♦ Kat and the V-Pets ♦ : Tales From the Alternate Universe of Katie-Kat's Virtual Pets: #3. "I'm Still Me

(This introductory KATVP update explores gender identity within the Webkinz family--specifically, transgirl Paley and hermaphrodite Fadam Zalo.)

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(This piece was written on March 8, 2017. I wrote this for my professor to read as a mid-term project. In other words, this story takes place in March 2017.)

I'm Still Me - Part 1
A Picture Story
Written By: Katie-Kat Labrador (me!)
With a Little Inspiration From: the Daniel Tiger episode about how "you can change your hair, what you wear; but no matter what you do, you're still you!"

Hi, friends. It’s me, your friendly neighborhood writer. I’m sure if you’ve followed the older stories, you’ve seen a lot of my growth through plot progression of my world with virtual pets. From the very first photoshoot I made from when I was 13 to the storylines I wrapped up when I was 18, my stories can be easily analyzed as me documenting my discovery of our social world through creativity and pure fantasy. I’ve lacked consistency with updating my stories during my college years (18-21), but I’ve kept note files filled with ideas for new things to write about.

In this story I address two audiences: my established fans as well as the people in this narrative class I’m writing for to achieve a substantial grade in so I can achieve the academic credits I need to graduate from college.

I’m going to address the new audience first because I’m sure they’re so very confused about what’s going on in these paragraphs. So, hi; I am a student in the Narrative Studies class, and I’ve introduced myself as Katie. I think I’ve begun to explain my writing before in class, but let me write it out to remind what it is (also I’m much better at writing than speaking). The summer before I became an eighth grader, I became active on a fansite for Webkinz—those old stuffed animals that come with tags that give the pets a virtual pet side. There was a trend of people taking various pictures of their plush pets “doing activities” such as doing a craft, playing outside, or traveling on vacation.

I dedicated maybe 80% of my time outside of school to taking pictures of my Webkinz to escape my traumatic life, which led to the other creators and me to form a community and eventually our own fictional universe. What was originally kids playing with stuffed animals and a camera evolved into young teenagers orchestrating a giant soap opera. Every Webkinz had their own personality and story—they lived as living creatures amongst their human writers and interacted with one another. As most of us reached college age, we either slowed down with writing or left the community all together. Since the website I posted my stories on is basically a deadzone now, I’m moving the stories and its universe to Blogger because I wish to continue the series on a more productive platform with more creative freedom than I have on the fansite. I am also incorporating other elements, such as the Tamagotchi blog I started when I was 12, to have more content to construct imagination. This series is called Kat and the Virtual Pets or Kat and the V-Pets for short. I’m Kat, and the “virtual pets” are my Webkinz pets and Tamagotchi pets (accompanied by other virtual pets, stuffed animals, dolls, and toys in general that I choose to personify).

Now I am going to say hello to my established fans: hi, guys—it’s been a while. It’s Kat, and I know many of you have been waiting YEARS for me to return to my schedule of regularly posted dramatic chapters of the story universe. I intend to update more often, especially with the flexibility of Blogger. The Webkinz are back! And if you’re here from my Tamagotchi blog, the Tamagotchis are activated! I am merging the worlds to create a new Universe for new possibilities to tell stories and send good messages to people. You guys have told you that reading my content has soothed any emotional pain—I intend to continue doing that. You guys have showed me that reading my content has taught you new things about the diversity of our world and some of the complexities of the mind (with the characters having disabilities, mental illnesses, identity issues, etc.)—I intend to expand on that.

I’m creating something new. I’m creating something to help, to educate, to connect. There will be new kinds of characters here, including a community of Barbies to interact with the others (because you guys have been heavily requesting that for years; also, it adds a human-ish realistic element). There will be new forms of content and I plan to have a lot of it similar to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood to help create mental peace. I’m going to encourage my readers to interact in the comments section (maybe you all will find new friends and support). All of these ideas are probably too broad to comprehend, but I don’t mind that—it just shows that the possibilities here are endless.

Now, let me introduce myself once more. Hi, friends. I call myself Katie-Kat because some people know me as Katie, and some people know me as Kat. Usually, people I meet in person call me Katie and the people I meet through my online shenanigans call me Kat. Katie sounds better than written, and Kat looks better in words than heard (at least to me). I have learned a lot of myself over the years, such as how I feel gender-wise and how my Borderline Personality Disorder and other diagnoses affect my thoughts. After many years of reflecting on my gender identity and androgyny, I have settled on the term genderfluid—I consider myself all of the genders. I go by the pronouns she/her/hers, they/them/theirs, and he/him/his. Whatever pronoun slips out when addressing me, I will accept. There is a lot of fluidity in my identity: being called Katie or Kat and then she, they, or he.

