#(it...does not necessarily make it less gay)

[ostermad-blog]

So, Queer is a political identity formed in opposition to a cultural default (cisheterosexuality). We created Queer as a unifying label as part of an organizing strategy to demand our rights and recognition in the face of larger structural forces that seek and sought to erase and eliminate us and the challenge to those forces we embody.

In a world where that default does not exist, where those structural/cultural forces are not in effect, both cishet and LGBT+ people still exist, but the latter group are not Queer.

This construction of Queerness is similar to black vs Black. Little b black is a color that skin can be. Capital B Black is a racialized political category formed in opposition to a presumed default of whiteness. In a world without white supremacy, black people exist but are not Black.

Dream Askew, a ttrpg by Avery Alder, is a Queer game because your community is expressly marginalized and exists on the fringes of a 'normal' society. Arguably almost all Belonging Outside Belonging games are Queer, due to the depicted communities existing on the margins of and in opposition to a larger, dominant cultural mode (this includes Dream Apart, a game about shtetl Jews living on the fringe of goyish society).

D&D is not, and has never been a Queer game. The existence of gay, lesbian, trans, ace, etc. characters within a text does not make it Queer unless the systemic force of cisheterosexism also exists. To play Queer within D&D is to find an identity at odds with and marginalized by the structures and assumptions of the game world - the followers of a faith that believes there should only be one God and are thus discriminated against and ridiculed for their obvious foolishness, or a movement that rejects the use of magic in all its forms.

Stardew Valley is also not a Queer game. You can be gay in it, but a gay relationship functions exactly the same as a straight one. I like Stardew Valley a great deal. Playing as a farm dyke is a ton of fun. But the game is not Queer.

Deadly Weapons by Adira Slattery is a Queer ttrpg. You play a girl, whether your character knows it or not, and you are endlessly entangled (both romantically and oppositionally) to demons the rest of the world cannot engage with and refuses to acknowledge are real.

To put this another way, games offering dark skin tones and weaves don't automatically allow the player to play Black. If Elden Ring let me add top surgery scars or choose my character's genitals and secondary sexual characteristics separately, my character would not be Queer.

I can play gay or trans on D&D all I want, and that does not make it a Queer game, no matter how welcoming WOTC is. Hell, one of my ttrpgs is a trans-themed magic school game, and it is arguably not a Queer game either.

I understand and appreciate your work to make Queer/not Queer less binaristic, but in doing so you've conflated LGBT+ identities with being Queer which, while absolutely true in the real world, is not necessarily true in our fictional game worlds. I think there's a lot of joy and wish-fulfillment in playing LGBT+ characters in worlds where they are not marginalized for their identity, in dreaming up futures in which we are fully normalized and assimilated into the mainstream. Many of the games I run do this. But that normalization, where LGBT+-ness is commonplace, makes these games not Queer.

“This RPG is a queer game!” “No it’s not!”

Have you seen these kinds of arguments on the webz? So have I! And I think this is an issue of people arguing without a common baseline of terminology. So let’s see if I can help out with that.

Like all sorts of other Queer Nonsense™️, how queer a game is isn’t a binary, it’s a spectrum! In this case a spectrum corresponding to the NPC attitudes from 3rd Edition D&D.

Queer-Hostile: this game explicitly does not want you to tell queer stories. It hates you for who you are. Do not tell this game you’re queer!

Queer-Unfriendly: this game doesn’t actively hate you for being queer, most likely because it doesn’t acknowledge the existence of queerness in any way, but might make you uncomfortable in general by just being too conservative and weird about other stuff like race and gender equality. If you tell this game you’re queer, it will say “if you must, I guess.”

Queer-Indifferent: this game probably won’t acknowledge queer identities in any way, but not in any kind of malicious way. It genuinely doesn’t care. If you tell this game you’re queer, it will say “okay.”

Queer-Friendly: while not explicitly about queerness, the general vibe and acknowledgment of queer identities will most likely make you feel welcome, and the writers probably genuinely want you to enjoy yourself! If you tell this game you’re queer, it will say “yay!”

Queer-Helpful: this game is about queer narratives. Don’t like it? Tough! This game will tell you you’re queer.

Hope this helps. ☺️

[introspectivememories]

everyday i wake up and i think about carlos reyes anc his relationship with his sexuality and his parents. what do you mean he came out to them when he was 17 and he's still waiting for them to say something? what do you mean he's still waiting?? what do you mean his father didn't want him to be a cop because he thought carlos was too soft? what do you mean he came out at 17, scared and nervous, and they smiled and told him it was okay only to turn around and spend the next, what, decade?, never talking about it?????

[thesporkidentity]

okay so disclaimer about differing social mores of the time and intimate friendships and modes of expression meaning that straight men's interactions were often different than the average straight dudes of today, i haven't read up on the author but the subtext is most likely unintentional blah blah etc etc

but

y'all. i have lost count of the times i've stopped in my reading to be like. bunny, sweetie, that's gay. dude has it baaaaaaad for raffles

I see his indolent, athletic figure; his pale, sharp, clean-shaven features; his curly black hair; his strong, unscrupulous mouth. And again I feel the clear beam of his wonderful eye, cold and luminous as a star...

it's the UNSCRUPULOUS mouth that gets me. that's the most (probably unintentionally) homoerotic thing i've read since hemingway's description of f. scott fitzgerald "The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more."

