Vorlonagent

The Secret ID forms don't need heterosexual attraction to do their jobs. Elliot has two spells that we know of (plus this new "vision" spell of which we know little). Those are his "be any girl" spell and his Cheerleadra spell. Now gender-invert those two. I can't see how a "be any guy" spell is going to reduce Elliot's stick-in-the-mudness. Seems to me any male body is going to be too like his own for him to give himself permission to loosen up. This would be even more true of a "Superman" spell. He would be more like he normal surface persona that he usually is. I'll grant a partial exception for the secret ID forms, but that's it. I don't see turning into a different guy is going to open Elliot up. What am I missing? RE Tedd, Elliot has had a long time to observe Tedd as Tedd's only friend. I read Elliot's answer to Tedd the same way as Elliot's answer to Ellen I referenced upthread. In my mind, that comes from Elliot's core being. He had to work through his own issues with Tedd's frequent transformations, and Grace rightly called him on the effect he had on Tedd. But Elliot got through most of that before he knew he was awakened. the last time he voiced any in-comic issues with Tedd was Grace's birthday party.

We know the TF Gun retains its target's original orientation even though a trans-gender morph (if you liked girls before you still like them after) but adds some opposite-sex attraction. Ellen describes that last part as feeling "tacked on". I'm not sure we can blame the huge mutual attraction m!Sarah and f!Elliot felt on the TF gun, especially since neither character is turning out to be simply straight-heterosexual.in 2017. Edit: I will agree that Elliot's generic "be a girl" spell doesn't seem to add any attraction for males, but note that is decidedly untrue for Elliot's "Mild mannered" secret ID form at the very least. I disagree. I think female forms were a way out of Elliot's self-repression and I don't think male forms would have that effect. I think Elliot would have still understood Tedd though. Even under normal circumstances, Elliot's mind does a great job of reducing some things down. "She's family. Help her." with Ellen for example.

It's intriguing but I get a lot of fun out of building complex structures out of all the dice in my dice bag. With a D4 at the core, the right facets of a D20 can match up with the slant of the D4, and then you can match up D10s to 2 points on the d20s...

With Elliot, the feminine might even be a little stronger. His time as a bully that bullies other bullies could be looked at as a "mama bear" sort of thing, protecting those who couldn't protect themselves. There's something that seems to happen to Elliot when he turns female. His hormones went into overdrive both at Grace's birthday party when he was in female form looking at maleSarah and kissing Ashley in MallForm. Or being feminine could simply lower his inhibitions. I feel like there's a loose thread there and I want to tug on it and see what unravels.

For whatever it's worth, none of this stuff is a simply on/off yes/no sort of thing. Kinsey recognized that with his 7-point scale of sexual orientation. and the detail keeps piling up from there. Think of it more as a palette of colors. You might be painted with just a little bit of transgender. Animalia is not the only one even on this forum. I am similar. I think I might have just a dab of transgender to myself as well. I identify male. I am comfortable in a male body and generally think and act as a cisgender male. It's who I am. But as a writer, I gravitate to female characters. Playing that late-great MMO City of Heroes, 70-80% of my characters were female. Their hearts and minds came from this female voice that is also a part of me but the male part of me built their bodies and dressed them. (Which isn't as degrading as it might first sound. My natural taste in "sexy-awesome" about matches what Dan posts to the EGS website. His Patreon art is a bit much sometimes) While I don't think I'd be interested in male attention if I were suddenly a sexy girl, if I were split into a set of Ellen/Elliot twins, the temptation to experiment would be hard for us to resist. It's not just sexuality-related stuff. It's anything not-normal. I had a college mentor whose Ph.D disseration was on how humans treat both positive and negative "deviants" (deviations from the normal) the same way. Better or worse, smarter or dumber, standing out in a crowd for any reason attracts fire. These forums have helped me cautiously open the door and peer into the corners of my psyche and understand and accept what I see. I hope Animalia gets the same out of it.

This. It's saying "There's things I wouldn't do if I had to plan and think about it, but I might or would do if I could make it happen on spur of the moment."

Understanding is a three-edged sword.

