#Gay sex would be less queer than them

[frobby]

If I were to rank who is the gayest in haikyuu 1st place would def be bokuto and akaashi by like miles

[six-of-cringe]

never thought i'd say it. not happy about gay sex

[localgardenweed]

Im on a romance anime addiction rn and like just finished one and OMFG IM GONNA CRY THEY WERE SO FUCKING IN LOVE BRO THEY WERE IN LOVVVEEEE

I can’t fucking believe i almost stayed up all night on a work night to watch Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! A solid 8/10, some parts kinda wanna make me kill myself and some characters got on my nerves, at one point completely dropped till the end, but i felt the pacing was good and didn’t feel super rushed till kinda the end like we could have used another episode or two

Still looking for good wlw anime cause I ALMOST ACCIDENTALLY SUGGESTED WATCHING CITRUS BUT WHEN I READ A SYNOPSIS I LEGIT SCREAMED LIKE NOOOOOO NOOOOOOOO NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I just want girls who are in love bro and if its doomed so be it man

[bugboybuck]

Halligan tool

uh, does that count as one word prompt? One item prompt?

Evan's about five drinks in, flushed red with his curls all mussed up and a damp spot of spilled beer on his shirt, when he collapses into Tommy's lap at their booth on his way back from the bathroom and announces with no preamble, "Babe, did you know Halligans were invented in - in nine-teen-forty-eight?"

He's so fucking cute. Tommy's not drunk - tries to drink less these days, because hangovers at forty are no joke, and he's long past his clubbing days - but Evan had wanted to go to a gay bar as part of his big queer life experience, so here they are. Evan drunk and flushed and relaxed, Tommy so smitten he thinks he'd follow this man to the grungiest WeHo bars in existence. His legs are gonna go numb if Evan stays in his lap much longer, cus Tommy's man is certainly no twink, but Tommy just wraps his arms around Evan's waist and raises an eyebrow. "Were you on Wikipedia in the bathroom?"

"There was a line," Evan explains. "Two - two guys were fucking in the only stall."

Ah. That explains why he looks a bit pinker than he did when he left. Tommy quests an exploratory hand over the crotch of Evan's jeans, hidden in the low light of their booth at the back of the the bar, and decides he'd definitely enjoyed whatever he'd heard in the bathroom. Tommy is instantly more interested in following up that line of enquiry, but —

"Babe, stop it, I'm trying to tell you something important!" Evan says, shoving Tommy's hand away. Tommy takes it back, holds it up in the air in surrender.

"About Halligan tools?" he checks. It's been a while since Tommy had to carry that classic bit of firefighter gear, but anyone who's ever worked in a firehouse knows them like an extra limb, a family member, something you could find by touch memory alone in the dark. Evan's Wikipedia spirals are cute, but Tommy can't imagine he has a brand new piece of information to tell Tommy about a metal rod nearly one hundred years old.

"Right," Evan agrees. He's sliding off Tommy's lap a bit, holding on with one hand gripping tight at the base of Tommy's neck. "Yeah, I just thought about it. About - okay, like, you know how a Halligan is like, the best thing you could ever have in a crisis? It can do a bunch of shit, like, all the basics, just by itself. It's got the claw, i-its got the blade, it's got the, what'dya call it, the pick. So it's, it's not like it can't do shit on its own, you know. But - but then, right, you combine it with a flathead, and they just fit together so perfectly? Like, they interlock and everything, they're designed for it. And then you've got an axe and a Halligan, so its even better, like, you can do even more shit, but, but, they fit together so well they're actually like, one thing when they're together? So we just call them the irons?"

Tommy looks at Evan from two inches away. They're bordering on five months together and everything still feels new, fresh, insane and invigorating and like no relationship Tommy has ever had before - the sex alone is certainly making him feel ten years younger - but at the same time, it's more settled than anything Tommy's ever had either. It feels like they know each other more than they should at this point; like it's been so easy to understand each other, to creep towards that feeling of deep and terrifying love. Tommy doesn't have a clue why Evan sounds like he's writing love poetry about firefighting equipment right now, of all times, but Tommy would listen to him do it forever.

"That's a nice way of describing it," Tommy says, smiling fondly at Evan. Evan's breath smells like beer and he's uncomfortably heavy and hot in Tommy's lap, but Tommy wouldn't trade an inch of their shared space. He runs his hand through Evan's sweaty curls. "I'd buy you a fancy new Halligan for your birthday if I wasn't a little worried I'd come home to find you in bed with it, based on how romantic you're talking about it. And I feel like that would hurt."

"Tommy," Evan complains, which gets Tommy to laugh, which makes Evan snort with laughter too. One of his broad hands thumps into Tommy's chest like a reprimand, then stays there. "You're not listening!"

"I'm listening, baby, I'm listening," Tommy assures him. He slides one hand back over the seam of Evan's jeans, just enjoying how he's so flushed and broad and squirmy. "What else about Halligan tools?"

"What I'm trying to say—" Evan pauses. Tugs on the back of Tommy's neck and looks right in his eyes, those big round baby blues drilling into Tommy's soul, his pink lips in a pout — "What I'm trying to say, Tommy, is I think I'm a Halligan and you're my flathead axe. I - I want to fit together with you, 'cus we make each other even better. And we're good on our own, but when we're together, I dunno, I just - I feel like we're a whole new thing. Like we need a new name. Like I was designed to fit into you. Do you get it?"

And Tommy —

"I get it," he says. He doesn't mean his voice to come out so cracked, kind of caught in the surprise of Evan, his incredible, ridiculous boyfriend - who doesn't tend to wax romantic but can make a homecooked meal or a thoughtful gesture or an offered errand feel like a declaration of love any time - confessing to him via an analogy about a titanium rod. It is so Evan that it's insane. He makes everything circle around the things he loves — his job, helping people, his family... and, lately, that list maybe includes Tommy. And Tommy has never been top of anybody's list before. He pulls on Evan's curls. "Have I mentioned lately that I fucking love how your brain works?"

Evan leans down and kisses him with a flushed, sloppy mouth.

Tommy kisses him back, and wonders if Evan also remembers that when a Halligan and a flathead axe are interlocked, they're not just called a set of irons. Sometimes, people call them a married set.

But Tommy figures he'll hold off on mentioning that for a few more months. At least until he convinces Evan to move in.

[ilovedthestars]

A thought I’ve been having: While it's important to recognize the long history of many current queer identities (and the even longer history of people who lived outside of the straight, cis, allo “norm”) I think it's also important to remember that a label or identity doesn't have to be old to be, for lack of a better word, real.

This post that i reblogged a little while ago about asexuality and its history in the LGBTQ+ rights movement and before is really good and really important. As i've thought about it more, though, it makes me wonder why we need to prove that our labels have "always existed." In the case of asexuality, that post is pushing back against exclusionists who say that asexuality was “made up on the internet” and is therefore invalid. The post proves that untrue, which is important, because it takes away a tool for exclusionists.

