Nominally, one of the points of being on a mental health leave for the semester was to help curtail and avoid the exact patterns of behavior that Reiki could feel himself sliding back into as easily as slipping into a hot bath with all the aromatherapy trimmings. Easier, even, if he were completely honest with himself. Aside from the need to adjust to the temperature of the water, he would’ve needed to give himself permission to take that aromatherapy bath in the first place. Getting that kind of blessing out of himself would’ve required a submission of his rationale, explaining in detail why he thought he needed such things and signed in triplicate by all of his worst impulses—or else an immediate and pressing impulse that outweighed all of the formalities to which Reiki normally subjected himself and refused to be silenced.
Contrariwise, it proved so easy to justify to himself things that he knew he should’ve known so much better about: the simple and seemingly unassailable claims about having eaten better than he had, about having eaten at all when he’d ******** off to Mirrorspace to make himself stop feeling goddamn guilty while staring in a reflective surface, like he’d done something wrong by asserting his ******** boundaries and not going into that freezing, miserable s**t-hole excuse for a magical realm. More selfies than not had gone unshared lately, whether on Instagram or in texts to someone, for fear that any of the people who cared about him might rightfully express any concern about what he wore (either too baggy or too tight in the wrong places; too strategic a placement of this that or the other fabric window) or how he posed his body (was he trying to keep track of things that he didn’t need to put through so much scrutiny).
Reiki knew better than all this. He knew that he knew better. Still, putting himself through such things felt like giving himself treats right now, after all the bullshit diva behavior he’d gotten from Mirrorspace lately. Felt practically indulgent to turn back to habits that would hurt him eventually, but that in the meantime, helped ease the pressure he’d felt building in his chest and crushing around him ever since New Year’s Eve, when Mirrorspace decided to make him stop ignoring it. Walking backward into a different, entirely self-chosen Hell came as easily to him as breathing.
Easier than ever, really, since not being on campus right now cut his weekly support group meetings down by half. (Realistically, this meant going from two meetings to one, and telling himself that made Reiki feel terribly, unnecessarily dramatic for trying to act as though that loss really meant anything.) Plus, he wasn’t going to campus Stitch ‘N’ b***h meetings, given that he mostly only went over to DCU either to bother his parents, grandparents, twin brother, baby sister, godfather, and/or recovering alcoholic aunt, or to dart around while powered up and look for trouble that he could bust up (strategically avoiding mirrors as much as possible because yet another whiny, needy little b***h “baby, why haven’t you come to see me, you’ve been gone for three whole hours, I don’t like it” call from Mirrorspace was the last thing he felt like dealing with right now).
Still, Reiki couldn’t just……silently, passively let himself rely on old habits that he’d worked so hard to break. Felt wrong, deep in his bones, to fall back on something that he knew would only end up dulling his shine. Even now, the handful of strategic untruths he’d spun for his family, both in blood and in drag, and his precious friends—they didn’t sit right with him at all. If nothing else, he had to get a handle on this before Haruhi rightfully kicked his a** for letting it get bad enough to make any real trouble. So, maybe it was not, strictly speaking, the best use of his time while dolled up in his pretty new fuku, at least not by Mirrorspace’s or anyone else’s definition? But tonight, perched atop one of DCU’s almost-sort-of-off-campus apartment-style dormitories, Reiki had decided to get himself dinner while watching for any trouble he could interrupt.
Dinner from Gertrude’s, at that. A styrofoam takeout box of sweet potato fries and one of their roll-up sandwiches, this one made with their fabulous chicken fingers as the primary filling. It had blessedly stayed warm in his subspace pocket while he’d run over to campus from Scandals—he’d skipped the mirrorwalking for now, lest Mirrorspace get any cute ideas and think that it was being funny by trapping him there or gods only knew what it might do. Multitasking didn’t always work so well with ADHD, but……it was okay, this time. And if it wasn’t, Reiki would just ignore that until later.
genovianprince_
Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2023 8:56 pm
Arsenolite marched on patrol around on the city, mostly on a personal mission, but not totally disinclined towards snaking energy from unsuspecting individuals, if it wouldn't take too much time. But the conversation with Andesine had left him with much to think about, so he was heading towards the only source he could think of to ask his questions—Murikabushi. Finding the guy was a total pain in the a**, though.