As I come up with more ideas for my story series, I think of new ways my characters can be diverse and a lot of it includes gender identity as well as other traits that reflect my journey. To help introduce everyone old-but-new and just-plain-new, I have dedicated this story to introducing the diversity of identities my characters have developed. In this story, I will show you various characters and show how they express their identity in creative setups and scenarios. I will--

“DO YOU EVER SHUT UP?!” Chloe yells.

Chloe is a plush and virtual white Poodle—she was my very first Webkinz and I got her when I was 12 years old. She was stitched together in a factory almost ten years ago, but her character has evolved into a persona with the mentality of an 18-year-old human.

“I just have a lot to say about my ideas!” I defend myself to her.

“I’m pretty sure every reader has given up on this nonsense by now,” Chloe argues. She groans, “you go on and on and ooooon. Like, enough is enough. We get it: you’re weird.”

“Hey, where would you be right now if I didn’t type out what I thought about?” I ask her.

Chloe puts on a pondering face as she considers what I said. “That is a good point.”

“This whole universe is a lot to digest, especially to the outsiders from my class I’m submitting this too,” I explain to her.

“Kat, you’ve made this mess every semester,” Chloe lectures me. “You take some dumb writing course at your college, and you write a story or two about us because one, we’re all you know what to write about, and two, you want to stretch any writing skill education to this insane project you refuse to give up on.”

“Chloe--”

She cuts me off. “And what happens every time? You get a whole twenty people dangerously confused. You know by now that no one in your academic environment likes your genre of material, so I don’t get why you torture people with your ridiculous and overly-complex imagination every few months.”

“Any excuse to get material produced, y’know?” I reply. “There’s something about all this that feels inspiring to me and something keeps telling me to never stop developing it.”

“I have to give you credit for sticking with the same material for about a decade,” Chloe admits. “But still, you’re wild.”

“Hey, you’re pretty wild too.”

Chloe rolls her beady eyes. “Can you just jump into the action already? No one cares about your internal dialogue. Even if they do, they can go to your Tumblr and then get bored of your insanity after a week.”

I laugh.

If you’ve read my past stories (from 2010-ish), you already know about Paley the transgender Webkinz (male-to-female) and Zalo the hermaphrodite Webkinz Zumbuddy Klip. I began writing about them in 2010 when transgender issues became more public and acceptance for transgender people began emerging. I obviously had taken interest by then as I had started to recognize I didn’t fit into society’s ideas of how girls should live their lives. Writing these stories had helped me think about trans issues and how I viewed them (as well as how I wanted them to be viewed in the future).

Anyway, it’s Paley’s time in this story.

Paley, a peppermint-colored plush puppy Webkinz, is seen standing in front of a camera I am managing with Chloe by my side. The camera is on a very small tripod on the floor and I am sitting comfortably in back of it (because these little guys are maybe ten inches tall).

“Did you apologize to half your audience yet?” Chloe interrupts me with annoyance.

“Ah, yes,” I respond as her reminder jogs my mind of what else I need to explain. “You cut me off earlier so I didn’t get to it.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Chloe quickly says to rush me out of my rambling.

Nevertheless, this piece probably feels odd if you’re reading this from my class, and I apologize about it. You see, these stories are designed to be very visual. Many people that read these ask if I make pictures, and I explain that I do. The stories take form of a visual novel or picture book style piece. I write out a simply described story, then I create pictures through real-life photography, game screenshots, or hand-drawn digital cartoons to illustrate most lines of the story. I have even incorporated elements of artistic film shots into photography to add more substance to my story. I imagine my original audience is fond of this format—I get to communicate my message efficiently and they get a story that’s simple in content to explore (which is great because a lot of my readers have enough stress in their everyday life). I’m sorry that this story probably lacks detail you might crave (and I will probably be asked by my professor to fix this aspect). Just pretend you can see pictures of this absurdity.

If you’re reading this from the blog, you probably already see the pictures that I have probably made by now, so you’re fine.

Anyhow, Paley, a peppermint-colored plush puppy Webkinz, is seen standing in front of a camera.

“State your name and who you are,” I instruct, similar to people who produce filmed interviews for documentaries.

“Hi! I’m Paley,” Paley says to the camera. “I am a Webkinz Peppermint Puppy…and I am also a male-to-female transgender person.”

