Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win
Jul 29
A set of facts from this post, on request from @littlestartopaz. “Kid Death, Soul Eater. Also Harry, from The Blue Sword”
Death the Kid
Canon: Kid’s hair stripes apparently go all the way around his head once he’s a full-blown shinigami, and that’s adorable to me for some reason.
Headcanon: I tend to imagine that Kid had a rough time adjusting to ‘normal’ people. Like, the other meisters were reticent with him because of…who he is and who he’s related to, and he comes at everything with a very arrogant perspective, especially early on, so I tend to think that he has a horribly rough time learning to make friends. Like, Patty and Liz were probably his first close friends. I’m pretty committed to that.
Heartcanon: Oooohhh, I dunno, I was pretty pleased with stuff. I feel like Kid actually has a devious side under that wide-eyed anxious exterior, would’a liked to have that pan out more fully.
Soulcanon: Kid becomes a shinigami and replaces Death and has a few conversations with various people who protest that it’s just not traditional for the Grim Reaper to dual wield pistols. They make lengthy and detailed arguments against his actions, there are sources, there is, on one memorable occasion, a PowerPoint. And Kid nods and ‘hmm’s and he continues to dual wield pistols. I don’t fucking care how it happens, he makes Patty and Liz immortal somehow.
Crotchcanon: I actually have no idea. Because every time I sit down and try to think about Kid and sex, I inevitably end up wondering about the logistics of sex with a shinigami. Like. How does that shit even pan out? Do you need to worry about condoms, or are death gods naturally infertile? Or in control of that sort of thing? Does Death have a body under that robe? Do the weird black shadow-tentacle things come into play? HOW DOES THIS WORK. So, as you can see, I have never made enough headway on this train of thought to have an opinion.
Harry (Angharad, Harimad-sol)
Canon: Harry Crewe is canonically good with any and all (non-demon) animals. Giant ill-tempered warhorse? Sure. Loner hunting cat? No problem. Harry Crewe is also a stone-cold badass, and all of you should read The Blue Sword and appreciate her.
Headcanon: Harry definitely causes small-to-middling disasters as she learns to use her massively powerful kelar for things other than bringing down mountain ranges. And as handy as that ability to fucking wreck an opponent is, it’s a little hard on Corlath’s City, and they all look on with a sort of benignly exasperated affection. Kelar tends to cause problems, but even Corlath never 'fixed’ a stone door and accidentally melded it with the frame.
Heartcanon: Damarian weddings have some kind of family-of-the-bride aspect and Mathin gives Harry away, or whatever the equivalent is, as the Daughter of the Riders. He cries a little and she cries a little and no one ever says anything about it. Also, Corlath very very quietly slaps Mathin with some kind of title, whatever he can get away with, as the father of their new Queen. Mathin isn’t informed of this for almost an entire year.
Soulcanon: Aerin and Harry meet. In the flesh. At some point. I don’t give a fuck who argues with me on this. And Aerin visits Harry in her dreams and at first Harry’s very deferential and nervous, but she lightens up over time, and Aerin gives her advice on being a queen and being a legend and being a mother. (At some point, when Harry is just exhausted of everything and frustrated with everyone and ready to ride off into the desert just to get away, Aerin turns up and tells a story about a very vain girl named Galanna who got her eyelashes shaved off and could have been rolled out a window, she was sleeping so heavily. Harry laughs herself sick in the dream and wakes up smiling for the first time in weeks.)
Crotchcanon: Okay but we can all agree that there was definitely some desperate, maneuvered-around-wounds, I-can’t-believe-you’re-alive-and-here sex in Corlath’s tent after that reunion scene, right? And once everyone was recovered and back in the City, there was definitely a day where Harry was just like “Update: I moved all your meetings and acquired snacks” and they just literally spent an entire day having sex in the blue stone garden. I can’t be alone in that assessment.
…is that the word gay has been used so overwhelmingly as a pejorative, as a slur, that most children in the U.S. in the past several decades likely grew up learning “gay” as a word for bad, strange, or wrong before they fully understand that there are “gay” people, and that it’s not just a word with negative connotations.
