#(i am not saying that this is exclusive to ace people but it sure does happen lol)

[nat-20s]

Comics Jughead Jones truly one of the long-time queer-coded turned canonically queer characters of all time

[rosabell14]

The hunters of Artemis, Reyna, and Asexuality in Riordan's writing

I kinda started thinking about this since Reyna became a hunter. I could never articulate why I hated this Choice. I was asexual after all. Shouldn't I be happy about this rep? We Ace people barely get any after all. Then I realized that it's because I just didn't like the hunters as ace representation. And I didn't need to be grateful for mediocrity.

You want to know why the hunters of Artemis suck in general? And as Ace rep specifically? Because Riordan did not write them with that mindset.

Like people are so busy hailing this man as the king of representation in literature(blegh) that they forgot how heteronormative and white(sometimes racist) the original series was. Y'all really think this man was thinking about writing asexuals in the year 2007? Get real. What Riordan was doing was a white man trying to write feminism and failing (there's a reason most of his female characterization of female characters boils down to tough "not like other girls" characters who are dicks to the boys around them yet also to the girls around them if they're jealous)

Now onto the hunters.

The hunters when first presented in TTC are not a group of asexuals but rather religious celibates. Fantasy Pegan nuns if you may. The first problem arises when their ages are brought up.

"Then the archers came from the woods. They were girls, about a dozen of them. The youngest was maybe ten. The oldest, about fourteen..."

Remember, before ToA gave us Emmie and Jo, the hunters WERE all young girls. Now why in the world are they so young? Especially when in the actual myths, the hunters could come from any age whatsoever? Well the reason is a doozy.

"Are you surprised by my age?" she asked.

"Uh… a little."

"I could appear as a grown woman, or a blazing fire, or anything else I want, but this is what I prefer. This is the average age of my Hunters, and all young maidens for whom I am patron, before they go astray."

"Go astray?" I asked.

"Grow up. Become smitten with boys. Become silly, preoccupied, insecure. Forget themselves."

Hooo boy. What a way to phrase it. Going astray. Losing themselves. This kinda confirms that the reason why Artemis goes after young girls specifically is because she only wants girls who have yet to finish puberty. Girls have yet to discover their own sexuality. Now I'm not a representative of Asexuals everywhere, but I'm pretty sure most of us don't discover our sexuality at the age of ten. Let alone have the maturity to decide to become celibates about it. And let me reiterate: celibacy is not sexuality. Sure asexual people CAN choose to be celibates but it's not the same thing at all. In fact Zoe and Thalia are big cases for this. Both of them had liked men before(herakles and luke) but joined for their own reasons. Thalia to escape the prophecy and Zoe out of heartbreak. Hell, Bianca herself is mostly swayed by the idea of having no responsibility and a new family.

Now Rick does another thing that goes against the myths. The exclusion of make hunters. Artemis frequently hung around or taught male hunters who respected her. Daphnis, Scamandrius, freaking Hippolytus whom Artemis greatly cared about. Oh but we need to come up with bullshit reasons why Nico can't just join the hunt with his sisters so the hunters of Artemis are all: Ewww men. Also note how at no point does Riordan mention people who fall in love with women.

Now the next point is the oath itself. Artemis says this:

"What oath?" I said.

"To forswear romantic love forever," Artemis said. "To never grow up, never get married. To be a maiden eternally."

When I tell you that Emmy and Joe were retcons . Rick was freaking INSISTENT on the hunters being kids. Also note the three points: to never fall in love, to never get married, to stay a maiden.

I mean I think I don't need to explain why obsessing over the virginity of young girls is creepy. Does Riordan think girls older than fourteen can't keep it in their pants? And let me be adamant here Riordan only cares about the virginity Clause here. He mentions falling in love and marriage because he sees them inherently intertwined with sex.

Now onto the wording of the oath itself:

'I pledge myself to the goddess Artemis. I turn my back on the company of men, accept eternal maidenhood, and join the Hunt.'

I mean you might be able to interpret men here as mankind and therefore excluding women as well. But I have many reasons to believe that Riordan didn't even CONSIDER women as a possibility(someone inform this man that lesbians existed smh 😞). Also note that falling in love is not mentioned in the actual oath but maidenhood is.

Now onto the next big issue. Percy Jackson's Greek gods and its chapter on Artemis. It basically confirms all of my problems.

"IT’S NOT THAT ARTEMIS HATED ALL MEN, just most of them. From the moment she was born, she knew one critical fact: Guys are kinda gross."

No mention of girls. In this chapter Percy(Rick) brings up Artemis' disdain for dudes over and over again.

“Let me be a maiden forever, Father,” Artemis said, twirling her finger in Zeus’s beard. “I never want to get married.---- But you can grant me a bunch of followers: ocean nymphs, river nymphs, wood nymphs—what the heck, how about mortal girls, too? Any girls who want to join me can become my followers, as long as they remain maidens like me. They should probably make the decision when they’re about nine years old, before they get interested in boys, because after that, they’ll be all distracted and of no use to me.”

Yikes yikes yikes. Ladies and gentlemen the age has been lowered to 9. Freaking 9. Also I guess girls older than that don't need Artemis' protection then? (the real problem is that older/married girls should be out of Artemis's jurisdiction and under the protection of other gods like Hera, Hestia, and Ares. But Hestia is barely there. Hera is terrible and the Amazons also suck)

Now when I tell you that Artemis' big point was about virginity, I mean it. This actually has mythological evidence.

The myths actually DO mention what happens when female hunters fall in love. Rhodopis and Euthynicus were two hunters who offended Aphrodite by choosing a chaste life so she had Eros make them fall in love. However note that they weren't booted out of the hunters for falling in love, but rather after having sex in a cave. THAT was what Artemis took offense to.

Another myth is the story of Aura. A huntress who offended Artemis by comparing their breasts(Greek mythology am I right?). Saying that her breast were better than Artemis' because they were smaller and hey maybe that means that Artemis isn't actually a maiden. Artemis punishes her by making her lose her VIRGINITY. She goes to nemesis for revenge. Nemesis goes to Eros who makes Dionysus fall in love with Aura and when Aura refuses his advances he ties her up and... Yeah you can guess where I'm going with this.

But hey! Those myths aren't in the Greek gods book. You know which myth is? The myth of C(K)allisto. And this one angers me so much I want to chew on the drywall.

The way Riordan writes it. Zeus turns himself into Artemis, brings Kallisto's guards down with the disguise, gets close to her and then when Kallisto REJECTS Artemis' supposed advances, forces himself on her. I need to say this again. Kallisto does not fall in love, she isn't seduced, she does not break her oath. But we still need a reason for her to be yeeted out of the hunters so her lack of maidenhood it is

“You were my favorite,” Artemis said. “If you had come to me immediately, I could have helped you. I would have found you a rich, handsome husband and let you settle into a new life in the city of your choice. I would have allowed you to retire from the Hunt with honor. You could have gone in peace. Zeus’s assault was not your fault.”

Kallisto sobbed. “But I didn’t want to lose you! I wanted to stay!”

Artemis felt like her heart was breaking, but she couldn’t show it. She had rules about her followers. She couldn’t allow those rules to be broken, not even by her best friend. “Kallisto, your crime was keeping the secret from me. You dishonored me, and your sisters of the Hunt, by not being honest. You defiled our company of maidens when you were not a maiden yourself. That I cannot forgive.”

I want to slap this man so hard he flies to the opposite side of the universe. We are not here to blame victims of assault guys! Except we are! But with extra steps. If you get attacked, it's not your fault, but If you are too scared to admit the truth then you deserve to lose your only safe space and turn into a bear. Oh nooooo Kallisto DEFILED Artemis' company by being an icky non virgin. The moment you lose your virginity even if it's not your fault you get punished. But not because I'm gross but because YOU lied. How terrible! And he expects us to feel for ARTEMIS???

