Me Wearing A Dog Collar And Leash Looking Up At My Manfriend In His Trench Coat And Fedora: Let’s Go

for Rainspeak

they shadowbanned alaa again. this is at least the tenth time this has happened. tumblr doesn't respond her to her appeals and deletes her accounts. this is fucking vile. keep donating to her fundraiser. [verified]

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I was inspired to do this ~ 🦈✨

Original comic by:  @mysillycomics

If you’re interested in checking out Stop!! Hibari-kun! then I recommend Hazel’s excellent video that serves as a primer to the series - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa6MK_boub0

If you really like my work, you can support me at https://patreon.com/comicsbyxan and get access to works in progress, previews and extras!

Transcript:

Sometimes I just stop and think about how weird it is that Stop!! Hibari-kun! even exists. A romantic comedy where one of the leads is a trans girl would be notable even today, but this show aired in 1983, and the manga it was based on began in 1981. Stop!! Hibari-kun! is almost forty years old, and yet I’d argue that in certain ways it still hasn’t been surpassed. There have been shows that handled their trans characters better, and there have been other shows with trans protagonists (although, frankly, not very many). But Hibari herself is an utterly unique creation, and I honestly can’t think of any trans protagonist in the intervening years who could match her in brilliance and sheer badassery.

It makes for some bizarre juxtapositions because in every other sense the show is a product of the 80s, whether stylistically, in its pop culture references, or the occasional jarring racial stereotypes. There’s a fair amount of transphobia and homophobia too, which might seem at odds with what I’ve described so far, but part of Hibari’s strength is that thrives in spite of the adversity she faces.

Hibari is the daughter of a yakuza boss and is – on paper, at least – his only son and heir. The story is told mostly from the perspective of Kousaku, a boy sent to live with the family after his mother dies, and who immediately falls for Hibari but then feels conflicted upon learning that she’s trans. Make no mistake, though: Hibari is the star of the show here. She’s strong, smart and beautiful, and at school (where she’s presumed by everyone to be a cis girl), she’s a popular grade-A student with throngs of lovestruck boys – and at least one girl – falling at her feet. In another show this might come across as insincere; a low-key transphobic joke along the lines of “the most popular girl is actually a boy!” But with Hibari it doesn’t feel like that. The show’s presentation of her victories feels genuine and celebratory.

The grace with which Hibari navigates her life extends to her encounters with transphobia, too. Most of her family disapproves of her, and Kousaku’s ongoing inability to deal with Hibari’s transness often comes off as pretty hurtful. But Hibari seems unfazed by her father’s ranting and enjoys teasing Kousaku over his plainly obvious attraction to her. That’s not to say there aren’t brief moments where Hibari expresses frustration over her situation, but the narrative never lets her stay sad for long.

And I think it’s Hibari’s nigh-invulnerability – both physically and psychologically – that makes her work as a character, especially from the perspective of the trans women in the audience. In the hands of a lesser creator, Hibari could have been a figure of ridicule, but remarkably she is never a punchline, while those who mock her or try to hurt her inevitably end up as the butt of the joke. Crystal Frasier, who knows a thing or two about compelling trans protagonists, describes the show as a “transgender power fantasy”, and I think the recent resurgence of interest in Hibari has come at a time when trans women are seeking out stories where we get to be victorious.

This does return us to the question of exactly how this transgender power fantasy came to be, back in the early 80s, and at the hands of a cis creator, no less. And that’s… well, that’s a little complicated. I’ll simply say that Hibari’s creator, Hisashi Eguchi, has stated in interviews that “It is really the frustration of not being born as a girl which fuels my drawings” and leave it at that. Regardless, Eguchi has given trans audiences an icon. In a world of trans stories that focus on pain and misery, here is a protagonist who approaches her transness with joy, optimism and strength. As Hibari herself would say: “Just think of it as God’s prank.”

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Hello, I am Etaf Al-Qataa,I'm from Gaza, Im34 years old ,I… Etaf Alqattaa needs your support for Please help us get out of life's crises

Etaf is a wife and mother of 5 from Ghazzah. Last year, she and her family's home was destroyed, a long with her husband's source of income and their car.

They were displaced for 200 days, all the way induring the hellish tribulations of genocide. Luckily, they were able to flee into Egypt; however their struggles are not over.

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I think about Lycion and his relationship with beauty soo much

Looking at him, we can see that he easily meets the elven beauty standards. He has long silver hair, clear skin, and androgynous form: he's the picture of a youthful, pretty man.

And yet.

He experiences such a visceral reaction to his own body. Despite looking like your stereotypical pretty boy, he doesn't fulfill the expectation of being vain in the slightest (at least not in this form).

