Hi there! My name's Sixteen. I like to spend time thinking about things and writing down my thoughts. This account is dedicated to tracking and reflecting on my journey of self-expression. I already do some journalling elsewhere on the internet, and maybe I'll do some cross-posting of relevant past writings, but I like the idea of sharing my thoughts in a space that is both more accessible and less directly linked to my personal identity.

My writing will primarily be for myself, but perhaps my words might resonate with you. Expect introspection, navel-gazing, yearly themes, queerness, kink, and the Oxford comma.

I may also post lewds.

Anyway, that's enough from me. If you happened to stumble upon this and get this far, I hope you have a lovely day ^_^

Architecture is slow moving, it's something people live in- it inspires culture, film, cinema, and allows a substrate for people's lives to grow within. it influences who you encounter, how you encounter them and provides emotional or logistical context, and the best kinds of architecture recognize & play with this in a transformative way.

for a long time I saw myself as many things, a director, a journalist, a producer. In the totality of my lived experiences so far I have deeply neglected what I was fond of and looked forward to being in my youth, which also got me into games.

I wanted to grow into an Architect, and level design was the first game discipline that clicked for me once I knew I could shape spaces.

(side note: my later forays into 3D art would ultimately be a result of a level editing quirk where the engine's ability to invert sectors could double as crude extrusion for object creation. plus, the industry pivot towards 'level design isn't real! only modellers make stuff now! level design is just a place to sit assets! a trend which would, ironically, invert itself later.)

see, Architecture fascinated me- as it's something that can both exist in fantasy (great never-buildings of inhuman proportions, seen only in drawings or film) and in real life (remarkable achievements of engineering for the sake of human expression and utility)

I grew up in the woods, and as someone who grew up in the woods, the idea of urban spaces utterly fascinated me, this artificial terrain, this unseen verticality inaccessible to me as someone who lived in lowland clay ravines.

as I have grown and progressed both in my experiences or abilities, I have realized that I fundamentally root all of my designs, ideas, and the ways in which I engage with groups of people through the lens of architecture. I create flows that achieve meaning, I connect people who would create meaningful moments, I frame the shot with blocking done so with obstacles. spiritually, I am a sort of beaver- making aimless wetlands that later serve as a firebreak and an oasis which life, expression, joy finds a way to thrive for all that call it home or travel through.

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this lack of unified clarity (not that it is necessary to have unitary purpose, we're always changing) has troubled me- each new chunk of myself I discover has given me (albeit temporary) purpose which drives me to great endeavors that do not last. I viewed this as a sort of flaw, or failure- not realizing it was a feature and an indication I was not in touch with the greater pattern of how I engage the world.

one reason I do not wish to engage with trivial social engagements the way we're utterly forced into (for many reasons) is at the great banquet of socialized stimuli, I think I have lost touch with the reasons I came here. I'm full and my tummy hurts, what I need is to turn inwards, digest, reflect on what I've taken in the way I used to when I knew very little and was so hungry, eager for more.

I must convert this sustenance, these experiences into energy to make something greater than myself for myself and others.

time to hit the gym, so to speak

For best results, please select the category that most applies to the manga you’re reading:

🔘 The author seems so excited to have discovered that nontraditional gender roles exist

🔘 Forcefem, but as reactionary as possible

🔘 These feels are rough, author buddy, you ok?

🔘 Oh, no, the very cis author thinks it’s just a gag but this bit will become fundamental to your identity somehow

🔘 Tragic, Wandering Son-style horseshit again

🔘 Porn, fortunately and/or unfortunately

🔘 TSF as a time-honored tradition without someone getting weird about it

🔘 TSF as a time-honored tradition but the author wants to get real weird with it

🔘 This is exactly the lived, joyful experience of being, say, a trans woman, but the author seems to be under a terrible curse that prevents them from even thinking the words “trans woman”, so the main character has to utter “but I’m a boy” every 2-4 pages in case we and/or they forget it

🔘 Autobiographical manga but if they were in your circles you’d have to take the author aside and have a real deep talk about internalized essentialism and binarisms

🔘 Being trans and both explicit, not for cis consumption and Regular about it? Like, what are you reading, Love Me For Who I Am again? (If this category fits your manga, please stay on the line and an agent will be dispatched to catalogue this incredibly rare event.)

puts her serious hat on

It’s a little dispiriting that what we get for translation are basically almost only things that are interested only in coming from a place of cishetallo hegemonic dismissiveness rather than healthy, sustainable self-exploration and an embrace of expansiveness and understanding. I’m happy I put $50 into J-Novel, say, and it did ultimately pay off with how much I’ve read on the entire year, but the frequency of stuff that makes me roll my eyes is sometimes a tiny bit overwhelming.