“Do you want to tell the audience a bit about yourself and your story?” I ask.

“Well, I arrived at the house in late 2010 for the holiday season and my role in the story was to be overly-enthusiastic about Christmas. We had a snowman who preferred Halloween, I tried to force him to enjoy Christmas, he got annoyed, it was a fun time for our stories. I spent that entire season pushing for holiday spirit and cladding the bedroom with winter-y and jolly decorations. I was basically the holiday icon of the house, after the Reindeer who help Santa, of course.”

“When did you feel different about your identity?”

“Well, the following January, my virtual side was registered online to Webkinz World,” Paley begins. “It was cool; I could go online now, y’know? Everything seemed great, but then I looked at my biography from the game website. I was accidentally registered as a boy Webkinz rather than a girl Webkinz.”

“How did that affect your life following the adoption?”

“It really shouldn’t have affected my life, because the website states that there’s no difference between girl and boy Webkinz. Webkinz act similar regardless of gender, plus they accept any clothing no matter how feminine and masculine they look. Basically, it’s just a circle in the wrong place on a page. Unfortunately, our society has set up gender roles where ‘girls’ are accepted to do one thing and ‘boys’ another, and ‘gender’ is determined by our bodies. Even though all Webkinz have the same body structure, because, y’know, we’re toys, some people take gender expectations way too far. Shortly after my adoption, some of the other Webkinz found my adoption papers and biography and saw that I was registered as a boy even though I live life as a girl. These fellow pets kept pushing me to identify as a boy and do stereotypically masculine things and wear masculine clothes. I was very uncomfortable because the dark, plain clothes weren’t me. I like sparkly things, I like pink things, I like traditionally ‘feminine’ things. I relate to girls. I identify as a girl, therefore I am a girl, despite the slight mistake on my biography and adoption certificate.”

Paley’s story of her discovery of gender identity went over well with the audience. All of the commenters felt empathy for Paley and showed sympathy; one of my close friends even cried over the story (then again, her hormones were going crazy that week). I taught a lot of kids about the concept of being transgender that week; I likely introduced them to accepting the transgender community.

I felt nervous about posting a story with an LGBT+ storyline on a forum that is very opposed to even the mentioning of homosexuality or non-heterosexual things. “There are kids here!” the moderators would often say about various things. I understand the desire to keep sexual talk and relationship things off of a social environment designed to be child-friendly, but too many of us have noticed that images of Bella and Edward from Twilight on top of each other stayed on the site; meanwhile, an image of Kurt and Blaine of Glee hugging is quickly removed because these characters are known to be gay and eventually date each other.

I said many things on that story about why gender identity isn’t related to romance and sexuality. There are plenty of famous transgender kids who have television specials dedicated to documenting about them. The only thing in these documentaries are stories of how these children enjoy things and roles assigned to a gender that is “opposite” of their birth sex and how the identify as the gender opposite of their birth sex. Nowhere in any of these documentaries about transgender kids is dating mentioned (except the ones where the child was reaching puberty, but most kids discussed were elementary aged).

I wasn’t afraid of disapproval; I was afraid of the conservative moderators banning me from the website. I used to have so many nightmares about being banned from the website—it was basically my whole life, so what would I do if my stories were gone?

Regardless, I still think I did a good job dancing around the rules, hitting every “loophole” I could think of. (That…or the moderators didn’t bother monitoring my stories because there were so many replies going into it every day. I think they just decided to trust me and focus on moderating the rest of their VERY active online social gathering.)

Zalo flutters into the camera’s view and lands next to Paley.

Zalo is a Zumbuddy Klip, which are basically alien-looking fairy-like creatures that accompany the Webkinz in their everyday lives. Online they are watched over as toddlers while following around their assigned pet; offline they cast spells and grant wishes like fairy godparents.

“State your name and who you are,” I say.

“My full name is Fadam Zalo, but everyone calls me Zalo,” Zalo begins. “I am the small Klip version of a Webkinz Zumbuddy. I am considered a ‘Tricky’ Zumbuddy, or at least by the company that sells me. The black lab sisters, Madeline and Maddy, share me as their Zumbuddy. Madeline usually hogs my time, but Maddy, her little sister, is much more tolerable. Um, I am also considered a hermaphrodite, or a creature that is both female and male, so I use the pronouns ze/hir/hirs rather than she/her/hers or he/him/his.”

“You have the more unknown gender neutral pronouns. Barely anyone knows about the ze/hir pronouns, even in today’s culture where there is so much more gender neutrality. The gender neutral pronouns are usually they/them.”