But rosabell! This is how things go in the myths. What was uncle Rick (bleghhhh) supposed to do? I don't know... Choose a different version of the story? There are versions were Zeus/Hera are the ones who transform Kallisto into a bear. There are versions where Kallisto actively CHOOSES to sleep with Artemis. Granted it's still assault because she's being lied to but at least then, she'd have a degree of autonomy in the events. At least Artemis could rightfully accuse her of breaking her oath. But noooo, Riordan doesn't know lesbians exist. He actively makes Zeus into a canonical Ra*ist. Why is he on the throne again?

(the fact that this book came out AFTER HoH y'all 😭)

Once again, Riordan sees maidenhood(virginity)/love/marriage as intertwined. This is NOT what being on the aroace spectrum means. You can fall in love but not have sex. You can have sex but not fall in love. You can have sex AND still be an asexual. You can be married and still be a "maiden". Riordan doesn't get to claim to be such a progressive ally for retconning the hunters in 2017, TEN years after he first introduced the hunters because he suddenly remembered that lesbians exist.

Or more like because he doesn't know what to do with his female characters. The hunters more than anything are Riordan's heroine dumping ground. If you don't want it put them in relationships, either kill them(Bianca whose main purpose is to die) or make them eternal virgins(the hunters, Rachel). The fact that some people genuinely think that Calypso should have joined the hunters astound me. Girl suffered for years because of the gods and you all think that the best thing outside of Leo for her(not that I like Caleo) is to become a servant to the gods? Because you can't perceive a female character doing anything else if she's not in a relationship. Like with Thalia, this at least made sense on a strategic level because she didn't want to reach sixteen. Oh but we also don't know what else to do with her so she needs to want to be a hunter after the war is over so we give her a half-assed argument with Luke and now she can be all: wah wah Zoe you were totally right about boys. And the cherry on the cake is that she doesn't even get to be in the final confrontation with Luke or say goodbye to him because of a freaking STATUE. And after pjo her personality becomes Zoe 2.0 and her and Jason get ONE measly meeting.

When I first spoke of not liking Renya joining the hunters this is what I mean. Riordan had so many options with Reyna. Why did she have to leave her esteemed position which she worked so hard for? Two boys rejected her? Why couldn't she go reconnect with her sister more then? She could have joined the Amazons. But nooo Riordan was so allergic to the fans asking him wether she could be Bi or a lesbian. For the stupidest reasons too? Oh Reyna being a lesbian would come off as stereotypical because she got rejected by two guys beforehand! My dude, do you think people don't say the same thing about us who are on the aroace spectrum? That we say we are aro/ace because we got rejected before? Come up with a better excuse next time.

My brother in Christ couldn't even allow Reyna to talk about her sexuality and whatnot. It couldn't even be fully about her. No. He had to turn Reyna into his own mouthpiece admonishing the EVILLLL fans who may have shipped Thalia and Renya. He literally had her say the word "shipping". How cringe can you get? And then he had the audacity to admonish the fans by saying: Why does a strong friendship always have to progress to romance?

It's a sentiment I agree with but coming from this man, it's extremely hypocritical? I don't know Richard maybe because YOU are obsessed with shipping? No character can escape your shipping hands unless they're eternal virgins or dead. You literally turned the Argo2 into Noah's ark2. So much attention focused on shipping that the seven barely felt like friends.

Why does Reyna need to join the hunters? She can choose to not relationship without having to become a servant to female Peter pan.

This is actually a really adequate metaphor when you consider that Emmie and Jo say that they have not met Artemis in YEARS and Apollo mentions that the two of them were lucky she let them LIVE. god can you imagine joining Artemis when you are 9? At an age when you have still not finished maturimg cognitively and therefore shouldn't be trusted on taking a freaking celibacy vow(were you even given the talk yet that age) and after 70 years you decide you want to leave? If you're lucky Artemis will part with you on good terms but SIKES every person you probably knew before joining is now dead. Where is THAT angsty Bianca fic?

Speaking of Bianca. How she was handled also angers me. In another post, I've already talked about how the hunters barely gave her adequate information before letting her join.

How Zoe was the main reason for her death. Zoe KNEW that at least 2 people might die in the quest she was given and yet she decided to bring the least experienced girl to the quest and couldn't even watch her properly.

But you know what else pisses me off? The fact that THEY should have been the one to tell Nico about his sister's death. I've always hated how Chiron made Percy the CHILD tell Nico the other CHILD about his sister dying. But more than anyone, it should have been the hunters' responsibility. Bianca was THEIR responsibility. She died in a quest to save Artemis. The least they could do was tell her remaining family of her fate. The Doylist reason of course is that we need to kickstart Nico and Percy's complicated relationship and have Percy discover that Nico is a son of Hades. But in universe, the fact that they immediately fuck off from the camp upon regrouping makes them come off as extremely selfish. We don't even know if Bianca was given a funeral by them or not. We see Artemis being upset about Zoe but we never see her react to the news of losing Bianca.

[mia-martian]

I wanna bring to the Death Note and Lawlight community a take that I have and rarely ever hear about.

A lot of people seem to look at or even just remember L as an unfeeling apathetic weirdo- and this is coming from people who haven't seen the anime in years or just see a couple scenes of him. And that's a fair enough assessment to make- dude is detached in his own way.

But it's really ironic when he's put next to Light Yagami, a character who I believe literally doesn't know how to love.

Not in the aro/ace way- dude doesn't even know how to love anyone platonically. He doesn't love his family, he doesn't love his friends or his romantic partners, he doesn't love anyone. If he shows any small signs of it, I am not inclined to believe it.

When his father died and he cried, it looked like the most half-assed performance to me. As if he used it to framework and test how he would act for L's death. (Edit: Apparently Soichiro's death was after L's i think? I remembered that incorrectly. But at the same time, I think he copy-pasted his fake reaction to L's death and reused it for his dad. Point is, I don't believe he even grieves sincerely.)

And I don't think the Death Note itself exclusively did this to him. Sure, it influenced him a LOT. When you find yourself in a place of power, your brain chemistry LITERALLY changes. Of course the ability to kill with almost no consequence would influence him.

But even in the Yostuba amnesia arc, even when he's doe-eyed and defending the innocent and fighting with L about the people who died for the Kira case, I am not convinced that it's the truth. I am not convinced that he isn't just saying what he was taught to say and believe by his father. I am not convinced he fully believes his own words, even subconsciously. At least in the context of the anime and manga, he is the most insincere character I have ever seen. It's nothing but bullshit coming out of his mouth.

I'd argue the Death Note only gave him a feeling of authority that caused the mask to slip off. I'd argue that he was always this lost and was just waiting for an excuse to cut to the chase on 'justice'. To build his guillotine and finally start collecting the heads he wants to put on his mantle. He is the unfeeling, apathetic and cold freak that I've seen people assume L is. All the Death Note did was foster it.

Because while L tries to be a character for the necessary evil and gray area (i.e. Lind L. Tailor), Light is just evil. He is blindly writing names and filling pages the moment he realizes that the notebook works. He is placing a bomb in his house without thinking of the risks he'd place on his kid sister or his well-meaning parents. He is manipulating women and using them like tools. I simply cannot imagine a reality in canon where Light Yagami can love.

And obviously my point isn't to say "Lawlight wouldn't work in canon !! You can't ship them !!" The canon of a story isn't some kind of divine set of rules, literally have all the fun you want. Canon isn't real. This story isn't real. Literally make it all up and turn Light Yagami into a pining, simping mess. If anything, that's justice.

But it's interesting to think about. I used to ship Lawlight so intensely. But then years later, when I rewatched the anime, my feelings changed drastically.

Now I can't fucking stand Light Yagami, and I wish the same fate he places on all his victims. As ironic as that is.

If he was a real human being, and I had the notebook in my hands, his name would be one of the first that I would write. Call that a sign of my bias.

Now I can't imagine a single scenario where Light loves L.

