#I think they are all very queer I do think so

[drchucktingle]

vote BURY YOUR GAYS in final round of goodreads awards, a book that addresses this moment and moments like it by avenging them through what is essentially meta fan art by way of horror satire. a real world chance to pick up a ball that many have dropped.

i know i get a little RILED UP over timelines but i cant ignore the way this moment could potentially create something so potent. a history of dead queer characters leading to a book that directly stands in opposition to the trope finding success and elevated through FAN votes

like a rallying cry for every slain queer character. all of the fan fiction creations and erotic ships crawling from their graves and staggering into the bright lights of mainstream consciousness. BURY YOUR GAYS they groan. the cemetery was FULL. so many votes it cant be stopped

fun to think on potential realities, and especially fun when theyre just a FEW STEPS AWAY. if you want to trot that path with me then take a moment to vote bud, its very easy. if you voted last round you can do it again now.  lets shake things up buckaroos

VOTE HERE:

[azaharinflames]

Honestly, if you check who Callum Blue is - a proud Republican Trump supporter - and look at the people who are now hyping him up as the bestest of boys...

There is nothing more to say about those people. You know, those "queer" and LGBT people who hate racism and support immigrant rights and hate Trump.

If THIS is what they are willing to tolerate to hate on a man who had the misfortune of playing a character that got in the way of their ship... No wonder Trump won

Yeah, the very public and very insistent support for a known Republican (that only stopped following (not) all the accounts after being called out) does not sit right with me.

Like obviously we don't know these people. But it's still a rather bad look on them. Then again, RG is also following rightwing accounts, and his brother has posted about his whole family voting for Trump and being proud about it, so. I think the cast chooses to ignore politics in the cast, even when supporting Trump speaks more than of your political views.

And it's oh so hypocritical of toxic buddies to now be kissing Callum's ass because RG and OS seem to be cool with him. For months they've been attacking Lou and justifying it on him being a Trumpie when all of their 'proof' was him liking a tweet previous to his first presidency and... that's it. Because since then Lou has tweeted Democrat, if at all.

And now that Callum is a proven Republican, and it's not as easy to ignore that all signs point to RG being one as well... now we don't care, do we? Because they've gone back to the cast not liking Lou just because. No longer can they claim it's because of political views because, well. Yeah.

I don't want a single BB telling me they care about queer rights and equality. They turn a blind eye to it whenever it fits them, I don't care whatever they have to say.

Anyway. Yet another (mini) rant lol. My inbox is open to rant, vent, and discuss whatever.

Take care <3

[hyperfixies]

The people who keep saying "platonic love is love too" and "it's important to show that two men can be close friends" whenever the subject of JayVik's ambiguity comes up...

You're right and under any other circumstances I'd agree.

HOWEVER... is it really so hard to grasp why in this particular case, in the context of this particular show, going that route is highly problematic? Do people not see how making only the male/male couple ambiguous was a shitty move?

If they were the only ship on the show? Sure.

If there were other openly queer male couples among the main characters? Sure, let this one ship be ambiguous all you want.

But that isn't the case. There are no ambiguous hetero couples. The attractive lesbians get to make out because that's dude-approved. But the two guys who display levels of adoration, love and devotion for each other that might be deemed cheesy even for a hetero couple? THEY get to ~transcend romantic love to become something superior~?? THEY get to be ~beyond baser needs like kissing and sensuality~? Only THEY get to be ~platonic soulmates~?

If people want to see it that way because they identify with it and it gives them comfort, more power to them, that's valid. But I can't ignore the fact that Riot are a homophobic company and exclusively interested in profit. Their customers are primarily cishet males. The very people who brought those characters to life for the show expressed that there was romantic subtext and intent and even getting CaitVi wasn't easy.

So no, in this particular case I really don't think their 'ambiguity' should be glorified when it reeks of plausible deniability, corporate greed and cowardice. Their case is not ~platonic love that transcends romance~, it's censorship.

[ghouljams]

tbh i think the 141 guys would probably just kill me and leave me in a dumpster somewhere after fucking me so their friends don't find out. honestly, that's most CoD characters. i think the threshold for "depersonalized enough to not care where intimacy comes from" is a lot higher than people expect, and imo only the more monstrous, least 'human' operators would ever even come close to reaching it, though the ones who come close but don't reach it are also nearly guaranteed to murder me. the only "non-queerphobic" CoD character is the lesbian cia milf, but she's still probably queerphobic

Hi friend! I think you may have misunderstood what I do here, which is have fun with characters that aren't real people and thus do not have actual thoughts/feelings/opinions on anything.

I'm not really sure what you were hoping I would say in response to this, but the only thing I can say is: I think you should love yourself more.

I mean this from a place of love but I genuinely cannot see what can be gained from this attitude of "yeah but they'd probably all be queerphobes" especially when you're coming into a very vocally queer person's inbox and saying it. Were you hoping I would agree with you? Or disagree with you? Do you need someone to hold your hand and tell you that it's ok, that these fictional men would love and accept you as you are? I can do that, but I don't think this attitude of assuming the worst in people(especially ones who are what you make of them i.e. fictional) is an unhealthy one.

All I can tell you is that in my fics you'll never run into anything other than acceptance, and that's a promise.