And he still needed to ask the jerk why the hell he lied to him about his name in the first place, but that wasn't really a priority.
Upon seeing a lone figure chowing down on some food on a rooftop, he leapt up to them—Dark Mirror, check. Cute skirt, check.
Feeling the approach of a Negaverse aura, Reiki stiffened but tried to will himself to just stay calm. Maybe they would leave him alone. Maybe they wouldn’t be anyone else from Faustite’s team, so Reiki wouldn’t need to answer for their little group therapy session from a few months back. Whoever this Nega was, they felt like they were about on Reiki’s power level now, give or take a bit, so maybe both of them could quietly ponder every conceivable meaning of the phrase “mutually assured destruction” and leave each other alone.
Unfortunately, not tonight. No, in tonight’s cards, the Negaverse aura had to approach Reiki’s Spot, and had to call him by name. In a voice that distinctly had not been present down in the basement of the Farnsworth. Once he’d swallowed his current bite of sandwich, Reiki allowed himself a sigh. Yes, Reiki dignified Arsenolite enough to look up at him, and he knew that he needed to behave himself for the most part, for Monoceros’s sake. If Reiki ******** around too much, then would it—could it—impact Monoceros’s ability to get out of the Negaverse like he wanted? ……But messing with Arsenolite a little bit was probably okay.
“Oh no,” he deadpanned, his tone flatter than a mediocre white boy’s a** (perhaps Arsenolite could relate). “I’m actually Murikabushi’s evil twin from the Mirror Universe. Sorry for the inconvenience, Captain, but anyway, how’s things. All power and glory to the Terran Empire.”
Not that he expected the gesture to mean anything to Arsenolite, but Reiki made the Vulcan salute, holding up one hand and spreading his fingers so the pinky and ring-finger were pressed together, as were the index and middle fingers. For anyone who knew, this would have clearly signaled that he was messing with Arsenolite……but if Reiki had to guess, he would’ve rated Star Trek lore pretty low on the list of things about which Arsenolite knew ******** anything.
genovianprince
Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:48 pm
Arsenolite blinked, brain stuttering for a moment. Was that a thing that the Mirror didi to the Mirror senshi? Not in anything he'd ever heard or read... Wh....
Oh, he was ******** with Arsenolite again, okay, yeah.
"Would it shock you to know," he began, as viciously as he could muster, "That I happen to know what Star Trek is? And even that the Vulcan salute is, in fact, from an ancient Jewish blessing, in which only the Cohanim, or singular Cohen, could spread his fingers in the intended way, from which the Vulcan salute is a derivative, and say the priestly blessing at the correct given time? And that Leonard Nimoy peeked when he was told not to, and was inspired for the Vulcan salute from that?"
He crossed his arms, staring at Murikabushi with a scowl. "I'm not a completely stupid brute, you know."
.... Sure, did he only know that from multiple absolutely ridiculous internet arguments? Yeah. Did he still totally win them when he brought sources to the table (or lose when the other guy brought sources to the table that he actually read)? Yeah.
It was far from the most dignified response, but hearing Arsenolite clap back at him so well, Reiki snorted. That snort quickly gave way to giggles, which in turn quickly shifted into full-chest, delighted laughter. In the back of his mind, he kinda hoped that Arsenolite wasn’t taking this as some kind of personal offense, as Reiki laughing at him, rather than seeing it as Reiki appreciating that he had been successfully Got, and that Arsenolite had apparently learned something from having been given a fake name, back when they first met.