Kids grow up hearing “That’s so gay!” said with such vehemence relating to topics that those same kids aren’t remotely educated about, and they just internalize that it’s bad. This is how you get elementary schoolers saying, “Mr. Hopkins gave us homework, he’s so gay,” and the same elementary schoolers grow up to be high schoolers and adults who say, “What? I don’t mean gay like gay people, I mean gay like stupid or bad.”
And some of them aren’t overt homophobes in any other way… but dang, you teach little kids that a word that describes a class of people means “bad” and “wrong” before they know those people exist, and that’s bound to shape the way they think about things, isn’t it?
And in contrast you get queer kids who start to put 2+2 together about what “gay” really means a little bit faster than the kids around them because they’re desperate for some information, some hints of meaning… but they’re also hearing the same lessons as everybody else, that gay=bad, gay=wrong, gay=undesirable, gay=something no one ones and no one should be, gay is the worst thing you can be.
In the small town I lived in and the school I went to, nobody ever hit me and called me queer. No one ever shouted “queer” from a moving car while I was walking home. No one ever threatened or inflicted violence on me with the word “queer” on their lips.
Gay, though? Yes. And variations on the f-slur, but gay itself was enough of an invective, enough of a pejorative, to the people flinging it.
“Gay” was the slur that cishet people threw at me as a form of violence, often in corollary with physical violence. “Queer” is a word that I learned online, from members of my community. My experience of the former word is as an attack, while the other was as a sanctuary and respite from that attack.
Now, I’m not a gay man, but a bisexual trans woman. I was still sorting that out at the time, but I doubt it would have made a difference to many of my tormenters if I’d been able to explain it properly.
So when “gay” is used as the happy-go-lucky umbrella for what I would personally call the queer community, gay with even its positive connotations strongly coded as male, I’m not just being misgendered/swept under a default label of male along with a lot of other women and non-binary folks, I’m being forced to accept a label that I never sought, one that is definitely used as a pejorative and a slur, and a slur that was specifically used as a weapon against me.
Both “gay” and “queer” have the same problematic histories and problematic presents. They have both been subject to reclamation efforts. To me, the difference is how those efforts are organized.
“Gay” is an attempt to normalize, to assimilate, to take the elements of our community that are most palatable to the heteronormative homogeneous hegemony and emphasize them, making those elements even more palatable and altering or hiding the other elements of the community.
“Gay” is like trying to get into an exclusive school that you fear is likely to reject you for prejudiced reasons, so you keep your nose clean, make sure you take all the right extracurriculars, polish your cover letter and personal essay, and try to make the right contacts with influential people on the inside… and if you have to hide some of your past activities, break ties with friends who are less presentable, and de-emphasize your family to make sure the admissions office doesn’t get the wrong idea about what you’d bring to their institution, well, it’ll be worth it, because that’s what you have to do get a, you know, fair shake.
“Queer” rejects that. Queer rejects homogeny, it does not demand that we sand down our rough edges or smooth out our contours. It does not seek to reshape ourselves or our community to fit ever-evolving standards designed to keep us out, but it challenges those standards.
If “gay” is trying to appeal to a bigoted admissions board by being smooth and shiny enough to slip in, “queer” is challenging the admissions board to accept or reject you on your own merits as you exist, and challenging the bigoted assumptions that underline the power structure as revealed by this. It’s bypassing the admissions board by creating your own infrastructure for sharing resources and information.
I have a suspicion that a certain percentage of the intra-community backlash against the word “queer” is not because the negative connotations of the word hurt us as listeners, but rather that the radical connotations of the word hurt the effort to make assimilate gayness into heteronormativity.
I.e., it is less, “Queer makes people think it’s okay to bash us.” and more “Queer makes people think we’re not like them.”
Most people end posts in defense of the label “queer” and the umbrella term “queer community” by saying “I won’t call queer if they’re not comfortable with it,” and most of them get told, “BUT THAT’S WHAT YOU’RE DOING WHEN YOU SAY ‘QUEER COMMUNITY!”
I’ve never yet seen anybody talking about the gay community have to disclaim that they’re not using the word to people who view it as unreclaimed slur or who just plain find it too hurtful to have even given that discourse any thought.