[tired-salty-vampire]

This hit way too hard. I came out to my mom late last year for similar fears. My parents aren't bad people, per say, and they love all of their kids - myself tentatively still included - very much. But it has always felt like there were strings attached. I told her that I'd been with my partner now for over a year and we plan to get married eventually. She said that while she and my dad would not shun me from the family, they would not be celebrating my relationship. Most of my family are very religious so I was amazed that I wasn't cut off on the spot because my parents had shunned my older sisters (who have since been welcomed back into family functions) for years on end for far less. I was proud of them for that and it showed growth and while I wasn't expecting them to be elated and jumping off the walls in excitement for me, I am sad that they will never be happy for me and that I've found someone I love, loves me in return, and that I want to spend the rest of my life with.

We spent our last Christmas with our respective families before moving out of state and neither my partner nor I were able to spend it together at each other's famiy homes because they are both incredibly pious and have forbidden the other from being at their house. So we are allowed to still be with our families on the condition that our partner is not with us. This just drove home even more the "loved with strings attached" aspect of family who isn't awful, but definitely not great.

"It's just so sad." This something my mom has always said about people who are LGBTQ+. Especially about my uncle, who has been married to his husband for three decades at this point, but I didn't find out by that he was gay until I was fifteen. He'd been a part of my life with his "roommate" who'd occasionally come to Christmas or other holidays. It just wasn't talked about because of the homophobia and essentially the homoerasur from my parents and their parents.

Whenever she would say things like that, I'd always think, "No, what's sad is that you think it's sad for people to love someone of the same sex. Or to realize that they identify as someone that they weren't originally assigned at birth. It is sad that you can't accept or respect people who have different beliefs than you and don't adhere to the rigid system you do, and you reject them on principal."

My only hope is that after my partner and I are married, my parents at least will allow me to bring my wife to family gatherings. Because I have every right to do that just as much as a heterosexual family member would.

To come back to what OP said, most parents of queer people usually aren't just straight forward good or bad, kind or abusive. It's very often some confusing and emotionally trying combination of "We still love you, but with conditions" and because of that you never know where the line is or what is safe to mention or talk about before they go off on you about "life choices".

Overall, having parents or family members who are passive aggressively "accepting" of your being queer is likely more far common than media shows and that aspect, as much as it sucks and is complicated, is still worth sharing.

I feel like we always see parents who are 100% super supportive allies, or parents who are horrible and cruel.  At least in media or in the most popular stories.  But I feel like that ignores just how many people have parents where you just have no idea?  And even if you think they’ll accept you on a surface level, you don’t know if they have a breaking point.  Especially if you need to go on hrt, or request they change the way they think about and refer to you.  Sure they’re liberal and all, or centrists, or “tolerant”, but how far does that stretch?

I think most closeted LGBT+ kids live like this, wading around in the grey area.  I’d like it of more of us knew that was normal, I’d like if we talked about it more.

[revenge-of-the-shit]

No hi I'm back again because after sitting on it for a while it was like Arcane suddenly saw all those issues it presented and abruptly decided that it was time to turn a blind eye to it instead in favour of a greek-tragedy-cosmic-horror-doomed-soulmates storyline. Whether this is due to studio interference or due to the actual politics of the writers, I don't know, but at the end of the day Arcane disappointingly fails to break free of the neoliberal messaging that deeply pervades any media that even tries to be progressive. It presents all these very real systemic issues, then either forgets about it or slaps on a last-minute band-aid solution that only serves to brush it under the rug.

I will grant that a part of it is just the fact that they simply didn't have enough time. A lot of this could've been expanded on had we just had one more arc, or even just three four-episode acts instead. The quick pacing honestly did Arcane a disservice this time. They had huge ideas, many of which were great, but they simply did not have enough time.

Some things that I wish we saw more of:

Ekko's community building and the fruits of his effort (and to add on to this: let him see his tree again!!! wtf!!)

Jinx and Sevika (and Ekko!!!) really, truly leading a united Zaunite revolution for longer than like half an episode that forces literally anyone in Piltover to consider the consequences of their actions

On that same point: meaningful change that takes down systemic barriers - better public infrastructure for Zaun, better funding for health issues, examining injustices committed by enforcers - this was only barely addressed by Ekko ("you're destroying our vents and polluting our waters") and then like never talked about again

Putting Sevika on the council as the singular token Zaunite is so painful like I can tell you as someone who's been the only queer non-white voice in the room that it's not as progressive and cool as it might seem to be. It's painful and torturous and just reeks of tokenism. A good first step would be to have a council with an equal amount of members between Piltover and Zaun but that's not enough to just have that!!

Jayce and Caitlyn actually having like, even a moment, just to think about what they've done to hurt, to oppress others, in their pursuit of "justice". Making weapons you never said you would and gassing a city of civilians should be thought about more, actually

Like there could've been so much more to Jayce and Caitlyn to make their characters even more well written. At their core they truly want to do good, they care, they earnestly want to help, but they are also raised in privilege and I want to see them wrestle with the biases they've been soaked in more.

I already talked about Maddie and the enforcers in a different post but just... more nuance about enforcers and how even the nicest enforcer you know will happily gas civilians and stand by and watch unnecessary violence. Like. Loris was one of the "good enforcers" but he helped to gas civilians too. Did we forget that

Vi!!! Just. More of Vi. She got the short end of the stick this season. The writer's punching bag. I wish we got more time to actually explore her trauma and to just... give her a break. But also more time on her thinking on her own decision to go bluebelly.

