Save Me From Ordinary

It was ordinary people who told me my soul would burn when I told them I am an atheist.

It was ordinary people who kept me from recognizing my gender until my 20s.

It was ordinary people who promoted a level of homework that devoured my free time for most of high school.

It was ordinary people who saw everything about me that was not useful to them and demanded that it change.

It was ordinary people who kept me feeling excluded, misunderstood, and feared until I was an adult, and sometimes still.

It was ordinary people who lied to me for fun and jeered at me for believing them.

It was ordinary people who made the world too bright, too loud, too messy, too much, and told me I was wrong for noticing.

It was ordinary people who made it so that, when I am frustrated or scared enough, I stop feeling my hands.

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Save Me From Ordinary
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Redemptive Sacrifice Done Right: On Shadow Weaver

Redemption through sacrifice is an old motif that has gotten more attention in recent popular media. Redemption arcs are powerful when done correctly, but they are also difficult to execute and require specific story structures to support them. Writers who want the powerful singular moment of redemption with less of the work required to earn it often use sacrifice as a shortcut. When a character’s life ends in the service of the people they have wronged, it can seem like the ultimate return payment for the harm they have caused, but can also be emotionally cheap. Without an effort to actually make right the wrongs of one’s past, a redemptive sacrifice can seem like an effort to suffer enough that some cosmic scale is balanced, a retributive impulse turned inward rather than a restorative one aimed outward. Worse, destroying oneself in a sacrificial blaze can also seem like an effort to escape accountability and prevent an honest reckoning with one’s legacy. For these reasons, I have grown to resent the idea of characters experiencing redemption through destroying themselves.

But one piece of media managed this difficult task with impossible grace, and that is She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. The story of Shadow Weaver might be the only time in my conscious memory that I have seen a redemptive sacrifice work. And to understand why, we have to go through Shadow Weaver’s story.

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Redemptive Sacrifice Done Right: On Shadow Weaver

Love Lives Here: A Review

“Thank you,” I told them. “Thank you for being so much better than an occasional phone call asking if I’ve given up yet.”

Zoë Michelle Knox and Amanda Jetté Knox were already famous in Canada for the improbable beauty of their journey when I met them. They were the family that had gone from the picture of white suburban normalcy to a beacon of queer hope, as father and son rediscovered themselves as wife and daughter, made public by Amanda’s blog and Internet presence, and they had been all over Canada’s magazines and web sites. The fact that they were local meant that my friends and extended circles were particularly aware of these lovely people, and made sure I heard when their speaking tour brought  them to an auditorium within not-too-forbidding walking distance of my home. They spoke about Amanda’s then-nascent book, Love Lives Here: A Story of Thriving in a Transgender Family, about trans issues in general, about how society fails us and how people can make sure the transgender family members among them feel loved, supported, and cared for despite widespread social disapproval and even violence.

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Love Lives Here: A Review

He Mourns: The Narcissistic Abuser at the Heart of Infinity War

CN spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Avengers: Infinity War

Families can be tough.”

In Avengers: Infinity War, Thor offers this wisdom to Gamora after learning that her adoptive father is the omnicidal titan Thanos. The horrors of familial strife are a recurring theme in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, being a fixture of the Thor, Black Panther, and Guardians of the Galaxy sub-franchises, but in Infinity War that theme reaches its darkest crescendo. Thanos is the compelling antagonist he is in no small part because of his children, and how his relationship with them is a pitch-perfect recreation of real-world narcissistic abuse.

Thanos, in golden armor, and Gamora as a child, holding hands as Thanos leads Gamora to a pavillion. Thanos is gigantic, and the young, red-haired Gamora's head is roughly at waist level.

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He Mourns: The Narcissistic Abuser at the Heart of Infinity War

Of Largest Lineage

I come from huge families. My mother was one of seven, and my father’s mother was one of nine. Between them, I have fourteen first cousins, at least five second cousins, eleven first cousins once removed that I know about, and more miscellaneous spouses and siblings than I care to track.

Mom never forgave her siblings for moving away from each other. Most of the brood ended up within driving distance of one another in the Great Northeastern Conurbation, albeit in three different states, but one stayed in Puerto Rico, one followed work to North Carolina, and Mom followed the needs of her husband’s family and moved to Miami. Most of the seven are involved in the US military in some way, and some of my cousins continued that legacy, and that meant being passed around bases and active duty for years at a time, far from their kin.

Dad’s family all ended up in Miami, sooner or later. My grandmother used to visit relatives in Cuba, but she is long gone, and it is likely they are as well. Most of Dad’s side of the family made Miami their first home outside of Cuba, but Dad’s path passed through New Jersey first. I grew up there, getting acquainted with Mom’s nearby relatives first and not really recognizing Dad’s side of the family until they became our frequent reality after the move. Even then, Dad was an only child, so all of the relatives were a generation apart from me, whereas my maternal cousins were close to my age, so Dad’s family and I are not well acquainted.

After picking through the family tree to survey my safety within it, I find this a tragedy.

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Of Largest Lineage

Answers for Trans Day of Visibility Questions

I arranged a question-and-answer session on my Facebook profile on this year’s Trans Day of Visibility. My friends and other visitors brought up some amusing, interesting, and valuable questions. For posterity’s sake, that’s all here now.

  1. Isn’t having the superpower of invisibility the other 364 days of the year awesome?

It’s kind of disappointing, really. It makes it so much harder to get appreciation for all of these selfies.

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Answers for Trans Day of Visibility Questions

We Are Not Ironic Comeuppance

There are two comments that are rarely far off when self-proclaimed allies encounter anti-queer politicians.

“I bet he’s secretly queer.”

“I hope he ends up with a queer kid.”

Naïve, ironic, and insensitive in the trademark way of ignorant would-be allies, these comments rankle deeply. Much has been written about how the first of the two effectively assigns all responsibility for society-wide anti-queerness on queer people and absolves from same the straight people who invented and perpetrate it, so today’s topic is the other one.

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We Are Not Ironic Comeuppance