[gammija]

...

[sleeperagentclone]

I have managed to lose every huge "fuck you" pocket knife I've ever own, which sucks cause it would be really good to have one right now

[bugpill]

If I see any more misinformation about Kamala Harris to dissuade people from voting I will explode.

1. She did a lot of work as a prosecutor to dismantle the system. When she was DA in San Francisco she was labeled as being “soft on crime” which she in turn claimed was “smart on crime”. Harris made a program called Back on Track so that low-level nonviolent drug offenders could enroll in school rather than doing jail time. She has believe and continues to believe that supporting people prevents crime far better than criminalizing people.

Yes, she put people behind bars. I know she called herself the “Top Cop” and I fucking hate that. However, the number of people who served time in jail was significantly reduced due to her program. She’s not a saint, but she tried to reduce harm as much as she could in her position. Since then, she’s called for even more action in terms of legalizing marijuana and I believe recently fully endorsed it publicly.

2. She is not transphobic. Harris backed the state of California when it tried to deny gender-affirmation surgery to a trans prisoner, but as attorney general, she could not deny the state’s Department of Corrections as a client of hers. Essentially, she had no say in the denial of surgery herself, as she had to represent the department’s interests over her own. Once she realized what they were doing, Harris actually worked behind the scenes to get that very policy changed so that any inmate who needs that care could get it. Additionally, she has lead efforts to put an end to gay and transgender “panic” defenses in criminal trials.

3. Kamala Harris is Black. For some reason, people like to say that she isn’t, and that she’s Indian and pretending to be black… for what reason? Depends on who’s telling the lie to begin with. Kamala Harris is Black and South Asian. Her father, Donald Harris, is a Black man who was born in Jamaica. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India. Speculating about her race with so much evidence towards the contrary is so wrong. If anyone tells you shit about this, just send them her whitehouse.gov biography.

4. Harris (reportedly) has different opinions than Biden on Palestine. Whether or not she makes a clear stance against Israel, I don’t know. That hasn’t happened yet, but I’ll remain hopeful until further notice. She reportedly tried to push Biden towards “a policy on Gaza that was both more humane and in alignment with international law” but wasn’t listened to. The only reason why this is one of my points is that I’ve seen a lot of people stating that she is totally behind every decision and stance Biden made as president, which isn’t necessarily true. I don’t want to give her credit for being pro-Palestine if she isn’t, just to be clear. That is not what I’m trying to do here.

I desperately want her to stand for a free Palestine. I cannot make the promise that this will happen. All I can hope for is that her policy will be less harmful than Trump’s- who wants Israel to “finish the job” and promises to “throw (pro-Palestinian protestors) out of the country”.

Conclusion: the fact of the matter is that people make shit up all of the time. Sometimes it’s propaganda they accidentally absorb, sometimes it’s deliberate misinformation. People often take rumors as facts, and we need to be more vigilant about it. What I know is that some people will do anything for you to not vote tor Kamala Harris, when in reality she’s our only hope here.

Is Harris my favorite person ever? Absolutely not. Does she share my exact views and opinions? Nope. Would I rather vote for someone who more aligns with my personal views? Yes.

Is voting for Harris the only way to stop Donald Trump and Project 2025? Yes.

Disclaimer for the blog: To be 100% transparent, this is only my (Fanya’s) opinions. Although this is a shared blog, I cannot claim that my stance and my voice speaks for everybody involved in this blog. Some members are not American. Some may have different takes. All I know is that all of us are anti-Trump. Don’t go after my friends if you have beef with what I’m saying. I’m trying my best here.

[lesbianwithchainsaws]

I'm sure this has been said a dozen times already, but it always baffles me when people say "Hannigram isn't canon" , "Hannibal is queerbaiting", "the show should've made them canon" or anything similar to that. I see it less on tumblr, but have seen it elsewhere and it's like, did we watch the same show? Just because they're not making out sloppy style or having intense gay sex on screen doesn't mean they're not into each other?

Like there's a scene where Will straight up asks "is Hannibal in love with me?" and gets a confirming answer. Theres a scene where Hannibal compares them to Achilles and Patroclus. Hannibal turns himself in to the FBI despite being able to escape and he does it for Will! Hannibal is so completely, deeply obsessed with Will because he loves Will. The show makes it explicit time and time again that Hannibal is in love with Will.

And Will is very much into Hannibal as well. I think for Will it might seem less obvious at times, after all, he had a wife and a kid while Hannibal was imprisoned. But ultimately there's a reason why Will chooses to free Hannibal and go with him. They kill the dragon together and Will is the one who says how beautiful it is. Will outright admitted that he wanted to run away with Hannibal, and that want never actually left him.