I mean, I think L definitely would have feelings for Light. L has shown that he has the capability to care, despite how the writers tact on things like in the How to Read manga where his line about Light being his first ever friend could've been a 'coldly thought-out strategy.' (Eye roll)

Even in the scenario that L doesn't truly consider Light a friend, he shows that he cares for people even a little bit. When a member of the task force decides to quit and leave, L says he appreciates him and makes sure he and his family are well paid and protected. When he witnesses a member die, he's shaking in fear. He is capable of being vulnerable and caring for others. He just doesn't do it often. It's half a choice to protect himself, and half his unmasked autism. (And bro IS autistic i don't gotta defend that point)

L is capable of loving Light if L allowed himself to. If that "you're my first friend" line is sincere, he's opened his heart up to a monster. And the unfortunate thing is that there is no possible way Light is reciprocating. Light is the unfeeling, lying monster, uncapable of even concieving what love feels like. Light doesn't care for other people. His motives might be driven by a sense of justice, but that is just the flavor. That's just the color that his true intentions are thinly painted over. The true intention of power. The only thing that brings him joy is the authority he believes he has over humanity.

[communistkenobi]

i know next to nothing about queer theory, but i did exist online during (what felt like) huge exclusionary periods (ace discourse, bi/pan discourse, and transmedicalism were the big ones i remember)

i wonder if the first drive for sexuality being something unchangeable and intrinsic to you had something to do with those things, that queerness was fixed and definable, which meant that there were strict lines to be drawn about who was and wasn't gay/lesbian/bi which was only made worse by trans and nonbinary people who didn't exactly fit the previous molds

ill be doubly honest and say i only interacted w/ the community online at the time bc living in a homophobic country doesnt give you a lot of opportunities to meet up in person which means my view of the whole thing is skewed. im not sure if this makes any sense

What I’m about to say isn’t a diagnosis of the causes behind those discourses (partly because i don’t think there is a single reason animating those arguments), but like I guess in general a very baseline authority people fall back on is biology. Dominant reactionary discourses describe being gay trans etc as a lifestyle choice, as an active decision to participate in sexual and gendered degeneracy, and so a very appealing counter-claim to make is to point to biology - we are born this way, we can’t help who we are just as cishet people cannot help who they are, so you should accept us because we can’t change our identity. That rhetorical strategy requires/assumes a stable sexual and gendered ontology, a primary authority of the body that can’t be altered. While I believe this argument is fundamentally flawed, I think this is a straightforwardly easy argument to make re: sexual orientation. With trans and non-binary people this is more difficult because the foundational claim to our existence is that gender is mutable, is alterable, is subject to change (and also “I’ve felt this way since I was a child” is a pathological model of gender dysphoria that is enforced through medical and psychiatric institutions, not a reflection of lived reality for many, many trans and non-binary people). That doesn’t necessarily mean being transgender is a “choice” (although if someone said they woke up one day and chose to be transgender then that is a perfectly authentic justification), especially because “choice” in these discussions is often framed as individualised, private, detached from the social world - we are all just free agents making rational autonomous decisions in a field of equally rational choices, etc. which I think is a very impoverished way to understand choice and agency. Gender is an institution, it is a set of behaviours and performances that we choose to engage in in many different ways, and my use of the word ‘choice’ there does not imply these choices are free from coercion, violence, or harm. I chose to transition, I chose to engage in performances and behaviours that signal to the social world that I am a man - where that desire to make those choices arises from is another matter, and honestly not one I’m super interested in figuring out. Like if I discovered the ‘origin’ of my transness it wouldn’t make any difference to me. Similarly, how I choose to signal masculinity is very obviously bound up in dominant gendered assumptions. Trans people get accused of upholding gendered norms a lot, but that’s only because we aren’t taken seriously unless we do so! It is a survival mechanism that allows us to better navigate incredible amounts of violence and social exclusion, and arguing that our desire to do gender with our bodies comes from some grade-school assumption that dress = woman and pants = man or whatever is pure projection on the part of cis people. cis men think if they drink pink wine they’ll become gay - trans people are not the ones enforcing these norms here.

Getting a bit far afield here, so to loop back around - I think a stable state of sexual and gendered subjectivity or “being” is very appealing to a lot of people because it’s a way to dismiss reactionary fears and to justify to yourself that your oppression is entirely out of your control (which is true obviously!). Again I think these arguments are flawed because they buy into cisgendered and heteronormative ideas about gender and sexuality, that it is a biological burden imposed on us, that deviance is not a choice, that gender is done to us as opposed to being gendered agents, that we are similarly trapped in a sexual prison and should be accepted on those grounds, etc, but they have massive rhetorical power.  

As I’ve said before I’m a pretty staunch believer in Butler’s assertion that it is social all the way down, that gender is not discoverable in the body but rather the body is the medium through which gender is done in the world. Cis people choose to do gender just as much as trans people do! The only difference is that institutional architecture is set up to facilitate and make invisible (in very misogynistic and racist ways) those gendered practices. I think the stronger counter argument to make is that cis- and het-normativities are deeply violent and miserable status quos that need to be dismantled and discarded, that true choice can only emerge vis a vis gender and sexuality once those institutions are abolished, and that choice is actually a desirable end-goal - I want people to be able to participate in gender and sexuality as free agents, as non-coercive practices that are sites of great joy and wonder and pleasure. And this world is only possible if we accept that there is no gendered or sexual ontology, that it is all smoke and mirrors, that this current system’s primary function is to reproduce the nuclear family, to maintain the hereditary nature of class and wealth and race, to provide a standardised system of labour division, to maintain a distinction between the public and private labour realms, and so on.

So again like, is this what animates discourses about who gets to be counted as lgbtq/queer/whichever label you want to use? I don’t know. Probably some of it has to do with that. Queerness is in party a pathological category that is used to describe a failure to meaningfully reproduce cishet norms and practices, it is a set of relationships you have to legal and political and medical and administrative institutions (which is especially true for trans/non binary people). I like this definition because built into it is the possibility of change - I do not want trans people to be assimilated into cishet society, I want society to become transgender, thereby making transgender an irrelevant medical and legal category of person. Much like communism aims to abolish class by universalising the proletariat, I want to abolish gender by universalising the legal and political and medical mechanisms of transition. Only then will cisgenderism be abolished.

One thing I have been thinking a lot about is something a friend said to me, which is that human rights to do not begin with a definition of human - in the same way, I think trans rights do not require a definition of transgenderism. Just universalise and de-pathologise the mechanisms through which transition is expressed. Make it easy to change your name, remove all barriers to hormones and surgery, make everyone economically secure enough that they can change their wardrobe however they please,  desegregate all gendered spaces, de-gender clothing, remove gender markers from all documents, and so on and so on. Doing so would make both cisgender and transgender an irrelevant legal and political category and, again, allow choice to emerge as a meaningful mechanism of gender expression. 

This isn’t a comprehensive policy platform, there are many things I’m sure I haven’t thought through and a large portion of this discussion has to contend with the colonial and white supremacist nature of the western binary gender (bringing us into discussions of decolonial efforts, socialist efforts, and so on), but this is already getting long and I feel like I’m rambling. But like fundamentally I believe in a radical political imaginary that argues that all of this is subject to change and therefore any arguments about an essential gendered or sexual being is, at the end of the day, a reactionary description of gender and sexuality 

[dollypopup]

So, I wasn't gonna post anything about this, honestly, but because I was directly asked, here's my 2 cents!

First, I want to thank you for saying you trust me with this! I'm also on the ace-spectrum, and I'm a queer, bisexual woman, so I do have a lot of empathy with you and everyone else who was down for queer rep.

(Also, I do not have Anon turned on for my asks. I absolutely respect your privacy, but I've been harassed before, and if people want to come at me, they can do it with their whole chest. Similarly, if people want to come TO me, I'd love to be friends!) I want to start off with the fact that whilst I understand that you believe the article, I don't. Call it the skeptic in me, or my media literacy classes during my grad program or denial or what have you, but we live in a huge era of misinformation. A tabloid is not likely to be any kind of reliable source, and a random reddit user even less so. It's like making a balloon full of pudding and having a clown say it's helium. We're not going to know until the needle pops it. Surely, no one would ever lie on the internet.

