bernardsunglasses

[bernardsunglasses]

many posts going around about female characters and their recognition on tumblr… so i wanted to talk a little bit abt dc women (and bc this is a tim/bats blog — i’m talking specifically about cass and babs and steph)

they are given so much emotional depth, compassion, and presence in the earlier comics — that’s what makes me love them so much!! like they fuck up and learn and just exhibit incredible strength and will. this complexity and care nowadays is replaced with just. blatant infantilization and blandness.

to see them have so much power in the comics and to have them so brutally lost that in the canon since the 2010s is so sad and legitimately painful. and it’s all the more frustrating to see this same ineptitude and absence reproduced by fans who claim to be making a “better version of canon” with them always still missing!! it um. sucks ass, for uh. lack of a better term…

[bernardsunglasses]

Our first match of today’s Struggle tournament will be between Roxas and his best friend, Hayner!

[bernardsunglasses]

max made him do it at normal speed

[bernardsunglasses]

“Cass is the perfect fighter and she is always 100% serious in any of her fights. Shes not the hero to be thinking of jokes in a fight”

Cass:

[bernardsunglasses]

you honestly don’t need to like every queer character that exists, and i truly mean it. at the end of the day, if you don’t like them, you have every right to. but you don’t get to say they are bad representation simply because you don’t related to them. not every character will appeal to you, but that doesn’t make them a bad representation. feel free to critique them and their personalities, it’s your right to, but don’t be a jerk about their queerness unless they are falling under a harmful stereotype.

some people take it on the next leave too, and say that a character who isn’t queer in canon is better representation. in what world? you might feel connected to them and see your queerness in their journey, the same thing has happened to me too, but that’s not the same as having a literal queer story. queer characters are there to make you feel seen, but not only that. they are also here to challenge the status quo, to normalise queer people just existing and to make bigots uncomfortable. remember when jon kent was first announced to be bisexual with the cover of him kissing his boyfriend? yeah, a headcanon will never have such reaction.

my point isn’t made to attack people for seeing parts of themselves in “straight / allo / cis” characters. it’s wonderful that you found a character you could relate to and make you feel less alone. it really is. like i said, i see parts of my queer identity in characters who “don’t” have my sexuality too. but don’t put down actual queer representation for characters who have never been confirmed queer. it’s wrong of you to. at the end of the day, these are the characters who actually make the difference.

[bernardsunglasses]

Hello, tumblr user. Before you is a tumblr post asking you to name a female fictional character. You have unlimited time to tag a female character, NOT a male one.

Begin.

[bernardsunglasses]

bart and meloni really do something to me man. they said we will make bart a mama’s boy in a way that is so devastating

[bernardsunglasses]

timives having a sleepover at ives' house and theyre giggling under the covers taking a "am i gay" quiz because they think its the funniest shit ever and question one is "have you ever wanted to kiss someone of the same gender as you" and they both fall silent and then look at each other

[bernardsunglasses]

[bernardsunglasses]

A little Terra sketch; I've been in a Birth by Sleep mood

[bernardsunglasses]

"youve already written that trope" yesss. i like it a lots. i will be writing it again. 1000 stories of the same trope over and over again for ten million years

[bernardsunglasses]

quick what is everyone doing right now

[bernardsunglasses]

The world DID work really hard to give me trust issues

[bernardsunglasses]

Do you have any thoughts on how old a person "has to be" to realize they're aro/ace? I'm an adult, but realized I was ace at 14, and anytime I say that, people jump to tell me that's too young and that I couldn't have known. It frustrates me that other queer people are willing to say something like that about something that brought me comfort and community when I otherwise would've felt alone, but I don't know how to put into words how hypocritical and irritating it is, or whether being told that is even an experience other aro/ace people have had.

Eyooo- 👉👉 I'm also an adult who realized they were ace at 14! And yeah, I got the same reactions. I think it's bullshit. 14 is an age people hit puberty and start heavily figuring themselves out romantically and sexually, and I might be wrong but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people were pretty sure they're gay or bi or pan or at the very least not straight at 14, so why not aces, right? I remember personally my experience was... "Welp, everyone's obviously horny and I'm obviously not, so I'm obviously asexual", and honestly it was clear enough to me. Never occurred to me that I could be a "late bloomer" or whatever because like... Really I didn't miss it, if anything I was VERY happy to give it a pass.

So... Yeah. It's insensitive and diminishing and we get that A LOT and it's annoying af. Society makes it hard enough for us to figure ourselves at as is without people, straight or queer, telling us "nah actually your experience isn't really real and you don't know shit". I think it's one of the hardest and most universal struggles we have, and you're right for feeling irritated about it.

[bernardsunglasses]

Cupid missed

[bernardsunglasses]

...I think I had a point about shipping aroace characters without ever addressing they're aroace somewhere in there but I kinda got carried away

Anyhoo

[bernardsunglasses]

I still see so many posts that are like "It's okay! Dw, aces aren't babies who can't handle sexual content!" and I get the point of them is to like,,,, advocate for us to not be infantilized or excluded from conversations about sex without anyone even asking us about our boundaries but also it really shits on the part of our community that cannot handle said content.

There's nothing wrong with having these boundaries as long as you don't come into other people's spaces and try to force them to change the way they talk to each other based on your boundaries. It's disappointing to see that we still even within our community use our engagement with sexual content and our ability to handle said content as a reasoning of why people shouldn't infantilize us instead of like... the fact that a lot of aces (including sex-repulsed ones) are taxpaying adults with jobs or something...