Didn’t mean that Reiki particularly fancied the idea of dealing with him for too long, especially not if someone like Anser or Angelica were lurking around and decided to get a hug up their a** about Reiki existing while Dark Mirror and talking to a Negaverse agent, but……could’ve been worse, he supposed. At least the longer Arsenolite spent over here with Reiki, the less time he could spend out there in town, draining or harassing or starseeding anybody truly innocent. Reiki had senshi magic and more than enough experience with mediocre white men who really thought they’d done something special. He could handle Arsenolite’s bullshit; random, defenseless civilians could not.
And god, the bullshit was ripe tonight, with that Very Serious And Unimpressed tone out of him, not to mention that Exceptionally Put-Upon Pouty Face, complete with crossed arms. As if he had been denied the privilege of getting a hippopotamus for Christmas. Reiki had to stop laughing, he really did. It wasn’t entirely his fault, though. Arsenolite invited well-mannered schadenfreude like this. He was just that kind of a*****e.
Plus, as much as he’d once upset Reiki, starseeding a man (Raymond Callahan, Reiki silently reminded himself) right in front of him (And killing off all of Raymond Callahan’s potential reincarnations besides, unless someone can still rescue that Starseed somehow), Arsenolite really didn’t cut mustard anymore. Truthfully, that was no more his fault than the impulse to laugh in his general direction was Reiki’s. But how could some jumped-up white boy with a cute little bow-and-arrow set and glaringly obvious delusions of grandeur really hope to impress Reiki when Faustite and Jadarite existed? Not that he’d seen Miss Jada’s weapon down in the Farnsworth, but she was on Faustite’s team and had an undeniable sense of style, so Reiki presumed her weapon was considerably more impressive than Arsenolite’s.
Arsenolite also failed at being literally on fire. And at having the right sort of irascible temper to truly capture Reiki’s interest. And, generally speaking, at being Faustite.
Either way, Reiki did need to calm down. He’d had his few moments of laughter, and letting it go on any longer really would have been rude. “Well played, Captain,” he said good-naturedly, giving Arsenolite a smile, briefly setting his sandwich on top of the takeout box so he could give Arsenolite a little clap as well. “I obviously didn’t expect you to know anything about Star Trek, but congratulations, you got me. Very well played. Like I asked, though: how’s things?”
genovianprince_
Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2023 10:12 pm
Arsenolite snorted, dropping to sit next to Murikabushi. God, this sucked, and this guy already thought he was a ******** moron. As if that didn't make any of this harder! The condescending laughs and comments about not expecting Arsenolite to know about Star Trek... It boiled his blood, but he needed to remain calm. After all, he was about to probably piss the guy off.
"Look, I'm just gonna be blunt about this," he said, staring up into the sky. "I had a conversation with one of my subordinates that got me thinking. And you're one of those obviously weird queers, so I guess I'll talk to you."
He took a deep breath in and then heaved a sigh. "I didn't want to ask Andesine because I'm her Captain; the last thing I needed to do was make things awkward, and I don't exactly have a good reputation on the internet and new accounts even less so, so my only option is you."
Rubbing a hand over his face, he sighed again, realizing he still wasn't getting to his point. ********. "Basically... How do you feel about the publicly weird s**t that some of you—some of us?—do? Because the conversation I had with Andesine is making me think that some of the stuff I think is still wrong. That... I'm still hurting Monoceros."
Eugh. Being vulnerable. It was the only way to get anything done, though, with some kind of peace.
cw: pretty detailed & intense discussion of adults trying to bully a gender non-conforming child until he turned into a gender-conforming one.
A deep breath, a few moments to steady himself, and Reiki allowed himself a sigh. Alright, so Arsenolite was being……vulnerable. Ish. For some value of the word, Reiki guessed. Personally, while Reiki acknowledged that coming to him about this at all had probably taken a lot of uncomfortable humility on Arsenolite’s part, he didn’t want to give the a*****e credit for opening up—not least because Reiki wanted to be focusing on eating his dinner when he was trying very hard to not let himself backslide into Something Terrible.