[eydilily]

i did it last week so i'm doing it again; how we feeling about gempearl this session 6...

the divorce arc isn't even that angsty anymore it's just like, we are watching several minutes of two people who are so obviously obsessed with each other and are just being dumb (/lh) about it. i think that it's just so clear now that they both want to get back with each other but they just??? are stupid and gay????

gem wanting pearl to kill her in a 1v1 because she knows pearl is capable of doing it and, that way, she could start earning her forgiveness back but pearl just doesn't do it?? the whole "you got ants in your pants" "yeah, yeah they are named pearl"??? pearl so obviously trying to make gem jealous with the camel and gem responding so curtly???? the little "did you even look me in the face during our murder camel… happenings?" from gem?????

they are so bitter. they are so gay. they want each other in ways that are dangerous to the rest of the players. every single interaction thay have is charged with intense queer tension. i need them to have a homoerotic fight

you genuinely took all the words from my mouth I CANT EVEN START WITH THEM? its nearly embarrassing /lh its gem giving pearl so many chances to kill her before she gives up and goes over to skizzs place ??

and i get Why pearl didnt take the offer for a proper 1v1 between them. like out of ALL PEOPLE, pearl would be the one who would understand the need to prove your capabilities in a nice even match considering she has that same need with scott (that still has not been fulfilled imo lmao the pufferfish was nice but it probably still didnt satiate that urge for her)

BUT pearl is on yellow, and her self preservation instincts kick in and even if shed love to bury this hatchet with gem she has other goals in mind. (Gem on the other hand has a very different laid-back? attitude towards lives. shes confident surviving even on red and thinks other people should share the same sentiment)

and dont even get me started on the camels. smth smth never left the desert smthg smthg never got off that damn camel.

THEYRE SO BITTER. they both want things to go back to "normal" but normal to pearl is just the two of them as they are and normal to gem is back in SL when theyre both on their red life and its them vs the world ITS HORRIBLE!!! GET IT TOGETHER YOU TWO PLEASE FIGHT IT OUT ALREADY

[naamahdarling]

So, the other night in an effort to show a friend that LLMs can produce very credible fiction and relatively inventive ideas, I played with ChatGPT for about 10 minutes I was able to make my point flawlessly. Don't get up my ass about this, that's juvenile.

ChatGPT has watched enough Dropout to be able to reasonably (and genuinely amusingly) impersonate Brennan Lee Mulligan and, to a lesser extent, Sam Reich. It's successfully produced a script for Game Changer where the show was entirely about cats and Brennan couldn't win, and parts of it were actually funny. It also produced an AITA post from the point of view of Brennan Lee Mulligan AS DM OF DIMENSION 20 that was in places absolutely hilarious.

It is able to very successfully postulate a set of G1 my little ponies that do not actually exist, complete with colors, cutie marks, and back card stories. It had a little trouble with G1 versus G4 due to the sheer glut of content, but its ideas were genuinely appealing because the source material it was drawing on was designed to be appealing.

It generated a list of birthday party themes that would terrify an arachnophobe, two or three of which were really good. A request for it to generate a list of queer pride birthday ideas didn't produce anything particularly original, but it was all appropriate and convincing.

It produced a short script where Johnny Sims from the Magnus archives receives birthday gifts from his coworkers, and one of those was a knife-wielding tentacle. This script was in places a little less sharp than the actual writing, but it absolutely nailed the speech patterns, and each gift was appropriate to the character giving it. It was genuinely funny. In places it was clever. It actually made me laugh.

I have most of these saved if anybody wants to see them instead of playing with it themselves.

It really isn't a question of what has been dumped into the data set. We can just assume it has been dumped in there somehow.

We can't undo what has been done and we're never going to be able to name all of the people whose work has been used to train these datasets.

I have both positive and negative feelings, strong ones on both sides, about this technology. If someone wants to use this technology to create a script for a movie in the Predator franchise, or a sequel to their favorite book, or whatever, that is a neutral act. Profiting from that is highly questionable, passing it off as the real thing is completely indefensible, using this technology to replace writers and artists and real people doing ANY work where there is no benefit to humans (like identifying cancer cells -- "AI" does that) is the second worst thing that can be done with it.

That's what worries me about this. It could produce infinite Simpsons episodes without the need for a single writer. Eventually it will be able to animate them so accurately you could ask it to make it look like it had been recorded on a video cassette and it would be completely convincing. It would be able to imitate the voice actors perfectly.

We do not want corporations to have that power. Worker protections are critical. It isn't that AI produces art that is bad or soulless or whatever. Those are completely spurious arguments and irrelevant to any true discussion of whether or not it is ethical.

What matter is is that we keep this shit out of the hands people who want to delete us from the workforce. They aren't going to delete the data. We need to protect workers.

P.S. Artists, Disney and Adobe do not have your best interests at heart. Copyright issues are more complicated than they are being presented, and if you find yourself on the side of one of these companies in any capacity, re-examine literally everything you think immediately. Unions. You want unions.

