Cat Boys & Social Issues

Date: 10/11/2018

I’m really struggling to remember the details of this dream the way I normally would. I remember a few parts with the usual degree of detail, but big chunks of the plot are either super vague or missing altogether. I remember a school that trained superheroes while still trying to let them live as normally as possible. The school uniform policy was “wear your superhero costume at all times, never get caught without it while on school grounds or on official hero business” or something along those lines. One particular group of young heroes went up against some kind of villain, I think. There was something that turned all their desks into shower cubicles. I don’t remember how they got out or what happened after. I know SOMETHING happened, but I don’t know what. I do know that at the core of it was a boy with a cat/ninja theme. He almost looked like if Chat Noir from Tales of Miraculous Ladybug & Chat Noir tried to become a ninja after watching too much anime. He was also blonde, which helped the look. After... whatever happened with the evil shower thing I can’t fully remember, the cat ninja and his friends went on missions to specifically try and track down the villain responsible. But this villain was always one step ahead of them. They ended up with bathtubs in basements and showers in parks and one kid had their whole apartment flooded. They were getting increasingly frustrated and focused on the idea of revenge. Cat Ninja was the only one to see that they were out of their league. He told the group that revenge wasn’t the most important thing. “Why worry about revenge? We’re gonna go through so much just being students. We’re gonna fight other villains, and take tests, and make friends, and fall in love. Instead of focusing on revenge, shouldn’t we just let ourselves enjoy that? Being kids?” He swung one leg out nervously while he spoke, hands behind his back. His tail swished. His ears were partially down. He looked up from the roof they were standing on to the faces of his friends, and he honestly looked like a pleading kitten. It worked. The group all ran to hug him. His mask fell off when they did, but it was against school rules for any of them to peek. One girl, a super-smart one who was crushing on Cat Ninja, opened her eyes when her heart skipped a beat at the idea of being trusted enough to see him without the mask. But she specifically didn’t look at his face, and closed her eyes again quickly. After that, there was some kind of... bizarre crossover event on TV? It took some of the kids’ shows I’ve loved the most over the years and put them together into a multi-art-style crossover montage — along with a few cartoons I hadn’t really loved, but still mattered to me as icons of my youth. The characters from all these shows were apparently all going to attend the same school, and those transferring in were realizing how weird the school was as they enrolled in the montage. It made it look like an ad for a new series, a show where they’d actually bring everyone together and just have awesome crossover episodes all the time. I was getting super excited... until I actually listened to what the announcer was saying. Every other line was just some TERF propaganda thing about how “biology is biology, and that’s why trans people aren’t actually trans and they’re all just confused.” They especially talked about how women produce milk for babies, which means their ultimate purpose in the world can only be to have and raise babies. The Rugrats showed up at this point, complaining that the formula bottle milk didn’t taste as good as the milk “from the source” and wasn’t as good for them to drink. It became a whole Thing about how biology is what dictates a person’s gender and the world only works right if we follow our biology. Being trans, myself — irl and in the dream — I got pretty pissed that they’d use my favorite cartoons to try and tell me I was “just confused” and “meant to fulfill [my] biological role” in a crossover ad that wasn’t even promising me a new show to watch. I complained to my sister and then scowled really hard when I turned off the TV. I think I might have gone to a writing desk after that, to write the crossover I wanted without any TERF nonsense, but that might just be wishful think now that I’m awake.