koan and nayana (twokinds) created by tom fischbach
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Description

"A Forgotten Memory"

Sketch of the 1226th page of TwoKinds.

Blacklisted
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  • A reminder for whoever made tags for these two: You need to start a tag with “character:” for it to become a character tag.

    jacked-assassin said:
    Sidenote...
    While looking for that previous comic, I stumbled across Natani's First Flashback where Zen tells Natani, "Stop being such a girl about everything!" This implies that Natani wasn't always a trans male.

    I wouldn't mind seeing evidence that proves I'm wrong, but so far, I'm under the impression that I'm being gaslighted on Natani's gender being male.

    Okay, do we really need to go over this?

    Firstly, saying you’re being gaslit is just plain bad form. You’re making a very aggressive claim there, without too much to back it up. It’s not going to go over well.

    Secondly, let’s review the history of Nat as a character and in the comic. When Tom created Nat, he mostly planned to use Nat’s physical features (read: boobs) as a gag. Nat would be a reverse trap, to use the terminology of the time. Tom likely planned for the Basitin Isles arc to straighten Nat out, using the relationship with Keith. However, making a comic takes time, and as things progressed in the comic, so did things in real life. Being a rather furry comic, Nat’s situation likely drew in attention to and from transgender individuals. Tom likely realized that people liked Nat as the character was, and considering his plan as for the strong man to straighten out the confused girl, he decided to drop that part of the story arc. Instead, he was stuck with Nat as a someone who was rather confused about their gender. Due to his background and story, he definitely preferred male pronouns, be there were some parts about having a female body (like the nice big set of boobs he got to play with) that he enjoyed. It seems like we’re finally getting a cleaner resolution to that entire situation now.

    As for why this all matters, and why people can get rather aggravated over people calling Nat by female pronouns, it’s important to remember that there are people who like to be be called him or her whose parts do not match up with those which you might expect. While Nat is a fictional character, and thus can not care about your choice of pronouns, there are real people who would be rather upset of you did that to them. It’s not that hard to remember Nat’s preference, so, but failing to use it, you leave the impression that you also would not care about any real individual’s pronoun choice, which is definitely going to rub some people the wrong way.

    And as a reminder, shortly after the boat burned down, Nat restated his preference. At the most extreme case, we can take this as a ret con, in which case it still shouldn’t be such a big issue to call him a guy.

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  • jacked-assassin said:
    While looking for that previous comic, I stumbled across Natani's First Flashback where Zen tells Natani, "Stop being such a girl about everything!" This implies that Natani wasn't always a trans male.

    It implies that Natani was perceived as female, anyway.
    The story Youngtani tells in comic 931 and 932 seems to paint the picture of Nat being raised under "her" assigned gender at birth (i.e. female, with the societal roles and expectations that implies), then using the joining of the guild as his excuse to socially transition. Or at least that's how it ended up - depending on how you want to interpret 932, joining the guild may have "cracked his egg", so to speak, and gotten him to start leaning into the role of an Assassin Brother as an actually affirming identity and not something assumed out of necessity. Sort of the inverse of how Guilty Gear took Bridget's story: she lost the external pressure to keep up a feminine identity and had to seriously examine why she was still clinging to it, while Natani was forced into assuming a masculine identity and had to examine why it wasn't causing him any distress.

    In any case, Natani's gender feelings weren't something he advertised much at the time - hence Zen's lingering mental conception of Natani as his "sister", even at the point of the speech canonizing Natani as a trans guy - so until that moment he'd have been viewed as a girl by everyone around him. This would have been the case at the point of the flashback you linked (and Zen's comment there is a reflection of the "feminine = weak" idea that gets explicitly conveyed in comic 928, and it's Zen's speech there that gets them both to "keep moving" into the guild so that they can both earn enough to support each other. Nat started presenting male to meet recruitment criteria, and the rest is history.