For reference, because I think it's really important to bring this up as often as possible, the worst application of this technology I can think of would be deliberately or accidentally misapplying data that could be used to affect things like a person's medical care, criminal record, and credit score, all of which are actually currently things that a single company can do, APPRISS, now owned by Equifax, yes that Equifax, and fucking nobody, none of y'all, are freaking out about that even though it's the single most frightening thing I have seen in 20 years. I cannot overstate its potential to utterly destroy the lives of literally anyone who comes into contact with the system that uses it, and those are unbelievably common. They are currently selling their product to law enforcement so that cops and businesses can use it to predict who will engage in criminal behavior, I'm literally not kidding about that, they come right out and say it. It is being trained on existing data and refined constantly.

Enjoy breaking your leg and needing painkillers, which get you flagged in a medical database that will try to prevent you from accessing them in the future (already happening), and also entering you into a law enforcement database that knows you have taken them. Then add in whatever eldritch fuckery bringing credit bureaus into it would cause.

We aren't fucked, I'm not a doomer who insists that all people are terrible and that we have no future and we might as well let things burn, I do actually care about the world we live in and the people who populate it and I consider humans a delight rather than a plague, but we need to start seriously resisting the use of this shit by entities more powerful than us. They are already way ahead.

“I can now say with absolute confidence that many AI systems have been trained on TV and film writers’ work. Not just on The Godfather and Alf, but on more than 53,000 other movies and 85,000 other TV episodes: Dialogue from all of it is included in an AI-training data set that has been used by Apple, Anthropic, Meta, Nvidia, Salesforce, Bloomberg, and other companies. I recently downloaded this data set, which I saw referenced in papers about the development of various large language models (or LLMs). It includes writing from every film nominated for Best Picture from 1950 to 2016, at least 616 episodes of The Simpsons, 170 episodes of Seinfeld, 45 episodes of Twin Peaks, and every episode of The Wire, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad.”

😡

[fandomfixationstation]

Asexual Reader x TWST Characters: Part Two! Rewritten

This is a rewrite of earlier posts I once wrote on a different blog. I am revisiting this and trying to improve on what I wrote and once again doing this for myself and other asexuals who lack the content and kindness others get. Writing this for every fanfic I've read where the character breaks up with the reader for being asexual and doing better. 

That said, Everything will be entirely my headcanons and you aren’t required to agree with my interpretations of the characters and story.

(Part two)

Malleus Draconia

Malleus Has only considered two things. The fact he has loved his significant other more than most things he can think of, and that being royalty means a lot of complicated matters. But of course he is more than happy to reassure his significant other that he treasures more than anything in all of the realms and any dilemmas or choices to be made or had will be made together.

Malleus will do everything in his power to be supportive and an ally. It might start with getting a Flag, but it most certainly doesn’t stop there by any means of the matter. As I had said the first time I wrote the post, please imagine he gives you a locket with a picture of the two of you. Give or take some cheesy engraving, a decoration of everlasting love of the purest form or something akin to it.

As I'm sure I've already said before, and likely to say again in the future. Malleus will always make sure that you're okay with whatever physical touch he gives you. He'll be up most respectful of any boundaries that may change at any point.

Otherwise, there isn’t a whole thing to say. Due to being a prince his relationships were always going to be complicated and something he was going to figure out the hard way. So regardless he’ll fight to make sure the two of you will be happy in your relationship, whatever that may specifically look like for the two of you.

Jade Leech

Going to double down on Jade being one of the most understanding people on this, he doesn’t need an explanation on what it means. The only questions he really has is what does that mean for you and what your comfort levels are with specific actions. Rather business casual, non stressful chat. Very clear communication will be had.

Unapologetically saying Jade Leech is also Asexual. So this honestly works out for himself. Your boundaries are respected, so are his. While he might not always be the most romantic, he does have his moments! They are thoughtful when he is and it will always be very endearing and something meaningful to the both of you.

While his gifts are usually very thoughtful and tailored specifically to your liking: it is non negotiable that you will get one mushroom terrarium as a token of goodwill, affection, and to generally remind you of him when he isn’t able to be around. It came free after listening to him info dump for about an hour about mushrooms.

Also, for the first time disagreeing with myself. Jade doesn’t usually cuddle, but like that mostly boils down to getting the right setting to get him to settle down to cuddle. Turn off his brain and eel cuddles. You will be trapped for at least an hour, longer if he can get away with it.

Riddle Rosehearts

I will not be the first nor the last person to mention just how sheltered Riddle grew up. That said, despite at first having no good idea what you're talking about he is the most willing to ask questions to make sure he understands. He certainly is going to have to look into queer history in general to make sure he doesn’t make a fool out of himself later either. So he’ll definitely be supportive of you, any other queer people he ends up interacting with. You’ll just have to bear with him through his initial confusion.

Riddle probably has a mental list of what is allowed and what isn't allowed. If he can remember all the queen's rules because they're important to him, he can certainly remember things that you like and don’t like because you are important to him. This also means he gets good at memorizing what teas you like, and what kind of gifts you enjoy the most, or what ways you prefer to spend time together.

Unbirthdays, Birthdays, other events in which it is acceptable to give gifts or generally spoil a person: riddle will always make sure that there is something that you’ll enjoy. A single gift that will make you feel thought off, some sort of food dish that is to your preferred tastes. Afterwards is probably always spent with cuddles and a cup of tea to unwind. A break well earned if you will.