But aromanticism, a label & community with a lot of overlap & solidarity with asexuality, was not a label that existed during Stonewall and the subsequent movement. It was coined a couple decades ago, on internet forums. While the phrasing is dismissive, it would be technically accurate to say that it was “made up on the internet.” To be very clear, I’m not agreeing with the exclusionists here—I’m aromantic myself. What I’m asking is, why does being a relatively recently coined label make it any less real or valid for people to identify with?

I think this emphasis on historical precedent is what leads to some of the attempts to label historical figures with modern terminology. If we can say someone who lived 100 or 1000 years ago was gay, or nonbinary, or asexual, or whatever, then that grants the identity legitimacy. but that's not the terminology they would have used then, and we have no way of knowing how, or if, any historical person's experiences would fit into modern terminology.

There's an element of "the map is not the territory" here, you know? Like this really good post says, labels are social technologies. There's a tendency in the modern Western queer community to act like in the last few decades the "truth" about how genders and orientations work has become more widespread and accepted. But that leaves out all the cultures, both historical and modern, that use a model of gender and sexuality that doesn't map neatly to LGBTQ+ identities but is nonetheless far more nuanced than "there are two genders, man and woman, and everyone is allo and straight." Those systems aren’t any more or less “true” than the system of gay/bi/pan/etc and straight, cis and trans, aro/ace and allo.

I guess what I’m saying is, and please bear with me here, “gay” people have not always existed. “Nonbinary” people have not always existed. “Asexual” people have not always existed. But people who fell in love with and had sex with others of the same gender have always existed. People who would not have identified themselves as either men or women have always existed. People who didn’t prioritize sex (and/or romance) as important parts of their lives have always existed. In the grand scheme of human existence, all our labels are new, and that’s okay. In another hundred or thousand years we’ll have completely different ways of thinking about gender and sexuality, and that’ll be okay too. Our labels can still be meaningful to us and our experiences right now, and that makes them real and important no matter how new they are.

We have a history, and we should not let it be erased. But we don’t need a history for our experiences and ways of describing ourselves to be real, right now.

[rallamajoop]

So why are there so many gay vampires?

From the time of Carmilla all the way up to the works of Anne Rice (a universe that seems to get only less subtle as the years go on), gay vampires have been a thing basically as long as anyone was writing about vampires. Lesbian vampires have been a genre all their own for decades. Bram Stoker, author of the most famous vampire novel ever written, was gay himself. So why vampires specifically?

I’ve seen people attempt to answer this one before, and there are all sorts of contributing factors I could point to here, from the genres’ beginnings with Lord Byron (infamous bisexual disaster fuckboy), to modern discourse about why queer folks so often find themselves identifying with the monsters and outcasts of fiction. Few other monsters besides vampires can so easily pass for ‘normal’, or are nearly so well known for their snappy dress sense and ‘unnatural cravings’ for human flesh. And that’s without even getting into all those skeezy outdated stereotypes casting queer people as predators, or the idea that even one ‘gay experience’ could somehow ‘convert’ you into being one yourself.

But to my mind, there’s just one really important thing that makes vampires so gay, and it’s the same thing that makes them sexy in the first place: plausible deniability.

You see, a vampire’s bite is simultaneously a) ridiculously sexual, and b) not even a little bit sexual at all.

You don’t have to look far for vampire canons where there’s nothing sexy about being bitten by a vampire. Bloody, violent, painful, sure ‒or just clinically miserable, human bodies torn open or hung up to drain like a human blood bag. What’s sexy about getting bitten by a mosquito, or a fecking leech? The diet of the actual vampire bat requires it to process so much water that it apparently spends mealtimes busily pissing out the difference, and the anti-coagulants in its saliva leave the wound bleeding messily long after it’s gone. The basic act of feeding is no more inherently sexual for a vampire than it is for a zombie.

Vampires are even a surprisingly acceptable monster to market to children. There’s a vampire muppet, a cartoon about a vampire duck, and a whole series of books about a vampire rabbit. You can put a vampire on the side of a cereal box without undue outrage. Vampires do not have to be R-rated for sex or violence.

So of course vampires will go after victims of the same sex. Do you stop to inquire whether the cow you’re eating was male or female? It’s all just predator and prey!

Until it’s everything but.

Do not let the ‘vampires aren’t supposed to be sexy!’-purists fool you. The tradition of sexy vampires goes all the way back to the oldest folklore, where the first victim of a newly-risen vampire was often their still-living spouse. Vampires were even occasionally known to get women pregnant (a convenient excuse for any widow who might turn up pregnant slightly too many months after their husband's death). The ‘original’ Nosferatu sounds more like an incubus than the naked mole-rat creature they made that movie about. The demon lover aspect of the vampire has been there all along.

And it’s not hard to imagine why. If someone is biting and sucking on your neck, then either they’re a vampire, or they’re well on the way to second base (other folklore has its vampires feed directly from their victim’s heart, which is scarcely less suggestive). The implications of an exchange of bodily fluids were never subtle, even in Stoker’s day (I'm looking at you, Lucy-with-the-three-husbands), and the vampire as a sexual predator was a popular literary device well before Stoker's time. Beautiful vampire women would seduce men to their demise, and the males of the species might visit the bedroom of some innocent maiden time and again. The Victorian obsession with mesmerism, meanwhile, provided the perfect explanation for how victims might be hypnotised into eager compliance, and perhaps not even remember being fed upon at all. Vampires have been the ultimate guilt-free sexual fantasy since way back in the day, compatible with all your awkward Victorian mores! (Not quite ready to admit they're sexual fantasies? No problem: he's just here to, y'know, suck on your neck a bit. No subtext here!)

The whole act of biting is so suggestive that in the early years of vampire cinema, it wasn’t shown at all, not even between opposite-sex participants. The camera of 1922’s Nosferatu maintains a demure distance during the climactic scene where the heroine is finally bitten and slowly drained of blood, and Universal’s Dracula conveniently fades to black or cuts away whenever it’s about to take place. But even if the biting has to take place off screen, who’s to say a vampire isn’t going to pick victims of both sexes?

The stately tradition of the lesbian vampire has cinematic examples going all the way back to 1936, with Universal’s Dracula’s Daughter. Though the titular vampire has a nominal male love interest – a psychologist who naively advises her to confront her temptations without fear – the result of his advice is a famous sequence where she picks up a young woman under the premise of wanting an artist's model, and convinces her to remove her top. No actual biting or nudity is shown (it was only 1936), but her fate is left in little doubt.

By the era of 70’s sexploitation, all such subtlety had been abandoned. If we’re all good with naked boobs, who’s going to be offended by a little biting?

In fact, when it comes to men rather than women, a vampire bite was, for many years, far too sexy to be shown, or even alluded to. Nosferatu clearly feeds on that film’s Jonathan-expy, but our only evidence is the bitemarks on his neck in the morning, and the final sacrifice to defeat the evil monster must naturally be female. Universal’s Dracula had to ignore explicit studio mandate that only the brides should be allowed to feed on their own Jonathan-equivalent, as to even imply that Dracula himself had fed upon a man was obviously far too homoerotic to contemplate (never mind that it’s Dracula who must be established as the threat in this opening sequence, or that it’s Dracula his victim will spend the rest of the film obsessed with).

