Hey Nonnie! I am so glad you’re enjoying it, thank you so much!
There is at this stage one genderfluid character in Sansukh: Bombur and Alris’ child Bomfur. They also answer to Bomfa. Bomf is a silversmith, and a very good one. They are married to a goldsmith, Zerin.
Bomf is something of a quiet achiever amongst their huge and noisy and generally rather famous clan. They habitually speak rather softly, and are very close to their young brother Bibur (who is apprenticing under their husband, Zerin).
Bomf is well-known for their incredible wealth of hair. Bomf has the brown hair of their mother, Alris, but in the bushy abundance that is all Bombur’s legacy. Bomf also has a very remarkable singing voice, though it is not the stellar polished brilliance of his eldest sister Baris.
They like to part their beard in the middle on some days and braid it in different styles upon each side, each indicating a different gender. This gives them an asymmetrical appearance, which they rather enjoy.
Upon some days they wear the braids that indicate that this is a Bomfa day, and others to show that today they prefer to be Bomfur.
Well, my experience was a very solitary one, back in the late 90′s. I experimented with my look, my mannerisms and movements, my voice and my name (I still use my chosen name/nickname). I didn’t have the faintest idea where to go for help or information at the time. Only that I didn’t fit my preconceived notions of what a woman was ‘meant to be’.
But it doesn’t have to be like that for you, Nonnie. There are lots of resources available now: try reading up on many different identities, reading personal accounts, and speak to people who are nonbinary, demi or gender-noncomforming. Most people out there will be thrilled to help you. You needn’t change yourself to fit a preconceived idea, as silly young Dets tried to do. Experimenting is a very personal thing, Nonnie: it’s absolutely your choice how you present and how you identify, and to whom.
AAAAAnd that’s where I should stop, because I am cis, and it’s really not appropriate for me to continue over the voices of the people who are nb, demi or gender-nc.
Are there any lovely people out there who can give the Nonnie some safe, supportive sites or communities for questioning, demi or nonbinary folks?
I’ve found it helpful to find IRL discussion or individuals who I connect with to help me with my identification rather than groups. Not to be an asshole but I get super pissed off at a lot of NB ‘help’ blogs on Tumblr that promote dangerous identity policing and often have one set idea of what being NB is.
So I’m not linking to any. There’s no way of ‘knowing’ for sure you’re nonbinary or whatever. Most people who use Tumblr nonbinary help blogs always ask this and it’s tiring. But maybe cause I feel like an old veteran lol. Any answers you get will have to come from inside you and have to make sense to you as an individual. Fuck it, make up your own words and language to describe your gender. That’s what I did – cause I realised I couldn’t see my identity talked about anywhere. Making up fictional genders helped me because I took gender away from a colonial concept and the poisonous validity birth assignment is given, even in trans spaces.
Make sure your gender fits you. Don’t try to cram yourself into things that don’t fit. Talk to yourself and other NB individuals, but also take no shit.
Well, my experience was a very solitary one, back in the late 90′s. I experimented with my look, my mannerisms and movements, my voice and my name (I still use my chosen name/nickname). I didn’t have the faintest idea where to go for help or information at the time. Only that I didn’t fit my preconceived notions of what a woman was ‘meant to be’.
But it doesn’t have to be like that for you, Nonnie. There are lots of resources available now: try reading up on many different identities, reading personal accounts, and speak to people who are nonbinary, demi or gender-noncomforming. Most people out there will be thrilled to help you. You needn’t change yourself to fit a preconceived idea, as silly young Dets tried to do. Experimenting is a very personal thing, Nonnie: it’s absolutely your choice how you present and how you identify, and to whom.
AAAAAnd that’s where I should stop, because I am cis, and it’s really not appropriate for me to continue over the voices of the people who are nb, demi or gender-nc.
Are there any lovely people out there who can give the Nonnie some safe, supportive sites or communities for questioning, demi or nonbinary folks?
Large fandoms—things like Doctor Who, or Supernatural, or Star Trek, or any superhero comic—tend to have unique and separate sides to them: curative and transformative.
Curative fandom is all about knowledge. It’s about making sure that everything is lined up and in order, knowing how it works, and finding out which one is the best. What is the Doctor Who canon? Who is the best Doctor? How do Weeping Angels work? Etc etc. Curative fandom is p. much the norm on reddit, especially r/gallifrey.
Transformative fandom is about change. Let’s write fic! Let’s make art! Let’s make a fan vid! Let’s cosplay! Let’s somehow change the text. Why is Three easier to ship, while Seven is more difficult? What would happen if ______? Transformative fandom is more or less the norm on tumblr. (And livejournal, and dreamwidth, and fanfiction websites, and…)
Here’s the big thing: there’s a gender split. Find a random male fan, and they’ll probably be in curative fandom. Pick a random transformative fandom-er, and they’ll probably be female. Note that this is phrased in a very particular way—obviously there’s guys who cosplay and write fic, obviously there’s women who don’t. But men tend to be in the curative fandom, while transformative fandom is predominately women—and/or queer people, POC, etc. Why? Because the majority of professionally-made media is catered towards a straight white male demographic, leaving little room for ‘outsiders.’ Outsiders who, if they want to see themselves in media, have to attack it and change it—hence slash fic, hence long essays claiming that Hermione Granger is black, hence canons about trans characters or genderqueer characters.
And then curative/male fandom tends to view most things that transformative/female fandom does with disdain. Why? Because, in their eyes, it devalues canon. Who cares about knowing about Tony Stark’s lovers if somebody’s gonna write a fic where Toni Stark is flying about? Their power is lessened. Scream of the Shalka is unambiguously not canon—but it doesn’t have to be in order for me to read and enjoy a 30k fic where the robotic Master was secretly in the TARDIS during Nine and Ten’s time and they shagged behind the scenes. Canon? No, but who gives a shit?
Also, as transformative fandom tends to be an outsider looking in, they’re much more likely to analyze the work from a queer/PoC/neurodivergent/gender perspective. If I come to /r/gallifrey and start to talk about how ‘In the Forest of the Night’ had a questionable portrayal of mental health/autism, I get blank stare. If I go on tumblr, I get a conversation. This is also where the ‘overreacting, shrieking SJW’ trope plays in, either because of a redditor’s misunderstanding of terms and therefore assuming that a mild critique is a scathing one, or because the tumblr user in question is young/inexperienced and jumping the gun.
So, there you have it: /r/gallifrey’s bashing of reddit is part of a larger split in how men and women tend to enjoy fandom, and a lashing against how fanfiction/related things addresses fandom because it’s not the right “kind” of fandom. And also because tumblr is popular with teenage girls, and there’s nothing reddit loves more than shitting on whatever teenage girls like.
reddit user lordbyonic on the difference between reddit and tumblr fandom
but it also explains WHY fanfic (and the population of people who read it) is largely written by women
So you already know that my!dwarves don’t assign genders at birth; genders develop as a dwarfling grows. Dwarves don’t assign genders to strangers or people they don’t know. Therefore this makes the concept of trans dwarves a little difficult to discuss – because ‘trans’ dwarves (if we take trans…
Aw Yiss 