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  • someinternetguy said:

    A reminder for whoever made tags for these two: You need to start a tag with “character:” for it to become a character tag.
    Okay, do we really need to go over this?

    Firstly, saying you’re being gaslit is just plain bad form. You’re making a very aggressive claim there, without too much to back it up. It’s not going to go over well.

    Secondly, let’s review the history of Nat as a character and in the comic. When Tom created Nat, he mostly planned to use Nat’s physical features (read: boobs) as a gag. Nat would be a reverse trap, to use the terminology of the time. Tom likely planned for the Basitin Isles arc to straighten Nat out, using the relationship with Keith. However, making a comic takes time, and as things progressed in the comic, so did things in real life. Being a rather furry comic, Nat’s situation likely drew in attention to and from transgender individuals. Tom likely realized that people liked Nat as the character was, and considering his plan as for the strong man to straighten out the confused girl, he decided to drop that part of the story arc. Instead, he was stuck with Nat as a someone who was rather confused about their gender. Due to his background and story, he definitely preferred male pronouns, be there were some parts about having a female body (like the nice big set of boobs he got to play with) that he enjoyed. It seems like we’re finally getting a cleaner resolution to that entire situation now.

    As for why this all matters, and why people can get rather aggravated over people calling Nat by female pronouns, it’s important to remember that there are people who like to be be called him or her whose parts do not match up with those which you might expect. While Nat is a fictional character, and thus can not care about your choice of pronouns, there are real people who would be rather upset of you did that to them. It’s not that hard to remember Nat’s preference, so, but failing to use it, you leave the impression that you also would not care about any real individual’s pronoun choice, which is definitely going to rub some people the wrong way.

    And as a reminder, shortly after the boat burned down, Nat restated his preference. At the most extreme case, we can take this as a ret con, in which case it still shouldn’t be such a big issue to call him a guy.

    VERY well said/written!

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  • mokeymanq said:
    It implies that Natani was perceived as female, anyway.
    The story Youngtani tells in comic 931 and 932 seems to paint the picture of Nat being raised under "her" assigned gender at birth (i.e. female, with the societal roles and expectations that implies), then using the joining of the guild as his excuse to socially transition. Or at least that's how it ended up - depending on how you want to interpret 932, joining the guild may have "cracked his egg", so to speak, and gotten him to start leaning into the role of an Assassin Brother as an actually affirming identity and not something assumed out of necessity. Sort of the inverse of how Guilty Gear took Bridget's story: she lost the external pressure to keep up a feminine identity and had to seriously examine why she was still clinging to it, while Natani was forced into assuming a masculine identity and had to examine why it wasn't causing him any distress.

    In any case, Natani's gender feelings weren't something he advertised much at the time - hence Zen's lingering mental conception of Natani as his "sister", even at the point of the speech canonizing Natani as a trans guy - so until that moment he'd have been viewed as a girl by everyone around him. This would have been the case at the point of the flashback you linked (and Zen's comment there is a reflection of the "feminine = weak" idea that gets explicitly conveyed in comic 928, and it's Zen's speech there that gets them both to "keep moving" into the guild so that they can both earn enough to support each other. Nat started presenting male to meet recruitment criteria, and the rest is history.

    Also an EXCELLENT reply/reminder!

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  • anmynous said:
    Man. Tom's art just keeps getting better...

    I wouldn’t mind him doing landscape pictures like showing off certain areas in the comic

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  • jacked-assassin said:
    I guess we finally know what Zen's & Natani's mom (Nayana?) & dad (Koan?) look like.

    Sidenote...
    While looking for that previous comic, I stumbled across Natani's First Flashback where Zen tells Natani, "Stop being such a girl about everything!" This implies that Natani wasn't always a trans male.

    I wouldn't mind seeing evidence that proves I'm wrong, but so far, I'm under the impression that I'm being gaslighted on Natani's gender being male.

    Natani gradually changed her gender upon joining Clovis's guild. At first it was to fit in and then it was because she liked it.

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