But in that unspeakable land of male-on-male homoeroticism, you might be surprised how much homo we can squeeze in even without resorting to fangs-in-necks. The Lost Boys is surely one of the most homoerotic vampire films ever made, but there, the one big blood-drinking scene is rendered in a bloody massacre of slasher-movie violence. And though Anne Rice certainly describes the scene where Lestat drains Louis of blood in lurid detail (and even has them spend their first sunrise together sharing a coffin), Louis is already thoroughly seduced before he ever reaches this point.

You see, the lore of the pop-cultural vampire conveniently comes with a second and equally-compelling target for plausible deniability: the act of making a new vampire.

Obviously, to work, this has to be deliberate. A world where anyone bitten by a vampire becomes one hasn’t much to offer us, and the relationship between maker and fledgling can just as easily be framed as parental, as recruitment into a cult, or purely transactional. But whichever way you twist it, the implications of choosing another to share in your own eternal youth and immortality… like, I don’t have to spell this one out for you, do I? Did I mention how that thing where a vampire’s traditional first victim tended to be their own mortal widow goes all the way back?

But if we’re not ready to be completely obvious with our mainstream audience, some alternative explanation can always be provided for cover. Lestat doesn’t really want Louis, he just wants Louis’ money! (He also really wants Louis.) The Lost Boys just want Michael to join their gang! (Their very, very pretty gang, who swan around in mesh shirts, tank tops and assless chaps.)

The two sides of the vampire-deniability coin aren’t mutually exclusive, either. Carmilla drinks her new paramour’s blood, but also gazes into her eyes while promising her you will be mine. Drinking blood is a key part of making a new vampire in so many vampire stories, after all.

Carmilla isn’t even the only gay vampire story of the Victorian era. I recently posted about two other fascinating examples, both featuring male/male pairings: one being pretty much just a gender-flipped version of Carmilla, and the other a tragic love story filled with significant "vampire = gay lover" metaphors (why oh why must the townsfolk keep us apart, when we’ll only ever be happy once we’re united once more?) This stuff goes surprisingly far back.

In fact, you can find queer subtext in vampire fiction that predates even Byron and Polidori. 1819's The Vampyre was the first published vampire story, yes, but the first known work of vampire-fiction in the English language is a poem published by John Stagg in 1810, also called The Vampyre (look, the genre didn’t exist yet, you didn’t have to be creative with your titles).

In brief, Stagg’s poem recounts a conversation between a wife (Gertrude) and her dying husband (Herman), whose dear friend Sigismund, lately deceased and deeply mourned, has returned as a vampire. Night after night, he crawls into Herman’s room to drain his blood. Herman’s fate is already sealed, but unless Gertrude takes action, it will surely be she that Herman will take as his own first victim when he rises from the grave.

There may be nothing intentional about the queer subtext of this tale. A vampire’s victims often include friends he knew in life, as Stagg himself cites in his introduction. But if Herman’s first victim will be his wife, what are we to read about the fact Sigismund’s first victim is Herman? Especially given how long he’s kept secret from poor Gertrude that his dear ‘friend’ has been climbing into his bedroom each night, lying beside him in bed and sucking and draining "the fountain of my heart!" while Herman moans and tosses (in pain, obviously!), always leaving him "exhausted, spent." Ultimately, Gertrude is saved only when both Herman and Sigismund are staked through the heart, and we close on the image of them slumbering together in the tomb.

It is, however you turn it, pretty gay.

I reiterate: this is the very first known work of vampire fiction written in the English language. The second was the one that was kind-of-written-by, kind-of-stolen-from, and unambiguously based on bisexual-disaster-fuckboy Lord Byron. And the two most influential works of vampire fiction of the next hundred years would be Carmilla, the very lesbian vampire story written by a… presumably straight man? And Dracula, the not-completely-convincingly-hetero story written by #1 Walt Whitman fanboy Bram Stoker. Vampires have always been very equal-opportunity kind of monsters.

There are, of course, plenty of influential heterosexual vampire tales to fill out the roster too. Varney the Vampire, a penny dreadful from the 1840s, was so successful it ran for over 200 chapters. The 1960s had their own wildly successful Varney-equivalent in the soap opera Dark Shadows. Love it or hate it, we really can't ignore Twilight either. My own introduction to the genre was Christopher Pike’s The Last Vampire series, which came out alongside the original Vampire Diaries novels. So there's plenty of material around to keep the straights entertained – and honestly, that’s only as it should be, because the very thing that makes vampires so queer-friendly is that the sex of their victims doesn’t matter. And it’s so easy to make vampires sexy (let alone a full vampire-proposal!) that even the Victorians could do it.

Now, if your reaction to all this theorising is to tell me "but the LGBTQ’s shouldn’t have to hide behind plausible deniability!" I can only counter, "well sure, but why should the straights have all the fun?" Because playing with all the ambiguity of "is this monster really just after my blood or is this going somewhere?" can be all sorts of fun, regardless of the genders involved. And as long as they’re up for exchanging bodily fluids with persons-and-or-victims of either gender equally, why not have some fun with it?

So, okay, maybe the real title of this post should have been "why are there so many pansexual vampires?" But the answer doesn’t change. Vampires have been the bisexual disaster fuckmonsters for as long as anyone’s been writing about vampires, and have been a metaphor allowing people publish barely-coded gay attraction since 1872. And much like the queer community, they’ve only become more complex, more sympathetic, and all the more popular as romantic paramours as the years have gone by.

[leidensygdom]

The ways in which being asexual feels isolating

I've been pondering whether to post this or not, but I figured out I wanted to explain a bit of this experience.

So, I could go on a very long tangent on how being asexual is usually a lonely experience, and how much I've been otherized here and there- Specially in real life. How the same people that claimed to be queer (or allies) had been much weirder about my asexuality than they were about me being bi/pan or whatever.

But I think I wanna talk about how something like that bleeds in every aspect of socializing, even down to something like fandom. I stay away from fandom usually- I like to look at cool fanart and that's about it. I hate discourse, I hate drama, I hate reading people getting worked up because they're treating fanon as canon. But there's one thing I've noticed, over and over, that just sends me off my rails.

And it's how fandom tends to treat asexuality (or aromanticism). So, you get a character in some piece of media that explicitly, unequivocally, states they're either ace, aro, or both. "I do not have interest in a partner", "I don't desire to have sex nor do I enjoy the topic", whatever. And as an ace person, I do appreciate being able to see myself in media- There isn't many chases where something is established that bluntly.

Now, you decide you want to check some fanart for that. Fandoms have this tendency to make absolutely everything about shipping, even when the media they're basing it in does not revolve about that (and it's annoying, because a lot of times people aren't interested in the actual themes- It's all reduced to shipping). Suddenly, you notice people treating the aforementioned character as anything but aro or ace. It's all about shipping. "This person interacted with this other person in a way two friends would, but we gotta make this their entire personality now". Some people may instead go for "well, maybe the character is not having sex, but they're probably an absolute freak about it, studies it extensively, has encyclopedic knowledge about it-"

Now, there's of course sex-favourable aces, and that's completely valid, but it's already straying from what, canonically, the character had mentioned. Asexual or aromantic characters aren't really allowed to exist as themselves. People often see them as a blank slate to fill, to change, to fix. I could talk forever about how people react to real life aces like that. I've had people asking me incredibly invasive questions because they saw my lack of sexual attraction as something broken, something they could fix.

