Make this Forest a Home?

So what is transmisogyny? It is exactly what it says on the tin: the discrimination and mistreatment of trans women. It is an intersection of transphobia and misogyny. As such it is both of those as well.

Why is it bad? Well, the better question to ask would be why *isn't* it bad? It serves no purpose beyond the spread of hatred as well as perpetuating the belief that women are like property that must look and act a certain way.

Who does it affect? Obviously the primary target is trans women, and you should care about the fact that it harms trans women. But in fact, transmisogyny affects everyone.

You might think "I don't hate trans women, so I'm not transmisogynistic!" and you may not be. But, you must also keep in mind that it is so deeply entrenched in society that you might say and do transmisogynistic things without knowing it.

For example:

Do you expect women or female characters to look a certain way? This could be plain old misogyny, but it could also be transmisogyny. If you've ever complained that a female character looks too much like a guy because her boobs are too small or her shoulders are too wide, etc., well yeah ... you are probably suffering from transmisogyny disease. And also general misogyny disease too, seeing as transmisogyny is a subtype of it.

Do you get grossed out by women with certain types of genitalia, insisting they censor themselves as some sort of fetish or otherwise sequester themselves away for the sake of others? It is transmisogyny. Regardless of what you are attracted to, a woman should not be forced to hide herself away as some kind of freak commodity simply because she is not what you personally consider desirable. Also, people are likely forced to interact with you on the regular, so it just makes you a hypocrite.

Do you refer to women by what is between their legs*? It is transmisogyny. It's a way to other women that do not fit the "norm".

Obviously, assuming any given trans woman is a secret pervert is transmisogyny. This may seem obvious but so many people do this! In LGBT focused spaces perhaps most of all!

there are many other examples but most tie back into the ones mentioned here. Please do a little introspection from time to time.

Trans women deserve to feel as safe and as welcome as anyone else here in this community.

Lastly: this post is about trans WOMEN (/trans fems). I am aware that other trans people exist, but there are certain pervasive attitudes that are near exclusively shown towards trans WOMEN, and so that is what this post is about.

😫 = How does your muse handle a family member being stressed out? What about sick?

Fun chance to show the contrast between them, using their child Sakura Jade being frequently ill growing up (combined with the trauma of losing their son):

Cheri sorta shuts down and goes into autopilot, she does what she needs to do to keep Sakura's temperature at a good rate, gets them the food they need, watches them... though after some time she needs to go out into the dungeons to recollect herself and do some stress relief. Huge part of Cheri's character is that she doesn't really do well with emotions, so sadly Sakura tended to think she was indifferent when really she was trying to keep from falling apart. (Though as Sakura grew up, he understood her better and they talked it through, so no ill will there)

Maya's the opposite in that she frets and overthinks and tends to freeze up. Because of her upbringing, she tends to overcompensate in trying to make Sakura happy, which sortaaa resulted in Sakura being as... prissy as he is. But she gets very stressed out and was very distressed over Sakura's illness, blaming herself for it even. That being said, she tried her best to try and hide those feelings from Sakura and just try to be there for him and coddle him. She used to sleep by his side during his worst days, willing him to get better.

Unrelated to Sakura and more related to "stressed family member", gotta speak on her having grown up in a volatile household of course. Prime fawn response girlie. Most of her childhood consisted of her trying to suck up to her father and sister as much as she could, placating Odin whenever she lost a battle and comforting Pyre when she cried and said that Maya didn't have the right to grieve their mother. For a long time, she was used to just trying to find the "right" thing to say to calm them down and accepting their ire... Though after getting out of there and having her character arc, she's better about standing up for herself.

⚰️ = How would the loss of a family member affect them? Does it vary based on type of family member?

Rubs my hands together. Oh this one's good.

Okay so Cheri... I won't spoil her deal too much so all I'll say is that she is a compartmentalizing queen. She buries herself in her work and tries to keep busy. Again, awful horrible with emotions. This is something I really wanna get into on Bugs of Petalroot because she does come across as uncaring as a result but she really can't help it.

When she lost her son, she spent days searching for him. She had to stop because Sakura needed her too. She's stewed in guilt for years and years that she just can't process...

