Ineffable!

So this week I found out that guy had a major crush on last year separated from his girlfriend of eight years. I wish I could say I was very surprised by the way I felt, at the news, but to be honest, not really. I’m also not really surprised that most of it is complicated and weird and not always comfortable.

Like, aside from the him-specific bits and the kinda unavoidable disappointment in knowing your crush doesn’t like you back, it brings back a lot of questions and fears I have about dating as an almost-definitely-gay trans man, especially pre any kind of transition other than social and it’s...not a comfortable place. These are questions I don’t have answers or models for, and I don’t really have an offline community where I can try to come up with answers for them.

I don’t know any other trans person in Phnom Penh, and while my friends are absolutely supportive and all, these are not problems they’ve been confronted with before and therefore they have even less information, let alone answers, than I do.

(I was talking with a bunch of them at lunch today and at one point I talked about my experience s a trans guy, including the knowledge that being interested in men who like men can be real complicated when you don’t have a dick, or plans to get one, and one of them sort of...didn’t believe it could be a problem, at first. Which, on the one hand, I get it: if you’d told me before I got more informed on queer topics that cis gays could be transphobic, or that gays could be biphobic etc. I’d have been surprised too—I was surprised when I found out about it, though not as much as I’d have thought I’d be—but on the other hand: it’s always frustrating to express a fear only to have someone deny its legitimacy, even out of very well-meaning ignorance.)

There’s no solution I can think of to these issues right now, except maybe got to sleep and hope I’ll feel better tomorrow but it’s still not my coolest evening this week, and I wish I had a pet I could hug.

One thing I’m starting to understand as I try to (very slowly) work on a co-writing project about a fandom I’m currently into (yes, it is Good Omens, how did you guess) after spending seven months working on the same fic and spend my days at work alternating between long stretches of intense focus and moments when I can’t stomach the thought of doing anything remotely intellectually challenging, is that I seem to be a very start and stop sort of person/content creator.

I don’t think it’s that unique a thing, really. It’s just that it’s taken me this long to start realizing that I need periods of being a consumer in between bouts of being a creator, which is possibly a bit of an ill-timed realization when you’ve just agreed to co-write a story, but I’m fortunate to have a patient co-author, so it’s okay.

FANDOM: DC’s cinematic universe.
RATING: Mature.
WORDCOUNT: 27 147 words.
PAIRING(S): Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne (main focus is on Clark, though).
CHARACTER(S): Kal-El | Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Jor-El, Lara Lor-Van, Kara Zor-El, Zor-El, Martha Kent, Alfred Pennyworth, Diana Prince, Barry Allen, Arthur Curry, Victor Stone, John Stewart, J’onn J’onn, plus a quick cameo by Lois Lane.
GENRE: Alternate Universe (canon divergence), transition fic with romance.
TRIGGER WARNING(S): A great deal of anxiety and self loathing, especially in parts one and two. Some descriptions are heavily inspired by my experience of dysphoria-induced dissociation.
SUMMARY: Batman crashes on Krypton a few days before the Turn of the Year
celebrations and Kal-El's life takes a sharp turn to the left, on a path
that will ultimately lead him to becoming Clark Kent.

FIC MASTERPOST: [Total length: 98k+]
ALSO AVAILABLE: [On AO3] [On tumblr]

THANKS: to susiecarter (also susiecarter )​, for getting me into this pairing (seriously, go read her stories!), cheerleading me through the writing process, and then betaing the whole monster in absolute record time! And thanks to stuvyx for the AMAZING comic pages which you can find here and here and then shower her with praise for her work! :D

FANDOM: DC’s cinematic universe.
RATING: Mature.
WORDCOUNT: 20 640 words.
PAIRING(S): Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne (main focus is on Clark, though).
CHARACTER(S): Kal-El | Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Jor-El, Lara Lor-Van, Kara Zor-El, Zor-El, Martha Kent, Alfred Pennyworth, Diana Prince, Barry Allen, Arthur Curry, Victor Stone, John Stewart, J’onn J’onn, plus a quick cameo by Lois Lane.
GENRE: Alternate Universe (canon divergence), transition fic with romance.
TRIGGER WARNING(S): A great deal of anxiety and self loathing, especially in parts one and two. Some descriptions are heavily inspired by my experience of dysphoria-induced dissociation.
SUMMARY: Batman crashes on Krypton a few days before the Turn of the Year
celebrations and Kal-El's life takes a sharp turn to the left, on a path
that will ultimately lead him to becoming Clark Kent.