And I hate that! I think I'm allowed to say that I hate that! It's hard and unusual for media to cement an aro/ace character, because they're defined by the lack of interest for something, which is often hard to show. But when it does- No one seems to care. It's all shipping, it's all "well, he's gay in denial", "well, she's probably super repressed". If you took a canonically gay character and made them straight on a fanfic, you'd get angry people. Which is bound to happen when you erase representation that people identify with. But aro/ace characters are NOT even seen as queer, they're not even seen as "representation" by most people. You can erase that bit of it, put some god awful shipping on top, and people will applaud you. And it sucks!

I wish people would see being aro or ace as an identity worth respecting, not an identity that needs overwriting. It feels a bit too close to how people often treat aro/aces irl, and it sucks. It reeks of this sort of exclusionism, where "aro/aces are technically queer but it's queer lite at best, it's less interesting than being gay, and we kinda don't want them near us anyhow". Again, I've had far worse experiences about being ace than I have about not being straight.

Sorry if the post got long, but I hope this experience may at least resonate with other people who have been struggling with this, too. It has always felt just kind of lonely to be ace, and see how little people do even consider it an identity, even when it comes down to something like fandom.

[musicalmoritz]

It’s canon Mitsuba’s gay?

I’m gonna use this as an excuse to yap because Mitsuba’s queercoding is either weirdly downplayed by fans or used solely for BL shipping purposes so I want to talk about it through the lens of what it means for his character, role in the story, and relationship with Kou

Yes, Mitsuba is canonically gay

Things don’t have to be explicitly stated in order to be canon, subtext is a major part of media analysis. This is something a lot of fans miss which leads to a misunderstanding of the source material. I do have some credentials for this, I’ve taken two undergrad college literature classes in which the subject of queercoding did come up multiple times. Meaning analyzing queercoding has literally gone towards my degree so I feel like my opinion holds some weight (not as much as that of an actual English major but yk I assume I’ve had more education on it than the general TBHK fandom)

There are multiple ways to queercode a character, sometimes it can be as simple as feminizing a man or masculinizing a woman. Though that method might be a bit outdated nowadays with gender roles becoming less strict, it’s still worth keeping in mind when analyzing queer characters. Another way is through romantically colored scenes with characters of the same sex, or by having them hint at disinterest in the opposite sex. Mitsuba checks off all three of these boxes and then some

First off, Mitsuba is attracted to men. This is made extremely obvious through his relationship with Kou but I’m gonna explain it anyways because unfortunately I’ve seen a lot of fans say they’re just platonic

Mitsuba and Kou went on a date. When this is brought up, fans typically jump to the excuse of “but Kou said it wasn’t a date,” which is where my American Lit class is going to come in handy. One of the major things we learned is that authors have to understand that everything they write has some sort of real world connotation. If you write a scene with a doctor, you have to understand that your readers already have preconceived notions of what doctors represent. You can choose to either lean into that or subvert it, but you have to be aware that as soon as a doctor enters the scene, readers have already made assumptions about that character

The word “date” is clearly being used in a romantic context here. When Kou texts his friends and brother about it, they all assume he’s talking about a romantic date. While in the actual context of the scene, Mitsuba and Kou aren’t quite ready to use such a strong label yet, the romantic wording here is still very intentional. AidaIro would not have labeled this moment as a date if they didn’t want readers to view it in a romantic light, because they understand that their readers are going to associate dates with romance. Japanese censorship is really strict, it’s hard to publish stories with explicitly queer characters unless the series is labeled as a BL or GL. And so Japanese manga writers often have to find roundabout ways to express that characters are gay without outright stating it- such as suggesting that they’re going on a date with a character of the same sex

In the printed volume for Vol.20, there’s an editor’s note that mentions that when Kou and Mitsuba are making plans to hang out at the school festival, it holds a romantic implication for the Japanese audience. Cultural differences are important to keep in mind, to western fans this scene might not raise any eyebrows but for its primary audience, it is confirmation that Mitsuba and Kou are romantic. I also find it interesting that the editor felt this context was important enough to warrant clarification

And frankly, their relationship doesn’t make a lot of sense if it’s solely platonic. Male friendship is something TBHK writes very realistically, the male characters aren’t as touchy-feely with their friends as they are with their female love interests. Yokoo and Satou don’t directly ask Kou how he’s feeling when they notice he’s upset, instead they give him a task to distract him- similar to how men in real life cheer their friends up through quality time rather than talking through their emotions like women do (not every man ofc but a good majority of them). When Teru is down, Akane doesn’t hold him and reassure him the way he does with Aoi. There are no grand declarations of ultimate “friendship” the way you see in fan servicy series like Haikyuu. Instead, he used his and Teru’s rivalry to indirectly motivate him to get his head back in the game. When Hanako is sad, Kou cheers him up by making donuts for him and then giving them to Nene so she can pretend she’s the one who made them. This is a very healthy portrayal of male friendship, and Mitsuba and Kou are nothing like this

Mitsuba and Kou both cry and vent to each other multiple times (the Mitsuba Arc, the Picture Perfect Arc, the Nightlife Arc), and instead of comforting each other indirectly they do things like offering to die for each other. You would never see Akane offer to die to make Teru feel better, nor would you Aoi and Nene or Kou and Hanako. It stands out so much from other friendships in the series, even Kou’s friendships with other characters. That is a conscious writing decision, AidaIro make a point to show Mitsuba as an exception for Kou. It’s worth noting that in the same chapter where Yokoo and Satou cheer Kou up indirectly, Mitsuba attempts to directly have him talk about his feelings

They’re also incredibly possessive over one another, in a way friends usually aren’t. When Kou was in the Red House, he was shown his greatest desires, and Mitsuba appeared in one of these. Kou said he knew Mitsuba would appear, which is interesting because at that point he had already picked up on the house showing him what he wanted. But what does he want? He wants Mitsuba to rely on him entirely, to be completely useless without him. He wants Mitsuba to be “no good without him,” to need him so badly that he begs him to die so they can be together. I’m not exaggerating, these are lines pulled straight from the chapter (paraphrased but still). Later on in the Nightlife arc, Kou breaks down when he discovers Mitsuba has been relying on Tsukasa for life-saving help. As for Mitsuba, he wants to die by Kou’s hands. He says it wouldn’t be satisfying if anyone else killed him, and that he would be happy if Kou were to be the last person he spent time with before he died. He tries to trap Kou in a picture perfect world just like Hanako does with Nene, because he wants to live a normal life with him. It’s also shown in one of the extras that Mitsuba cries when Kou ignores him