That being said, as much as I yearned and wanted for Demi Colin to be confirmed, it's not set in stone, and so it couldn't have been taken away from us. Honestly, even being ace-spec, a lot of the HC of Demi!Colin started putting a bad taste in my mouth when I realized that a lot of this predominately cishet fandomw as doing it as a means of keeping Colin 'pure' for Penelope, and that struck me as incredibly acephobic. Sure, they were HCing him as one of us. . .but not because it fit with his character or provided a rich and interesting arc for him to explore, but more so that his identity was an extension of their hopes and wants for Penelope. It wasn't for him as a character, but for him as a prize. And that made me so very sad, so my dream of Demi!Colin died when I saw that happening so frequently. Us Demi and Ace folks deserved better than that, and we continue to.

Either way, I think you are absolutely allowed to feel your disappointment! This is a frustration safe zone! There was a lot of potential this season, especially for Colin, that I feel has been dropped. But even IF that article contains some truth (big, heavy IF). . .idk, I see it through the lens that lot of us Demi folks have had sex. Even no strings attached sex. I know I have. Was I disassociated from it for a lot of the time? Yeah. Was it satisfying? No. But did it happen? It did. I chose to take part in it, and they were experiences that helped me grow. And I am no less Demi for it! IF this article is true, instead of us freaking. . .I feel like it could tell us a lot about Colin's character.

He is a man who has had, largely, no good role models in his life. Not in this regard. Who does he have to guide him? Anthony? Literally said he should have taken Colin to brothels. Benedict? Hell, he had a threesome himself. Why wouldn't Colin be out here thinking 'This is what Men do, this is what my brothers do, why not?' Colin is young. He's 23 still trying to find himself. And the entire idea of 'oh, he's a nerd! no way he's had threesomes' lol, like nerds aren't kinky? Come on, I'm a nerd and I've done way more than people would assume I have. He was traveling for months, and I think this really isn't as huge a deal as we're making it out to be. I ship Polin exclusively, and I love the idea of them having their firsts together, but I'm also not angry otherwise. In my mind, he's still demi. Just like he'll always be ND, even if it isn't confirmed.

Sidenote, o want to touch on something that is somewhat unrelated to your post, but something I'm seeing a lot is the whole 'it's dehumanizing for him to watch two women!' or 'it's lesbian fetishization!'

from the very bottom of my heart, as a gay woman, people saying that can eat me. These are the same people who didn't care about any of our representation, before. They didn't care about having lesbian characters, didn't bring them up. Now that it affects their (largely) het pairing, and specifically Colin as a perfect prize in a pairing he has largely been denied a narrative within, we're talking pieces and pawns for their discontent? No, I refuse. There are legitimate criticisms that can and should take place about Bridgerton's lack of care toward wlw, and especially that our only representation may actually just be a lesbian performance for the sake of a threesome, but this is not a criticism on COLIN. It is a criticism on the PRODUCTION. Because if we had queer women in the series before, it wouldn't be an issue. However, I refuse to have my sexuality used as a 'ewwww gross! look what they're doing! isn't that soooo wrong?' gotcha moment by people who just don't like his character. If we're gonna have a conversation about it, we should have a conversation about it based purely on our actual desire to protect and care for queer women. Not using us as stepping stone soap boxes to prop up an argument.

Queer people are really done dirty in the Polin fandom, and this is proof of it. Demi!Colin is important to me, and he continues living on in my heart and my fics, and even if it turns out that he's fucked up and down the Amalfi coastline and watched live porn, that won't make him less demi to me, personally. Ace spec people's experience with sex is all unique, and honestly, watching seems very in line with Colin's character. I don't agree with peeps who call it weird or gross that he watches porn.

This is an incredibly puritanical fandom, and I find it more and more evident as I spend time in it. The entire 'suffering' 'penance' 'deserve her' 'grovel' train was already very clear in that regard, and then people only wanting Colin to be a virgin so he remained 'pure' and 'untarnished' (legit takes I had to read with my own eyeballs) for Penelope was so Catholic on main that it made me feel insane.

Us ace-spec peeps deserve to be and should have the space to be upset at any developments taking place! We also deserve to be free from people doing pseudo pearl clutching and hiding behind feminist and queer-friendly language to disguise that they're just upset that Colin is getting anything at all in his storyline that centers around him and his own discovery outside of Penelope. Even if he isn't a virgin, he can absolutely still be Demi, Anon! And I hope that brings you some comfort.

Am I a fan of the threesomes foursomes moresomes and live porn speculation? No, not particularly. Am I livid furious throwing up about it? Also no. This series has betrayed me and disappointed me in so many ways, but so has the fandom. I guess I'm accustomed to it, now. But I want to reiterate that we should not believe everything that is posted. Some rando on a reddit forum confirming a tabloid article does not investigative journalism and peer review and confirmed sources make.

But in the event that the season does disappoint and gives us some baffling storylines: this is where fanfic can be such a comfort. It's how a story lives on in perpetuity. I've written trans!Colin and queer!Colin and demi!Colin and virgin!Colin and bdsm!Colin and all sorts! We can give we everything we want. It's our playground and it's meant to be fun.

But over my dead body will I believe a Sun UK article lol

[mommyclaws]

look as a lesbian I don’t get why it’s so awful to just want lesbian spaces?? We as queer people all have different experiences and we can have smaller spaces while still embracing the whole community.

Lesbians go through different experiences than bi non-men do. That DOES NOT mean “we suffer more” or whatever because I hate the whole oppression olympics shit. We are not attracted to men neither sexually nor romantically, and that’s what makes us oppressed in this heteronormative world. We go through harassment, corrective rape, violence, and conversion “therapy” because we are homosexual. If my dad ever found out I was exclusively attracted to women I would get kicked out. Why is it suddenly so awful and “gatekeepy” to ask us to have our own spaces? We still have sapphic spaces! We even have bi spaces and pan spaces! Heck, I see gay non-women are allowed to have their own spaces!

It’s harmful to be treated as a monolith. I’m not attracted to men, and saying im an “exclusionist” for this is lesbophobic. I’m not evil for being exclusively attracted to non-men. I’m not evil for saying we should have our own spaces while we’d still have sapphic spaces!

Words have meanings, and the lesbian label is important to me, for all of its history and all of my struggles. I’m tired of us all being seen as “big mean lesbians who hate men” so so much. It reeks of misogyny to me.

I am heavily disappointed, and I ask everyone to please understand why bi lesbians are harmful.

I'm disappointed you've missed the point of my post. I was talking about the history of different lesbians and sapphics being excluded and hated in our community through generations. The conversation wasn't about bi lesbians specifically, it was about the butches, transfemmes, Pan/Bi, Aro/Ace, nonbinary, and countless other identities that were or ARE still considered not "valid" members of our community at point or another. I was pointing out how this "Bi Lesbian exclusion" is just a repeat of past mistakes and in the retrospective it is rooted in radfem/terf ideology that claims sapphics have to present and feel a certain way to be accepted. I didn’t say anywhere that being attracted to non-men is evil, I didn’t call anyone a “big mean lesbian”. You’re putting words into my mouth. That entire post was about defending sapphic’s right to attraction and expression.

Lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, non cis women and etc can all be oppressed, harassed, hate crimed, rejected by friends/family and other terrible things for their non heteronormative attraction.

Some people are failing to realize these exclusively “one identity spaces" they feel are being threatened don't actually exist in real life. Sure someone can have like, a "nonbinaries only" discord server or a meet up with friends who are all the the same identity. But a majority of queer spaces in real life? They don't have those rules because theres no way to separate queer identities neatly like that- There isn't a need to. You're going to find bisexuals and pansexuals and nonbinaries and trans people and all sorts of other identities at the same lesbian bar, the same sapphic support group, the same circle of friends.

