Rain
Comic 686 - Gatekeeper
Author Notes:
There hasn't been a lot of original fantasy Rain references in this dream sequence. Not as much as I expected to be using, for sure (the Kaminari angle changed a lot from my initial vision). But Fara's costume is virtually identical to how it looked back then (we'll see it better next time). Heck, she was in a bandit gang in the old version. Oddly canon!
Vincent's meanwhile, is completely different. And he didn't use an axe back then either (I just thought it was appropriate in this instance because he's a musician. Get it? He uses an axe?).
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Pretty obvious, yes. But it never hurts to do obvious jokes! :3
Before Rain was the slice-of-life story we know today, it was originally meant to be a fantasy story. Same basic idea of having trans and queer characters, but with a different kind of setting. Honestly, it wasn't very good though. When I changed it to what we know today, it just felt more natural and had a better feel to it (plus I'd grown up and learned a lot that I didn't know then).
It's better the way it is now. Trust me. ^_^
After years of gatekeeper shit, I had a meeting with a psychologist yesterday. I was kind of expecting the worst, but I'm always optimistic so I went in smiling. I sat down, and she was really great! There was lots of stuff about how I've clearly thought all this through, and how I'm not crazy or hurting myself, and she said the only reason I haven't got a letter for hormones right now is that it takes more than an hour to tick off the boxes on the WPATH checklist!!!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY
Now I'm really curious whom we find inside...
The "not-a-gatekeeper" bandit in the dream here is actually Rain's therapist, Vincent, in the real world. "Gatekeeper" literally means someone who physically guards a gate, door, or other portal (and is kind of an old-fashioned term that gets used a lot in medieval fantasy settings), but it's also a modern slang term for someone who enforces harsh and arbitrary limits on who gets to be considered a legitimate member of a social group. And in the specific context of therapists for trans people, it means a therapist who keeps refusing to acknowledgement their patient as a legitimate trans person, so they can't legally medically transition. Earlier in the comic, Rain expressed worries about her therapist being a "gatekeeper", and was overjoyed to find Vincent was nothing of the sort. So, in Rain's dream, Vincent looks like like a formidable guard watching the entrance to the bandits' lair - a "gatekeeper" - but is then very emphatic about not being a "gatekeeper". Which is what he did in real life for Rain, just with the other meaning of "gatekeeper". I hope that's clear.