They’re also drawn very romantically, again we don’t see Teru and Akane this intimate with one another unless they’re fighting. We especially don’t see Kou this intimate with anyone other than Mitsuba, and while Mitsuba is sometimes clingy with Tsukasa we certainly never see him posed romantically with a woman. This comes back to authorial intent and real world connotations, AidaIro know that male friends aren’t typically this close, and therefore casual affection like this will be interpreted in a romantic light. We see them hold hands/wrists multiple times too, Kou gives Mitsuba a piggyback ride in one scene, and in ASHK they had a classic “pinned against the wall” page

I’ll also mention the AUs, because those indicate a lot about the characters as well. In Hanako-Kun of the Opera, Kou poisoned Mitsuba so he could take him away from the opera house and protect him from Tsukasa. He basically kidnapped him. He also stayed with Mitsuba at the opera house for a seemingly long period of time despite hating opera. Aaaaand they’re childhood best friends in this au and Kou took care of Mitsuba while he was sick

Then there’s the Ghost Hotel, where Kou is a werewolf who takes bites out of mummy Mitsuba during full moons. Despite this, the two appear to be friends and Mitsuba helps Kou out around the kitchen. Cannibalism is consistently tied to romance throughout TBHK, most notably with Hakubo and Sumire but other romantic pairings have cannibalistic moments or official arts. During the zombie mokke chapter, Nene panicked when Akane tries to eat her because she assumed it would put her in a love triangle with Aoi. So yeah, cannibalism in TBHK is directly tied to romance and we see that with Mitsukou both in canon and in this au. Speaking of which, I’m not even gonna get into the symbolism of Kou holding a heart out to Mitsuba. Connect the dots for yourselves

Now that we’ve got Mitsukou out of the way, let’s talk about Mitsuba’s disinterest in women

Remember how I said one of the ways queercoding is done is by having a character hint at disinterest in the opposite sex? Yeah, very rarely are we going to see a queercoded male character outright say “I have no attraction to women.” Instead they say they just never saw the appeal in dating, or that they never had time to settle down. In more obvious cases, we have scenes like Reiner from AOT joking that Ymir isn’t all that into guys

I couldn’t find the second scene but there are TWO extras where the subject of Mitsuba’s disinterest in women comes up. C’mon guys I’m trying not to be mean here but you have to be blind, oblivious, or in denial to not pick up on that. Whyyyyy would they mention Mitsuba not having a crush on any girls twice if it weren’t to suggest something about his preference?? Coupled with his appearance (which I’ll get to later) and relationship with Kou, these scenes carry a lot of weight. Even if those other aspects weren’t included, scenes like this would still indicate he has no interest in women (which would make him gay or aroace, though due to his relationship with Kou the aroace thing is kind of ruled out)

Compare this to a scene where Mitsuba thinks he’s being asked out by a man. He doesn’t say “hmmm nope no guys, I’m cuter than all of them~” he specifically says “I’m not interested in guys with lame earrings.” The way this is worded implies that Mitsuba is discussing a type, though it’s v much a comedic scene and we know from everything else that he absolutely does like guys with lame earrings, it’s still worded in a way that makes him appear queer. If he were straight, they would have had him say he’s not interested in guys at all (like Dazai from Bungou Stray Dogs, John Watson from BBC Sherlock, Finn Hudson from Glee, idk there are a lot of male characters that are explicit straight sorry for the crazy random list). Also note how he teases Kou about it, he knows that Kou is fond of him and doesn’t hesitate to use that against him (like when he was comforting him during the Nightlife arc)

They don’t go overboard with Mitsuba’s disinterest in women because, well, that’s not really necessary. Two scenes is already a lot, and he doesn’t have any romantic relationships with women in canon (even as a crush/a joke scene). It’s rare for TBHK characters to have absolutely no scenes expressing interest in the opposite sex, since the series is partially a romance. But Mitsuba consistently only ever shows interest in one man, and when girls are brought up he’s quick to brush it off. His mom did think Nene was his girlfriend when they met, but this was depicted as a very awkward and comedic scene. Because the premise of Mitsuba having a girlfriend is objectively hilarious

(Due to Sousuke’s young age it’s reasonable to assume he wasn’t out to his mom yet, he’s around the age where most kids are closeted. It’s even possible that Sousuke hadn’t come to terms with his sexuality yet, though it’s still a prevalent part of both his character and No.3’s)

Now let’s move onto appearances. I want to give a quick disclaimer, not all gay men are feminine and not all feminine men are gay. Androgyny is also very common in anime and doesn’t automatically mean a character is gay, but there are cases when it’s used for queercoding. Mitsuba is one of these cases

Mitsuba is a very feminine character, this is addressed as soon as he shows up in the manga. He was bullied for his appearance (and personality), but unlike his personality he never tried to change his feminine appearance. He kept his hair long, continues to wear scarves and cardigans and earrings. No.3 wears these things as well, and I would argue has a more feminine personality since he seems to be more open about his emotions and idk. I struggle to categorize feminine and masculine traits because imo that’s subjective but there are things society deems feminine vs. masculine. The problem is that I really dislike the whole “men are strong and women are emotional” thing but ehhhh I guess I have to talk about it for this. Hmph. But yeah although Mitsuba isn’t exactly the biggest sweetheart ever, he does act somewhat feminine compared to the other male characters (as I’ve said he’s p much the only man in the series who attempts to work through emotional conflicts directly)

Once again we circle back to intent, AidaIro know that a male character dressed in pink with pink eyes and long pink hair is going to raise some eyebrows. Even by androgynous anime standards, it’s a bit much. And good for him, although not all gay men are feminine, some are and that’s also fine. I can’t speak on how well he represents feminine gay men because I’m a lesbian but he does dress similar to some of the feminine gay men I’ve known irl (or slightly less feminine in some cases…I knew this one dude in high school who used to wear corsets to class and he was so badass I hope he’s doing well)

I could get into how Kou is a bit feminized too with the whole housework thing but this ain’t abt him. I will say that Kou is still a very masculine character but despite this his character is feminized in some ways compared to the other men. I’m not really here to discuss whether that’s good or bad, I’m just stating the evidence as it is, you can make your own conclusions as to how you feel about it

So how does being queer impact Mitsuba’s character arc?

When I get around to writing my analyses of all the TBHK characters I WILL be talking more in depth about the queer allegories with Mitsuba’s character but for now I’ll give ya’ll a quick summary. Supernatural characters have been used for years to represent queerness, the same could be said for villains and any character trope that represents a feeling of “otherness.” Sometimes it’s more broad like X-Men, where the superpowered characters are used to represent all types of minorities (though I believe X-Men is more closely tied to race, there are rampant queer themes as well). Then there’s books like Interview with the Vampire that get more specific with it, where Louis denying his “true nature” as a vampire is used as an allegory for him denying his queerness. Well I’m here to tell you that Mitsuba and Louis de Pointe du Lac are in the same boat

Mitsuba differs from the other supernaturals because he desperately tries to hold on to feelings of normalcy. He wants to be a normal human and live a normal human life. He doesn’t want to be othered, to be outcasted from society for something he can’t control. We don’t see Hanako, Tsuchigomori, Mei, or any of the other supernatural characters struggle with this. You could argue that Akane does but his situation is more related to learning to empathize with others than any internal battles within himself. Hanako may have moments of wishing him and Nene could have something more, but that’s more about romance than his identity.