While there is far less of it than I would like, I can readily find pop culture in English that normalizes or celebrates queerness and the expansiveness of self, identity, desire and growth, especially in comics, in independent productions, or in adaptation — I can point to Heartstopper, Sex Education, Friends at the Table, Steven Universe, Questionable Content, Happiest Season, The Owl House, Bravest Warriors, Kill Six Billion Demons, She-Ra, Val and Isaac, any of the enormous avalanche of books from LGBTQ Reads, I can go on —

— and yeah, I actively seek out and love Japanese pop culture in translation that’s on this vibe and gets translated: people who know me know I don’t shut up about I’m In Love With The Villainess, Our Dreams At Dusk, Love Me For Who I Am, Those Two Are Always Like That, Ohana Holoholo, any of Gengoroh Tagame’s stuff, both porn and for general audiences, She Likes To Cook And She Likes To Eat, There’s No Freaking Way I’d Be Your Lover, Unless, I Think My Son Is Gay — heck, even manga whose that let me off with vibes I don’t like, like Wandering Son or Bokura no Hentai.

And sure, there’s the autobio stuff — I do own X-Gender, Until I Love Myself, the Kabi Nagata oeuvre, and more. But I’m interested principally here in how queerness exists in escapism more than I am about work that describes reality (tho this is important too!). Autobio work is read by the interested; escapism is, through the homogenization of commercial endeavor and the sieve of popularity, a vane for what people assume other people will want to see, and for the stances they think are acceptable when in the lighter mood of entertaining.

That’s why I’m sad that the great majority of the stuff I see in translation is generally putting the viewpoint into a place of deprecation or scandal when faced with the expansiveness of self. Things like, to cite two titles I read this week, language like “actual woman” from J-Novel’s translation of Sword Saint Abel’s Second Chance, to immediately invalidate the gender-switched protagonist’s behavior as being anywhere near the possibility of feminine by going full essentialist on gender roles and what is acceptable to see from a woman; things like invalidating bisexual or lesbian attraction in the same brand’s I Could Never Be A Succubus, by drowning the possibility for expansiveness into a textual “if it’s between girls, it doesn’t count” (a triple whammy: used to justify dubcon/noncon between two women, used by the protagonist to justify satisfying her own sexual wants while keeping herself “okay” to pursue her comphet attraction with the protagonist without communicating with him, and absolutely cratering any discussion of queer attraction by latching it square in the category of kinky sex).

While I could blame J-Novel and the priorities of commerce, there’s a similar proportion of titles in noncommercial scanlation setups. It’s not that I don’t want to hear stories where ‘I’m a boy, though!’, it’s that I find almost exclusively stories about ‘I’m a boy, though!’, and it tinges my enjoyment of titles like I Turned My Childhood Friend Into A Girl or Crossplay Love absolutely sour.

(And again, it’s not the trope itself — heck, say, Zenbu Kimi no Sei does it brilliantly if only because, beside the magically gender swapping protagonist that “I’m a boy, though”, it a has magically swapping protagonist that doesn’t think in those terms, and a cast that includes also non-magical-genderswap trans and queer and nonconforming people! And I could critique bits of it, sure, but this thoughtfulness puts it miles ahead of the two above, IMO, as good and close to my gender feelings all of those are.)

So:

Perhaps it’s a matter of proportions, such that there is so much English material that I can find with ease despite the large majority of it being bad?

Or is it just the case that what we get here in translation does not reflect an original-language proportion that does exist?

Is it a sourcing bias, in which I am looking only at commercial titles, or perhaps at outlets that prioritize more conservative outlooks? Should I be looking more closely, say, at translation groups that are queer-focused?

Or am I judging by a meter I should adjust?

Words have power, she said.

And they diminish yours each time you turn them against yourself. They're sharp and carry weight. Wielded in the right hands they destroy, but even a novice can inflict great pain.

Stop stabbing yourself, dumbass.