Also fun fact, in an earlier draft of her backstory, Shuca was created to die, and she was going to be closed off and cold because she'd lost her "other half". She even evolved just to stop seeing him when she looked in the mirror. So avoidance was always going to be her thing. I changed my mind on that fairly early though because I like Cheri having someone from her old life around who she can confide in, one person she feels comfortable being a little vulnerable to, as much as she can physically allow herself to.

(Also on BOP, I wanted to have like a half-joke referencing the old backstory where Cheri implied that Shuca had died before the events of the blog, saying things like "he's not with us anymore" or "he's in a better place". Only to casually reveal via calling him on the phone that he's fine, she's just REALLY sad about him leaving their team to become a florist. Kinda to show how Cheri isn't really good at communicating things and also to show how genuinely hurt and sad she is that he left and is living a better life without her, like to her it really is as if he left a hole in her life. I actually tried to set this up on the blog's existing posts referencing him, but I don't think I conveyed it all that well, no one really picked up on it. And honestly I couldn't figure out how to naturally convey it anyways. When I reboot it I'm probably just gonna say he's alive to begin with)

Aaaand I'll say how she feels about her biological dad just for fun. When she's about ten, she's told that he walked up to her swarm one day, terminally ill and carrying her and Shuca's egg, gave the egg to the swarm, they refused to take him in because of his illness and because he'd evolved, and so he walked away to presumably die. Shuca is torn up over this and cries and is sad he never got to meet his father, but Cheri just... rolls over to go to sleep. It's sad, but she didn't know the guy. She's grateful he at least gave her a sturdy community before he left. But she just doesn't know the guy. It feels awkward, even invasive to grieve him. So she just... doesn't. It's one of the few times she and Shuca had a really bad fight because he thought she just didn't care...

Okay now for Maya. Uhm. Well... girl's been grieving family since the day she hatched. As I alluded to earlier, she feels like she's not allowed to grieve her mom because she died when Maya was too small to remember her. She even goes as far as calling her by her name instead of "Mom" because she doesn't think she has the right. Can't say too much on that right now but yeah...

And then when Pyre and Odin both eventually go, she's so conflicted. In Odin's case, she's actually relieved because now she can stop worrying about him finding her and hurting her again. She can sleep easier. But he was also good to her sometimes, and a part of her always wished he could just... have an epiphany and become the father she needed. He was certainly capable of it. But he refused, and now he'll never have that epiphany, there's no chance their relationship can get better.

Savel and Levas's Wedding:

Traveller - @/askthetraveller Cedric - @/monifandoms Dawn, Dusk and Twilight - @morva-doodles Serra - @askteamspirit

Late night Visitors:

Omni - omniandco Janus - @ask-mirage-mews

Hospital professionals:

Agatha - @neverlandfaerai Robin - @book-of-legends Acacia - @bugsofpetalroot Ami - @ask-dream-fighters Claire -@/iamyourdoubt Elara - @ask-404dungeonnotfound Cream - @guardians-of-dreams Lalu - @asklalu Minerva - @phantomguild Primrose - @/monifandoms Sarah - @ask-sarah-and-co Satchet - @soulspectrum RJ.EXE - @/askthecanvasguardians Parn - Tai

And patients:

Joule - @dailyashleighraichu Elliot - @ask-elliotgang

Town visitors:

Jolly - @/ask-dream-fighters Annalise - @ask-pokecats Curce - @/curce Cipher - @themeowsticvigilante Gemini - @askthehalfshiny Snow - @ask-a-learning-ai Nancy - @/ask-dream-fighters

Therapy office and patrons:

Chime - @askchimeknight Walter - @office-pokemons Tsubayuki - @askiceboundlopunny Sunny - @churchofyolk Bijoux - @redolentgrove Kane - @a-shy-mimiktwo Ninetails - ifbench Destino - @ask-the-royal-absol Simon - @ask-prince-manaphy

Town visitors (part 2)

Scarlett - @psychicduo Lenox - @askbohemiancompany Rosemary - @noblejanobii Sai - @askpokemoncrossover Shinji - @pmd-waveringfate Abigail - Office-pokemons

Notra and Antono's Concert:

Mariko - Askstormscall Zhen and Abigale - @lustrous-dawn Ginjiro - @symphonies-of-silver Rimi, Edin and Noelle - @ask-the-shiny-pokemons Rayden - @johto-succession

Pop - @pokege-ne-project Medley - @harmonia-university Linda - askiceboundlopunny Sophie - @team-pokefriends