The show itself coined the term "murder husbands". A character in canon calls Hannibal and Will that. Hannibal refers to himself and Will as Abigail's fathers. They wanted to run away together and be a family. The finale of those two on the cliff embracing and covered in blood is like the most romantic scene ever shown on tv.

Characters do not need to kiss on screen to be canonically in love!

And I think with this show that statement is especially true because of how many times characters *do* kiss and have sex, and it means nothing. Hannibal had sex with Alana as a way to manipulate her and have her blind to what he was doing. He didn't do it out of love. Margot didn't have sex with Will because she was attracted to him. The show displays very obviously that those things don't necessarily equal attraction, and I think it's completely fine that Will and Hannibal never do something like that. Their attraction to each other is still there!

[drchucktingle]

work of jordan peele is BIG influence on chuck this is correct. there are quite a few similarities actually, especially when you consider both of us are coming to horror from place of comedy (i personally do not see tinglers as comedy but obviously this timeline has placed them there and i am perfectly okay with this trot).

we are both creating horror stories for our own historically marginalized groups and in particular, writing stories that are SPECIFIC to those groups.

for example when thinking about QUEER HORROR there is plenty of queer horror where the horror itself has nothing to do with queerness, or the queerness is subtext. for instance you could have a slasher where the main characters happen to be gay, but their queerness is not necessarily part of the fear.

on the other hand, CAMP DAMASCUS is directly commenting on a queer issue

BURY YOUR GAYS is directly commenting on a queer issue

by the same token GET OUT is directly commenting on a race issue

US is directly commenting on a class issue which is, of course, going to be wrapped up in topics of race and marginalization

it should be said that the other kinds of horror where issues of the marginalized groups is more in the SUBTEXT are not wrong. there is a time and a place for that. the book that will likely be chucks next horror novel is about bi erasure, but it is much more about the subtext and symbolism. there is a bi lead, but also a monster that does not seem to be about bi erasure AT FIRST. it is much less direct. so there is a time and a place for both kinds of approaches.

but i think the biggest thing that is similar about jordan and chucks approach (and what has been a big influence on me specifically) is that our goal is NOT: 'how HORRIFYING AND TRAUMATIC AND MESSED UP CAN WE MAKE THIS?'

we are doing something else

processing trauma by exposure can be a common goal for horror AND honestly i think it is also totally dang fine to make art like this. there are some incredible pieces where trauma and tragedy is the goal. however (and i will speak for myself here) when you are coming from a buckaroo community that has been through so much of this trauma in real life, i PERSONALLY find that goal to be a little too boring.

my goal is more like this: how can we use this genre of fear and tension that i love to comment and explore and say something new? how can i pull apart an issue and deconstruct it in a way that is cathartic and maybe even changes minds?

so i cannot speak for jordan but i feel like our approaches are similar in this way. i see a LOT of reviews that make comparisons between CAMP DAMASCUS and GET OUT and i am always very flattered

[missyandthemisfits]

Tokyo Rev - Sexual Orientation Headcannons

18+ Random Personal Headers

Mikey - Pansexual

Doesn't really go out of his way to find mates, truly they just find their way to him. Has a slight preference to women but that's just because boobs are awesome. 

Draken - Hetero with a capital HETERO

He knows what he likes and he's never questioned it, really. Has the idea of it crossed his mind? Yea. Nothing against it either, just not for him. 

Baji - Questioning 

He's pretty sure he's into women, but between the age of 14-17, really finds himself questioning these sudden specs of romantic feelings for certain dudes...no one is the wiser.

Chifuyu - Straight with Bi Tendencies 

Chifuyu is very into women - but also he'd be lying if he said he's never uh...experimented before. Decided the only pegging he enjoyed was with/by a beautiful woman.

Mitsuya - Bi

He has fairly recently discovered he is indeed attracted to men and women and he's fairly comfortable coming out to his people too. He's confident enough to wear it pretty proudly after a very short insecure period. 

Hakkai - It's giving Gay

At some point in life, Hakkai realizes that the real reason he's so awkward around women is because he's aware he's 'supposed' to want to date them and find them enticing but...doesn't. Men are more his speed and he's starting to be okay with that. Has yet to tell Taiju-

Smiley - Straight, but has dabbled

Smiley will try anything once - and has, but it's not his thing. Just thinking about a woman in a lewd position drives him insane, men just don't do it for him. 

Angry - Questioning (but may or may not have a preference for women)

The thought of romance in general kinda scares the crap outta him cause he's always wondering if he's doing enough or if perhaps he's doing too much - so given that, of course he hasn't settled on a person, or sex, of choice. Whoever it is, he just wants to make them happy - inside and outside of the bedroom

Kazutora - Believes he's Hetero, Turns out his Bi

Kazutora is well into his adulthood when he finally figures out he's attracted to the same sex as well as the opposite sex and while he doesn't necessarily like the idea of a relationship at first, he grows to understand he needs that sort of intimacy. Once he starts, he can't get enough of it.

Akkun - Straight, but has dabbled.