I think Riddle is more of a love letter kind of person than giving you poetry, however if he does give you poetry he is very embarrassed by it, and without a doubt its cheesy. But its cute. Everything down to the punctuation is thought over at least twice before he dares to give it to you, wanting only the best for you.

Epel Felmier

“why wouldn’t I still love you? You’re still the same person I fell in love with after all. You're just a butterfly who’s found its wings” Was a banger of a line and i will leave it here to be appreciated. Also considering that I headcanon Epel to be trans, he just gets it. Be might ask for a bit of clarification, but he gets it the fastest. Most understanding.

Will go out of his way to make you feel loved and appreciated! You will get the most random reminders that he cares about you and how much he loves you. Probably little notes and gifts for you, left where you’ll get them.

There are plenty of cute date ideas: picnics, apple picking, horseback riding, I could go on really. But the idea is that he’ll always bring you something, usually a snack of some kind. If he doesn’t he’ll make you a flower crown, or maybe weave flowers into your hair if that is more your thing. Regardless, it is sweet and fun. No expectations of anything else but to be in each other's company.

---

Part One | Part Two

[boyswanna-be-her]

Would you be willing to speak a little on your own experience joining dsa and working with them? I have a pretty active local chapter and im seriously considering joining

Certainly!

I'll preface this adding the context that I have no interest in dying on the DSA hill. I think they're a cool org and I'm glad I got involved, but having run a chapter for a year and attended the bi-annual conference last year, I don't at all think it's perfect!

The big selling point to me with the Democratic Socialists of America is that it's a big national organization working on a LOT of things at once--so if your pet project or personal cause fails, like mine did with Florida's Amendment 4, you still have an organization ready to help you with the next thing you want to do. So, unlike joining an organization that focuses solely on abortion rights or queer rights or racial justice, joining DSA gives you access to a community and a resource pool that is continuously working for the betterment of society.

The other big selling point is that it gives you access to a bunch of different things so you can choose where you put your energy. If you want to do mutual aid, your chapter probably has a way to do that. If you want to learn more about running for local office, your chapter leadership can hook you up with mentors and help with that. If you want to know when the next big protest is where you can make a sign and shout a chant, they can probably tell you about it. You can do small things or big things or you can just join for the fellowship.

Personally, I learned about DSA when I was volunteering as an abortion clinic escort. I knew a very average amount about socialism, and was attracted to the org solely because of the work they were actually doing in my community. I knew they had a reputation for being largely white, cis, hetero dudes, and my local chapter wasn't different than that when I joined. But even as an afab trans person, I felt immediately included, and was voted into leadership basically as soon as I expressed an interest in helping. And since then, I've seen LOTS more people join who are NOT cishet white bernie bros. So if the makeup of your local chapter turns you off, please recognize that your own presence might offer a gateway for more diverse people to join.

I'm down to answer any other specific questions! I hope that helps! Every DSA chapter is different, but I met tons and tons of leaders at the national conference and nobody sucked, so I feel good about endorsing it as an org that's doing good work.

[neyafromfrance95]

i know i have talked about this already, but there is not much else to talk about at this point and i still can't get over how much ick s2's finale gives me when it comes to galadriel's storyline.

everyone except for sauron invalidated galadriel's trauma and treated her like a burden in s1, then they shamed and humiliated her in s2. and it all could have had a good narrative reason... if it hadn't led to a really sexist conclusion.

the whole narrative of the good guy who slut-shamed her "fixing" her, resulting in her putting down the sword and putting on the dress instead? yikes...

i love galadriel's characterization in trop. she is a perfect blend of feminine + masculine. saying this could get me crucified but i think she is much more queer-coded than sauron is; in a way that i can see her being nonbinary-coded. she is gender-nonconforming! she is abrasive and proud and a leader!

and this makes the insinuation of that ending all the more painful - from being this authentic, complex character to being... a tradwife to be.

she did not actually turn into a tradwife ofc. now that would be a real blasphemy against tolkien, lol. as galadriel was always a leader first and foremost, never defined as a wife/mother. but narratively, it felt like that was what happened.

some people will say that it's her transformation, that she must learn not to rely on her sword, yada yada. and sure, it can be a character development. BUT! in what direction? they have to be very careful with this direction if they don't want it to come off as a regressive and bio-essentialist "embrace your inner divine feminine, woman" conservative propaganda. it can be done if they lean into "the witch galadriel" arc.

and man, it's somewhat a similar case to killing eve. one reviewer of ke's finale said that women live their lives told to sit still, be accommodating, be self-sacrificial, and there comes a point in their lives where they have to decide if they are going to conform to all that even if it's inauthentic to who they are. villanelle recognized eve's darkness (which really was her authentic self) and wanted to nourish it. so the framing of eve "surviving" villanelle and being cleansed of her "darkness" felt wrong to many.

in many ways, that's how trop s2 finale felt to me. it's so interesting how haladriel's dynamic turned out subtextually. sauron saw galadriel's trauma, her darkness and yet he alone saw galadriel's greatness in her authenticity, and offered her authority - something that all others stripped her off of. yes, he stabbed her (and villanelle shot eve, btw), but told her that he would make her into an overlord of the universe at the same time, lmao.

worst of all, it doesn't make sense legendarium wise - galadriel is going to continue being a leader; yeah, she is not going to be as abrasive, but she will grow into a stone cold bitch (affectionate) instead; she is going to have a push-pull dynamic with sauron till he evaporates. so what was all that supposed to mean? i do believe they catered to the whiny "make galadriel tradwife again" crowd, and maybe inserted a mormon propaganda where it's the most misogynistic in its' message.

anyways, i still have my fingers crossed that they redeem the story direction in s3 by dismissing the undertones of s2 finale. or else it would really leave a sour taste in my mouth.