Instead, no. No, he’d gotten called on to do the emotional labor of holding Arsenolite’s hand through this conversation that, for Reiki, was inextricably bound up in a lot of experiences he didn’t really want to discuss with a Negaverse officer whom he actually more or less respected (kinda.… sorta.… when Faustite wasn’t being pointlessly abrasive and making Reiki wonder if there was value in spritzing him like a disobedient cat when he got like that, or if the whole “literally on fire” thing would’ve made such attempts at discipline more like attempted murder, a distinctly unacceptable risk), never mind discussing them with <******** Arsenolite.
Unfortunately, Reiki’s family had raised him right, and leaving someone to flounder while trying to improve himself was not an option Reiki considered valid—at least, not for him personally.
“Okay, well, seeing as you are……bi? Pan? Aro, maybe?” Reiki shrugged, tilting his head as he considered what Arsenolite could’ve meant with the some of us correction that he’d snuck in there. “If you’re LGBTQ, then that means everyone I’ve met from the Negaverse is some kind of queer.” Granted, Reiki didn’t know for certain about Miss Jada, Space-Buns’s little sister, or Abbey Roadkill, but not a single one of them had given him Aggressively Cis-Het vibes in the same way that Arsenolite had done. Plus, everyone else on Team Flaming Eggplant was pretty definitely queer—and most of them were likely sleeping with their General, besides—so it would’ve made sense for those three to also be queer. Either way, until Reiki heard otherwise from Jadarite, Lilith, and Pax themselves, he was inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
“Which is not me saying that you can’t come to me with things like this, just……you may have more options inside the house than you realize. And it could be worthwhile—not for answering your actual question but for, you know, not feeling so alone—for you to reach out to other queers in the Negaverse. Make friends. Or if you can’t get all the way to friends right off the bat, at least make ‘acquaintances who don’t feel homicidal about you’ or whatever.” Sighing, tucking his bangs behind his ear, Reiki explained, “Having a larger network of queers in your life will be good for you. Not least since, as you can probably infer from how different you and I are, queer people are not monolithic in our opinions and someone might have a take on any given issue that you won’t get from anybody else.”
Faustite’s hot takes, for example, were probably fascinating.
“As for your actual question, though……” With another deep breath, Reiki crossed his legs at the knee. “I mean, it’s impossible for me to give you any kind of unbiased answer about this because I’ve been doing things other people considered ‘publicly weird’ for my entire life. Like, when my brother, our same-aged cousin, and I all started school? I got all kinds of s**t……for wanting to wear the skirt uniform they have at Knightside, not the pants uniform.” Shrugging did nothing to help Reiki feel more like this Didn’t Really Matter, like he was totally fine with all of it. Regardless of how twenty-some-odd years had passed since everything he had in mind, some pieces of it stung as if they’d only happened yesterday.
“It wasn’t like I was experimenting with my gender, the way they say about some trans kids? I’m cis and I’ve never felt any angst or discomfort with being a boy.… I’m just a boy who likes wearing skirts and dresses. And who, as a child, decided that someone being a prince or a princess was determined by who they wanted to kiss because……” Reiki made a sound like I don’t know. “All the Disney princess movies had princes kissing princesses, right? Now, my brother looked at that and went ‘All the princes are boys and all the princesses are girls.’ But I looked at it and went ‘Princes kiss princesses, so if I want to kiss princes, I must be a princess’—which was so much the better for me because, with Disney princess movies and Anastasia and all of that princess stuff for kids? The princess is always the main character, and I’ve been a drama queen since day one.”