FIC MASTERPOST: [Total length: 98k+]
ALSO AVAILABLE: [On AO3] [On tumblr]

susiecarter

susiecarter

stuvyx

So I’ve been giving thoughts to the idea of Good Omens and queerbaiting, because it’s been discussed a lot and. Uh

I don’t think Neil Gaiman was queerbaiting anyone, in the sense that he seems to have wanted to give us good rep. It isn’t perfect by far and I have my beef with the whole ‘they’re totally a romance but only in word of God’ thing, which I might go into later on. But, technically speaking, not queerbaiting.

Amazon? A different beast entirely. I have zero doubt that they saw this and thought 'perfect, queer viewers AND homophobes!’

Regardless of that though, and despite the things I’ve said in the past that might run contrary to this post, I’m going to say: this isn’t enough. Because we can say whatever we want about how Ineffable Husbands is canon, but at the end of the day the only characters who label Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship as romantic (or even queer in any way) are people trying to belittle them. This is not interpretation, it’s a fact.

I know there are people who saw themselves in the ambiguity, and I respect that. I’m glad people found something that was good to them. That still doesn’t change the fact that Aziraphale and Crowley are not canonically queer, not really, because anyone who refuses to see them as queer will still be able to say 'yeah but in the show…’ and right now we’re not in a cultural place where subtext is enough to make good rep.

This isn’t an attack on the show, or on Neil Gaiman. I know he’s been trying, even if his queer work is…well, it feels iffy to me. But it IS criticism though, and I really hope some queer person in his life will take him aside someday and let him know that. More than anything I hope he’ll listen.

Because he’s trying to do good.

But it’s still not enough.

It’s Fic Back Friday! And in this occasion I’d like to go back to another fandom I haven’t been active with in a while (not a fan of what they’re doing with the franchise recently, I’m afraid) let’s go for an X-Men fic! :D

The welfare of a child by oddegg (2116 words)

Chapters: 1/1

Fandom: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Characters: Sean Cassidy, Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, Raven, Hank McCoy, Alex Summers

Additional Tags: Angst, Childhood, Neglect

Summary:

Written for the 1stclass-kink meme prompt: Charles gets turned into a kid/baby. While the team scrabble to work out how to put him right they try to look after him. Turns out, Charles doesn't need much looking after. If he's a baby, he never cries. If he's a little kid, he's really self-sufficient.

Everyone's charmed/amused by this except one person (Sean) who is really unnerved by this. All babies cry. Kids that age are not that independent - they're just not. Unless they're used to nothing happening when they cry/used to fending for themselves.

Reccer’s note:

I liked this fic when I first read it, not just because it was sort of exploring the loneliness of Charles’ life despite his (many) privilege(s) but also because it gave Sean a lot of depth that the movie didn’t. sure, I liked his goofy character in First Class, but even the most ridiculous person has something else going on behind that, and it was nice to see a fic try t take a dig at it at a time when we still thought the new X-Men franchise would try and do something with its new-to-the-big-screen mutants.

Today is Work in progress Wednesday *and*, @caloub tagged me in the “Last Line” challenge, so in honor of that, here’s the last (complete) sentence I wrote so far for the Good Omens fic I did not expect to write but am more or less working on anyway:

Sure, the air conditioning gets better there, but the corridors also get smaller, busier, and far more crowded with electronic devices in the walls that make it impossible to drive the temperature lower than pleasantly-cool-on-the-Crowley-scale^[5] even in the winter.

[5] Everyone else sweats and showers two-to-six-times a day.

I’m actually pleased that this doesn’t reveal the setting of the fic because I kind of want to keep it a surprise and/or teasing people about it–it’s a fusion fic that, again, I hadn’t expected at all xD

Didn’t do Motivation Monday yesterday because my laptop was being a boob so let’s use today to give a shout out to @keircatenation, whose enthusiasm enabling talents played a huge role in me deciding to write Clark Kent, of Krypton, aka my Superbat Big Bang story!

Other enabling things they do/did include:

• Yelling about the Lightwood family with me
• Making art of my Mortal Instruments rewrite AU (which I should probably enter in a bang of some sort if I want to finish it)
• Indulging me when I have AUs I just can’t wait to discuss with them, even when they’re just random ideas I know I’ll probably never write