Academic Fandom Trash, Now with 30% More Angst!

Xavia, she/her, fandom sideblog

[xandromedovna]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Marry Crisis! It's @redvsbluesecretsanta time again! @metaphysicpareidolic, Grimmons be upon ye!

[blueteamjax]

MERRY CHRISTMAS @xandromedovna ! Kimball and Carolina sneaking away for a private moment in Kimball's office during a Christmas party.

[xandromedovna]

AAAAHHHHHH!!! THEM!!! not to be a lebsian but oh m. y god. it's the bustier with the slacks, it's the dress cut down to there, it's the hair laid to rest, it's the fuckign WINK, I would commit arson for them, thank you for your service 🫡😍❄️

[drfrankensteinvsthequeerborgs]

merry December 10th to all who celebrate, function with relative ease ⛄️

[drfrankensteinvsthequeerborgs]

can’t believe I, a gay, have to Do Things on Destiel Day, will the homophobia never cease?!

[xandromedovna]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

This year for @redvsbluesecretsanta I got @joltning, who wanted the Triplets meeting the Reds and Blues, hope you like it with a side of Oherry angst, Happy Wednesday!

[drfrankensteinvsthequeerborgs]

merry December 10th to all who celebrate, function with relative ease ⛄️

[afteriwake]

Fic Cover & Chapter Headers For "A Tale Of Two Timmies"

Art Title: Fic Cover & Chapter Headers For "A Tale of Two Timmies" Fandom: Rules Of Engagement/Teen Titans Fic Link: AO3 Warnings: None for the art Bragging Rights: So I am slowly making my way through all of the art I still owe (I only get one day a week at the coffee shop these days), and I got pictures from my author of the main character of the fic, Timmy Patel, to work with. I found three that looked really good with the size frame I was using and decided to do a quick animation of them with the red background on the frame. I used the same frame textures for simple chapter headers, giving it an overall Vaudeville look (according to my author, who loved it very much).

[xandromedovna]

aaaahhhhhhhh look at it!! thanks again for these! :D

[websurfshark]

MERRY CHRISTMASS!!! 🎄🎄

this is my secret santa for @xandromedovna !!! i hope you enjooooyy!!!!:333

[xandromedovna]

!!!!!!

them!

I don't know what core children's book memory this is unlocking but it's serving whatever that is, I love it thank you, the subtle use of their armour colours, the shy affection, how cozy they look, outstanding, thank you for your service

(DFHASGAJHKJASHIASAGIOASNGSAKJDGLUIEFHASJKFN)

[xandromedovna]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Happy holidays, @hipstersoulgushers, I'm your gifter for @redvsbluesecretsanta, here's that ghost!Felix Lolix you wanted ft. some bonus Grif and Lopez, hope you like it!

[afteriwake]

Art Title: Fic Cover and Chapter Headers for "Hang the Author"

Fandom: Supernatural/Black Mirror

Warnings: None

Bragging Rights: I had so much fun with this! It's not completely symettrical and even as I had hoped it would be, but it's still art I love and I think the header and the chapter headers turned out great.

[xandromedovna]

!!!!!!!!

look at it!

[xandromedovna]

me, rifling through my friend’s cupboards: dude, all these genders are expired, you’re gonna get food poisoning, you’re supposed to change out your gender at least every six months

[xandromedovna]

sometimes I remember that we’ll never get a season 2 of Julie and the Phantoms and I’m overcome with the urge to burn Netflix to the ground, anyway support striking workers

[some-unoriginal-fandom-trash]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

@xandromedovna hi! I was your Secret Santa for this year, and I had a blast coming up with stuff :p. I gave you some happy Docnut fluff, with some other shenanigans featuring some other characters and pairings you asked for. Enjoy your fic! (Little fun fact, the hangar parties are something I used to go to as a kid! It’s extremely military, so all those “activities” are pretty much stuff I remember.) Happy Holidays!

[xandromedovna]

ASDFHKJDSHFEUIBGADS I LOVE IT, STRONGLY WORDED SQUEE TO FOLLOW IN THE COMMENTS, THANK!!!

[xandromedovna]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Here’s my @redvsbluesecretsanta gift for @sleepyseadogg, hope you enjoy it and Mary Chrysler!

