Activity

@k-a-grey

Ok, so that was a long time. Idk if you even still remember but I promised to give my thoughts on the article about queer representation so I’m finally back now, I swear I’ve been working on it this whole time just really slowly in corners and pockets of time between…*”stuff”* 😒. But anyway! Sorry for the delay and lemmie just jump in.

 

Alright, so he brings up a lot of valid questions about how to contextually deliver. And I really love that he really seems to have thought about this and doesn’t give the easy way out like “oh if you have this, this and this you should be ok.” or “oh no, you can’t do that at all.” So he’s great and I think he raises two major questions regarding this which are: A. Are we–individually–capable of handling the subject in a Christian way? and B. Will we?

Now this, I’m not writing about queer characters because I just sat down and said “I wanna write about queer characters”; It’s something that’s just been in my heart, that needs a voice because it’s stuck in my brain and something I’m forced to confront, so I need answers for me and doing that in my characters is a good way to get them. So a definitely feel very called to dig deeply into these themes.

If I’m honest, I’m not capable of handling this subject. I have more questions than answers and more hurt and help. But I’ll be praying and working this through, I don’t know how but this is what I feel is on my soul to write and part of my vocation and calling. So I can’t but I have to, and if I trust in God then He’ll provide. I can’t handle this topic in a Christian way, but I plan to 🙂

But that said, I’m not going to give easy answers either in my book. I believe these actions are wrong, and I want to now just know but really understand why so I want to get into what’s happening, what’s going on inside their heads, why and what are the consequences?

I want to show both the brokenness and the uniqueness of people who embrace this lifestyle and there are a lot of factors I’m going to explore but I put most of them into one of two categories: What are the physical consequences and what are the psychological consequences? It’s gonna be hard for me to get into detail just generalizing so I’m going to use one of my most obviously queer characters as a model for my thought-process here:

Sloane: gender-fluid shapeshifter taken in by a nonhumanoid race. Not only has she not been exposed to a lot of fellow human beings but she is also one of those very very very rare girls who was born with one green eye, her other eye is blue. Thematically, and loosely speaking, the green eye represents masculinity and the blue eye represents femineity (or did I make it brown or gold in one of my revisions…?). This is because culturally, green eyes are very strongly associated with a male trickster who was a shapeshift–long story blahblahblah (this means I don’t actually know the story is yet XDD)–but he was cursed, blessed, affected whatever so that in the entire world only the first born sons are ever supposed to have green eyes and nobody else. Is that story true or false? Idk idc; she has this about her that’s appears exclusively male even tho she’s a girl so what does that make her?

1. Physical consequences:

Lemmie just start here with gender dysphoria and how it works and effects people. I really don’t know how common this is but; have you ever looked in the mirror and felt like the person you saw was a stranger to you? This is one of the most common first experiences of dysphoria (aaand also a symptom of depression but that’s another rant!) It happens more often with people who experience gender confusion. I think about 60% or so of adolescents who experience gender dysphoria grow out of it eventually and my dysphoria has gotten better over the years to the point were I’m just about out of it probably, but I also know people who that just didn’t happen and they still have to deal.

But ANYWAY, returning to the mirror, as a shapeshifter Sloane can really struggle to figure out her born gender. Of course animal forms and forms she can assume of other races don’t “click” with her, but in the mirror she can “recognize” herself in both male, female and gender-ambiguous forms, but only during certain periods of time: sometimes she identifies with the male form sometimes the female etc.

Logically, she is aware of the fact that she was born female. Physically, she still menstruates in her female form, but if she shifts form the male body isn’t capable of menstruation which is something one of my friends pointed out to me and I really need to do some research on that aspect—(Update; just spent 30 min looking that up and I am intrigued, especially with gender-fluid there’s a lot of stress-postponement of period, like it’s fairly common for them to physically skip periods every so often without meaning to just because the body reacted to all the dysphoric-pressure maybe or maybe weird periods helped with dysphoria. Periods are VERY stressful for most trans-people (go figure) and especially physically painful. I actually don’t experience any real emotional instability or physical pain in most of my periods–but when I do it’s horrific and constant. And also, ALL the genderfluid people on that post were either bisexual or asexual, and I recently read about guys wanting to change gender because they were gay and didn’t want that stigma and I’ve often wondered whether my asexuality contributed to my gender dysphoria…interesting side-thread, could be nothing it was just that one site on a Google search so honestly…)

But ANYWAY! Any hormonal surgeries to stop menstruations are incredibly dangerous, for example using the testosterone makes you especially pone to injury and bleeding not even to MENTION the psychological damage of excessive and multigendered hormones when the hormones of ONE gender is hard enough to manage. However there’s also a bit of a movement in the queer community to stay as healthy as they can with their choices and retain the ability to nurse and menstruate while presenting as male. But it does affect dysphoria etc and I wonder how Sloane will handle it since she can probably delay or even skip entirely periods on occasion and how will that affect her body…??

