I came up with this via my other fandom, Digimon (where I am also older than most. I may be the oldest of all over there) Specifically Digimon 02.

In Digimon 02, the kids'clothes change upon entering the Digital World because this is how they see themselves.

I first decided to import this for my project to explain why Juusirou had that whole coughing up blood to the point of fainting thing, which nothing seems to cure, but is otherwise a-OK, and Shuuhei's scars being drawn with the outline pen.

I came up with Soul Scarring--if a wound/injury/illness is traumatic enough, or is otherwise burned enough into your perception of yourself enough, it's with you until you die (at which point, I roll with Rukia's memories of Kaien and your soul returns to the essence of Soul Society. I know canon has a couple contradictory explanations)

This concept further extends. Let's say you have someone who dies in the Living World at 95. Their image of themselves is, for whatever reason, them at 50. Their soul will look like that. My image of myself hasn't caught up with the balding guy I see in the mirror, either.

This also extends to trans people. In my project, I haven't gotten there yet, but it's very explicit that some trans people have cisnormative souls. However, not all do. Because not all trans people are dysphoric in the same way, and cisnormativity is not any more of a Holy Grail than, I dunno, being neurotypical or something. It's not quite like whiteness because some people do experience intrinsic symptoms of not being either that do harm their daily lives, but not everyone wants to be the "norm"/priveledged bunch. I don't like my anxiety, but I love my synaesthesia. I don't like my PTSD, and I don't like non-stop suffering, and the anxiety from it may actually be making me malnutritioned because I don't eat enough, which is frightening and a severe health risk, but I had well over 20 years of constant trauma, and for better or worse, I no longer am able to imagine a "me" without a whole 26 years of my experiences. That would be way too much of a different person.

Ichigo's one such that doesn't feel the need to have surgery. Ichigo experiences paralysing amounts of social dysphoria. Particularly consider all the violence in his life, and a lot of the bigotry, both queerphobia and sexism/machoism, that go along with violent types. Consider a lot of the bigots also pick on him for not looking Yamato Japanese enough (which I'm writing as being explicitly mixed instead of this weird thing about his hair but we don't comment on anything else or anyone else's hair except Orihime's being threateningly pretty to other girls)

Ichigo doesn't have my problem with transitioning late enough in life that his voice failed to drop. (Ichigo doesn't get misgendered every time he wears a mask and doesn't need facial hair to get gendered correctly. Nor does he get singled out by violent conservative neighbours for being something queer but they can't pin it since they've never heard of highly eraced trans men) As far as this blog is concerned, Issin gave him HRT as well as his name (to keep the theme naming of fruits and the importance of his parents giving him that name. And yes, "karin" and "yuzu" with different characters, are also fruit. Just not ones eaten here)

However, he doesn't actually have any problems with what's in his boxers or his piping. Here, he has a daughter, and he mostly enjoyed that experience and being able to do that. He wants to give her siblings at some point, too. He didn't enjoy that he had to hide out for safety, but that's a "them" problem, and he has enough supprtive people in his life that he knows that. (He didn't have much morning sickness, but the last leg/labour were not the greatest)

So, his soul reflects this. He doesn't have a cisnormative soul. Once his original body gives out, any subsequent body (I hc gigai, at least as Kisuke makes them, sans inflatables, are blanks, like we see him working on that mould and bond to the wearer. They *can* be modified, because it's Kisuke. Of course you can have a tail like Looney Tunes depictions of Satan and a narwhal horn! But those would be added on specifically, sans Akon's horns which are obviously there in soul form. The default body is a blank that moulds to you, which is how you can get such high percentage of attachment to something you can pop on and off and you didn't come with)

I'm not saying wanting or not wanting to be cisnormative is better, but I am very much saying there is no "One True Way uwu" of being trans, or being anything, really. That's what drives me writing this all. It's about time we stopped accepting only one narrative and forcing everyone to fit themselves to it. (And of course, in the case of trans people, too young and "you're too young to know" but if you come out older "you should've known when you were younger so we could've told you you were too young to know uwu")

He hasn't had top surgery, either. Unlike one of my other muses, who I made miserable, Ichigo's about the same as me up top. If he were fat like I am, you wouldn't think much of seeing him unbound. I didn't get mine for fear of complications due to health issues. I still bind when out because of dysphoria. Ichigo has to bind to pass, and I'm on the fence about the reason why he hasn't had it at any point in my timeline, but for RP purposes in any of my current threads, it's gonna be related to what I just said about him wanting more kids and wanting to be able to breastfeed. Though if I end up with any threads with him going through that, I may have him go pump-to-bottle for dysphoria.

It’s a chilling moment for her. What started as crack is, well, the first time in her life that it’s been thrust in her face that she has something to lose.]