[schakira]

i think black people being "kicked" out of it, so to speak, is more of a symptom than it is the direct cause. because if we do reinclude black ppl within the queer community, that won't really change the fact that being queer as a whole has been turned into a product? like...

i'm saying that because, if someone shows up showing me a circle of black people at a pride parade, i'll still feel like something is off, like these aren't my people, and that's what i'm gonna get to.

i think around the 2010s, the very battle for queer rights was turned into a battle for marketability. people proved that behaviour that was against queer rights were going to be cancelled, avoided, boycotted and the like. that practice itself wasn't wrong. but then something insidious happened i think. like we really lost the plot.

queer identities became marketable. companies started selling pride flags, talking about inclusivity, but then put "queerness" into palatable little identities, putting the more marginalised ones even more on the side. all for profit.

not only that, but i feel like more and more spaces for us were turned into places blocked by paywalls. bars, events, events, events, services, items, etc... and that very practice already filters a lot of people.

i feel like the battle for queer rights was stronger before because it was a fight against classism; you ran the risk of losing jobs and families, security and even your life just for advocating for queer rights. then, as time went on and we got more "accepted", that entire class struggle started fading out.

there are more points to this and i'm on the bus just typing away what i THINK could be the reasons, and i may very well be wrong.

but it really feels like i can't be gay without consuming something. an album, a show, an event, consume, buy, engage, invest. i feel distanced, you know? because it has become less about rights and more about money. that's why you see people changing their stances as soon as they gain more income. that's why people start distancing themselves from marginalised queer identities as they move up. you know? and black people as a whole, i know we struggle with racism in the work force, and more. hence why we're more of a symptom. and dangerous symptom of a very serious class divide happening right before our eyes, you know?

i don't like how queerness has been mainstreamed and commercialised. even the ballroom scene. like what happened

[deadboydetectives-confessions]

I’ve seen people talking about the season 2 spoilers and I think the one thing that irks me the most are the people talking about Edwin being a “party gay.”

I mean no offence to the people who genuinely take to that interpretation of his character, but I just can’t get behind it.

So much queer culture is built around parties, and bars, and clubs, and performances (drag or no) - events with crowded spaces with lots of people and noise and lights. I get why it’s that way, but it makes connecting with other queer people more difficult for those of us who can’t, or won’t, participate in these functions.

Would I have liked to see Edwin, as someone just recently coming to terms with himself, explore these spaces? Absolutely. Would I have liked to see him immediately fit into them? Hell no.

He is still partially caught up in the etiquette of his time. He spent seventy years in Hell, and from what we’ve seen of it, it’s overcrowded and overwhelming. He still struggles with touching Crystal, even though he loves her. I think a big event with lots of people could easily trigger his experiences with Hell, or be very off-putting at the very least. I’d like to see him come to terms with that, and the fact that a lot of queer events are too much for him. I’d like to see that disconnect from the community, and how he struggles to accept that it’s just not his scene, because, as a queer person, it’s almost expected to be his scene. At the end, I’d like for him to find other queer spaces he can be himself in. Maybe he finds connection to the past in a queer museum, maybe a love interest (though I don’t really care about him getting a love interest besides Charles, I know some people do) in a queer bookshop he frequents, maybe it’s not even a queer space at all, but he finds people who he feels seen by, and develops quiet relationships with, where there’s no pressure to perform surrounded by alcohol and lights and loud noises.

Maybe, by the end, he slowly works his way up to gay bars and drag shows and genuinely enjoys them. First, though, I’d like to see a bit of struggle, and acknowledgments that the “party gay” side of the community isn’t for everyone.

Anyway, this might just be me projecting onto a character I like too much, but I think it would be nice to see an experience like that reflected onto DBDA, which has done so well with exploring queer themes already.

.

[velvetvexations]

I have nothing against op but "sucks that trans women are having to support trans men :/" is just wild. When 90% of posts about transmisogyny end with "and that's why trans men suck", who is really putting the conversation about transmisogyny on hold for trans men? Probably the people who keep making transmisogyny about trans men??

Queer discourse always sucks, it sucks that members of our own community always have to defend each other against each other, but it's also kind of our responsibility to defend each other and anyone who's not a complete asshole will get that. So to be like "I'm sorry that you with your higher concerns have to debase yourselves for little ol us" is weird!!

I get your point and agree with it, but I do think you're reading a bit much into the post. I understand that they were framing it as it being a burden trans women are shouldering, taking away time and energy that could be spent on their own specific issues. You read that correctly. Nonetheless, I feel there's a broader context to take into account.