All of which, while important context, was starting to wander away from the actual point. So, Reiki paused for a couple more deep breaths, then tried to rein himself back in: “I feel like, when you say ‘publicly weird s**t’? You’re probably thinking more about, for example, the guys who wear leather fetish gear to Pride, right?” At least, that was what most people who’d ever brought similar conundra to Reiki meant. “But the thing is, me being like five or six, wearing a cute little skirt uniform to school because it made me feel good, and happy, and confident in myself? With nothing sexual about it because I was six? People treated that a lot like how they treat the whole idea of kink at Pride, or queer couples being ‘too open.’”
Illustrating exactly what he thought of that concept, Reiki rolled his eyes and made sarcastic quotation marks with his fingers.
“And I wouldn’t blame you for thinking like ‘Oh, but that’s obviously not the same, how could there be anything sexual about a kid picking out clothes’ because……” This shrug, Reiki meant more as an indication that what he was saying felt more or less self-evident. “I assume that you don’t think about literal kids like that. But me just wearing the clothes I liked and that made me feel comfortable in my own skin? It still posed a threat to the whole social order about gender and sexuality, just like queer men who are too flamboyant, queer women who are too butch, trans guys wearing skirts, gay trans men and trans lesbians just existing, pretty much everything about non-binary and genderfluid folks’ lives, and yes, even kink at Pride.
“Like, I got my ADHD diagnosis as a kid? Primarily because one of my first grade teachers saw me swishing my skirt on the playground and went ‘Oh, he is clearly only wearing that as a way of self-stimulating.’ She happened to be right about the ADHD, sure, and I was actually self-stimulating with the skirt-swishing. But she went ******** apopleptic when getting me on Ritalin did not magically make me wear pants to school. Some of my classmates’ parents didn’t want their kids to make friends with me—even encouraged their kids in bullying me like they did—because they decided that I must be some gender-confused freak who’d clearly infect their kids with my gender-confusion. Even though I wasn’t confused and I didn’t say anything about what anyone else wore. I’m pretty sure the guidance counselor I had to see for a while wanted to accuse my parents of child abuse because they let me be myself and loved me unconditionally. They—”
Reiki’s breath hitched, and he hated it for doing that. “They stopped after a while. Probably because they ran out of ideas for bullshit they could subject me to. Because I didn’t relent, or change, or wake up and go ‘I think I’ll wear pants to school today.’ Not even after hearing other kids’ parents say I’d brought the bullying on myself by acting how I did when—? All I did was wear clothes? But then came ninth grade, and the move on up to Meadowview, and it started all over again. At least, the s**t with the teachers did, because the s**t I got from some of my classmates never stopped. The sheer number of times I ever had to wear a spare uniform of my brother’s because my skirt got stolen out of my locker during gym class? And that was always double humiliating because……”
Because I was sick in ways that made me regularly test how long I could go without eating.
“Because I was really skinny in high school, and my brother is on the chubby side, so I was always drowning in his uniform in addition to feeling like s**t because it wasn’t what I wanted to wear.” Reiki huffed. “So……yeah. I don’t really put a lot of stock in any of the arguments that people have against any way of being queer that’s quote-unquote ‘too open’ or ‘too flamboyant’ or just too much. There are all kinds of other important, specific arguments to be made too—like how leather culture and BDSM started with queer people, and the community organizing that leather groups did during the height of the AIDS Crisis, and how so many of the photos people throw around to whine about ‘kink at Pride’ aren’t even ******** *from* Pride?
“But……” One more shrug. Probably not the last Reiki would do tonight, he felt. “I learned really early that most of the time? When people talk about any kind of queer behavior being ‘too much,’ what they really mean is that it makes them feel threatened. Because it doesn’t conform to what they want reality to be. ‘Publicly weird’ queerness reminds people that all of the systems we come up with for trying to ‘tame’ gender and sexuality? Are ultimately fake. Which means that gender-conforming cis-het people aren’t inherently better than anyone else. And it means they can’t claim any moral high-ground based on what does or doesn’t make them happy.