Good point. The Dunkels are accepting about what is. Elliot's a girl now. Accepted. But not without their own opinions or imposed limits or rules. In some ways Tedd gets more leeway from Ed Verres than Elliot gets from his parents. I'm sure the years before the cheater's cheating was revealed were good years for Susan. Maybe not her mother however. When Susan found out her dad cheats and when her mother found out may not have been the same time. Her parents could have been keeping up pretenses for her sake. Their lack of presence in Justin's narrative is itself suggestive that they didn't know what to do. With the obvious addition that his uncle had an idea and the parents let him run with it.

It seems to me the Dunkels with their curiously unflappable acceptance easily take the top spot. We don't really know the Browns all that well. Nanase seems to deal with her mother's drive to excellence (a mixed bag of plusses and minuses) much easier than Emily from Misfile does. Pandora seems to have done a decent job too, Noriko and both of Susan's parents take the bottom slots. With Noriko at the absolute bottom, then Susan's dad, then Susan's mom. Reading into Justin's story a little, I'd guess that his parents were in a similar boat as Ed Verres where they really weren't able to engage with their child.

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Not if he is convinced he already knows why. A parent that doesn't get you but is not abusive and is accepting enough to let you live life on your terms? I tend to think a lot of GLBT kids would consider that a serious upgrade in situation. No argument, Ed Verres is guilty here. But it brings me back to the simple fact that every parent screws up somewhere. What is so unforgivable about Ed Verres so as to deny him human fallibility?

Why would Ed Verres research gender issues of any kind? We know Tedd is genderfluid because Grace told him and us at the same time. Not even Tedd knew Tedd was genderfluid prior. Why would Ed Verres? (Tedd knew he was different in some way, yes) Knowing that Tedd had to deal with watching his mother walk out on him, it's easy for Ed Verres to conclude that the entire spectrum of Tedd 2.0 behaviors including Tedd's fetishes.and alienation are due to his mom. I would expect Verres is familiar to some degree with the political debates though those may not be the most helpful things to pay attention to. Politics is never a good medium for imparting useful information as there are huge signal-to-noise issues. All parents drop the ball somewhere. Demanding parental perfection is like demanding government perfection. It's OK to want it but in reality you just have to settle for hoping they won't make too many egregious mistakes. They're going to make some. Ed Verres is a single parent whose job makes demands on him at odd hours and takes him out of town a lot. That's an obvious point of failure and that is indeed what we see. Ed Verres does not understand his son as well as we, his son or probably even he would like. That's his failing, but it's a common parental issue even with cis-gendered parents and kids. Despite, Verres has been tolerant of his son's actions, even actions he is uncomfortable with. Verres hasn't tried to assert control of Tedd or force Tedd into a box of Verres' expectations. You'll find that, while Tedd's situation is still emotionally very rough, there's a lot of things that commonly happen to GLBT kids in their families that were never inflicted on Tedd because Verres simply didn't go that route. But yes Ed Verres doesn't understand Tedd and his lack of it withholds some important parental approval that Tedd really does need. Whatever Ed Verres' faults, I see no evidence of him choosing prejudice over his son.

I'll have to disagree. Everybody has to learn something for the first time at some point. The less breaks you cut people for knowledge they don't have, the more anger, alienation and misunderstanding you create and the gods know this part of life doesn't need any more of that...

I personally think Ed Verres never picked up on the clues that might point to Tedd as genderfluid. Tedd's actions process differently if one simply assumes he is straight.

All that is valid and agreed. But stuff like attitude, word choice seems to shift when Elliot is female.

i've noticed that Elliot's mindset is different as a female than as "Elliot" Elliot himself is wrapped pretty tight, but seems to feel a lot more free as female even without the mind changes that came with his Secret ID forms (especially the Party form) Female as workaround for Elliot's self-imposed limits.

That's a healthy slug of tea right there...

Among other things. Let's see how many traits he can juggle...

Tedd should be proud. Some of his fundamental Teddicity (it's a word now) rubbed off on Elliot...

March 8 and 9, 1862, Hampton Roads, VA to watch the CSS Virginia take on the Union blockade forces on the 8th and see its duel with the USS Monitor on the 9th. Note to self: Bring earplugs. A good seat for this show could be much louder than any rock concert.

New York as a massive change-blindness experiment...

I'm told people in New York identify tourists because they're the ones looking up...

and people would be somewhat jaded about it anyway. "this is Moperville. Weird stuff happens here."

Feel free to vent or dump here. Line up music and other environmental factors to tide you over...

Cooking the books to show a prophet...