Soo that’s one physical consequence I’m going to explore, because it’s a big deal in the lgbtq+ community, especially in the trans part of it and it’s not really thought about by people who don’t experience or know of someone who’s experienced dysphoria.

So that’s an example of my approach to that I guess…

 

2. What are the psychological consequences?

Again with Sloane, her situation when the story starts is that she has been betrothed to the crown prince of Hesgmarde to seal an alliance (which is…kinda funn coz he’s literally like the only completely straight character in the book 😀 XDDDDD) and they hate each other on sight and all. She investigates murders he investigates his brother’s disappearance and eventually they find out they’re investigating the same thing and have to work together lotsa fun they eventually learn to respect each other as people and develop a good working relationship but whatever back to consequence:

Politically, the fairly-recently-established council support Sloane’s lifestyle, at least officially. But socially, there’s still a lot of actual discrimination because I’ve researched this and seen it and gonna call it what it is even if I disagree with their choices that’s no cause for all the hate spat around. Aside from that, many people can’t quite see them as actual people because it’s so strange and foreign to someone who’s never experienced that on a personal level.

And another thing I’ll be exploring is how people treat her differently according to the gender she presents and how much of a factor in her fluidity that is, not to mention social pressures and gender expectations. I want to explore how much of this is intrinsically part of her internal makeup? How much is symptomatic of a much deeper set of conditions and circumstances? How does she stay true to her identity, and how much of this is part of her identity now? How does that grow into a more healthy outlet for how she is and who she is?

 

As someone who generally feels like both genders at once, it’s a very personal exploration for me, and something I don’t want to easy-answer out of. And I’ll also be exploring sexuality and romantic love which is very strange to me as an asexual girl and often makes me feel dysphoric. My story is dealing with trauma and being dehumanized, and it’s about recovery and realistically defining and realizing true love. I want to look at ways queer people can cope, change and grow.

Like, for instance, calling people “bro” or “man” has helped me integrate the more masc aspects of my personality with myself as a girl so I accept it as part of me even if it’s different. And also, manga and anime really helps too, idk why but maybe it’s just loud and colorful with loud personalities that aren’t confined to any one gender but still with characters that have a clear sense of identity even if they break gender stereotypes. Also there’s a lot more asexual MCs in manga and that’s really nice, I struggle to relate to a lot of characters but manga characters tend to be a lot more relatable to me. So telling myself I’ve got an anime character aesthetic makes me more comfortable as a girl but then also I’m sure ya’ll have seen this where you can only tell a manga character’s gender because of the pronouns used and every character acts like their gender is completely obvious, that’s funny but also comforting in a way.

Actually now that I’m thinking of it, I haven’t actually read the manga yet but my brother got me to watch the anime episodes of the first season and it had a lot of characters that casually broke gender stereotypes like the MC could cook better than his love interest who was loud and hotheaded and they balanced each other out nicely while still having a clear sense of gender identity she was very obviously a girl he was very obviously a boy and they were very comfortable in their own skin. It’s Rurouni Kensen, I loved it, you gotta work through how dorky the first part of it is but when it reaches *that point* 🤩

One of the villains was trans and that was handled well to me. But I LOVED THE THEMESSSSS IT WAS SOO GOOD THE MC IS AN EX-ASSASSIN TEACHING EVERYONE THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE AND HE WEARS A REVERSE BLADE THAT CAN’T KILL ANYONE BECAUSE THE SHARP END FACES HIM AND THAT’S SO SYMBOLIC ADN THEN HE HAS TO LEARN THAT EVEN HIS OWN LIFE IS SACRED TOO AND HOW DEEPLY THE THEMES WERE HANDLED AHHHHHHHHHHHHH 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

Anyway, great anime GREAT characters SUPER FANTASTIC EPIC THEMES!!!! I was so invested in those characters…

*sigh*

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on writing queer depictions and all…I think I rambled a lot lol 😂