This desire to be “normal” is unique to Mitsuba’s character, and it’s a very queer desire. Being an angsty teenager who hasn’t fully accepted themself yet and hasn’t realized that being queer is not only normal, but a beautiful experience. It’s also so interesting to me that as he’s trying so hard to be normal, it creates a push and pull between him and Kou. He wants to be normal for Kou but he also feels that he’s hurting Kou just by existing, that this could only end bad for him. Oh the inherent guilt of having your first gay crush and feeling like you're corrupting them hist for pining from afar

So, can you ship him with women? Technically you can do anything, shipping isn’t illegal and we all have free will. Should you ship him with women is more subjective, I personally think no!! Queerness is not just a sexuality, it’s an identity that deeply impacts who you are as a person. It shapes your experiences and your view of yourself, and in an allegorical way it has certainly done this for Mitsuba. Yes, bi people are queer as well and this is still true for them, but bisexuality is not Mitsuba’s experience. Mono-attraction exists and that specification is very important to gay men and lesbians. For some people sexuality is fluid and that’s beautiful, but it doesn’t work that way for everyone

Some queer fans don’t care if gay characters are shipped with members of the opposite sex, and they’re entitled to their own opinions. It makes me immensely uncomfortable tho, so please block me if you ship Mitsuba with women. That goes for any ships between canon gay/lesbian characters and the opposite sex. I respect people’s right to have opinions but that doesn’t mean I have to like the opinions themselves, and I don’t have to engage with anything that makes me uneasy. That goes for all of you btw, never let people convince you that you have to put up with shit you hate on the internet lmao, this is not real life babes. Block and move on

TL;DR

Mitsuba is too gay to function

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hey sex witch! bit random & unserious question, but what’s up with people saying ‘bottom’ like it’s a funny insult? like. doesn’t someone have to be a bottom in this whole sex thing. or do I just think that bc I’m the bottom here. am I missing something lol

okay I already tried to type this once and the page refreshed and killed it, so fuck me, but:

in many online spaces, especially among mmm younger queer people with less nuanced understandings of sex, top/bottom get conflated with dom/sub (they're extremely different things) and then all four get treated as personality traits instead of sexual preferences.

in this configuring the sub/bottom is often positioned as a flailing, physically frail introvert to their top/dom's competent, physically capable extrovert; if you search "top and bottom bingo" you'll find dozens of deeply cursed results like this one that would suggest that bottoms aren't seeking someone to fuck them so much as a babysitter.

all of which stems from, I guess, the assumption that people who like to get dommed and/or bottom are doing so because they're more passive and less competent than their partners which, again, is a view that generally belays a pretty unrefined grasp of sex and intimacy.

also hey if I can be totally honest. I do think it's a word that some queer people particularly like being able to lob at gay men to suggest that they're effeminate and incompetent without just calling them a faggot, which like. is just unchecked homophobia, btw.

[gatheringbones]

[“Too many of us have chosen to live in sexually ambiguous, sexually boring, sexually dead lesbian relationships because it wasn't safe to talk about desire---desire for cock, desire for pussy, desire for leather, desire for diversity. Exploring my desire for men has led me in an interesting circle---back to my incredible passion for womyn. My queer world will have to stretch (again) to make room for my fantasies, and perhaps even an affair or two. It will have to stretch to make room for whatever I desire.

Finally I realize what I am so afraid of. I am afraid that men and penises have so much power in this heteropatriarchal world that simply desiring one can invalidate 25 years of deep womon-loving. I'm afraid that lesbianism is so fragile that it needs to be protected by an iron fence. I am afraid that by desiring a cock, I will be excommunicated, torn away from the world of womyn. I am afraid that if I allow myself to open, perhaps I will want more. This is why a lesbian wanting a man demands so much courage. Courage to stand outside of identity politics, to insist that our community grow to accept all of us.

My lesbianism is as sure and solid as the Himalayas, as predictable as the seasons and the phases of the moon, as familiar as a womon in my arms ("Wherever I go, there's one thing I know, I'm sure to have a womon around me"). My desire for men is as fleeting as good chocolate and ripe strawberries---not always available, sometimes bitter and disappointing, often intoxicating as nectar, somewhat allergic, and extremely tempting.

I can live with all these desires. I will not compromise myself again. Fitting in is less important than filling out. There is a revolution afoot, and it is stretching the parameters of the old gay life. The hundredth monkey. A friend says, "Oy, I'm not ready for this century." But she is. She is.

Just when I thought I'd made some sense of these desires for men and had come to peace with them, my ex-lover called. The butch who couldn't communicate and who could never fuck me right. She has something to share, something important, something very personal. She has decided to come out as a transgendered person---bi-gendered, s/he calls it. S/he has come to realize that s/he has both a male body and a female body. Hir language may be new, but the experience is familiar.

It was hir male body I always wanted. I'd called it butch. S/he says that when s/he is in hir male body s/he desires men; when s/he is in hir female body s/he desires womyn. In other words, s/he's as queer as a $3 bill.

Suddenly, a fog begins to clear. If I desired hir male body and hir male body desires men, and when s/he is in hir female body s/he desires womyn, then s/he must've wanted me womon to womon (or man to man?), while I wanted hir butch to femme (Dare I say, male to female?). Suddenly our sex problems become very clear.

I always felt hir switch. As I filled with desire, wanting hir hardness, her maleness, s/he would become soft, almost girly, and it was like someone pulled the plug on the bathtub, the desire leaked out of me, leaving me--us--empty.

This starts me thinking about the lover before hir. The one with the sweet curls in her hair, the big round belly, and the soft eyes. The kinky one, where anything goes. She loves my femme self, calls me bitch and desires to fell me with hardness, to force me into submission.

Somehow though, it never quite worked. I am beginning to see what went wrong. This one wanted butch/femme, boy/girl sex, and I wanted lezzie sex. I loved hir female body and wanted to touch her. S/he wanted to give me hir male body. When I tried to touch hir breasts, I was reminding hir that she was a womon and was therefore rejecting her power. The lover s/he picked after me identified as a heterosexual woman (although she too used to be a radical dyke). When my ex-lover told me this new lover wouldn't touch her (after all she did identify as straight), I thought, how terrible, such internalized homophobia. Now I am beginning to understand how, by ignoring the girl body, the boy could feel his power. It got old fast, but for a while it worked, fed the rejected boy place inside.

I began this piece saying I hadn't had a man in 15 years. I am beginning to suspect that I've had many men. They'd called themselves butches.

I suppose none of this makes sense if you just think about biological bodies. These girls definitely had female bodies, tits and ass, and oh, so lovely to touch. But there is no doubt that these womyn have also had dicks. I've never said this out loud before, because dick is a dirty lesbian word. But I have been filled by womyn's dicks, and no, they are not "just" dildos.”]

Lionheart, from wanting men, from genderqueer: voices beyond the binary, edited by Riki wilchins, 2002

[gallusrostromegalus]

How're gonna go about making Chizuru Likeable? I'm guessing she's Tatsuki's ex?