We’ve reached a huge turning point on this blog and I hope nobody minds when I tag the relevant people.

Remember this meme? Just this morning? (Thanks, @mercenaryrocket​)

She’s found herself at a version of a precipice I didn’t even think of when writing that third answer.

It’s been thrust in her face that she cares. She has always denied it- to herself, to the world. Refused to process it. Filed herself as a person who doesn’t care (cemented further by her rift with @professor-pinewood​, a time she dipped her toes into having a secret identity, maybe a secret identity with friends, but that came crashing down).

She liked Cyan ( @ex-rockxtgrunt​) well enough. They had some good times. Swapped clothes and brushes, talked, cared.

In tags, I jokingly called him her “best friend” but she wouldn’t have thought of him like that until this.

Her relationship with Silver... she’s compared him to a brother in her mind, but it didn’t become real until this threat.

And that’s the thing. Because she has nothing to lose, she’s never had anything to lose but her life, she’s never been afraid. 

There’s never been a chance she hasn’t taken- which is why this ask by @tenderpoison​ seemed impossible to answer:

Because she’s grabbed at life with both hands and breathed it with all her lungs, jumping at chances and opportunities every single time one presented itself.

She’s always been an opportunist, but she’s also always relied on herself. Always herself. Nobody else. No Pokemon- nobody to disappoint her, nobody to blame for anything, anything but herself. Total agency over everything that happens to her.

And that had the side effect of not having anybody or anything to lose.

Now, though... it’s like her whole world is inverted.

She’s been keeping in touch with Silver ( @ag-gravated​ ) in secret from Giovanni ( @geobadge​). Odds are, Giovanni also has no idea she ever even met Cyan. Out on base, she’s cold and unapproachable (with exceptions, but they’re not all canon).

Giovanni doesn’t know she considers his son something of a brother.

Giovanni has no clue he’s threatening the livelihood of the only other person she cares about protecting.

And Domino. Is. Terrified.

She doesn’t know this feeling, not really. She’s been afraid before, but she’s never had anything to lose.

She’s trained herself to jump toward fear, savor the adrenaline, do what other people lack the courage (or recklessness) to. Gotten addicted to the rush of sensations when she’s on her own and only has seconds to react- and herself to rely on.

She barely even knows fear.

Now she... can’t.

And that’s new.

Anyway, so when the digimon attack the Middle Schooler Band Fest Yamato's performing at, everyone from the TV crew (that really seems like a Public Access TV level thing, but okay) out there filming to Jun when she and Momoe have escaped to safety, is saying "it's those 怪獣、just like three years ago." The untranslated word is the word for monsters used in films like Godzilla, which seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for the uninitiated to call them.

And by the next morning, there's the report on the news about the Dark Towers. And it's all messing with military, etc., operations around the world.

So, it's not unreasonable to think that at least investigation by the government et al would've started in 1999, and that something like Hypnos or DATS exists by at least 2003, if not already extant in the background during 02. And, I mean, everyone saw the digital world appear in the sky, and I'd think that *alone* would warrant something.

I mean, only the Chosen may know how to *deal* with this, and their own siblings may not even be clued in, but I find it too hard to believe all large powers would just shrug it off... Even in the context of digimon, some things just wouldn't make sense. So while you have to rework the beginning of Tamers to have them playing with something else, or alternatively, set it after Takeru's released his books (which would then raise the issue of Ryou not ageing), at least Savers could take place soon after.

//Hey all, it’s Mulder. I’ve logged into my old-new account for a while! I’ve decided to try and extricate Silver from the circumstances under which I had been writing him previously, and give his character an independent spin from the character he had been when his blog was co-dependent on another, the mun of which I’m sadly no longer on speaking terms with.

//I’ve been avoiding him just because of all the painful memories associated with this account and this blog, but it’s time to move forward and forge Silver a new future.

So remember what I said about Ichigo probably being a boring cook.

He's the only worker at the restaurant, right?

That still applies. There are two dishes a night. One with meat and one vegan, technically, as at least more traditional Japanese food is when you pull the meat out, though it's listed as "vegetarian" because vegetarianism is as old as, and tied to, Buddhism. Vegan is a new American thing, and the only word for it in Japanese is a loanword so new, it uses the ヴ instead of beginning with a"b" sound. So, naturally, vegetarian is what would occur to him, and make more sense to a 39 year old and his mostly middle age customer base.

His menu items tend to be "chicken and egg over rice (oyakodon) or vegetable curry over rice" (please note that curry sauce comes in a dissolvable brick, and "vegetable curry" for Japanese curry is just carrots and baking potatoes)

The next night might be "mackerel miso soba or seaweed miso soba"

Then the next "beef over rice or mountain vegetables over rice."

The drinks are sencha, oolong, or water.

Simple and easily made dishes.