It was less about curiosity for him and more of a getting caught up in the moment as some dude, equally as drunk, came onto him. The kiss was fine...but he quickly decided it's not his cup of tea.

Takuya - Demisexual 

Takuya is into men and women but even more so, he's into emotional intimacy and connection. You can be the most attractive person he's ever seen but if there's no real connection, there's 0 chance of you guys being more than friends. Thems the breaks.

Taiju - Very Hetero

Taiju is strictly a taco eater, nothing to question and no reason for any complicated discussions with himself - he knows what he wants and needs and what he NEEDS is the bodacious body of a curvy woman-

Yuzuha - Bi with wavering preferences 

Yuzuha is bisexual but goes through phases where she's either only looking for men or only looking for women. She's got no idea why she's like this, her brain is just wired like that - can relate!

Kokonoi - Bisexual

Of course he's into men and women, he doesn't have a real preference either. Either is just fine - but he does like them very pretty, long eyelashes and all that jazz. He thinks he's not picky, he totally is. 

Inui - A Lazy Pansexual

Romance takes quite a bit of energy, energy that Inui could be using for other "more productive" things - but also he likes... I dunno, everyone? Like, he genuinely does not care what you identify as, if he's down he's down.

Ran - Straight and promiscuous 

He is, I kid you not, damn near insatiable sexually. Only gets it on with women and has only really had a few real relationships, but he's had more than his fair share of lovers.

Rindou - Demi, Sapio 

Eh, he's not much of a people person if we're being completely honest. Doesn't discriminate against sexes, just doesn't wanna waste his time with meaningless sex. Despite his complicated titles, he's very simple to please and is a fairly easygoing partner.

Senju - Lesbian with Straight Tendencies 

@me if ya want, but Senju is someone who adores female companionship above all when it comes to relationships. She can kiss dudes no problem and has had several crushes but she can't really see a future with them.

You can’t convince me Takemichi isn’t not so secretly Bi

[thechekhov]

Dungeon Meshi Quick Reacts

CH.30 (Good Medicine)

I kind of assumed that things would get worse from here...

...yeah, there's no 'but' to that. Getting Falin back so quick was too good to be true.

Aren't those the ghosts Falin talked to? They could be friendly.

"ee gads! a hairless little man!" I'd be frightened too if Chillchuck was suddenly behind a door I'd just opened.

Chillchuck, buddy, less than 24 hours ago you threw a knife directly into a dragon's eye. You can take care of some worgs, right?

Senshi's a card carrying member of the smells-okay-to-me-chief club.

Orcs be like 'oh, dragon's gone? Hm. Curious' and then just carry on. Wouldn't you be worried that something took out the dragon? Could be even more dangerous than the dragon itself.

I feel like at this point Falin might be just that.

MOUTH TO MOUTH RESUSCITATION!

Marcille, I don't think you have a lot of options.

......just realized those moose antlers are holding up her rack. Talk about a pushup bra. Damn. Respect.

Wait go back to that "create monsters to do their bidding" thing again. Was that the little mini dragons or does that include larger monsters like the dragon itself?!

OR something that was IN the dragon, controlling its actions and make it act irrationally? Is that why the Sorcerer wasn't surprised to see Falin as a separate thing outside the dragon? Was the assumption that whatever THING it was had escaped and become Falin?

And for all we know... it kinda had. It had merged with her spirit....

Or maybe I'm way off.

Congrats on the larger story plot! :D You're now in even more danger! Hoorah!

Chillchuck, a normal person would just go 'I'm leaving, pay me'. You're giving yourself away, worrying for them.

I can't hate him for the reasoning here. The deeper you go, the less likely you are to be found. The only person who cares enough about Marcille and Laios and Chillchuck to find their bodies are.... each other. So if they're dead here, they're likely dead-dead.

I want to nestle into her bosom and live there as a little creature.

Moreso than when she was literally in the gullet of a red dragon?! Come on, be reasonable. At least she's alive now. And remembers who she is.

Ooooh friendly ghosts. Makes sense why Falin was so chill about them.

All the more reason to believe there's something to be done!

Love the doggo yawning behind Chillchuck.

He's a coward, but being afraid isn't necessarily a sign of weakness. It's a sign that you realize how dangerous a situation is. Cowardice isn't stupidity, no more than ignorance of danger is bravery.. I think the orc leader is maybe realizing he's not doing it for completely selfish reasons. Mad respect to her though.

It WAS Falin, wasn't it? It wasn't as if it was a thing pretending to be her. She was there, and she was revived successfully, and then the soul confusion thing happened.

......damn. What a small holiday they got, before the next horrible thing happened...

hey, Marcille is not dumb! She's got loads of braincells! they're just all focused on doing evil stuff and being gay.

🎯

That's right! It's just like you, Chillchuck!

Was that... there before?

Oh, okay, no, it was. Hm.......

This stupid man is about to full a Falin and jump out a window to go look for her, isn't he.

Gods, this sucks for him so much. For all of them. Because they.... they WERE successful! They rescued Falin! They brought her back from the head! They DID that!