Well. Uh.

I kinda stripped her for parts.

Here's the thing: besides being a pretty homophobic and creepy joke character, Chizuru... Doesn't do much in the plot, and I already have an enormous cast. It was easier to take her best qualities and assign them to other characters.

Chizuru's guts to be an openly queer minor in 1999? Now part of Tatsuki.

Chizuru's joy at finding a deep friendship with Orihime despite kind of being a little freak? A new facet to Rukia's personality.

Chizuru's ability to notice stuff and do plot exposition? Chad.

Chizuru's deep fascination with Tiddies? Hallibel.

Like an organ donor, the concept of Chizuru lives in in everyone else.

Last I checked, all the women in AEIWAM who are interested in sex are some flavor of sapphic because nearly the entire cast is what could be called Bisexual or Asexual. Though using those terms kind of buries the lead that the actual axis of attraction is not sex or gender, or that the asexuality is something much weirder than simple disinterest. I honestly kind of struggle writing characters with conventional sexualities like "gay" or "straight"! All I got is:

Characters who are attracted to one very specific thing regardless of the gender anymore exhibiting that thing might be

Characters whose sexuality is predicated entirely on emotional reciprocation

Characters with a profound sense of sexuality who don't get to express it because of societal bias like fatphobia, or situational factors like being trapped in another dimension

Characters whose sexuality is primarily defined by their trauma, sexual or otherwise.

Characters who don't know themselves well enough to even know why they find someone attractive

Characters that don't have a sexuality per SE, but they have other deeply intense sensory drives they use as sexualities because it's close enough

Characters who are wholesale unfamiliar with the concept of sex or attraction, even as adults

Characters who participate in sexuality because they feel obligated to do so, and end up enjoying it anyway

Characters who are into features that do not normally occur in organic beings

Characters who have sexualities but they're very inconvenient so they intentionally cultivate more advantageous fetishes

Characters whose sexuality is defined less by attraction to individuals so much as how different sex acts would effect the greater group harmony

Characters who are attracted to straight up philosophical concepts.

I seem to have drifted from the original ask.

[twilightcitysky]

This post is less Good Omens- related and more personal, but there's been a lot of arguing over "representation" in the fandom the past few days. The strong feelings people express are awesome but ALSO I really want us in the community to appreciate and listen to one another.

People want to KILL queer people. There are still many, many places where it is not safe to have any identity other than cis het. Fighting that means sticking together, not tearing each OTHER apart. Allosexual, asexual, lesbian, gay, cis, trans, nonbinary, gender queer, GNC... we're all part of this community and we're stronger together.

In Good Omens, Neil Gaiman gave us a glimpse of what a world could be if people got to decide for themselves how to present and who to love without the hate and prejudice that inevitably comes along with that in the real world. I know people are questioning exactly what Crowley and Aziraphale are and how they identify, which is fine (honestly I don't know that we'll ever find out for sure. It may be something private between the two of them). But saying things like "it's homophobic" (for them to be ace), or "it's acephobic" (for them to be gay) sort of defeats the purpose of "it's a love story", doesn't it? At the end of the day, maybe it doesn't matter what EXACTLY they are. They're unapologetically QUEER and their story is for and about all of us.

It's okay to disagree. It's okay to ask questions. I mean, that's the moral of Good Omens, isn't it? We don't have to be the same; we SHOULDN'T all be the same... there's strength and beauty in our differences. But even if we don't all agree with one another, let's support each other.

I see them as gay male coded beings who have chosen that identity for themselves and would enjoy sexual pleasure as much as any other earthly pleasure. If YOU see them as agender or nonbinary sexless entities who are QPR or ace or aroace and would never have sex, I SUPPORT THE HELL OUT OF YOUR RIGHT TO DO SO. I'm in your corner and I will fight for you.

Love you all. Love that we love the ineffable love story of Good Omens, whatever form that takes, and let's lift each other up rather than tearing each other down.

[caassette]

been on tumblr less than a week and already Trans Discourse is on my timeline front page dash...

idk i kind of just feel like...there are actual real threats right now in the world to all trans people, and like. trying to create in-groups and out-groups within the community is the most braindead thing you can do

they are killing us. they want us dead. any time you try to segregate one fraction of the queer community from another, their job gets a little easier. let me give you an example that happened recently in Texas while I was living there:

June 2022: Log Cabin Republican Praises Trump, "Don't Say Gay", Trans Hate

Also June 2022: Texas GOP's New Platform calls gay people "abnormal"

Log Cabin Republicans are essentially gay conservatives. And as part of trying to be accepted, under Trump, they decided trans people were the out-group and that gay people (specifically, white cisgender gay men) were the in-group.

If I had to guess, they probably figured so long as they also pointed the finger at us and called us groomers and said we were fetishists, they would be more accepted in the republican party.

Guess what happened? Not that! Instead, the Texas GOP, in 2022 (Two Thousand And Twenty Two) decided that being gay was once again Not Okay!

This is what I'm getting at: in queer spaces, always, always, there must be solidarity. There is no such thing as someone who is "not gay enough", or "not really trans", or "just looking for attention."

I, myself, am a binary trans woman. My current partner is a genderfluid transmasculine nonbinary person. Do I spend hours talking with them about how they do or don't face certain forms of oppression, or about how their identity is less valid than mine?

Of course not! We kiss and hold hands and fuck and have empathy for each other.

As a queer person it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to be one hundred percent accepting, validating, and encouraging of ALL QUEERNESS, because the second you decide to draw the line, the oppressor wins.

Maybe you're not a Log Cabin Republican. Maybe you're not advocating for trans genocide while being in a same-sex relationship. Maybe you just, idk, use the word "theyfab." Or you think pansexuals should "just call themselves bi."

It doesn't matter that the line you've drawn is farther left, or smaller, or excludes less of the community.

What matters is that you've drawn it at all.

[starnana7]

every time I remember that the hit show supernatural made God, the literal God from the Bible, canonically bisexual but couldn’t do the same with a random guy who hunts monsters it actually makes me feel physically ill.. like blasphemy is okay but we draw the line at making the main character a little bit queer because it would “upset the heterosexuals men”? okay ig… and it’s so funny to me that they tried SO bad to make dean like really really straight and macho and a manly womanizer (I mean dude has literal porn brain and is obsessed with cars and is a film nerd) And still is the number 1 bissexual boy.. I mean no one that into cowboys is 100% straight 🙄 and if they actually wanted him to be that much of a cishet guy WHY would they make him have a codependent homosexual friendship with his best friend for more than a decade ?? and we have so much subtext to corroborates it that it’s actually insane.