I won’t call someone queer if they don’t think of themselves a queer. I will use queer as an umbrella term. If that’s not you, you can cheerfully include yourself out of it.
And heck, I’m doing you a solid. If you didn’t have a queer community to point to, you wouldn’t have anyone you could point to when you want to clarify that you’re not like those people.
If you’re bi/pan/aro/ace, anything other than black-or-white, capital G gay, you don’t have a word that doesn’t throw “sexual” right into the mix. And once you say “I’m bisexual, I’m pansexual, I’m asexual,” people seize on “sex” and think your sexuality is now public property and they’re allowed to fetishize at will or ask intrusive questions. Obviously this happens to gay men and lesbians, but they have “gay” and “lesbian” as descriptors without the “-sexual” in them. For those of us who don’t, I feel like queer can be a bit of a shield. If I say, “I’m queer,” instead of, “I’m bisexual,” I don’t get the waggled eyebrows and request to consider a threesome. In my experience, queer is somehow odd and confrontational enough that it turns off the “let’s ask sexy details” switch in straight peoples’ minds.
@jennytrout that’s fucking brilliantly put, thank you <3
THIS about the “gay as an insult” for this generation. That’s what I grew up on, kids at school sneering “that’s so gay” over and over again. “Queer” was a word I found online, and in history books about “queer literature” and “queer film history” and such. I think the first time I heard someone say it out loud was in college, at the LGBTQ club.
If anyone tells you that there are 2-3 sexes in the world I want you to just go ahead and slap them.
I was making a chart this morning, but by the time I got to the twentieth configuration of primary sex characteristics, I got bored and angry, so just fucking slap them. Don’t bother giving them a chart, it’s a pain in the ass to produce anyway.
Here’s some non-chart-form lists.
Primary sex is defined by taking one or more item from each list (roughly, because just as there are double dominant intersex conditions there are double recessive ones too and it’s a whole thing). All potential combinations of these options can be said to constitute their own primary sex category.
Chromosomes:
XX
XY
X/X0
Mosaic
XXY
XXXY
XXX
XYY
Others (there are so many, like I think you can live with up to five chromosomes? So many)
Hormones
Estrogenized
Androgenized
Double dominant (high levels of both estrogenic and androgenic hormones)
Double recessive (low or no sex hormones)
Gonads
Testicle/es
Ovary/ies
Ovotestes
Gonads
Testicular agenesis
Gonadal dysgenesis
Probably more, I’m not a professional here
Genitals
Penis
Vagina
Pseudovaginal pouch
Clitoromegaly
Micropenis
Hypospadias
Diphallia
Definitely more but I am Tired™
There’s like at least several dozen primary sexes, and that’s before secondary characteristic development comes into play and the point is biological sex is a fucking mass hallucination. Slap anyone who says otherwise.
(This is not a professionally sourced and cited resource post please do not treat this like it’s some kind of all powerful reference work I literally just made it in a fit of rage in abt ten minutes based on stuff I already know I didn’t even research it be careful use google etc and so forth)
It so is? Like it’s just ridiculously confusing and complex.
WHICH IS WHY PEOPLE WHO SAY IT’S SIMPLE AND COMES DOWN TO “MALE OR FEMALE”/”MALE, FEMALE, OR INTERSEX” NEED TO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND ACCEPT THEIR SLAPPING PEACEFULLY INSTEAD OF SENDING ME DOZENS OF ANGRY LETTERS
This has gotten more attention than expected so I figure I will put it here as well.
My favorite is that there’s a good chance that people so insistent on the existence of a binary may be intersex and never know unless: they don’t get a first period, develop unexpected secondary sex characteristics during puberty, or struggle with infertility later in life, or GET KARYOTYPED
These are also very human-centric! There are vertebrate animals that don’t use chromosomes as their sex-determination system (reptiles and some birds can also use the environment to determine sex) and there are vertebrate animals that use different chromosome arrangements.
