#tdas alejandro

alejandro:

It’s pride month. I’m a transmasc person. I feel like yapping about how a cartoon character was part of what cracked my trans egg and some of my experiences as a transperson in general.

Total Drama World Tour premiered in 2010 and the minute Alejandro walked on screen...Well, I didn’t have some kind of magic epiphany, but he sparked my interest and definitely had a pull to him I couldn’t properly describe at the time. I honestly thought I just found the character attractive, had a crush on him, or was stupidly invested in Aleheather as a ship. I have a few one-off ship my cartoon persona illustrations with Alejandro, but the bulk of my fanart was easily just Alejandro or Aleheather.

It started with a fun, dumb fanart of Alejandro ripping his shirt off, accompanied by sparkles and bright light. Then I wrote my first ever Aleheather fic “The Amazon” which was pretty much Alejandro and Heather getting stuck together trying to survive in the Amazon, confessing catching feelings, and then making out. After getting a feel for trying to write from Alejandro’s perspective, something clicked.

I wanted to try writing something beefier and more in-depth from first person rather than third person omniscient. The result was Captivated, a fic that started as an Aleheather-focused high school AU but quickly became a soap opera with the race for student council, petty cheating, scheming older brother Jose, and other bullshit. While I have very mixed feelings on that particular fic now, I remember how much I enjoyed writing for Alejandro. He was a pretty boy that oozed with impeccable fashion sense. He was smart, viewed himself as a 4th dimensional chess schemer, a jack of all trades with almost full mastery in all, very muscly in a way that fit both aesthetics and practical needs for endurance or strength. He was mean, petty, and cruel with a silver tongue.

In high school, I was a meek, quiet, dormouse of a person with horribly low self-esteem and crazy hair that hid in baggy T-shirts or behind books. It felt like I was either an easy target or someone people pitied. Other kids didn’t talk to me. Guys weren’t interested in my grungy self unless they were flirting with me on a dare or thought I’d be easy to break and manipulate.

Of course the world isn’t black and white. There were several kids that were actually friendly and kind to me and I’m hoping they’re all doing well now as the lonely, neurodivergent kid that didn’t quite know how to human. That said, I still didn’t like being this short, weird girl that would never get taken seriously, was laughed at or teased when I tried to speak up and got angry, or only felt validated when I leaned into being the eccentric class clown. I used to dream about being a big, burly, ugly dude. A brick wall that people were intimidated by and left alone or that I’d be able to beat up people just because I was bigger and stronger.

Writing for Alejandro was an escapist fantasy. I was writing for a character that was scary and intimidating in a subtle way and probably could win a fist fight if he had to. But he was also very desirable, sought after, and beloved by someone no matter what he did because he was a handsome young man with pretty privilege. Most of my approach to writing him was playing at or trying to convincingly portray this character but every time he became lovesick or pined after Heather, that was absolutely my hopeless romantic coming through.

I didn’t immediately clock my attachment to this character as wanting to be a pretty boy like him. There’s plenty of cishet, bisexual, and lesbian women artists that relate to, create, and write for masculine characters. I remember a book group I was part of getting to talk to one of the authors behind some bad boy/shy girl romance novel we’d read. The author was an older cishet woman that said she related more to the bad boy character and had an easier time writing from his perspective and coming up with his dialogue. That seems to be the case for and motivation behind why a lot of women write slash fanfics too.

That’s an entire rabbit hole in and of itself. I wanted to mention it more because Alejandro was just one small part of my transmasc journey overall.

I did have a real life experience with conflicting feelings over “I don’t know if I want to date this person or be him.” Granted, I didn’t know that’s what I was agonizing over until years later. The picture was: I still thought I was a cishet woman. When I met this guy for the first time, I felt drawn towards and intrigued by him. It really felt like a crush. I wanted to be around this person, enjoyed his company, admired how nice he looked wandering around in either turtleneck sweaters or a labcoat attempt at a casual Okabe Rintaro cosplay. He was a fun, eccentric anime enthusiast a year or so older than me known for sporting cat ears.

Why I’m skeptic about whether I actually had a crush on him is I remember getting the opportunity to be alone with this dude at a nature reserve. I spent the entire time anxious, wishing the third person that’d been invited would show up, feeling like horrible, awkward company. I know feelings like that can and do pop up in actual first date situations. It’s more that I could never comfortably imagine what it’d be like to just hang out with this person in a laidback setting or situation one on one.

These feelings were dramatically different from another guy I had a temporary relationship with and my current partner. In both of these relationships, I felt very attracted to the other person, highly anticipated alone time, and the feelings were enough to steamroll or work past the nervousness and anxiety. Granted, I also knew I had a green light and that the feelings were mutual.

I guess what cemented how I felt was looking back on it is that now, I’d love to look half as good as this real life Rintaro. I wanted to be as confident and openly weird as him. It was gender envy. Even if I ever had a snowball’s chance in hell with this guy, it would have been a horrible, awkward mess because I wasn’t interested in the actual person. I had an idea in my head or a loose sketch of who he was and spent far more time fantasizing about that image vs getting to know the three dimensional, real being standing in front of me. I’m glad nothing happened and that in what handful of romantic situations I’ve been in, it’s been a case of wanting this separate, distinct person.

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Kiss your boyfriend and no one bats an eye... be gay and evil and society goes wild