But now, instead of getting the reward of it, she's just gone. Is it better, because she's alive?

Or worse, because the threat is even more nebulous?

If they all died, would it be worth it?

who's the coward...? he's ready to go back.

For Falin, they went down there. They risked themselves.

For them, after talking to him only a bit, the orc leader went from 'hey, nice snack for my dog' to 'we're helping you get that girl back'.

It's about the CONNECTION!!! IT'S ABOUT HELPING EACH OTHER AFTER LEARNING TO UNDERSTAND ONE ANOTHER!!!

[whetstonefires]

So like, I'm pretty darn sure Mo Xuanyu did not actually make a pass at Jin Guangyao.

For several reasons, like for one thing hitting on your own actual brother who is also your boss is genuinely insane behavior, in a way nothing else we know about the guy actually matches, other than his reputation for being crazy which mostly seems to originate from the same point as the sexual harassment allegations. which tracks because even with rampant societal homophobia, that's such a crazy thing to do people would question it if it didn't come paired with the information that he's insane.

Then there's the fact that if that had actually happened, there's basically no way master spin artist jgy would have let it get out, because actually experiencing that would trigger his sense-of-uncleanliness issues so hard.

But what we see is that somehow Everyone Knows that it happened, but also that Jin Guangyao totally didn't tell anyone, because he's too merciful and kind and respectable. It just mysteriously leaked somehow that this private scandal happened.

(Also, to step up a meta level, the gay goth kid who was never quite accepted into his own family and wound up self-destructing was in fact guilty of the homophobic allegations spread by the powerful man who manipulates reputation for personal advantage? This is not the kind of story where that would be true. The thematic dissonance is too much.)

The only way it's believable that mxy made a move on jgy is if jgy spent a long time maneuvering him into it, hinting and deniably flirting and just generally being maximum skeeze, just a huge elaborate incestuous honeypot, just to bait a 'ruined reputation' trap. Which makes no sense at all.

I don't think jgy is necessarily above that kind of creepy grooming behavior but I do think he would hate it, and definitely wouldn't resort to it when sowing rumors would work just as well. and expose him to less risk.

So Mo Xuanyu didn't do it.

So what we've got is that Jin Guangyao systematically obliterated this kid's credibility.

No one would listen to anything he said after being expelled in that sort of context, especially anything against Jin Guangyao, whom he now has obvious motive to smear. This was a preemptive strike against some kind of leak.

It's exactly the kind of thing jgy would do--it targets individual vulnerability, leverages the weak points in Mo Xuanyu's reputation into gaping chasms, in a way that associates jgy with scandal but makes him personally look better. also shows signs of jgy projecting his own issues onto others. The MO fits.

And his motive is easy to construct: Mo Xuanyu had had access to his secrets, such as Wei Wuxian's manuscripts and probably a lot of the other ugly shit. And Jin Guangyao needed him silenced, due to some thing or other, but as with SiSi didn't want to have to kill him.

(A fascinating thing about jgy as a villain is the moments where he yields to sentiment pretty consistently contribute to his destruction.)

But then we come around to: so why didn't Mo Xuanyu sic Wei Wuxian on Jin Guangyao, then?

In cql wwx does have a curse cut for jgy, to keep him in the plot and create an additional open storyline to resolve, since viewers are gonna be denied romantic catharsis, but in cql the homophobia plotline isn't there because all the gay is censored, and mxy allegedly hit on qin su instead. which is less utterly unhinged to do though still big wtf.

In the book, mxy summoned the Yiling Patriarch just to kill the Mos. (Which he didn't even do lmao.)

So I've always been sort of poking at that, like if you're destroying your own soul to get revenge, why spare the person who deliberately ruined your life?

Even if he had done the thing, it was weird! Maybe even weirder; if you're in a headspace where making sexual advances anyone should be able to predict are unwelcome seems like a good idea in the first place, there's a pretty good chance getting punished for them isn't going to make you think you were in the wrong. Otoh there is a zone where he could have done it, gotten the backlash, cleared his head a bit, realized it was fucked up to do, and therefore not held a grudge in that particular direction, but it's still weird. (And also he definitely didn't do the thing.)

But if he was so angry, why was he not angry at Jin Guangyao? Who definitely kicked him out of the Sect, all else aside?

And then I looked at the passage in Jin sect where we swap to Jin Ling's pov and he tells us one of the few first-hand things we hear about Mo Xuanyu: He thought Jin Guangyao was the most amazing person in the whole world. He adored him.

And being betrayed and rejected by him didn't turn that into resentment. Even though he resented the other side of his family enough to want them gratuitously murdered.

So you know what I think happened?

I think Mo Xuanyu thinks it was an honest misunderstanding. That Jin Guangyao, his idol, falsely concluded that his gay little brother was creeping on him based on a misinterpretation of his admiring behavior, and was appropriately revolted. And that Mo Xuanyu doesn't blame him for it. He blames himself.

He went back to his mother's family to rot genuinely feeling like the ruination of his life was his own fault for being creepy. And died like that.

