🕸little miss spookiness🕷

Since it’s unrealistic for every single character in your universe to be cisgender, I’m making this post. You may want to rep trans people or you “don’t know how to rep”, so here you go (and yes nonbinary/genderfluid/etc. people are trans and included here!):

1.) Talk to trans people for once. And more than one trans person. Get sensitivity readers. Do research. Something!

2.) Don’t give your trans character a deadname. It’s called a deadname for a reason. LET. IT. FUCKING. DIE.

Our deadname isn’t our “real” name either. It’s our deadname.

Also, our deadnames usually aren’t even CLOSE to our actual names. So like why are deadnames and chosen names so similar/have the same initial? (i.e. “John” and “Jane”)

4.) We RARELY, IF EVER, tell our deadnames to someone unless we trust them very, very, very deeply. Little to none of my online and irl friends know my deadname, and some I would trust with my life. I wouldn’t trust them with my deadname ever.

5.) If you want to explicitly state your character is trans, for the love of god do not have them say something like, “I’m Olivia, but I used to be Oliver”. We do not say that. We say “Hi, I’m Olivia! How are you?” Y’know, we’re human beings.

You can have them say something like, “I’m trans.” (and even THEN some of us don’t normally say it so casually.)

6.) Please don’t describe us with features that make us dysphoric.

7.) (this is coming from a white transman) We’re not all skinny white uwu babies. Portray trans people of color. Stop erasing them. They exist and they matter.

8.) Write us loving ourselves. We get dysphoric and (most of us!) make changes to get the ideal body, yes, but we do love ourselves. I love that I’m persistent, ambitious, and caring. I love how selfless I am. I love that I take criticism well and make sure to do better. I love that I know how to hold my ground.

9.) We can also love parts of our bodies, too. I love my legs. I love my hands. I love my shoulders. I love my ears. I love my nose. I love my jaw. I love myself.

10.) Don’t fetishize us.

11.) We don’t exist solely for your entertainment. So stop making us suffer for you.

We’re proud to be trans. We’re here. We exist. Stop erasing us from your literature when there is no reason not to.

Say, for example, you’re someone who’s deeply affected by maladaptive daydreaming disorder. You’ve felt alone your entire life, sure, maybe you met some people with creative imagination at some point in your life but you never seemed to relate to them completely…it always felt so much heavier, so much more real to you. They were somehow always able to get back to their normal lives after “playing make believe” but for some reason…you weren’t.

Say you find out about Maladaptive Daydreaming and immediately feel like your entire life has been explained. It makes sense. It makes so much sense. The disorder is still being studied and has yet to be recognized by mainstream psychology, but you know, you’re very certain, that if it ever were to become official, there’s a very very big chance you’d be diagnosed with it.

One day you find that there’s a community on tumblr and, after reading their posts, you finally feel like you’re not alone. For the first time in your life you’re seeing people who feel the same way as you. You feel like they understand. They get it. You’re not just…just daydreaming because you’re bored or have a few spare minutes to let your mind wander… it’s more than that. Your fantasy life is so damn important to you, you can barely picture yourself without it.

Say you make a post on tumblr, venting about your feelings, about your experiences. You’re venting and tagging it with the accepted community tags, because you want to share your feelings with others who might be feeling the same way, because it might make someone else out there feel less alone as well.

Maybe you’re way in the deep end of the disorder, you don’t have friends, a significant other, you might have even dropped out of school or stopped working due to this disorder.

You make a post one day, maybe something along the lines of “I’ve given up on reality completely, I live only inside my daydreams now.” It’s a pretty vague post, but you tag it as “maladative daydreaming” because that’s what you’re referring to, and you’re aiming it towards that community. You’re very distressed, you’re in a very difficult situation, and it feels like the only thing you have left is to vent.

And then some people reblog it and you feel, hey. I’m not alone. Whatever this is that we’re all going through, we’re not alone. There’s people out there who get it. There’s people out there who are going through something very similar and they understand.

So naturally you look at the notes because you wanna know more about these people, but then you notice that some of them have added some comments or tags that aren’t really… relevant. You look at their blogs, search their tags, but there’s nothing about Maladaptive Daydreaming in there. Some of those reblogs are talking about writing and novels and you’re like…no. That’s not what this is about. It’s not what I meant when I made the post. It’s not what the post is for.

It makes you uncomfortable, because your feelings are being turned into another “haha relatable!” post on tumblr. Maybe you don’t say anything about it, but it bothers you. It feels like your situation and your feelings are being trivialized. It’s like the original intent of the post has been lost. You made a post about Maladaptive Daydreaming and how it affects you, and you tagged it as Maladative Daydreaming and expected it to be seen by the community. Obviously, tumblr is a social media platform and when you make a post, you’re aware that all kinds of people are able to see and interact with the post, but you tagged your post correctly and expected people to extend you the courtesy of respecting those tags. So it just feels kind of disrespectful when the post is reblogged with different intentions than what was originally intended.

Now, no one can make others not reblog or interact with a post, but it leads you to decide to make it clear that you would rather only interact with other maladative daydreamers, at least when you’re making posts specifically aimed at that community. What constitutes as a Maladaptive Daydreamer is, at the moment, pretty vague and based mostly on self diagnosis, but you think there’s a clear difference between someone who’s reblogging a post recognizing it for what it is, and someone who’s reblogging it for a different reason/with other intentions. You can’t exactly tell who’s who and that isn’t what you’re trying to do: you’re not trying to gatekeep, you’re not trying to tell others how to feel or whether they can consider themselves Maladaptive Daydreamers or not. Those aren’t your intentions. You’re expressing a simple wish: that your posts please remain within this specific community and their original intent please be respected.

I personally don’t think it’s rude or too much to ask to keep to that general rule. And not everyone feels the same way. Some people really don’t mind others outside the community reblogging their posts and that’s great! But I think if someone in the community prefers to keep their posts within the community, then that’s great also, and it should be respected.

So there you have it. I know this post came out super long, but I was trying to illustrate as best as I could a situation that could help you understand why some people prefer those without MaDD to not interact with their MaDD specific posts.