So what exactly are these "spaces" that every other identity has and lesbians supposedly don't? Maybe ask why bisexuals, pansexuals, etc also being in a sapphic space feels so threatening to some in the first place? They have a right to be there as well. We are a community.

A label can be used and defined as whatever the owner of the label is comfortable with! "Lesbian" has always been an umbrella term. It can be a singular identity or it can describe any sapphic experience or it can do lots of things, labels have always been flexible in this way. Someone using the label differently than another person isn't harmful. It's expression.

[ijust-really-likedanandphil]

If you think it is impossible for dan and phil to be in a queerplatonic relationship, please take some time to learn about what a qpr actually is (or just unfollow me).

Things to know:

you don't need to be aro or ace (or on either spectrum) to be in a qpr

anyone can be in a qpr regardless of gender, sexuality, or orientation

a qpr is defined by whoever is in it

Liking/enjoying sex or romance is not the same thing as feeling that type of attraction (ace people can have sex, aro people can be in romantic relationships)

Actions are not inherently romantic. They can be interpreted as such depending on the relationship between people, but ultimately, the romantic aspect of an action is due to a person's interpretation or intentions

Amatonormativity is the assumption that everybody prospers in an exclusive romantic relationship.

To undo amatonormativity, you've got to understand that no type of relationship is superior to another. Romance is not "more" than friendship, unless defined as such by an individual.

Queerplatonic is whatever the fuck you want it to be. Sex, marriage, kids, living together, none of those, some of those, all of those, whatever. Depends on the people. It is the "do whatever you want forever" option. Romantic relationships can be like this, but the idea is that they come with societal norms that we are expected to follow — qprs, until amatonormativity is uncommon, are an escape from that.

The fact that you might not want a queerplatonic relationship does not mean no one else does. That's like saying you don't want to be in a heterosexual relationship, so how could anyone else want one?

On the topic of Dan and Phil specifically:

I am not claiming to know if they are or aren't in xyz kind of relationship. That's the whole point

One of the main messages of "We are in a relationship" is that you don't know everything, even if you do truly know a lot.

You cannot know something about someone's relationship until they tell you, just as you cannot know someone's sexuality or gender until they come out to you.

Again, I am not suggesting that they are in either a qpr or a romantic relationship. I am clarifying that we do not know for sure. We can be 99% sure (I personally would not have that kind of confidence in my knowledge of strangers' relationships lol), but you can never know til they tell you.

Even then, they could be lying or leaving out parts of the truth (rightfully so). You don't have the right to that information, which I'm sure most of us agree on

Them respectively liking sex does not mean they fuck. Honestly, it's none of our business what they do, but there are other ways to have sex than with the person you're living with. Arrangements can be made. Again, they very well could. Not really our business though

The "hints" that DnP may be dropping could be real. They could be exactly what a lot of people think they are. It could also be DnP fucking with you, they could also just... not be hints. They're just people. They aren't characters being written for your consumption. The thing about hints is that they aren't explicit and therefore could be misleading, especially when so many people want hints (confirmation bias)

The whole point is!!!!!! we don't know!!!!!! it's fine to think they're cute and ship them but to pretend to know them well enough is crossing a line. Write your fanfic, make your fanart, but please stop pushing the idea onto other people that you either Know they're fucking + in a romantic relationship or you're just an idiot. 'Cause the world is not that simple, there are not just two answers. You're hurting aspec people with some of the rhetoric you use, so let's try to unlearn some stuff

Final disclaimer: if DnP ever come out and clarify that they are in a romantic relationship, spill all the beans, etc then that's cool, whatever! But I won't claim to have "known" that information before they gave it to me, just like I never claimed to have "known" someone was gay before they came out. It's disrespectful

[lothli]

About Tumblr, My Writing, and Finding Home

This is a personal post unrelated to news about my writings, and as such, is quite possibly dreary and uninteresting. I do apologize. As a courtesy, I've included a Keep Reading.

I spent around a month on Tumblr, from the end of September to the start of October, and I've observed many interesting posts from many people. I've also learned new things, such as what a whump is and other such writblr-exclusive terms.

But in a way, the more I learn, the more I understand the differences between myself and the wider community.

Most of the time, I do not write romance, especially regarding shipping of existing characters. I understand that this is quite an important part of the Tumblr community, what with the "antis" and the "pro-shippers" all running amok. For the record, I still consider myself a pro-shipper; what other writers wish to write is none of my business. It's just something I find little interest in doing.

I am a queer writer, but I feel like my work is not "queer" in the same way as many other very talented queer writers have. This kind of leans into the lack of romance; for my original characters, you'll never know if they're gay or ace or bi or het, simply because it's just not something I ever have them think about.

I find myself lost, unable to find a real home for my original works. Tumblr and Ao3 are suitable places for An Unmaking to live, and I am glad that the folks here seem to enjoy them somewhat. However, long posts don't seem to be in vogue on Tumblr, which makes some sense. This is a blogging site, not a writing site.

My one-shots fit in alright, but I also have short stories that simply don't fit here. Serialization is something I find great difficulty with on Tumblr; it's why I've given up posting An Unmaking here.

Ao3 and FF.net are both fan-fiction-dominated pages. Sure, I could probably post original works on both, but it doesn't feel quite right. It's not a home.

I've looked into other websites, but Wattpad seems unappealing in general, and I've never heard anyone say good things about the site outside of nostalgia.

RoyalRoad makes sense, but the demographics feel strange as well. I am not a LitRPG or Portal Fantasy writer, and the works feel pretty skewed toward a straight male-leaning audience. This isn't criticism; it's simply that I am not straight or male. In the same way that I do not fit in Tumblr's shipping and romance, I do not fit in RoyalRoad's power fantasies.

I'm not someone who chases stats or engagement. I simply want a place where my original works feel at home, where it feels like my work is something that belongs, instead of a strange hanger-off that does not quite fit in with the rest.

For my Secret History readers, an analogy: A creature of Winter and Sky is looking to settle. But the first is a place that is too full of yearning, too dappled for it to truly rest. The next is warm and comforting but also sharp in a way it is not. From place to place, it flits, looking for somewhere to make its home but never truly finding it.

If you've read this far, thank you for indulging in a painfully conspicuous and inexperienced outsider in her ramblings. If you have any suggestions for where my works may roost, please let me know in all the myriad of ways that Tumblr lets you interact with me. Frankly, I've probably missed some. Maybe there's some tag that fits me that I'm unaware of, too.

None of this will affect An Unmaking, not that I've been consistent with its upload schedule. Thank you for reading.

-- Lothli

[idyllic-affections]

i, for one, would love to hear your queer harbinger hcs! my personal favourite is transmasc wanderer (its practically canon to me)

side note, im not sure if ill be sending alot of asks, but can i be 🐌 anon?