“And for what it’s worth, I don’t think that you’re maliciously in the wrong for being taken in by ways of thinking like that? Or that you’re deliberately trying to hurt Monoceros?” Reiki couldn’t speak for how Monoceros felt, but……in this instance, it did seem unlikely that Arsenolite was hurting him on purpose. “I don’t think you’re being deliberate about it because we live in A Society, and it teaches us these ways of thinking about gender and sexuality? And unlearning it all can be a <******** b***h.”
And……Reiki really did not want to give Arsenolite credit for anything.
He really did not want to do the extra work to reassure Arsenolite about anything.
Reiki could have left well enough alone and said jack-s**t nothing.
Instead, he sighed and added, “But if you want to do better by Monoceros going forward? Then putting in the effort to unlearn all that garbage is a good idea. And……it’ll probably mean a lot to him.”
Even with Monoceros planning to leave the Negaverse, he’d almost certainly appreciate Arsenolite making the effort to do better about queer issues.
genovianprince
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:29 pm
When Murikabushi had first begun talking, Arsenolite had caught himself thinking a lot of "that makes sense" and "of course they did, that was weird" thoughts. But... No. That didn't make it okay. That... those lines of thinking were exactly what got him into treating Monoceros like that when they were children. Those lines of thinking made him into a bully just like the ones that had hurt Murikabushi, someone he... actually respected. Not to say he didn't respect his brother, but...
Just seeing someone else make it normal on purpose, and not letting the fear and shame from other people get to them, sent dizzying guilt through Arsenolite, crushing him with its weight so hard he leaned back on his hands until he laid on his back, still staring up at the sky, arms clasped on his stomach.
"I'm so sorry," he said finally, realizing the silence had stretched on for far too long. "You didn't deserve that. 'Ceros didn't deserve that. I was—I was—"
And suddenly, for the second time in a week, he began crying, and he loathed himself for it. He certainly didn't think he deserved to cry in general, but especially not over his own horrific behavior. A quiet sob escaped him before he could stop it.
"Man up, idiot," he hissed under his breath to himself, digging his nails deeply into his wrist. With physical pain to focus on, he could easily discard the emotional pain and withstand the need to cry.
After a few deep breaths, he could breathe normally again, and no more tears dropped from his eyes.
"... Thank you, man. I... Don't want to hurt him anymore. I don't... want to hurt anyone like that anymore," he sighed. Of course, there were specific ways in which he needed to hurt people, and he liked it a bit too much to just make a general statement, but eh.
As he looked up at the stars, though... some part of him wondered what it would be like. To be up there in the stars. After all, Monoceros had so adamantly refused joining the Negaverse in the first place... He quickly shoved that thought in a lockbox. The last thing he needed right now was to get thinking like that! He prayed nobody could read minds in the Negaverse. He was almost a General for chrissake. He couldn't jeopardize that on some stupid, random, idle thought. No.
There was only so far he was willing to go to change for his brother, and right now, giving the White Moon an inch even in his own head would allow them to take a mile. He needed to stay right where he was and become a General and help Monoceros feel happy and comfortable.
Of all the things Reiki most wanted to deal with in the universe, Arsenolite crying at him—for any reason, honestly—was absolutely nowhere on the list. As much as Reiki wanted to play nice with the b*****d for Toráin’s sake, Arsenolite aggravated his first gay nerve, his last gay nerve, and pretty much every other gay nerve in between them. He was a smug a*****e, overly pleased with himself when he’d done pretty much nothing to deserve it (in Reiki’s less than humble opinion), and utterly heartless about killing civilians (like Raymond Callahan, whose murder Reiki still absolutely held against Arsenolite, not least because it had been so senseless and marked the only time as yet that Reiki had watched somebody caught up in all this garbage die). If you asked him, Arsenolite might’ve had the right to cry, but that didn’t obligate Reiki to put up with him.
