Poem: "Type Integrity"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem came out of the February 2021 crowdfunding Creative Jam. It was inspired by a prompt from fuzzyred. It also fills the "Hydrangea - Thank you for understanding" square in my 2-1-21 "The Language of Flowers" card for the Valentines Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with ng_moonmoth, fuzzyred, and zianuray. It belongs to the series Polychrome Heroics.


"Type Integrity"


It was the supervillains
who looked at type falsification
and came up with type integrity.

They determined that empowerment
came through finding the role that
was right for you, instead of being
pressed into the wrong box.

So it was the supervillains
who saw desperation where
the superheroes saw only duty,
and who thus came to the rescue
where superheroes never would.

The man who always ended up
in charge by default was finally
invited to follow a capable leader.

The girl pressured to take pre-med
was coaxed into following her dream
of becoming a mechanic, and then
turned out to be a gizmologist.

The genderqueer ace who had
been pretending to be cisgender
and heterosexual was at last able
to see their true self and slip into
something more comfortable.

So many others were encouraged
to throw off a false role and free
themselves from expectations,
empowering themselves
to find their own path.

It was the supervillains
who saved them from things
when the superheroes didn't
even notice they needed saving.

The wild things understood
that being tidy and tame
wasn't always a good thing.

They knew how crushing
expectations could become,
that sometimes you had to be bad
in order to be good to yourself.

Some of them were supervillains,
not because they were evil, but
because they were too indelibly
themselves to pass for "normal."

The rest of the world might
think that superheroes were
the height of integrity, but
it was the supervillains who
walked away from everything
with nothing but their inner truth.

Where the world would not
give them a place to exist,
they took it by force and
made places of their own.

Some of the people they freed
went their own way, but others
followed the supervillains
whether they actually had
powers of their own or not.

Some of them just sent
a bouquet of hydrangeas
with a notecard that read,
Thank you for understanding.

* * *

Notes:

Prolonged Adaptation Stress Syndrome is what happens when someone pretends to be something they're not on an everyday basis. It is exhausting and soul-eating. This greatly contributes to the high level of mental illness in the trans community or autistic burnout in the neurodiverse community. The best treatment for PASS is simply to be yourself.

In the language of flowers, hydrangea means "Thank you for understanding." This is used more in Terramagne than here; florist shops there customarily have a flower dictionary for shoppers to use, and the most common sentiments appear on cards. For a little extra, you can get your message custom-printed.

Comments

[readera]

😁😁

[(Anonymous)]

Well, that put into words some things I've been feeling. Thanks. *e-bouquet of hydrangeas* -kellyc

You're welcome!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Well, that put into words some things I've been feeling. Thanks. <<

I'm happy I could help.

>> *e-bouquet of hydrangeas* -kellyc <<

:D *puts flowers in water*

[technoshaman]

Even just having to keep one's mouth shut in the face of abuse is damaging. Been there, done that, got the therapy bills. Nevermind eventually figuring out that one is stranger than one imagined... thanks Be, doing that in a MUCH safer environment...

When your company has an Official Pride Playlist and one of the senior people has clocked you for not-cishet and keeps feeding you cool shit... (this opposed to the longshoremen who are virulently male-supremacist and inexplicably don't seem to actually love their wives...)

[(Anonymous)]

>>(this opposed to the longshoremen who are virulently male-supremacist and inexplicably don't seem to actually love their wives...)<<

Its about power, not love/compassion/kindness or whatever other feelgood bullshit they wanna sell you.

Immortan Joe didn't to want to help anyone half as much as he wanted to be king. The reservation schools were to clear land, not to better the lives of their students. Slavery was to make money, not to guide poor misguided souls. Jail time is more often about revenge or making money then actually fixing the d*** problem. Guys don't want to help me get along with other people they want me to not say "No" because no hurts their feelings. Preaching at folk is more about feeling superior than trying to save souls.

Your male supremacist dudes? They wanna be in charge, they probably don't feel that women are really at the same level of personhood as Real Men(TM), and they'd likely be threatened (and react aggressively) to a woman that seemed to be an equal.

Honestly, always thinking your life partner is inferior to you sounds exhausting and depressing to me.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I once read a science fiction story about a lost colony. Right at the beginning, all the women were killed in an accident. One of the scientists used various animals to recreate woman-like creatures for the continuation of the colony. So the men were still human, but the women all had weird aberrations of behavior based on their animal background. It was basically a thought experiment for "What if 'she's only a woman' was actually valid?" Interesting story, if grim.

Re: Thoughts

[(Anonymous)]

Well, if they could still communicate well enough to be sapient... I mean,people variously get along with cats, dogs, parrots and tengu in their family units, a lizard-woman wouldn't neccesarily have to be much more complicated.

(That raises an interesting point: How do folk in Terranagne usually learn how to accommodate a new primal soup and their instincts? Are there classes or something?)

And in the Native Tongue books, the women stopped reacting to all the sexist...cow poo...once they'd invented their own language. And the men were delighted to have 'perfect, accommodating, non-complaining' women for less that a week before they started getting hit by an uncanny valley effect or something, and resolved it by putting the women in totally separate buildings.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Even just having to keep one's mouth shut in the face of abuse is damaging. <<

Painfully true.

>> Nevermind eventually figuring out that one is stranger than one imagined... thanks Be, doing that in a MUCH safer environment... <<

At least you did figure it out.

>> When your company has an Official Pride Playlist and one of the senior people has clocked you for not-cishet and keeps feeding you cool shit...<<

:D

>> (this opposed to the longshoremen who are virulently male-supremacist and inexplicably don't seem to actually love their wives...) <<

Love marriage is fairly new. It started out being for protection, procreation, and business. This actually works fine if that's what both people want. Not so fine if one or both want something different.

Hmm

[bairnsidhe]

So if you can display a cricket to show you're soup friendly in general, could you perhaps use an icon of hydrangeas to indicate you're specifically black-cape friendly to those willing to not be explicit assholes within your establishment? Such as restaurants that serve soup-sized portions but also have back exits if a patron has to tab out fast and leave before an over eager cop or white-cape decides to grab them on an outstanding warrant.

I know most of Terramagne operates on the principle that you shouldn't shit upon people not actively behaving badly in that moment, but we've seen too many cases of the "law and order" side of the fence deciding to act first for it not to be at least a little worry. (That cop who assaulted Cash, or the supergroup that fucked up with the Barettaflies, for instance.) And where there's a worry, there's people trying to fix the issue, and all the help a nary might be able to offer in exchange for the understanding of supervillains is their own understanding.