Because of that, to a considerable extent. How can you bend any of your will to saving yourself, to getting out of an abusive situation and seeking a better one, when you don't think you deserve to be saved?

Fucks me up.

[youcouldmakealife]

Masking, YCMAL edition

So, after the general info on masking, here's how it specifically looks like and impacts some of the 'verse's characters.

I think I kind of need to preface this with the fact that a lot of my characters have neurodivergent traits because, well. I do. I don't know how a neurotypical person thinks, the same way a neurotypical person doesn't know how a neurodivergent person thinks. You can read about the experience, and, despite shitty stereotypes to the contrary, you can empathize with it, but the wiring of the brain is literally different.

So when I'm listing characters here as neurodivergent, I either a) set out to write them that way or b) in hindsight can't deny that their experiences are written through a very specifically neurodivergent lens. Someone not being explicitly labelled as ND doesn't necessarily mean they aren't, I just..really don't want to go back through my entire 'verse applying diagnoses the same way I happily slap an MBTI or enneagram or kindergarten teacher/assassin label on them, because that feels wrong.

But if you're neurodivergent and see something in a particular character that makes you feel seen, I'm not going to tell you 'nah man, they're actually neurotypical'. Especially because literally every single one of them was written by someone neurodivergent.

Anyway! Canonically ND characters and their masks:

David: masks extensively. Generally does his best for 'unobtrusive, pay no attention', unsure why it doesn't seem to work (mostly because he's talented and beautiful, so it seems less 'unobtrusive' and more 'I think I'm better than you', which isn't helped by the fact that often when the mask does slip, it's to show frustration, contempt, or disdain -- think at the All-Star Game his rookie year, or several points early on with Jake. Also does not help that he often does think he's better than people.)

Bryce: Still laughing at 'straightsona' used to describe Bryce out with his teammates, because it's perfect. His 'I don't care, I'm hot as shit, bitches love me' dickhead behaviour was him picking up those behaviours from popular peers and teammates over the years, partly mistaking that for the reason they were popular (rather than being seen as boy kings making them callous or arrogant), and partly viewing them as the exemplar of someone no one would predict was gay. Jared's worst enemy.

Speaking of, honourable mention to Raf Sanchez AND Julius Halla here, Jared's going around collecting neurodivergent loved ones all through IJ(aoe).

James: 'unobtrusive, pay no attention', much more successfully than David, partly because he has a mouthpiece in the form of Finn. His crashing after road trips is partly extended overstimulation and change, but it's also having to wear the mask more extensively, because he has much less time to himself, especially when he shared a room. (He's mostly unmasked with Finn, that's why Finn is his exception to a lot of No People things, but he wasn't at the beginning).

Holden: Also kind of 'I don't care, I'm hot as shit, bitches love me', but...ironically? He doesn't mask as much as the others, and because of that, he frequently drives away people who originally seem to like him and wonders why. Has been described as 'a lot'.

Fiona: Literally will not leave the house without a full face of makeup and a pair of heels or she'll feel exposed and vulnerable, and putting her make up on is how she prepares to be Outside Fiona. She's very perky and friendly at work. The second she gets home it's an 'uggggh' moment and straight into the shower to decompress/literally unmask. She's more aware than any of the guys that she's putting on a performance, partly because she grew up with all those 'girls are expected to be...' followed by a list of things she definitively wasn't. Has also been described as 'a lot'.

Finn: And How May I Be of Service To You Today?

Now this is where it gets kind of interesting because like -- people often have facades. That's not a neurodivergent only thing. People can be fake, or posture, or pretend to be something they're not. Mike, for example, will lean into the big macho asshole when he's put on the defensive, Willy is Always Performing, Thomas is sunshine even when he doesn't really feel like being that, Robbie will play the buffoon to make people laugh if he thinks they need it, half of Joey's rants are playing to the cheap seats.

Like, there's a difference between pretending you're somebody else sometimes, or behaving inauthentically, and full on 'yeah, they're masking'.

But Georgie is masking. Georgie is, at all times, evaluating his surroundings, monitoring people's emotions and reactions (especially to him), and behaving in the manner he thinks is most likely to lead to his being liked. And he was already doing that when Robbie met him, but it's intensified significantly since.

I think that's where the biggest difference lies between some of the above ND characters and Georgie? David, for example, doesn't care if he's liked (like, yes he does, but also...no). The mask is for safety/to minimize vulnerability. David's in particular was tweaked to get praise and avoid criticism from his parents (didn't work), teachers, and coaches (worked much better), not so much for his peers.

But Georgie's isn't for safety. Georgie doesn't manage his behaviour to avoid harm, Georgie wants people to like him. And he's discovered that people don't seem to like him when he does certain things, or acts certain ways, or needs things from them, so he just...doesn't do those things.

Finn's interesting because he has both forms. Please like him it'll break his heart if you don't.

[goodluckclove]

Some Loose Thoughts on Queer Rep (Specifically Aspec Rep)

(Just in advance I'm going to dunk on Alastor from Hazbin Hotel like a lil' bit, as a treat. Mainly the team that made him and what he represents, but still. If that's rage bait for you, I suggest maybe dipping out now)

I have a theory that queer media needs both queer characters and queer genre characters. The difference is very important.