YAY omg... okay i will gladly share my queer harbinger hcs because i have a hard time believing that any of those people are both cis and het! and yes of course... hello 🐌 anon <3 also @zeldadou, i know you were also interested in seeing my hcs!

this doesn't include all the harbingers. as of right now, these are just my major and more detailed lgbt+ headcanons. slight nsfw but not really? just brief discussions of sexual attraction and how it relates to the harbingers' identities.

dottore never paid any thought to his identity, since it didn't benefit or affect him at all (especially back in his akademiya days), but he is very very much attracted exclusively to men in my brain. yeah he went on a date with a girl, but... you know. he also murdered her. so. yeah... also he's demisexual; he just does not feel any sexual desire unless it is directed towards someone he deeply cares about and has a strong bond with. he and pantalone are married, trust me fr /j /lh

columbina is genderless (she/it pronoun user) and lesbian. her angel motifs make me feel like it has no gender at all. after all... angels are eldritch. demons are reflections of human sin, but angels? they were never human. that is how i, as a writer, see the differences between angels and demons. so columbina, in my silly little brain, is genderless. or agender. or voidgender/gendervoid. who knows? but it has not a single ounce of gender in her body.

arlecchino is non-binary & lesbian. she likes women. who can blame her tbh.... she also has no pronoun preference and just presents in a more masc way to her underlings & her orphans (hence why they call her father, and why her underlings call her lord rather than lady if i recall correctly. also yes i am a short hair arlecchino enthusiast).

scara is transmasc & asexual. i know, i'm bold for saying that he's ace LMAO but fr, as of right now, i see him as asexual. i don't know why. i don't have a real reason for this one. however, i can explain him being trans--ei modeled him after herself, so... yeah. you guys see where i'm going with that one? yeahh he's transmasc i just know it 💥💥💥

pantalone is transmasc, demisexual, & demiromantic. why is he transmasc? i don't know. i don't have a real reason. i just feel it in my heart! his gender presentation is very androgynous and can be either masc or fem leaning--he's just secure in his identity like that yknow.... but i can explain why he is demi. being the richest man in teyvat, he obviously has to worry about being used for his mora. his attraction to people he doesn't have a very deep conmection with has generally faded since he's gotten to where he is in life.

childe is bisexual, but he doesn't 100% realize it yet! he's still in the closet. all his coworkers can tell, though. they know.

[aroaceconfessions]

So I have come to the conclusion that I am probably both somewhere on both the aro spectrum and the ace spectrum, but I am not quite sure where I fall with the microlabels, because I know I don’t fit the standard “no attraction at all” take either.

When it comes to romance, I am not sure if I am greyromantic, demiromantic, or cupioromantic. I know I want the dedicated, exclusive emotional connection that romantic relationships entail, and I do like the idea of some of the fluffier parts of a romantic relationship (especially cuddling and going out to eat together) but I only become open to the idea of it with someone after I consider them a friend (not sure if that counts as the “close emotional connection” though. I only consider like 5 people friends, so maybe it does.) I am much more open to expressing romantic interest in fictional characters, and have only considered 1 irl person for this, but they are taken so I don’t entertain it.

Sexual attraction is similar for me. I am not sure if I am demi or greysexual. I can’t bring myself to even consider sex with someone unless I consider them a close friend, and most the time that boils down to an “if they offered I wouldn’t say no” because the physical sensation is enjoyable and it’s a way to bond more. However I do feel like there is an exception for that person I mentioned previously as being willing to have a romantic relationship with. With them, if I didn’t know they were already taken, I might be willing to see if they were interested as well.

Submitted February 7, 2023

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 11 of Gideon the Ninth

Gideon really does not know how to say no to attractive women, does she? I'm still on the fence about whether or not Corona is going to turn out to be evil too, but Muir did almost literally name her "Cain", so I guess that settles that

There's actually something interesting here (to me, anyway), because although Gideon just cannot shut up about Corona being hot the entire chapter, except during the swordfight, there's something different about how this is portrayed here, that I don't really see much, or maybe at all? Forgive me, I've just been thinking a lot lately about attraction, and how you write it, because it's a day that ends in y and I have a story that's trying to be written and I keep going back to my Homestuck-fanfic-writing experience, and yeah

Normally when I see stuff like this, it's more explicitly sexual, or more explicitly romantic, there are references to things like people's bodies, to physiological reactions like butterflies, or being warm, or what have you, and I can't relate, depending on where exactly it falls on the sexual/romantic spectrum I come away with something in the range between "that sounds like an interesting experience, let me try to imagine it" and "rolling my eyes real hard right now" and "people like stuff like that? how curious, I must take notes", but this here, and also with Dulcinea in the last chapter, doesn't seem to fall into this category at all, it's all very aesthetic, about the general picture/vibes the person gives off, about the sound of their voice, about smiles and laughter, and so I can say, yes, I feel you, I get this experience you're having. I don't think it's a male gaze thing, because I see the same stuff happening in the female-dominated fanfiction world (most of the time there, actually, although certainly not exclusively), and I also really don't think it's intended to be an ace thing, because I'm pretty sure that no one in this book is intended to be ace, least of all Gideon. I don't know, though, maybe this will change later and it will become the same old same old. I noticed this today, because immediately after I finished reading the chapter, I checked my email and there was an AO3 notification for a fanfic I'm following, and I went and read the latest chapter, and the difference was stark

Anyway

I note now that Corona initially said she had organized matches for all the cavaliers, but having reached the end of the chapter, I see that we are missing the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth cavaliers, but Corona did not go off in search of them. Of those we've so far only met Protesilaus, and the Sixth and the Eighth have not yet appeared as named characters, although by process of elimination we can conclude that one of them must be the guy with the missing middle finger who appeared with knife-face earlier

I do feel for Jeannemary, she's only just arrived at Lyctor Camp and already her (not) dad is going around telling everyone embarrassing stories about things she did as a toddler, if this is the kind of thing Harrow was afraid of, I guess I can see why

Please, Gideon, do not write down Magnus's dad jokes for later use, you're so much funnier than that

Yeah, no comment

Naberius seems very unpleasant, but I can see why he's upset if the match was supposed to end when he disarmed Gideon. A little strange that Corona didn't call it at that point, tbh

I have like, less than zero understanding of what this means. Gideon seems to know what it means, but she is not telling

Magnus's comments about Jeannemary's last name seem to indicate that last names are hereditary, but this is clearly not the case given that Harrow's last name does not match either of her parents', and also the pronunciation guide seems to be saying that they aren't hereditary. I am confuse

I wonder what Harrow is up to? I guess this room is going to turn out to be Important

[twinsoftriumph]

(You do not need to answer this ask if you're not comfortable with it)

I am someone who followed you before you went on that huge hiatus back in 2020, I was a huge fan of your art because I loved the twins A Lot (still do to an extent), and your art style and interpretation of them was quite literally perfect. However, said hiatus started right as some individuals in skyblr were called out for holding some shitty opinions about queer discourse (Panphobia and aspec-exclusionism in specific) and these individuals were people you also associated it.

I do not want to seem entitled to know about this information, and I absolutely do not want to cause drama (which is why I'm sending an ask instead of making a post). It's just that finding out that you associated with these people and kept silent about it as they were called out for their harmful views was just...dissappointing.

I reiterate you do not need to answer this ask if you dont want to — I just want to know if you do not hold these same views or associate with people who do? At least as an aspec person I do not feel comfortable with following or interacting with someone who does, but also I am just a stranger on the internet 👍

Regardless of anything, I hope you have a good day/night

hope you don't mind me putting this under a read more since i wanted to give a decently thorough answer to this!

hello! i appreciate you sending an ask about this, and i don't have a problem with answering it. (also, thank you for enjoying my art!)

i will say up front that no, i am not any sort of exclusionist. i want to make this extremely clear right off the bat. i myself am actually on the ace spectrum, if it's any sort of comfort! but i've literally only ever explicitly stated this to like. two people. so i wouldn't fault you for not knowing (also i genuinely don't remember anything about ace exclusion stuff being part of the discourse?)

if you're asking for clarification on why my inactivity started around the same time as the discourse, it was for mental health reasons unrelated to the blog. i won't get into specifics but it involved stuff like dropping out and having to go to therapy (doing better now though). this was something that was building up for a while and i genuinely have no idea how i managed the amount of activity i did when first starting the blog LMAO. i was also fed up with some sky-specific problems.

i know the point of your ask is to ask about my own views, but if it's of any interest to you, in 2021, the main person involved publicly and privately apologized and said she doesn't hold her old views. thus, OP of the blocklist deleted it.

i do understand that at the very least, some affirmation for my mutuals, followers, friends and general audience at the time would have been valued; i do apologize for not saying anything at the time! i hope my words now can at least ease any feelings of uncertainty anyone may have toward me, but it's very much up to the individual.

ultimately, i do not find value in making assumptions about one's label, including the circumstances in which it was chosen, an individual's feelings toward their own label, that sort of thing! so again, i am not an exclusionist, and i want my blog to be a safe space. i've been hoping to clarify this but wasn't sure when or how i should do it, so i hope this suffices. you have a good one as well :)

[tallysgreatestfan]

Thanks for formulating what I am thinking. If you need more proof that TERFs are the enemy, go on any of their blogs and look at the gender and orientation of who they are harassing and who their "activism" targets. You will find out that it's almost exclusively women (by far not limited to trans women) and the only men they ever harm in 99,9% of cases are trans men.