Birds for example, don’t use XX/XY, they’re ZW/ZZ. In birds, the egg determines the sex (not the sperm) and females are the heterogamous sex (with ZW chromosomes). There is plenty of room for variation, too - a ZZW bird who presented as female successfully laid and hatched her own eggs (x)
Platypuses, meanwhile, have a system that resembles both XX/XY and ZW/ZZ in function, but the form is a little baffling. Platypus males are XYXYXYXYXY, and females are XXXXXXXXXX.
Clearly, there is nothing perfect, universal or holy about XX/XY - and anyone who insists there is has demonstrated that they don’t know anything about biology.
And it’s a fluid system even once you grasp the idea of chromosomes - we know that you can hack sex in lizards to create “superfemales” (by incubating an egg with “male” chromosomes at a temperature that hatches “female” babies). Superfemales present as females and can lay viable eggs. You can do it with lizards that happen to use the XX/XY system, and hatch fertile males with XX chromosomes. You can do this with chickens as well - take a “genetically male” fertilized egg and incubate it at the perfect temperature, and you can hatch a “male” chicken that will lay eggs for you. The difficulty is that this only works some of the time in chickens - the cooler temperatures that hatch female chickens tend to kill the male embryos that don’t transition, which is wasteful. Otherwise, this would revolutionize the poultry industry.
So now we know that XX/XY is like the Windows 7 of sexual determinism (lots of people use it, but would be silly to call it the only operating system in the world) how fixed is “sex” anyway? Well, most of us know that clownfish can change sex - if there are changes in their social structure, the dominant female can transition from a reproductively functioning egg-fertilizing male to a reproductively functioning egg-laying female. Bio textbooks say that clownfish “don’t have” sex chromosomes, but I think it’s more likely that they do, but that they don’t have any function. At any rate, the change is down to hormones, which change in response to the social environment the fish is in.
So are hormones, then, the Thing That Totally Definitely Determines What Men and Women Are? Not really. Before puberty, human children don’t have many sex hormones circulating in their bodies, and human children are often quite clear about their own gender. Humans who have had ovaries removed, or who go through menopause, no longer have waves of “female” hormones sloshing around - but we still call most of them “women.” Humans who have had their testicles removed or their androgens depleted (usually because of testicular or prostate cancer, which can feed on hormones) are usually still called “men.” And ovaries produce natural levels of testosterone quite happily, because they need to - just at lower levels! Pregnant humans often have particularly high levels of testosterone. Weirdly, “male” partners of pregnant people often drop to lower levels of testosterone than usual - their pregnant partner’s hormones influence their own biology. But a cisgender father of a fetus does not stop being a male just because he has less testosterone.
Pregnancy gets weirder, too - decades after the fetus has moved out, a pregnant person who once harbored an XY fetus will have XY cells in their body and brain. If you looked at, say, Molly Weasley, you’d be able to find “male” tissue in her brain - where her body traded for some fresh young stem cells from her fetuses, and used them to replenish her own older tissues. So a cisgender person born XX can exhibit microchimerism later in life and never know it. But having XY tissue in your brain doesn’t make you a man.
Okay, so what about gender roles? Surely those are clear - surely those are necessary for sex and sexuality and the Natural Order and all those things?
Well, we also know that animals practice a range of gender roles. Again, a lot of it is more obvious in fish, reptiles and birds, partly because sexual dimorphism tends to be more pronounced in these animals. But there are plenty of species in which you get multiple “types” of sexes. The most common is the territorial/satellite male arrangement, in which there are multiple distinct types of males, with different genetics, behavior, life history, physical appearance and courtship strategies.
Ruffs, a type of sandpiper, have distinct territorial and satellite males, plus “faeder” males that were only recently discovered to be male; faeders are identical to females in appearance and most behavior, and plenty of previous sightings of lesbianism in ruffs were probably faeder/female matings. Satellite and territorial males top faeders, but as faeders also top satellite and territorial males, researchers have interpreted this as “ruffs are perfectly aware that faeders aren’t the same as females, and none of them give a shit.”