……Except, with the man actually in front of him and actually crying, Reiki sighed and scooted over to gently pat his shoulder. As much as he wanted to tell Arsenolite to go ******** himself, in the face of his genuine distress over what he’d done to people in the past, Reiki couldn’t even get himself to fully think those words, much less say them.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said as kindly as he could manage, being careful with it because this was all probably a lot on its own, without him trying to be nice on top of things. Sure, Arsenolite was nowhere near as interesting as and infinitely more garden variety than Faustite, so it stood to reason that he’d react differently to things—but a lot of Negaverse operatives seemed to have some potentially fatal allergy to kindness. Maybe too much of it would get Arsenolite to lash out like Faustite sometimes did, so……trying not to overwhelm him felt like the best plan.
Didn’t change the fact that Reiki sat here, an entire homosexual, comforting a self-admitted perpetrator of queerphobic violence (even if Arsenolite was possibly queer himself), about what he’d done to other queers in the past, one of them a friend Reiki treasured……but swallowing down all those objections, Reiki silently snapped at himself, So it ******** goes.
This situation had not been part of Kurt Vonnegut’s intentions, Reiki felt pretty certain, but……so it ******** went.
“You’re right that I didn’t deserve what I went through,” Reiki said, making himself keep on, because someone had to do the rotten work of seeing Arsenolite through this, and the burden had sadly fallen on Reiki. “But here’s the thing: you didn’t deserve it, either. I don’t know what all you went through specifically? But……we live in a society, okay? One that rewards people for compliance with arbitrary rules that usually make no sense, except insofar as they set some people up as inherently better or worse than others, for no real reason beyond ‘They behave in ways that help promote this idea that the rules are just natural, not something that we invented.’”
Reiki paused for a moment and sighed. Time to bring this whole explanation right on home. “Even for the people who benefit from those rules, this does harm. That’s why you see so many guys who look at genuine ways that men are harmed by the double-standards of patriarchy and blame it on ‘female privilege’—which doesn’t actually exist in the same systemic ways as male privilege? But when you have guys who know that they’re being harmed but have been denied any way of understanding that harm, much less articulating it? Of course, it feels to them like ‘Oh, this is happening to me because I’m a man, therefore it must be that women are keeping me down.’
“It’s why you hear so many straight guys say things like ‘Gay guys are lucky, you have so many ways of being gay, so many options’—because even though a lot of the options they have in mind are some kind of homophobic stereotypes? The Society we live in says that any deviation from a rigidly prescribed ideal is a failure on their part as men, and to fail as men makes them gay, which is allegedly bad because it’s different. It scares people out of trying things that could make them happy, or help them find themselves, all because they don’t want to be punished for failing to meet standards they don’t even realize they’re allowed to opt out of.”
Patting Arsenolite right between the shoulder-blades, Reiki concluded, “Wanting to learn better and change is a huge step, okay? And……for what it’s worth, I’m proud of you. A lot of people only ever get stuck on how they deserved better, rather than trying to do something different.”
I want to kick you in the d**k for picking *ME* to help you through this when I know for a *FACT* that the Negaverse has their own contingent of queer-a** femboys, Reiki kept to himself, but somebody should tell you they’re ******** proud of you, just in case it ******** helps.
genovianprince
Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2023 10:42 pm
Proud of you.
Well. That was unexpected. Arsenolite sucked in a breath, trying very hard not to think about the last time he'd heard that from either of his parents. He didn't need to freak out on Murikabushi any more than he already had. The guy was saying a lot of smart stuff about... how other men policed each other's behavior? Essentially? It was a lot of information to get dropped on at once, and he struggled with sorting through it all while he felt a bunch of things he hadn't felt in probably literal years. If not close to a decade.
"So, first, thanks, and second... What you're saying is stuff like guys callin' each other sissies for not wanting to get undressed in the locker room, or punching each other's dicks for fun even if you didn't like it and getting made fun of for that... That's all part of the s**t that keeps us down and makes us feel bad next to each other and have to keep up this... like, masculine standard that doesn't need to exist, and we hurt people from meeting those standards and forcing others to. Right?"