[xandromedovna]

the real Goncharov is the mutuals we gaslit along the way 💕

[transsupernaturalbang]

Title: Nos Vies en Rose

Author: xandromedovna | Artist: jackklinestan

Rating: T

Word count: 11,545

Relationship Tags: Castiel/Dean, Dean & John, Dean & Alternate!Dean, Sam & Alternate!Sam, background John/Mary

Characters: Dean, Alternate!Dean, Sam, Alternate!Sam, Cas, Jack, John

Canon-Typical Content Warnings: transphobia, homophobia, gun violence, alcoholism, religious imagery, femmephobia and misogyny

Specific Content Warnings: internalized transphobia, dysphoria, misgendering, John Winchester’s A+ parenting including descriptions of child abuse, being disowned/kicked out, gender questioning, existential crises, dissociation, implied sex work, anxiety attacks, spoilers all seasons

Tags: Episode Tag 15x13, trans woman!Dean, non-binary!Sam, trans man!Cas, existential angst, post-divorce arc angst, coming out to yourself, midlife gender crises, debates about the nature of gender, free will, the enraging fact that John Winchester is in Heaven, slightly less shitty John Winchester, it is past Sam’s bedtime, canon compliant if you squint, this is about half-crack half-angst

Summary: Sam and Dean encounter another set of alternate versions, except these ones come with a free gender crisis.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Link to Author social: xandromedovna.tumblr.com

Link to Artist social: jackklinestan.tumblr.com

[xandromedovna]

(CW conversion therapy)

What frustrates me about media representations of conversion therapy is that it rarely captures how mundane it is. They often play up the hypocrisy or the abusiveness for drama or laughs (which is 1000% valid I’m not knocking the classics), but I have yet to see something that treats it like an everyday part of the character’s life. The queer character is nearly always sent off to a camp to be fixed where sadistic and repressed counselors run them through every stereotype in the book. And I get that educating people about how fucked up this is is important, because it’s still legal in many places and a lot of people still don’t think it’s that big a deal, but escaping is often framed as this heroic, I’m-free-now-and-proud-and-everything’s-fine romanticized notion of what surviving conversion therapy is. These stories of overcoming are important but they aren’t mine. Conversion therapy is also increasingly portrayed as an anachronism, as something that’s over, something no one seriously believes or does any more, something that makes any story a period piece of a less tolerant time.

I didn’t have to go to a camp or a hospital, the conversion therapy came to me, to my everyday world. It wasn’t this like emergency that required tearful pleas and strict punishment, it was just “my struggle”. My dad subscribed me to LIFE (Living in Freedom Eternally), and every month they would send me newsletters about ex-gays who overcame their sinful attractions and live normal healthy lives (according to a cishet worldview). I had weekly meetings with my Pastors to check on my progress working through the materials and my devotionals. I was handed a binder filled with the latest (in the 90s, it was conveniently outdated and cherrypicked) scientific research on the origins of homosexuality, which ironically convinced me even more that I was queer. I was given a handy summary of all the mistranslated Bible verses where my very existence is a sin, but it’s okay, as long as I go against my nature at every turn and do what comes naturally to my cishet counterparts. I’M the one that’s unnatural.

This was the late 2000s, by the way.

And this was just casually accepted. My Christian friends acted as my Accountability Partners to make sure I was still wrestling with my attractions and making progress in ignoring them, and I wanted them to. I wanted them all to help me because I genuinely believed I was doomed. I thoroughly believed all of this to my core. They didn’t need to send me away to convert me because it was all around me, and in fact they knew that sending me away would actually ensure the treatment wouldn’t work. When my parents discovered I was queer in 9th grade, I was grounded for two years. But this became increasingly unenforceable as time dragged on and they “trusted” me to be straight. They had already written it off as a colossal failure, and by the time I went off to college, it became clear I had made my decision to live as openly queer.

Except it wasn’t a failure. To this day I am still weeding through the trauma this caused. Yeah I’m queer and trans and proud and I have three-dimensional experiences outside of this, but I couldn’t just reject those teachings and be done with it, I constantly go through periods where I have to slog through it all again. Because it’s not actually about whether you “end up” queer or not, it’s about whether they’ve sewn enough doubt in your brain that you continually struggle with it long after you are under their direct influence. It’s about leaving that door open so that we always have the option to come crawling back when we see the error of our ways. They didn’t need fancy machines or a whole camp for a resounding success, they didn’t even need me to ‘turn’ cishet-- the suffering is the point.

And until I see that piece, what Hannah Arendt called the “banality of evil”, fictional conversion therapy stories will always seem historically inaccurate to me.

(she/her please)