Wandering Traveller:

Diane - @ask-diane

Flying with Savel:

Amber - ask-dream-fighters Copper Bloom - @diamond-and-pearl Niel - @askthe-eleazars Persues - @poniquest Quetzal - @asktheisle Solblitz and Vayu - pmd-waveringfate Theory - @iamyourdoubt Vela - @askwish

In the Forest:

Mollie - @the-reborn-ancestor-project Armani and Gabriel - noblejanobii Althaea - @pokitsune Hazel - @batwing1012 Wo-Chien - @/the-feral-one Serafina - @/ask-serafinas-harem Nick - @/thestaticsquirrel Vourison - @/morva-doodles Zephyr - @/askteamspirit Nova - @/occasionally-adventuring Kaine - @/ask-my-memoir Eclipse - Nova

Celebrating on Mt. Moon:

Quetzalcoatl - @/sphaeramjourney Riley - @/brokenpokeworld Shauna - @/ask-a-silvy Van Livine - @/askthe-eleazars

Ultraviolet - @/distortionmewtwo Morris - @/askleaderscrest Luelle - @/darling-zorua Loki - @/redolentgrove Skarla - @/megamannickblog Osseth - @/morva-doodles Zantsu - @/ask-suicune Mochi - @/inaris-pokemon-world

Ask karma is the practice of sending asks back to people who have sent you one. When someone sends you an ask, it is generally expected that you will send one back in return. It is to your mutual benefit to do this since now not only do both of you have asks in your inbox to work with, but it also exposes your blogs to each others' followers and can potentially gain you new readers.

Ask Calls are a Two-Way Street

Generally speaking, when someone makes an ask call, you should view it as a quid pro quo situation. Unless the person explicitly states in the post otherwise, they usually wants asks back in return for the ones they're sending out. While this is not always the case, like with me where I have way too many asks already and don't need more, more often than not, this is the expectation and it's bad form to not do so.

It's the equivalent of borrowing someone's pencil in school and never giving it back. At the end of the day, it's not super consequential, but the person whose pencil you just took isn't going to be super happy that they gave that to you and got nothing in return. You feel me?

This is especially true for written blogs, who I have noticed tend to get hit by this the most. Written blogs can get through their posts a lot faster than most art blogs and therefore need asks more often. But they also tend to get a lot fewer asks!

I experienced it myself during the PokeAskMagi event where I sent out around 20 asks from @askthewhiterocket and got back 7 in total for the entire event. By comparison, Shaymin Cafe also sent out around 20 asks and got approximately 12 in return. Not a lot more but it's still a better ROI especially consider Shaymin Cafe was the far less active of the two blogs during the event.

Everyone who sent an ask to Ask the White Rocket also sent one to Shaymin Cafe, despite the majority of the blogs I interacted with getting asks from BOTH of my blogs. In addition, during my final ask call for Ask the White Rocket, I got 1 ask in return for like 5 sent out, even after explicitly stating that the inbox was empty and I wanted asks.

I realize Shaymin Cafe is a popular blog and since I had two blogs, people probably ended up just sending an ask to the more popular blog of the two since Shaymes is a fun character and such. But the same thing happened last year when Shaymes wasn't even an active character and I was really only answering asks from Kyo's blog. To be quite frank, that's unfair to the written blogs, and unfair to me too.

It takes time to send asks. Ask hints make it easier, sure, but not everyone has them. Additionally, not all ask hints are incredibly straight forward. Some require you to read a bit in the blog's backlog if you aren't familiar with it to craft an ask that a person can work with (this is why I tend to link stuff with my ask hints). Some people might also want to double check the rules of a blog first or read up on the characters to ensure they're not sending a human character to a blog that doesn't allow them, or a Gengar to a character with trauma from ghost-types without expressed permission from the creator first. This goes doubly so when you're sending asks out from multiple blogs, like I was during the event.

That effort should not go unrewarded, so the least you can do is send an ask in return! It's just good manners.

This also goes for Munday asks

Admittedly, I am pretty bad about this myself, so we're going a little pot calling kettle black, BUT it's generally good form to also send Munday asks back to people who send them to you. Now if they're not open to Munday asks or w/e then no sweat it's fine, but let's be real, we all like to yap. We all like to talk about our characters. We all enjoy answering Munday asks, so spread the love and send asks back to people who send them to you.