I think a queer character would be a character in a story about their queerness. For some reason the only two characters I could think of are the guy from Love, Simon (What was his name again?) and the protagonist from Rubyfruit Jungle, which should express the weird and complicated relationship I have with this particular archetype.

Queer stories centered around queerness are definitely needed, but at the same time I feel like we're just starting to come to terms with the desperate need for the alternative, which are queer characters in genre media that contain overarching plots larger than their sexuality. Not separate, necessarily (Their queerness certainly influences things), but just beyond. This is more accessible for a variety of artists, which is also the reason why it can be a flop or a massive success.

We get more of this than ever for gay and sapphic characters, as well as some trans folks and occasionally non-binary. It's definitely way less seen in aspec characters, and even less respected. I started thinking this way because the internet is flooded with references to fucking Alastor from Hazbin Hotel as an aroace character and - like - god, I don't get it.

Like you can have your serial killer comfort character, that's fine. But latching onto him as representation for the entire aspec community when he was only confirmed to be aroace through a reference in a livestream and the weakest joke onscreen is pretty disheartening. It definitely reads like this part of his identity was added pretty late in his character development, and by a team of people that didn't seem to consider what the response and reaction would be and how they'd handle it.

I also wish the newest aspec icon in media wasn't created by a team so adamant on encouraging shipping culture above actually respecting the identity they've decided to provide representation for. Like I see it means a lot to people to have an aroace character doing something cool in a fun TV show that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with their identity. Then there's like four other people right behind that person who really wants that person to be romantic and fuck.

And like, yeah, aroace people can do that sometimes. It's a spectrum, I know. But can't we start with a baseline representation before providing proof of fluidity?

I just think we deserve better. Like a character who in the media is established to be aspec, and people are like "great" and move on to fight robots or do magic or whatever. And the person can be morally grey, or even a total dick, but like I'd personally prefer something with a little more depth than Hot Topic genericism.

Like don't get me wrong, I'll take some sort of eldritch horror as my representation, but...make him at all horrifying? Like everyone talks about how he has Eldritch powers, which I know to mean unfathomable and maddening. But I've seen everything he does in the canon of the show and it is both incredibly fathomable and makes me feel normal and sane. Yog-Sothoth this man is not.

But yeah, I don't think there's a solution here besides more aspec artists creating aspec characters in their work. That way people can still like Alastor if they want, but he's not like the only viable option in terms of representation in the media. Let me see lovingly-crafted cool guys and dipshits and chaos goblins and little babies and True Horrors, all of whom have varying degrees of distaste or indifference towards sex and romance.

Do it. We need it. Please.

[rollercoasterwords]

hi there! i saw a post you made ages ago about gender not necessarily being a static thing and being something that can change over a person’s lifetime.

excuse my ignorance in this but do you think that is something that applies to a person’s sexual orientation as well? i always appreciate your insight on these topics.

also, apologies if anything is worded strangely. english is not my first language.

no worries, i can understand u perfectly! and my short answer to ur question is yes

longer answer is i don’t think anyone is born w some innate metaphysical identity that they can unearth to discover their True Self; i think sex, gender, and sexuality are largely socially constructed, though obviously materially rooted. the comparison i sometimes make to explain this to students is to think about an accent—certain physical aspects influence accent (mouth shape, vocal chords, etc) but ultimately the accent a person has is almost entirely shaped by the world around them; babies aren’t born with some “true” accent they have to discover about themselves. but that doesn’t make a person’s accent any less real or “natural”!

i think where some people get defensive abt the idea that sexuality isn’t necessarily static or innate is that oftentimes conservative voices have used this specifically to say that being gay is a phase, etc. this is a very clever trick, in which heterosexuality is enshrined as “natural” and any sexuality departing from that is a phase, a choice, etc, such that many queer people have found themselves cornered into arguing that queerness is also natural and innate, just like heterosexuality. but the ‘born this way’ narrative will ultimately not lead to liberation, because it fails to question the basic premise that heterosexuality is natural and innate; in reality heterosexuality is just as constructed and contrived as any other form of sexuality, and in fact we often see the lengths that people must go to in order to hide this fact. kinda like the wizard of oz behind the curtain (the invention of heterosexuality by jonathan ned katz is a great book abt this!)

the other sticking point i think people often have with this concept is that they think saying sexuality isn’t innate means people can just pick & choose who they’re attracted to. but that’s not how social constructs work! again, going back to the example of accents, just because an accent is socially constructed/developed does not mean that people can just snap their fingers and get a new accent. this is because social constructs are grounded in material realities and have material effects; they’re not just playing make-believe. money is another good example of a social construct that has very real and tangible material effects; i can’t just take monopoly money to the store and buy something.

so…yeah. i think sexuality can be just as fluid as gender. maybe you’ll be attracted to something at one point in your life and that’ll change over time, or maybe you’ll identify with one sexuality and then later figure out a different label works better for you. when it comes to queer politics & queer communities, i really don’t see a point in trying to nitpick or analyze whether someone is REALLY x sexuality, or what the “correct” label is for someone to use, bc i find labels more useful for identifying shared struggles than for like. unearthing buried metaphysical truths about identity lol. i also have found that i personally am much happier not worrying about figuring out my “true” sexuality and just using whatever label best fits my experiences & how i’m perceived in the world

[sinnbaddie]

To say that Kakashi and Gai’s relationship (talking solely platonic rn) was mostly about him helping Kakashi cope with the loss of Obito is disingenuous to Kakashi and all of his relationships.