In fact, we see in the extras just how badly his body dysmorphia got to him. This was not a passive discomfort or a shallow desire. Lycion was trying to destroy his body. He hated living in his skin so much he was actively self harming in multiple ways in an effort to punish himself.

It's not until he uses ancient magic to get his beast form that his perspective of himself changes. The magic required him to be heavily tattooed over his whole body and we can clearly we can see that he wears these marks with pride. But that's not where any of this ends for him because despite having the solution to his problem, Lycion can't be a wolf all the time.

This means that he has to learn to cope with existing as an elf still, and what stands out to me is how Lycion's hair is almost always in his face. Even now, in the body he likes more, he hides. Whether this is a lingering discomfort or just a habit, there's no saying, but it makes me sad.

Especially in this panel, where it's clear that a lot of his hair had been pulled forward to cover his face rather just the few strands. His expression looks so hollow. He looks tired and uncomfortable. This isn't the casual playfulness he usually has. I think this is a peek into the idea that it's very self soothing for him to use his hair as a shield when he's forced to stay in his human body for too long.

I think that his hair is so important to him because we can see that it's the only trait that carried over into his wolf form. This means that when he's forced to be human he can cling to the single part of him that's shared between his current body and his preferred one.

In summary: I love him so much

Mithrun & Drives & Self-harm

Warning's in the title, let's rock and roll.

So there's a super-circulated extra about Mithrun's recovery after having been rescued from his conquered dungeon.

And I don't know how widely known it is that this image is cropped, or that it contains something I consider pretty essential to his character.

The top two thirds of the page are upsetting in a suggestive way. The final third is very explicit.

I understand the impulse to remove the explicit imagery of self harm from something you scatter around God's internet where it could upset literally anyone. At the same time, I think something's lost when you can't contrast 'He spent most of his days lying down, either sleeping or awake,' with the visceral imagery of him struggling to get out of that position, into which he has been strapped. It's less affecting if your initial impression (that he is totally passive) is not subverted.

Without this, it's too easy to assume that his aversion to things like mirrors and birds is due a vague Upset it might cause him, and that keeping sharp things and fire from him is due to an absence of self preservational drive.

But it's not like that. These are precautions undertaken because he has drives.

How much of that lying down is due to being passive, and how much is compulsory? How much time did he spend restrained, since this was a known problem? The restraints themselves harm him, which is kind of inevitable considering how determined he is to escape.

To me, this does point to him actually having agency and motivation. It's not motivation to do anything positive, but it's present.

And it makes sense, right, that he'd be motivated to self destruction when it turns out his quest has been (unbeknownst even to himself) to be completely consumed by the Demon?

Something that feels important about Mithrun, to me, is that he doesn't fucking like himself, and I don't think he ever did.

He's judgmental of his past self despite not ever confessing to being, you know, cruel to anyone. His issue is with his internality, which was an insecure and petty one. Externally, other characters did not perceive him that way. Milsiril doesn't dislike him because he's cruel or because she can tell he's only pretending to like people, she hated him because he was well-liked while she struggled to make any friends at all. I don't think he'd be so well-liked, or basically intimidate Milsiril with his bubbliness, if he was an outwardly nasty person.

It's important to me to point out Milsiril's perspective, because it confirms what's said in Kabru's truncated version of events: Mithrun was well-liked, and people's perception of him was positive. He was not behaving in a way that would drive others away.

He just can't be close to people, not genuinely. He's nice for the same reason he's always finding reasons to look down on others, for the same reasons he can't resist the Demon's offer, for the same reason he hurts himself. He does not like the person he is, whatever that person does, and he is convinced that no one else could truly like that person either.

I have another equally disjointed post in me about the parallels between the Demon and actual dynamics of abusive relationships, but key to this one is the fact that Mithrun's vulnerabilities - that he has learned love is conditional, that he cannot bring himself to interface with people genuinely, that he has been discarded by a family whose care for him was ultimately superficial, that he does not see himself as good or worthwhile - make his admission of having felt loved by the Demon super heartbreaking. Considering what it offered him, I suspect the hole left in his heart was exceptionally large.

It might feel easy to brush off Mithrun's behavior in the early days of his recuperation as simply erratic, but I see it as very purposeful and very much inkeeping with his character. He had a love that he could convince himself came without conditions, that promised an emotional security that he could allow himself to rely on, and it was withdrawn from him in a way that is undeniably violent and violating.

I don't look at the image of him hurting himself and see someone acting erratically because their mind has been magically broken. I see someone in an understandable, mundane kind of complete despair.

On that same note, I see his later dedication to returning to service as a simple redirection of the original self destructive drive. Mithrun doesn't even consciously understand this about himself, he labels this desire as anger and vengeance when it's really the exact same drive he's had all along: to either be loved or not be at all.

...

happy holidays? i don't have a button for this.