that boy needs therapy

hi! I’m Mar. they/them. full grownup. queer pervert and toxic yaoi enthusiast. enjoyer of pretty, nasty things.

I read and write Hannigram with occasional dips into other pairings/fandoms. I sometimes draw the murder husbands, too. the sfw stuff is here! posts about/summaries of my fics are here!

everything here is 🔞. you’ve been warned.

but here’s the thing. Writing trans fetishization, even as a trans-ish author, feels dangerous. It’s not something I could get away with in a larger fandom. every time I update I worry someone’s gonna come for my throat even with the tags and warnings, because people do not like when you imply it’s even possible for the concept of misgendering/fetishizing elements of a trans person’s assigned gender to be erotic, or welcome. and yet every time I update, I get trans men/nonbinary folks in the comments saying it’s hot as hell, even gender affirming.

for me, it’s sexualizing my own insecurities. making them desireable. there are times I hate the feminine things about myself. but the idea of someone finding them so hot they can’t help themselves taps into a deep, almost shameful arousal, which is, for me, where the good shit comes from. The straight world hates us, the queer community over-corrects by affirming so hard we’re not even allowed to explore the complicated feelings of our own experience lest we verge into the sin of acknowledging that no matter whether we pass or not, our bodies are different. trans men are men, yes! but I wasn’t born one. I didn’t grow up as one. I don’t have the same parts. maybe sometimes I fantasize about someone hot being driven wild by those differences instead of pretending they don’t exist (especially if they feel a little bad about it, heheh).

in the fic, Will is in control. he’s the one prodding, flaunting his femininity, using it as a tool of seduction. turning Hannibal’s curiosity into a kink by allowing him to even let the thoughts form, by giving voice to them. Hannibal, to me, represents the average woke cis man, mostly straight, who’s never been with a trans guy. he wants to do and say the right things. he’s got history in the medical field, so he’s even more aware of being politic about anatomy and gendered terms. he’s the collective agreement. Will waltzes in with complete confidence about who he is, parts and all, and gets off on making Hannibal confront that the trans element of it all turns him on. trans guys, or masc nonbinary people even, aren’t widely eroticized the way trans women are. that’s neither here nor there, but it is a fact. it’s wrong to want to be—fetishization is demeaning, after all—but things that are wrong can be so, so hot, especially when they’re taboo even within taboo spaces.

it helps that it works so well with this particular pairing. I genuinely believe Hannibal would see a trans Will Graham as being like a living tableau. he would be obsessed by the beauty and gore of it. and therein lies even more appeal—being trans is a lot of work. it comes with body horror. The process can be gross, at times. Visceral. we don’t like to acknowledge that, but I think it’s amazing. this little section in the last chapter is fully me putting that into words: