case scenario is they’re not listening. I hope they’re not listening. This isn’t some sort of response, I fucking hope it isn’t anyway.
And some people have come out of the woodwork to say weeeeird shit in the wake of trans women complaining about this. Misunderstanding people on purpose sometimes, in other cases just going full mask off to say trans women “just aren’t marketable,” like that’s not literally what the complaint is about, or that they just don’t exist in LA…or that there are only so few of us period.
Dropout is just some 2nd/3rd tier streaming service. They’ve always been pretty white, and pretty cis. They’re only so big, they can’t do everything, and they can’t do everything they do right. I know that. But they do talk a big game about doing it for all of us who no one else will do it for.
Except, not for me. Not for girls like us. Not really. I’m still watching, but I see that now. It’s just another thing that’s not really for us.
We’ve got some great stories about how fucking hard our lives are, but I have to…live one, so I’m still looking for stories where people coercively asssigned male get to play, experiment, laugh, feel safe, and end up or stay in transfemininity. No awful coming out, no isekai gender bender excuses, no undead/time travel psych torture, no Ranma Saotome gender Hokey Pokey. Stories about the joy of becoming or being yourself, and the magic of that, because it is magical, something that acknowledges that it’s hard, but isn’t about how it’s hard. Nice stuff for us.
My recs for that:
Yellow Brick Ramble, Daisy Finch McGuire (she has it rough at home but she leaves asap)
the one piece wano arc (good luck getting there), Eiichiro Oda
is it strange to feel dysphoric coming back from an isekai?, Squipkechi
I quit being a man, I got cancer so I decided to dress up as a woman and fall in love, Half-Me
She is convinced her half-brother is a girl, Mizukami Ice
And for the fembies, I cross-dressed for the irl meetup, Kurano I Want to Be a Cute Anime Girl, Azul Crescent