Any person is going to be traumatized after seeing someone — much less their teammate — be crushed to death under a rock. Kakashi is shown to be someone susceptible to depression due to 1. His environment 2. His initial beliefs and 3. His genetic line. Of course his life is going to be centered around one of the most traumatic experiences of his life, romanticizing it is so hurtful to his character because it destroyed him - and if Kishimoto actually cared about expanding other character relationships instead of making a “generational duo that falls apart” + wasn’t a misogynistic writer, Rin’s death would be the bigger influence on his life than Obito’s.

Yes, Gai had to help him numerous times in his grief but it wasn’t solely or even mainly about Obito. Rin was an absolute vital point in Kakashi’s downfall into chaos. The self harm he inflicted upon himself, the self hatred, the self shame. He became a whole different person after he was forced to kill her. I would say Kakashi’s father Sakumo is by far the biggest influence on him. He wouldn’t have needed any speech of “your father was a hero” by Obito if it wasn’t for Sakumo. His personality of today is thanks to his father’s own death.

Gai and Kakashi’s friendship is almost entirely about them when they’re in scenes together. Look at the chunin exams, look at any scene in the land of steam arc, look at their race, etc. naturally there will be grief the two bring to the relationship and it’s on them to work it out separately, together and with other people which did happen.

You’re actively ignoring every other character that has shaped and formed who Kakashi is by saying Obito is the biggest and only reason he is who he is. Gai is one of the strongest reasons why Kakashi is as motivated and strong as he is. Kakashi would’ve absolutely died at some point in (general) anbu if Gai didn’t pull him out and he was slipping so far when he was in it because of Rin and Minato.

Kakashi’s heart does not “belong” to Obito because he’s in love with Obito and can’t get over him, his heart belongs to the people he loves because that’s who Kakashi is at his core - a lover. He’s a person who cares so deeply, even for people he doesn’t necessarily like or get along with.

Kakashi is a person who is shaped by everybody in his life, that’s why he is one of the best written Naruto characters. He feels like a real person because real people are influenced by everyone in their life, in every way. It’s unfortunate to see those who call themselves Kakashi fans only to mischaracterize, limit and erase the bonds he was written to have to prop up one single bond for your ship.

Do you care for this character? His themes, parallels, relationships and writing? or is he just a placeholder / self insert for shipping content?

[you-were-alone-too]

although im LIVING for what seems to be confirmation of gay mike and the fact that the lyrics suggest that he wants will to confess to him first... (see exhibits a and b below)

if we assume that these lyrics are decently accurate to mike's arc in s5, then we'll see mike struggle a lot with communicating his feelings and that he hopes will makes the first move, but i don't think that necessarily means that's how it's going to happen.

mike tries and fails to communicate his true feelings to el multiple times throughout the show, and the few times that he does manage to tell her how he feels are usually based on impulse or because she's on the verge of death (and as we know, they're not necessarily his true feelings).

it's important for mike to be the one to confess to will, not only for his own emotional growth, but also to show the audience that will is the only person that he's able to be his true self with (both platonically and romantically). even though he's been able to successfully express his true feelings to will in the past, he's only been able to do so under the guise of friendship. but any time his feelings could possibly be misconstrued as romantic, we can see him acting similarly toward will like he does el: by pulling away, acting impulsively, or lashing out (like at the airport when he doesn't hug will, or at the roller rink when he says they're just friends. this is probably because mike is worried that treating will in the same way as he's expected to treat his girlfriend could be seem as romantic).

will has already done his part to try and communicate his feelings to mike. although he DID lie by saying the painting is from el, we know that mike is eventually going to realize that will lied, so will's true feelings will still be understood by mike in the end, regardless of will's intention to push him closer to el instead.

this now puts the ball in mike's court, leaving it up to him to be the one that has to confess to will. and i think that these lyrics do a great job of showcasing mike's struggle to communicate his true romantic feelings. he's so used to repressing himself and his interests and tries so hard to be "normal" that he wants someone else that isn't as scared of being different (or at least less scared than him) to do the hard part first.

so i think that mike has to be the one to clearly confess his feelings and put himself out there. this season is going to force him on a journey of emotional growth and self-acceptance. finally, mike is going to be the first one to step out of line and risk it all, even if he thinks he might be rejected. he's going to fully accept himself, not just the fact that he's d&d-loving nerd, but also that he's gay and in love with his best friend