Zalo raises hir eyebrow. “You’re the one that assigned them.”

I giggle. “Just trying to give the full picture. Tell the camera more about what it’s like having different pronouns for a mostly-unknown gender.”

Ze looks into the camera. “Well, Camera, Kat used to accidentally refer to me as ‘he’, but likely because of my masculine face,” Zalo adds. “They don’t do it anymore though. That was mostly during my first year here. They have gotten A LOT better with remembering pronouns, even though there are sometimes slip-ups with some people because of their brain’s disconnect and auto-pilot characteristics.”

“Perks of having dissociation problems,” I complain as I roll my eyes.

Zalo chuckles.

“Also another thing worth mentioning, you gender identity is still ‘hermaphrodite’ despite its recent controversial label. People of the trans community don’t like the word hermaphrodite, and even if they have a form of both genitals, they use the term ‘intersex.’”

“Yes, humans that don’t have strictly biological male or female parts are ‘intersex,’” Zalo responds. “They don’t use the term hermaphrodite because that term is mostly used by plants or worms. Which is understandable—they don’t have both functional parts, just some sort of in-between structure, I believe.”

“Is there a reason you haven’t changed labels?”

“Well, you see, I don’t have genitals so I don’t think I should have to change my label from hermaphrodite to intersex,” Zalo explains. “Also…I’m not even human. I’m a stuffed animal fairy thing, so should I have to move away from the term? In a way, my body truly is consisting of both genders’ structures…because that is how I am imagined.”

“This just got really weird and confusing,” Chloe interjects.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Zalo quickly says with cringe in hir face. “Basically, I’m not a human with genitals, so I can be considered a hermaphrodite without negative connotation. Me, hermaphrodite; humans, intersex.”

I was the first person in our story community to make stories about gender. Possibly, the only one. (I don’t remember any other writers having their characters defy gender roles like mine did.) I was used to introducing diversity to kids who didn’t know people similar to the ones I described in my stories. I had already introduced characters who dealt with various conditions that affected their everyday lives—ADD, dyslexia, Autism, short-term memory loss, OCD, insomnia, anger issues, and other things (many coming to the series and many I will discuss later in this story). My audience felt passionately about these characters and loved seeing more and more of them. I have two brothers on the Autism spectrum so it only made sense to have characters that weren’t neurotypical. At that point, I was dealing with my own gender identity issues so it only made sense to have characters that didn’t follow the gender roles and didn’t fit the gender binary.

“Did you ever feel like gender was a big deal?”

“Gender under your roof?” Paley rolls her eyes. “Pfft. Gummy’s been cross-dressing in dresses since around…maybe 2009. Kiki also cross-dresses in masculine clothing. I know for you, gender isn’t a big deal…especially with your androgynous-since-childhood mentality. Other pets here have their own conservative ideas…but they’re coming around.”

“Kids have an amused-confusion about things defiant from what they were taught about gender roles,” Zalo adds. “They just need to get used to new things, which is quite simple for them because they’re new to the Earth. Older folks…really need some more encouragement to open their minds to thinks outside the traditional. Here, gender isn’t as big of a deal as people out in the world make it out to be.”

“Do you think your stories will help the world?”

“Absolutely,” Zalo says. “It’s amazing what influences media, and especially creative media, have on society. I feel like we have already made a tiny difference in society.”

“We do our best as characters to show what life can be like,” Paley adds. “We may not be the greatest examples of real people, but we’re always being adjusted for better representation. We want to teach things that some people might not have exposure to. We want to help create peace in the world. I want people to learn what I learned: just because I seem like one thing, doesn’t mean I’m not another. My bio says I’m a boy, but I’m a girl. People want to believe differently, but that’s the truth. No matter what, I can’t change who I am; I’m still me.”

I turn off the camera.

“So, what’s next?” Chloe asks.

“That’s it for right now,” I answer her.

“WHAT?!” Chloe yells at me.

“Well, I’ve hit the required amount of pages, and I’d rather not kill my professor by going overboard,” I explain. “I’ll do a Part 2 for the final, and maybe a Part 3 and more on the actual blog. I’ll talk about more character identity things in those collections of words. But for right now, I only have space to talk about Paley and Zalo.”

“What about all those ‘creative set-ups and scenarios’? Where’s the scenes? Where’s the drama?”

“That’s coming. This was just an introduction.”

“That was so much for only a basic introduction…”

“Yeah,” I agree slightly. “So…what do you think?”