less heterosexuality more cyborgs

For some things I feel like cisswaps don't make much difference except as a way to put more girls in the canon -- which, don't get me wrong, I totally love the idea of things i love being exactly the same except with more ladies, but it feels kind of . . . shallow? or something.

And then with other things it makes a HUGE, world-shaking-important difference in my ability to connect with things and enjoy them. Like, take Captain America. Quite plainly, I don't care about the story of Captain America -- I can understand why other people love it, and there's some great fic out there, but overall I am not very invested. But switch Steve for Stella, and suddenly I am ALL OVER it. Because the story of Stella is fundamentally different than the story of Steve, even with every other aspect of her origin story the same.

Just about every aspect of Steve Rogers/Captain America has been analyzed and over-analyzed by people much more invested than me, so I'll leave that where it is. But the story of Stella Rogers/Captain America can go in basically one of two ways: Either you have Stella Rogers waking up into the 21st century and SURPRISE EVERYONE the model of American masculinity was a lady this whole time, or the public face of America's fighting forces in World War 2 is a woman in battle dress. (And either way you have the possibility of super-soldier super-girlfriends, so there's really no angle to lose from.)


... like, i dunno, i'm more interested in stories WITH GENDER STUFF than i am in just stories period. more on this as the story develops.

I really hate it when people try to un-queerify Ranma. It's just like ... wow, are you EVER missing the point of, like, the entire canon. But it's also really funny! So many people trying to make things heteronormative, when canon is basically made of infinite queer. (Never forget the levels of pseudo-heterosexuality built into Ranma 1/2 that actually make everything LESS heterosexual, e.g. Ukyou and Konatsu.) What really upsets me, though, is when critics who should damn well know better dismiss Ranma 1/2's gender stuff as 'rudimentary' or 'shallow'. That's just ... really upsetting to me, because that manga is the queer text of my heart.

On another note, I kind of want to write some sort of Ranma/Yobei Heron thing (you remember him, right? the hot-springs guy who got girls to stomp on his head to try to find Ranma?) but I once wrote an entire page on why the manga's ending was the symbolically perfect happily-ever-after for Ranma and Akane, and I feel kind of bad writing anything to mess with that. :(

I think I may have discovered a mangaka who treats not only same-gender relationships with respect but trans* people and their relationships as well! Like, this person did a manga featuring a host club owned & managed by a trans lady, and there is a gorgeous person who may or may not be genderqueer (signs point to hell yes), and all the actual drama was about people's relationships with their parents and friends AND NOTHING WAS CREEPY OR FETISHIZING AT ALL. ♥

It was super great! The second sentence our 'main' character (it's actually a very ensemble piece, but he's the first one we meet) says to the trans lady is "[I wasn't just trying to make you buy this thing I'm selling,] I think it's rude to call people men when they're presenting female."


So, despite the rather nonsensical title, I am recommending Gold Rush 21 and (so far) its author Fujiwara Kiyo with no real caveats.

I got a huge compliment today! Well, okay, I saw it as a huge compliment, which is not really a guarantee of reality. One of my friends commented on the fact that I always present as very girly-girl, and I was like "Yay! You noticed!"

Because I think it's important for me to be a girly-girl! I'm probably not actually being as ~subversive~ of gender norms as I think I am, but it's way easier for me to pull off girly-girl than dandy. And I cannot feel comfortable in sweatshirts & such for the life of me, so those are my two real options. Both equally appealing, one a hell of a lot simpler than the other. (Hi, H-cups! We need to have a chat about you and your huge-ness.) I love being super-femme, actually, wouldn't trade it for the world, but I do sometimes wonder if that's a reaction to not being able to pull off 'masculine' looks.

My reaction to people telling sexist jokes or otherwise making me uncomfortable is to go extra-girly, too. Adjust the jewellery, walk extra-loud, move the hips more, make 'girly' gestures—hair-flips and pouts and the like—put on more lipstick. You all keep being jerks over there, I am going to swan all over here with my gender expression and there's not a thing you can do about it.


(This comment was brought on by me wearing what was basically a fascinator on a headband. Feathers and netting and big plastic jewels oh my. Gave me a bit of a headache but I so don't mind.)

So now I am home! My last evening in Kansas was spent in the house of a very nice lady I may or may not be distantly related to (she lives across the street from my great-aunt and -uncle, and she was only ever referred to by her name) where I was given a very nice spare bedroom and bathroom all to myself, free run of the kitchen, and REAL FOOD. By this I mean hummus and crackers and carrots and celery, but that makes it no less REAL to someone who has been living off protein bars and carbohydrates for four days. The spare bedroom helped quite a bit too, I think, given that all the forced proximity to my dear family (she says without a trace of sarcasm) had been and still rather is making me angry and snappish about tiny things. I like people! I love people! Just not the same ones for long periods of time without being able to go away and cool off when I need to. *twitchy twitchy twitchy*

Also, related to this, I discovered a lot of my boundary issues, and my opinions of hotels/non-vegetarian restaurants/people who don't cook, and my feelings about + desires for the 'perfect girl' mould (nail polish, makeup, cool clothes, high heels, loud pop music) as armor against mood downswings/fucking up/little things that annoy past the point of tolerance/other stuff that makes me cry. (Having it on won't always work, but maybe it helps, and putting it on usually works. I can blame its not working on not having access to all the things on the list at any given feeling-shitty time.)

However, I have been moderately successful thus far at plotting out the Hermione/Dean acefic! It is kind of big and serious and tackles some of the same wizarding-world issues as the Hufflepuffs-and-Slytherins fic (still on the stove, though back-burner for now), but without the happy escape theme. Well, that'll be there a little bit because it is kind of a Thing for me, but running away into the Muggle world will not fix things even just for them. It sucks and they can't get out because there is no out and things aren't just going to get better and leaving it to other people is not going to fix anything either. And it's going to take them a long time just to find out everything that's wrong and deal with it being that way, never mind fixing it.

. . . it feels like the only longfic I'm capable of producing is Dealing With Canon Issues fic. Eh, that's okay.

Anyway, I wrote a Tracey Davis poem! I think I like this 'writing poetry' thing, though it always feels like NOTHING WILL EVER BE EDITED ENOUGH. This one punctuation choice/line break/word feels a teensy bit off, AAAAAGH IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD. :|