Transmascs are bombarded with messaging that makes quite a lot of them need transfems to have to tell them that no, they're not misogynistic for existing, and those transfems then have to use their relative authority in the discussion as the people claimed to be the Most Victim to shoot that shit down. I don't consider that a burden on me, but rather an exhausting and frustrating situation to be in for transmascs having to rely on the transfems vocally in their favor to tell people to knock it off because their own voices are diminished and it puts them in a very demeaning position.

So I think all that plays a part in the OP's feelings which I find understandable and coming from a place of more than just "it sucks trans women are having to show solidarity." It sucks having to go to your sister and ask her to get your bullies to leave you alone. It makes you feel guilty for relying on her and it makes you feel less powerful for not being able to do it yourself.

I think in retrospect I really regret not having added anything to it because you are right that solidarity should be the default expectation and I don't want transmascs to feel like their problems are a burden. I love my brothers and it's my sincere pleasure to advocate for them.

Truthfully, if not for this discourse I would be just about useless to the world. I can't advocate for my own issues, not only lacking the circumstances to even attempt doing anything IRL if I wanted to but also being horrifically triggered engaging with the outside world unless I ignore it as much as possible. When I used Reddit as my primary social media outlet I literally had lowkey PTSD from how many times I was accidentally exposed to news stories and had to be very careful to avoid them.

But so many people tell me I have a positive impact on them and their life. As much as I hate these circumstances, I'm happy to have found something I can do for others, and there's nothing wrong with needing your sister's help. <3

[idolomantises]

I’ve seen people make excuses for the writing by mentioning it’s all just set up for spin offs and sequels but… I don’t want that? Why on earth would I want to wait 3 years for a show to say “oh by the way these characters will get proper conclusions in the spin offs”.

Just tl:dr I’m over this series and don’t plan on watching any of the sequels or spin offs. Maybe if they introduce a hot robot character I’ll check it out.

There’s not even a promise that every single character that has an inconclusive ending (which is all of them btw) will have spin offs and sequel shows. I’m pretty sure they’re likely going to just use a completely different cast since League has a lot of characters.

I’ve seen arguments that the season is bad because it has very few episodes and wasn’t spaced out, and while I do agree the pacing is terrible I also… don’t even think this show could have been salvaged if they gave it a full 4 seasons. Because either way, it was going to end with a lot of characters being badly written, sideline and having arcs unfinished so it can be explored in sequels and spin offs (if that even happen).

One thing I liked about arcane is that it avoided a lot of really bad tropes that I’ve seen modern queer media weirdly struggle with. Arcane avoided the pitfalls written female characters, female characters used to push male relationships and very clearly abusive couples that are dismissed just because they’re gay.

Then season 2 happens and Mel becomes a disposable black woman trope, Sky only existed for male angst, Maddie is literally there for shock value and adds nothing to the narrative, Vi just… turned into that and Caitvi is toxic yuri in a way that’s very unfun and frustrating. These two are seriously so incompatible for each other, but they make out and have sex a lot so I’m sure this destructive relationship with warring idealogies will be fine. Please queer shows for the love of god stop assuming gay characters kissing and fucking makes up for their lack of communication and horrible behavior to each other.

Honestly I’m really disappointed that all these things happened to Sky, Mel and Maddie because watching fans tear apart female characters for 4 years just for existing and getting in the way of ships only for them to be exactly that and for fans to cheer about their suffering pisses me off so bad like girl… what the hell happened did the writers have amnesia. How do you write this show right after season one and fuck up this bad.

Maybe we should stop making videos about how tv shows write female/queer characters well until they’re actually done because this is getting ridiculous.

And yes I want to come back to the issue with how black characters were treated because I do find it pretty gross for Mel and Ekko to be absent for most of the show but then come back to basically save the day so fans don’t complain about how they were obviously sidelined for the sake of other characters. I dont really care for Ekko/Jinx but I did enjoy their time together in the AU.

And another annoyance is that this show did such an incredible job at introducing moral greyness to the show but then got scared to really commit to giving these characters any consequences. And I don’t mean like death or going to jail, but I mean holding grudges. I think Jinx is a very interesting and tragic character but she’s also… a terrorist? She caused the death of their friends and father? Like she’s a grown woman making these decisions. Having characters run around and risk their lives to save her felt a bit frustrating because yeah circumstances lead to this but half of these circumstances are also her fault. I really wish the entire season was about Vi choosing whether or not she was ready to forgive Jinx instead of basically accepting her back because Vander is back.

And VANDER…. Actually I won’t say anything because the more I mention him the more it pisses me off.

I have more thoughts but I gotta draw some comics so I’ll just leave at that. Disappointing season that I think is a lot worse than fans insist it is. It’s not one or two issues, it’s just compounding problems that won’t improve.

Thoughts on Arcane season 2

I didn’t like this season

It’s not bad, but I found it incredibly rushed, cramped and deeply unsatisfying

While season 1 had several protagonists it was also pretty obvious that Vi and Jinx were the emotional core of the entire show so why on earth was their dynamic barely explored here

Vi went from being my favorite character to a character I found deeply frustrating and annoying. What the hell is her personality of getting her sister back and fucking the hot lesbian. She has no consistency whatsoever and it’s something I don’t think the show realizes how batshit the constant flip flopping in. What do you mean you sister tells you she’s going to kill herself and then you start fucking your messy situationship

I don’t really care for Jayvik but I found Jayce’s confession very sweet.