and it’s also rlly funny to me that sam would be the most obvious choice for a queer storyline. like i’m not sure this is true but i heard somewhere that he actually was supposed to like be lgbt and that it’s implied in the show he’s pan bc he basically have sex w/ everyone and doesn’t care (like monsters and stuff). i wholeheartedly disagree bc sure he hited a demon and a werewolf and a kitsune and God knows what more But it still were just women and for me he’s still just straight 💀 we do have gabriel however and i would say that’s a valid argument but i don’t actually like them together because of the whole torturing-sam-every-tuesday-over-and-over-again but it’s still a good take ig. again this is just my opinion But anyways doesn’t matter my point Is that sam always felt like a freak and wanted to be normal and like was more open minded and “less-macho-toxic-behavior” than dean. he was a theater kid and talked about his feelings and all. STILL THO dean went and become The bissexual icon (Not Sam, Dean!!). and the fact that he was more manly actually only emphasized to his sexuality (and him being closeted) and sam being the straight one, and bare with me here. as sam winchester once wisely said “well you are kind of butch they probably think you're compinsating.” (to dean asking why people always assumed they were gay) and like this is so true, sam always felt comfortable in himself and like his nerdier and less cool strong man personality. But dean, oh, dean, no, no, no. and it could all be linked to john. we know how much dean wanted to gain his father approval and respect, all he ever wanted was for john to be proud of him. so he’d listen to the same music as john, same clothes… and so on. but when we really see a glance of him, we realize he’s actually much more “““girly””” (sorry for the term i lacked a better one) than he shows, Especially when compared to sam—who’s supposed to be the more girly one (again sorry for the term lol) or whatever. dean canonically likes taylor swift, chick flick films, actually liked when a woman made him wear underwear, the bailarinas shoe were “speaking to him” in that one ep of cursed objects, and so on. and every time he makes fun of sam for doing something not-manly-enough (like drinking lemon water or drinking from tiny coups) he eventually goes and do the same thing 😭 and i’m 100% sure that the writers just thought “haha funny scene this really straight deadly man does something not so convencional/more feminine(?) haha comedy relief time!!” but it actually just made him have a whole perfect queer background developed in the series. specially with the fact that He Does Overcompensate. why is he always flirting with women, why is he so butch and scary, always talking about straight sex and so on? because he’s really just deep in the closet. and it makes so much sense with john being his father, with him having to hunt two lesbians nuns in his 17 bday, always having to be strong and macho and cool and perfect—and therefore straight. even without cas, dean really does immaculate the bissexual experience and i’m so sorry but this is just true.

and now pointing to the subtext that i mentioned in the first paragraph (lol i can’t believe i’m making a whole rant as to why dean winchester is a confirmed bisexual), that whole confession to that priest where he says he wants experience new feelings, new people, FOR THE FIRST TIME. that always that the show mentioned a gay couple it ALWAYS focused on dean—not sam, DEAN. the gay hunters, the gay couple on the bar that the cupid “made”, the two cosplayers partners… the fact that every time that dean liked something it was borderline fangirl (gay) obsessive (the dr. sexy episode, that wrestler fighter). he Had a gay thing—and was all flustered about it. he flirted with a guy throughout charlie. THE MALE SIREN. the male siren like after that ep i was 100% convinced that man was not straight. he had a hot demon sumer with crowley?!!! and it’s so funny to me that not one of these things involves castiel, so if they really wanted to make dean be that straight why would they do that?? and only to dean, not even once to sam. Like. and not to mention all the homoeretic tension with benny??? sam never had a male best friend like that.. all of that and i didn’t even entered on destiel. Because this then really just confirms that he is Not straight. even if he wasn’t In Love with cas, they had something going on and the fact that if cas was a girl it would 100% be canon and filmed and Everyone would ship—and I really mean everyone—it just makes me go fucking insane. they could’ve had it all. the fanfic episodes, the parallels between dean and cas and “real couples”, ruby and cas duality and the fact that sam indeed had a relationship w/ her. Anyway i’m a # bi dean truth believer and i know this bc same boy # happy pride month to my fav bissexual boy in the whole world

also to anyone that says that “destiel” was unrequited love yes it kinda of was but only bc dean was so deep in the closet, he did love cas. he was indeed a bissexual man. i’ll die on that hill.

[unfortunate17]

i agree with you about being frustrated with how often this fandom has top/bottom discussions but its a pretty common talking point in most fandoms so YR isn’t special for that

No I totally agree with you that it’s a common topic of discussion in a lot of fandoms, but there’s a particular way we have it in this fandom that really grinds my gears.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t care if you hc Wilmon to be vers or if you think Wille tops or Simon tops or whatever - it’s the justification and reasoning that I’m seeing behind these headcanons that I find deeply irritating and, frankly, insulting and kind of homophobic.

This is going to get long so forgive me.

1. I’ve seen so many posts talk about how the show is “brave” and “subversive” by having Wille go down on Simon or potentially bottom, but like - what the hell are we even talking about? In what world is it subversive to show a queer character having queer sex?? What are we subverting?? This show has never shown us anything with its intimate scenes other than two guys that are deeply in love and really horny for eachother and I hate that we keep bringing this shit up!!!

2. I’ve also seen people say that it was very important for us to see Wille moving to go down on Simon in the tape in S1 because it’s “more damning evidence that he’s queer” and otherwise Wille could’ve just said he was horny and desperate but he was actually imagining he was with a girl in his denial statement. But be so fucking forreal, in what world is that a thing he could argue in an official statement to the press? He’d be the laughing stock of the world.

Wilhelm isn’t more or less gay because he went down on Simon vs the other way around. He’d still be having queer sex because he’s having sex with another guy. Arguing that the framing here is for anything other than a plot device so Wille’s face wouldn’t be visible to set up the denial is actually kind of ridiculous.

As someone very smart on here said, “I’m sorry that you apparently have a tier list of sex acts ranging from “kinda straight” to “Gaylord” 😭😭 get well soon, couldn’t be me.”

Imagine for one second Simon was the one giving Wille head? Would you have criticized the show for that?? And WHY?!

3. Next: saying that Wilmon’s relationship is “equal” because you think they’re vers is…a take and a half lmao. What the fuck does being vers have to do with a relationship being equal?? Why are we assigning arbitrary hierarchies to sexual preferences??? Why are we implying that topping and bottoming are somehow not equal and you have to carefully balance both, when, ideally, it’s just whatever the fuck everyone is into???

Wille isn’t selfish for topping. Simon isn’t sacrificing anything by bottoming. They’re fucking because they’re in love and they want to 😭

TLDR: Wille doesn’t suck Simon’s dick for class liberation. Simon riding Wille isn’t a commentary on how he’s “girl-coded.” It’s just sex, leave them alone to have a good time and stop assigning agendas to queer sex.

[hondafuckingodyssey]

I love the way that even though there was some level of queer baiting and censoring being done by Disney, nobody fucking cares and we're counting this as the gayest fucking marvel movie ever and a total win for the gays. (At least I am.)

Like, arguably, if they had just put in a gay kiss or let them make out in the Honda Odyssey, it would have turned out less gay.

Because they had to disguise a sex scene as a car fight it turned it into some sort of five dimensional chess version of queer coding and it somehow turned out more gay than gay sex.

Like, I'm not even mad about it.

If you strike us down Disney, we shall become more powerful gay than you can possibly imagine.

So, like keep up the good work I guess?

Sometimes I worry that the day will come when we don't get these queer coded masterpieces and things will just be plain queer. And I mean, that'll be a great day for LGBT rights and all, but I'll kinda miss this madness.