Above are some different forms of masculinity in ruffs. The bird on the top left is a female; the birds below are the different male types. In the picture on the right, the independent and satellite male are vying for the attention of the female; the faeder is the brown one on the left. The territory belongs to the territorial male, who will defend it from other territorial males, but he doesn’t attack the satellite and faeder males, because they aren’t in competition. (Imagine your OT4.)
Outside of that, gender roles aren’t as important as humans pretend they are. There isn’t really a Breadwinner/Housewife divide in the animal kingdom because most animals don’t practice capitalism. Performative masculinity only benefits species that gain an evolutionary advantage from it. Non-human mammals don’t find mammary glands to be sexually arousing. Mostly, animals just try to survive in complicated, complex environments that are constantly trying to kill them. The rules are: 1) adapt to changes in environment by being resilient, adaptable and diverse; and 2) successfully pass on the genes that succeed in your environment. You don’t need to be “fit” or fierce or have lots of bright plumage - those are not your objectives and may, in fact, distract you. You don’t even need to mate, or be fertile, or have children of your own - you just need to make sure that your traits survive, and hopefully help your species after your death.
There is nothing in the rules about the superiority of special genital configurations, which animals are allowed to touch the color pink, and who gets to grow a beard.
Tl;dr : every time a human tries to come up with a hard-and-fast rule about what “sex” or “gender” or “male” or “female” means, there is a bird somewhere that has quietly devoted the past 2 million years of its existence to proving that person wrong.
everyone here secretly harboring a massive science!crush on elodie raise your hand now plz
I would be the one recommending violence. Have I ever told the story of the time I walked up to @twistedangelsays , said “You should probably stop me,” and then immediately picked a fight with a dude who had a foot of height on us?
Let’s be honest: Jesus wouldn’t take the wheel. Jesus would let Peter drive, fall asleep in the back seat, wake up to the sound of the other eleven screaming in mortal terror (while Peter bellows expletives at the car in front), and get them out of a fatal car accident at the very last second by rebuking the speed limit.
if u were a gifted/talented child who grew into an anxious adult w fragile self worth and a perfectionist streak that makes u abandon things if ur not good at them immediately clap ur hands
Anonymous asked: heyyyyy, i would love an exr au where one of them has to teach the other how to dance and it's so frustrating because "he won't fucking cooperate" and there's the deal with sexual tension so one of them just snaps and. . . i'll let you decide their fate ;)))) (love your work btw)
Heeeeeeey,
sorry this took a little while, life…is happening to me. But!
Abuse of the fact that Grantaire is canonically a dancer! Sexual tension! Here we go!
“One-two-three,
one-two-three, that’s-my-foot, one-two-three, one-two—Enjolras!” Grantaire huffed,
doing an awkward sort of two-step to back up without releasing his grip on his
partner’s hand and waist. “There are actually nerve endings in my toes,
do you mind?”
“I’m trying, you’re not telling me what to
do!” Enjolras scowled down at the floor,
brow furrowed as he tried to place his feet, and tugged his hand out of
Grantaire’s. Grantaire released him
without a fight, dropping his hand from Enjolras’ hip and immediately missing
the warmth.
“It’s a waltz, not brain surgery,” Grantaire
said. “I told you what to do when we
started. There are literally three steps
to this dance.” Enjolras stopped, his
frown deepening until it seemed etched into his face, and Grantaire sighed. “Come here, we can try again,” he said,
holding out his hand again. “Your hand
on my shoulder, the other like this,” he coached, pulling Enjolras in
again. “Come on, Apollo,” he said with
an attempt at an encouraging smile, “weren’t you valedictorian in high school? You can do a waltz.”
Headcanon: What you think happened, based on the characters, settings, storylines and all reasonable extrapolations thereof.
Heartcanon: What you feel ought to have happened, quite divorced from rationality or sense.
Soulcanon: What you know happened, deep down in your soul, regardless of what anyone says. Including the creators of canon, themselves.
Crotchcanon: What your gonads wish had happened, or, alternatively, what turns you on.
Oh my goodness.
Okay, this seems like a fun basis for a meme: “Send me a character, and I’ll give you one of each” - a canon fact, a headcanon fact, a heartcanon fact, a soulcanon fact and a crotchcanon fact.” :-)