Mel my beautiful queen they’re gonna call you a Mary Sue

What the fuck was with all that Witch shit and Ambessa’s death was incredibly unsatisfying

Victor fans who kept begging the team to not make him a hot buff robot so he can still be a skinny twink pisses me off so bad because now we have an inferior twink robot design. I know fans probably didn’t influence this but I also need to complain about their lack of taste like what do you mean you didn’t want to see a hot buff robot man.

Ekko feels like an incredibly unimportant character and I’m pretty sure fans only like him because of what he can do for Jinx. A part of me wished he actually did hold a grudge just to see how fans reacted.

Season 1 was all about setting up emotional complexities and how nobody was truly evil and the show made it seem like there was no way for anyone to fully recovery from this but everyone is holding hands and singing kumbaya’s so alright nevermind then

This show was honestly a little too in love with Jinx. I did not enjoy her writing in acts 1 and 2.

The jokes were really bad this season

The songs oh my god the SONGS. I didn’t mind them in season 1 but in season 2 it started to remind me of love is blind and anyone who has watched that show would know what a massive insult that is.

Caitvi lesbian sex scene and I couldn’t even enjoy it because the writing was pissing me off

Caitlyn should’ve continued her little fascist arc.

Mel’s arc this season felt like weird fanfiction.

A bunch of random side characters die off unceremoniously after the show gave them so much unnecessary screen time

I hated Isha sorry. I’ve never seen a character more clearly made to die.

Jinx death means nothing to me because I know she isn’t dead so why even do all that lol

I will never call this show sexist but it has done a massive disservice to its female characters.

[rainbowsky]

Hello hello! Baby YiZhan fan here :) totally random but...... I was watching the whole Untamed BTS and I noticed that on 2018.05.04 their interaction was kind of different, WY with his hands on XZ shoulder a couple times, their "can you find my nipple?" game (hahahaha), they were very touchy with each other. I tried and didn't find any theories about his specific date but it seems something changed from that point on. Do you know if there is anything about it?

Hi new turtle! 💛🐢💛

Well, there are various dates that different turtles focus on based on how particular BTS clips land on them. Not every turtle reacts the same way to the same clips. It can be a very personal thing. What one turtle finds very exciting, another turtle won't be moved by at all. Everything is an interpretation and nobody knows what really happened, so we all just clown and theorize according to our personal interests.

There is also a lot of unreleased BTS, so there are gaps in our understanding of how things unfolded during filming. In the absence of information some turtles will try to fill in those gaps with theories, and others will ignore those parts and focus on the content that we do have.

As for my own take on this particular date, I think it's entirely unknowable and therefore I don't see a huge point in digging too deeply into it. After all, this all happened 5 years ago. It's water under the bridge, really.

I don't think that I would immediately jump to something shifting in their relationship that makes them suddenly more comfortable with each other.

For one thing, I think the idea that there is such a huge change in their level of comfort with each other is very debatable. There are moments from the first days of filming where they look quite comfortable with each other and some moments later in filming where people could interpret them as not looking very comfortable with each other at all.

Only GG and DD know exactly how they felt and why they behaved the way they did at any given time. What we might read as being about their level of social comfort with each other could be about something entirely different.

It could be that they're tired and don't have a lot of energy and therefore don't appear to have a lot of sparks with each other in certain moments, or it could be that they had an argument, or that some personal or career stress is distracting them, or that some other third party has said something to them to make them more subdued with each other. We just don't know.

Devil's Timeline people sometimes theorize that they were trying to hide their relationship in the early days, therefore they acted a bit distant with each other to keep up the charade but quickly grew tired of making the effort, or forgot to keep the pretense up.

One of the things that fans most frequently forget to take into consideration is GG and DD's experience as queer people in a heteronormative society. I think it's worthwhile to consider what it would feel like to go on to a movie set with a whole bunch of strangers and to be acting across from your gay partner in a climate such as the one in China. I think any perceived tension between them in front of the cameras at the time could be easily explained by that alone.

I talk about the climate on set in a bit more detail in this post.

Any shift in their behavior on any particular date could be entirely because of conversations they had with production that we are not privy to. That could be the date they fully realized just how queer-friendly the environment was for them on set. Perhaps they were able to relax from that point forward in the certainty that production had their best interests at heart and would protect them as a couple.

We simply don't know. Everything is CPN, and everyone will have their own take on it based on their own perspective. As a gay person I'm more likely to theorize based on my understanding of the social realities of being gay in a heteronormative society. Others might be more drawn to the romance, and still others might be trying to build a case for their own personal timeline.

My advice is to not get too married to any one particular theory of how things happened. After all, it could have happened any number of ways. We will probably never know what really happened, so there's no point in attaching ourselves too much to a specific perspective.

I find it more fun to look at it from a bunch of different angles and come up with different reactions or theories based on that. If they got together during filming, what might be happening here? If they were already together, what might be happening there? That kind of thing. I did that with my Japan trip post, and several others you might encounter as you browse through my blog.

Most importantly, no one can tell anyone that their perspective is the right and true one. We will never know for sure. We are all clowns working from the same information and taking it in our own personal directions based on our own personal backgrounds, baggage, interests, etc., and based on what we need from fandom.

As a new turtle you might find my masterlist post helpful. There are a bunch of older posts and lists and resources there that new turtles might find useful.