They claim they want to harm men and take their power away, but if you actually look at what they're doing and not just their propaganda, you will see that this is only a pretense to harm other women they perceive as "tainted by men" in any way (trans women obviously, but also bi/pan women, aro/ace women, neurodivergent and disabled women, women of color, or really just anyone who does not fulfill their oh so feminist but actually patriarchal femininity standards*). Because unlike men, these women are not defended by the current system, so they can target them without risk and feel powerful.

And don't think you are save just because you are a cis white abled neurotypical lesbian or straight woman. They will target you too as soon as you step out of line. If you don't want to protect trans people out of human decency, at least do it out of self-preservation.

Also look at the huge number of times where TERFs collaborated with fascists. And understand that even if they don't, they have a huge role in bringing fascist ideology into leftist spaces, and in making sure the queer community and feminists both can't act as a united front and at their full strength.

Maybe it is just because I am bi ("tainted by men", "unpure", "feminism traitor") and autistic ("too retarded to have an own identity" "mind like a child") and so was targeted by TERFs before, but you really need to learn their dogwhistles and understand that they are not on your side. When they say "fuck all men" they don't mean taking power away from cis men, they mean hurting minority men and all women who they can justify as being tainted by men. If they say "don't date men" they don't mean that dating men is really dangerous and you need to protect yourself, they mean that if you are attracted to men you are doomed to be abused and its your fault.

*btw a common tactic they love to use and will surely employ as reaction to this too is to bring up the rare minority woman they managed to brainwash into their ideology as a proof that no, actually they are not bigoted against that specific identity. Respecting a specific minority as long as they agree with everything they say and denounce their minority traits is not accepting them. Don't listen to what they say, listen to their actions.

garden variety conservative transphobia is going to get worse but radical feminism is also going to get worse. if youre a cis women terfs are going to try to recruit you and make you believe that the reason your rights are at stake is because of trans people. they're going to tell you that all men are your violent oppressors and they're going to include trans women in that category. they're gonna tell you about women who are gender traitors and joined the enemy and they're going to point to trans men. don't believe them. trans people are not your enemy, we have no power over you, and we desperately need your support and your solidarity.

be aware of radfem pipelines and dog whistles too. be skeptical of anyone that talks about the divine feminine or correlates birthing, menstruating, or female reproductive organs with womanhood. be especially skeptical of people who use those biological things as reasons to why women are more spiritual, or more in tune with nature, or just that they're better than men (read: anyone they decide is a man)

radical feminism is an expected reactionary outcome from cis women who are being oppressed by conservatives, especially when all they practice is ciscentric, liberal, white feminism. they feel the need to be radicalized but don't have the experience and information to pinpoint the true source of their suffering. trans people are not your enemy, AMAB people are not your enemy, anyone who identifies as a man is not your enemy. we're all being crushed under the same stone

[19thperson]

19th's Steam Next Fest Impressions Oct 2024 Edition - Day 6

Day 1/Day 2/Day 3/Day 4/Day 5

Is This Game Trying To Kill Me?

A game that's entirely the escape room parts of the first third of Inscryption. You wake up in a mysterious cabin with a computer in front of you. the computer runs a game about exploring a castle. Doing things in the cabin will effect the game and vice versa. Solve puzzles and try to escape.

It's fine.

It does want it wants to do but what it wants to do doesn't feel too impressive. I could see ahead of time where things were going.

Videos Game

All-in Abyss: Judge the Fake

In Japan's new "Designated Gambling District," 99% of the populace lives in poverty while 1% live like kings. In this dire city, the genius gambler Asuha enters to make her riches and defeat the 5 undefeated witches.

I'm a sucker for gambling manga so as long as this was functional this would click, but I have some complaints.

The aforementioned witches all have different means of cheating, and in-between the big matches, you have to investigate around the city to find some clue as to what their trick is and figure out a counter-strategy. The problem is the investigation is so linear that it just feels like padding between the poker.

It doesn't help that the characters are all kinda one note right now. (I was gonna say they were kinda flat but that isn't true huehuehuehue)

(It is a boob joke)(Kill me)

The poker itself is kinda fun. It has two systems complicating things: the "skill" system lets you alter the cards or your opponent's behavior. The skill "make em chase" is a taunt that keeps the opponent from folding, for example, while "ace in the hole" is "once 4 community cards have been dealt, you get to choose the 5th one". They're balanced by luck being a spendable resource. The 2nd system is a multiplier system. Every time someone raises, a multiplier on the final payout goes up, and it doesn't reset until someone goes to showdown, so you can't just endlessly fold. Hopefully future bosses up the stakes.

the problems: the poker AI for the non witch boss battles kinda sucks. and the big boss battles give you enough in the tank that you can just fold repeatedly until you get an ideal hand, and then use the skill to force a showdown.

Lastly it has dangan-ronpa-esque execution scenes, although not animated, just a CG with description, and the first witch's ironic death, the witch of sweets is force fed to death in blatant feeder fetish art.

Overall more Kakegurui than Kaiji.

Project Silverfish

Small Scale Scalie Stalker.

You choose a backstory, are dumped into some sort of exclusion zone, and take missions from various factions with a reputation system.

Not sure about the gunplay because I spent my short playtime avoiding fights.

Has Stalker's system of multiple smaller maps connected by loading zones but fewer of them. I don't know if they're similarly sized. I did not get far in my one attempt at Stalker years ago.

While I am fine with a map that doesn't give you waypoints or player markers, I would like a compass.

It's still in alpha and you can feel it. And I'm already not the best judge of immersive sims. But it seems to be a functional one I like that it has a cooking system.

Escape Everlit

Sci-fi mystery adventure game. Four people, who all visited the Everlit Building on the same day, wake up in an isolated island with little memory of how they got there. They discover technology that seems impossible in the house. For whatever reason, their dreams send them back in time, to the day of a violent tragedy on a train station

I'll address the elephant in the room first. Game uses a lot of AI art it seems. Some of the more consistent AI art but you can still see the seams. Would not be surprised to hear the translation was similar. It's got a very flat cadence, everyone talking like everyone else in plain terms. Which is sad because I do like some of what's going on here. Of course that's also because I am a sucker for this kind of mystery.

Promise with really big drawbacks. Not sure what to do with this one.

Glitch Dungeon Crystal

The world is falling into glitched corruption. You play as a tiny babushka who doesn't really know what's going on but has just discovered this place and it's filthy. Use your broom to clean up this place and maybe save the world.

A puzzle platformer. Being an old grandma your jump isn't worth writing home about, so you have to use a limited number of spells as well as NPC behaviors to get around. Some spells include one that lets you coyote-style walk off a ledge and keep going, as if there was still ground beneath you, another lets you high jump and float downward, another lets you climb walls, and one lets you go through enemies. I assume they'll be more in the full game. NPC behaviors include fishing frogs that pull you up from their lines and insects that will dig down holes, for some examples.

On one hand I do like the freedom of movement all these systems give you. It feels like there's very little aside from the limits to your own ingenuity to go OOB or at least reach seemingly unintended places. The problems so far is that the game isn't rewarding me for doing so yet, and that movement often requires mid-jump spell switching, which is easy to screw up, but also adds a bit of fun execution to the mix.

Becrowned

I didn't finish this one, not because it was too scary but because poor health item management led to me being painted in a corner. That isn't to say it isn't scary. It does succeed at that. Got a good jumps and some dread out of me.