Part of the reason I don't really make the effort to send out Munday asks much anymore and part of why I don't open for Munday as frequently either is candidly I got very tired of sending out like a dozen Munday asks to everyone I saw open for Mundays and then getting like... 2 in return. There were a couple weeks back in like July-August were I quite literally got 0 Munday asks, and it was incredibly disheartening. Like, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed coming up with questions for other people, but it was also a total downer to sit there the entire day waiting for asks to come in and then never getting any. Not even one asking how my day was or how my weekend went. Total and complete silence.

And sure, thinking of questions is hard, I get it! You wanna know my secret? When I was sending out Munday asks regularly, I googled first date questions or improv icebreakers. There's so many great questions to ask people from those. Sure, they can be be incredibly shallow and I'm sure any veteran ask blogger whose been at this a while has probably asked and answered whether they like coffee or tea better. But I'd rather answer that ask for like the fourth time than get nothing because then I'd at least get the opportunity to talk about my thoughts on both for a minute.

This also goes quadrupley so for the memes. There are times where I see people reblogging memes and going the whole day without any interaction because they're a smaller blog. And I'll admit, I straight up have sometimes gone on anon and sent them like three asks back to back because I didn't want them to feel like no one cared about them or their characters. They deserve to get a bunch of asks too, that's part of the fun!

And I think with memes the not sending asks in return is far less excusable because usually there's emojis or numbers that you can literally just copy and paste into the ask box. I cannot tell you how many times I saw blogs I'd never met before reblogging a meme post and it took me all of five minutes to go pick a random emoji and a name from their cast page and drop that into their inbox. It is quite literally that easy.

You should also, generally speaking, send an ask to the person you got the meme from too. Whether they were the one who created it or simply just brought it into popularity, sending them an ask for the meme is a nice way to say thank you for letting you use it too. It took time and effort to create and/or find that meme, and I guarantee you they did not do it simply because they wanted other people to use it on their own blogs. They did it so THEY could answer asks from it on their OWN blog. So give them the opportunity to!

FAQ

The blog I want to send an ask to has (insert species of character) and my blog doesn't interact with that (or vice versa).

That's fine! You don't have to send an ask in character if you don't want to. Sure that's the norm, but if the casts of your blogs are incompatible for some reason, then by all means just don't send an in character ask.

The blog I want to send an ask to doesn't have readily available/up to date asks hints.

You have a couple options here. You can read back through the blog to see what has recently happened to get a feel for what might be a good ask. If you're lucky maybe they'll have a taglist somewhere that'll make backtracking easy. But if not, skimming is fine too. Otherwise, just directly DM the blog and ask them what kind of ask they want. I've done this several times and that can be a great way to get a blog exactly what ask their looking for.

The blog I want to send a Munday ask to is doing a meme I don't want to engage with.

Send them a normal question then! I guarantee you they wouldn't be opposed to answering something opposed to the meme, and even if they don't respond, they'll at least know you tried to return their ask.

The blog that sent me an ask said in their ask call they don't want asks in return.

No need to send one back then! If they said they don't want any, then they aren't expecting any in return. I do this all the time! Sometimes we just like sending out asks for fun and that's a-okay!

The blog I want to send an ask to has closed their inbox.

That's okay! In this instance, it is perfectly reasonable to not send an ask in return. If they've closed their inbox, they're likely not expecting asks back. So you're totally in the clear to not send one in return. No need to go crawling through their submission box to send one in (people actually don't usually like this). Just maybe keep an eye out in the future for if their inbox reopens!

Unless they like explicitly made a post asking for asks within like the last day. In that case please tell them because they probably forgot to open it again (happens more often than you think).

The blog I want to send an ask to doesn't have an organization system making their story, characters, hints, and other materials used in ask crafting difficult to find.

In that case, the burden lies with that blog, not you. Organization is EXTREMELY important. Skins covers this a bit in their ask blog advice post. Having easily accessible tag lists, ask hints, and casts pages can really help with getting asks sent your way. In the same way it isn't fair to someone to not send asks in return, it's equally unfair to make someone scroll through a bunch of meme reblogs just find materials to send an ask with.

The best you can do in this situation is message the blog to ask them for what they want. But if the materials to craft the ask aren't readily available to you, that is on them not you.