This felt way in over his head. "And... being not that... Is really brave," he finally said, ducking his head. "I just went along with all that. How do you even put up with that s**t? And just take it over and over, and never do it back?"
He hugged a knee to his chest, heaving a big sigh.
As much as it stressed him out to keep listening to Arsenolite, Reiki had to admit: this garbage was significantly better than whatever bullshit Mirrorspace had been on since Gregorian New Year.
For one thing, this stuff with Arsenolite was actually real, and stood any chance of actually helping anybody, like? Ever. Sure, it’d be a difficult road for Arsenolite—he was fighting uphill against decades of conditioning from society, probably his family, probably some parts of the Negaverse (there may not have been much objection to all the queers in the Negaverse existing, but certain other aspects of it seemed like they bred a toxic space), and who even knew how many others—but……it was real. And he wanted to get better, which was more than Reiki could say for a lot of people.
With a quick nod, Reiki told him, “Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m saying, Captain. Society tells you that you can only be a certain set of things if you want to be Acceptable, but they’re wrong. You’re allowed to experiment—try on clothes you think look nice even if they’re not your usual style. Grow your hair out, see what it looks like. See how different pronouns feel when people use them for you. Get a friend to take a dance class or knitting class with you. There’s a whole universe of possibility, and a lot of the stuff that you’ve forbidden yourself from trying because it’s ‘sissy’ stuff? Could make you really happy, if you give it a chance. You don’t have to go all in right off the bat, either. Set your own pace; don’t let anybody else try to rush you or hold you back.”
The advice portion was easier to give than explaining why his alleged bravery existed.… But nevertheless, Reiki fussed with his bangs and said, “I got to realize these things early. On one hand, my family always stood by me. My Mom’s parents are petty, cruel, literally fascist assholes and they have really restrictive ideas about gender roles, so she wanted to never raise her own kids like that. My grandmother’s been fighting bullies and assorted injustices since she was a kid. My Dad, grandfather, aunts, siblings, cousins—they’ve all been amazing. Then there’s the whole thing……”
Reiki shrugged. “Dressing the way that people said little boys were supposed to dress? It always felt wrong to me. Nothing about being a boy felt wrong, but the clothes that went with it were not for me. I felt right—I felt happy—wearing my cute skirts. And other people wanted to tear me down for it, sure? But wearing clothes that made me hate myself, and my body, and everything about me wasn’t worth it.”
And now that he’d said the words tear me down, maybe Reiki didn’t need to add on a recommendation—but he was going to anyway: “If you ever get bored or anything? Look up Hedwig and the Angry Inch. You can find the movie and bootleg recordings of the musical pretty easily online. The story might not be super-clear on a first viewing? But the music’s the most important thing, really. It’s really punk rock and David Bowie-influenced, instead of what you usually expect from musical theater. ‘Wig In A Box’ and ‘Tear Me Down’ have always been my favorite songs from the show. Most people I’ve met tend to prefer ‘The Origin of Love,’ ‘Wicked Little Town,’ or ‘Sugar Daddy.’ But for you?”
Reiki considered a moment. “‘Tear Me Down,’ for sure. But ‘Exquisite Corpse’ and ‘Angry Inch’ might be good for you to hear, too. You might like them, I mean.”
genovianprince
Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2023 11:49 pm
Arsenolite hummed, nodding as he listened. Okay... Yeah. He could listen to some new music, watch a movie. That wouldn't be too bad. The thought of growing his hair out made him wrinkle his nose, but... Maybe he could try some other stuff. He wasn't in any rush, like Murikabushi said, he had time.
"Yeah, alright. Thanks. I'm glad that—that you had support in your life like that," he mumbled, sighing. "I, um. I'm gonna.... go. Thanks for... talking."
He'd have to think of a gift or something... He stood up, dusted himself off, and teleported back to Negaverse.