It is kind of defused when you die and your character ragdolls. Seeing him flail kinda robs the moment of its tension.

It cribs very liberally from Silent Hill 2 but if I were to knock it for that I'd have to knock like a good 80% of the indie survival horror scene.

The demo takes place in a Fucked Up Asylum, but thankfully it's not going straight for "oooh scary crazy people." It's not a huge upgrade but it's going for something more personal than that.

Biggest complaint is that enemy spawns don't reset after you leave the room. You run away from the enemy, enter a door, do whatever you planned to do in said room, step out again and oops they're right there taking a swing at you.

[vencyrus]

i really needed to vent so heres a dumb diary entry about being aro and potentially also being ace but i identify as pan as well as a list of times ive cried in the past 10 years. (unfortunately a very short list) read it or dont, but thanks for listening if you do!

man honestly i didn't know there were still things to find out about myself at 26. thought i was just with my road to self discovery. panromantic/pansexual just felt like it fit.

I spent a huge chunk of my early 20s dating and sleeping around hoping to kind of find my forever person. felt like that was my driving force the whole time, what got me out of bed and helped me go through the motions everyday.

all my friends eventually got partnered up and i saw less and less and less of them. it got lonelier and lonelier as everyone faded away. we like to say we will surely still have time for each other, keep in touch, hang out. those are just pleasantries. we all know them to be lies; we try anyway. eventually it starts to fade until its gone. time to try to settle down. it should probably be my turn for once.

decided to be a bit more exclusive for the past two years and thought i found the one for me a few times. i loved them and they loved me but eventually they decided that i was not enough. to no fault of their own. i was just not able to love them in a way that they deserved.

i never had a serious relationship until i was 24. focused too hard on academics and just partying. maybe if i had actually dated while i was in high school, maybe middle school, i would have had this realization sooner. instead i spent years pining over the idea of spending my life with someone. to love and to be loved. to spend the rest of my life devoted. i want to give someone my everything but i just find myself so incapable of feeling that intensely about someone no matter how much i feel for them.

maybe im not fully aromantic. otherwise i wouldn't have these fantasies in my head. maybe i am and what i feel is resentment. i dont know if i am truly incapable of romantic love. maybe i am, maybe there is a bit of a spark just waiting to be ignited. i dont know. this is all just a foreign concept for me.

i do know one thing for sure. i cannot love someone in a way that they deserve. it wasnt fair to my previous partners and it wouldn't be fair to future partners to treat them as guinea pigs to my feelings.

even now, the random hookups have felt dull now that ive given up the prospect of dating. i put my time into my craft now that i have all this free time and it does serve as a nice distraction to my feelings but they still swing by and hit me like a truck.

i dont cry often. ive cried in high school a total of 4 times. after that, thrice. once now, in my adulthood, when i realized how lonely i am destined to be.

anyway! time to list the times i've cried.

High School

when my best friend, nessa, started dating someone i had a crush on. i didn't actually like them. i just liked to pick a crush every now and then so the girls had someone to tease me about. so i could share cute interactions i had to illicit reactions. it added to the camaraderie but oh boy was i quite the liar. i knew nessa since sophomore year. we instantly clicked. i had never had a friendship quite that strong and i still havent to this day. i didnt actually have a crush on AJ. but i was utterly crushed by the betrayal

when i got hit by a car like a week after the above betrayal happened. i laugh about it now but man was i a wreck. i biked to school everyday. i loved riding my bike. and i loved my bike. that thing got me through a lot and got me everywhere i needed to be. i stick to the sidewalks always. ill use the bike lanes when necessary. on the way to school there is a long stretch of road surrounded with just grass. the bike lanes were sizeable enough to not worry about it. of course, thats not gonna stop people from swerving into the bike lane for fun. let alone the police in their stupid cop cars. had the gall to ask me if i was ok and blame me for swerving into the road. absolutely not. i take this route everyday, i get my sleep, and i stay safe. i was a good kid on a decline but that might have been my turning point. i still hold a distrust towards law enforcement but i feel like thats normal as a POC. but more regrettably, i have never ridden a bike since that incident.

when my brother moved away. short and simple. i feel like this doesn't warrant an explanation. we're twins! unfortunately on very very different paths. it would be insane for me not to cry. he was more in tune with his emotions and i kept mine bottled up and let them out when i cant keep them contained anymore; always when im alone and there wasnt anyone to witness. despite that, he was definitely the stronger of the two of us. he handled his emotions in a healthy way and i let it fester and ruin me and it became obvious to everyone around me. so, considering this would be the last time we see each other in so long, i had to show him i would be okay in the only way i could figure out how; by not being okay in the moment.

off to college. saying goodbye to my mom never really felt real. had a nice little trip with her before leaving then bawled my eyes out at the airport. there are a total of 3 substantial people who have actually seen me cry. mom, brother, and maya. maya doesn't count as much as the rest. i just exploded in class after getting hit by a car, which by the way, yeah, i did in fact still go to class after getting knocked into a massive mud puddle lol.

College

My dog died. i was overseas and i couldn't see him. i couldn't be there for him. that was my little buddy who was there for me when i was in need and i couldn't return the favor. one of my biggest regrets in life. i would never have left if i knew what was to come. that really is the worst thing about living on the islands. we had one surgical vet and if he was out on vacation, you were just out of luck. i mean, i cant blame the doc that much. even if the vet was actually on the island, doubt we could have been able to afford it. he lived a short life but i like to think that we gave him a longer life than he would have on the streets. i still remember the day we got him. my mom said she had a surprise for me. she drove me to a car yard and we spent 30 minutes just looking under the cars. i didnt know what she wanted me to look for but the moment i saw him, i loved him. that was my boy. my sweet sweet boy. that was my Donut.

One sentence for this cuz i gotta move on from this post. Visited my brother in Texas for his air force graduation. Reunion so short and separation once more.

The stupid Bergenfield State fair. I actually don't want to talk about this cuz it pisses me off more than makes me sad. Mental health was at an all time low and i just basically collapsed in the walgreens candy aisle and bawled my eyes out at 2AM.

[fierceawakening]

The problem I have with what you’re saying is… how do you want this to work exactly? Many trans women are abused by cis men. Do you want to send them to a men’s shelter or do you want to set up trans specific shelters?

If you want to send them to a men’s shelter, I don’t think you’re really considering their safety. Trans women are often unsafe in spaces with men. I wish it wasn’t so but it is.

If you want to send them to their own segregated little spot, I think you run into the same problem I ran into when I wanted to exclude asexual people from queer spaces: where is this very specific microspace, who’s building it, how does it work, and how do we make sure the people who need it have access to it?

If we’re not willing to wrestle with those questions and consider that we may very well not be able to make that thing, then again… to me, that reveals that the exclusion isn’t about looking at what’s safest and building from there, it’s about prioritizing our own feelings of safety over marginalized groups.

Is it possible I’m wrong? I mean, I don’t think I am, but I could be.

But I find myself suspecting that if you start to venture out into openly trans inclusive spaces, you’ll experience what I did when I went to an awards ceremony I didn’t expect to be ace-inclusive.

That is, I think the space will feel pretty normal and non threatening, and the trans women’s presence might startle or surprise you at first, but eventually you’ll just be like I was.

Like “I’m not sure I get this part of the event, but it’s no weirder to me than the gay men doing their thing ten minutes ago. This is… this is… fine? I’m kind of embarrassed I thought it wouldn’t be.”

People keep searching for ways to argue that JK Rowling has always been a horrible person deep down as a way of explaining her recent behaviour.

But here's the thing: that's probably not true at all.

Pretending it is discounts the harsher, scarier truth: that even decent, well-meaning people can be radicalised by dangerous, hateful, predatory groups, and given enough time they can become truly hideous versions of their former selves.

It can happen to me. It can happen to you. It can happen to any of us, given the right mix of circumstances. And over the past few years, we've seen it happen to one of the most famous children's authors of our age.

Nobody is immune.