#I grew up around a lot of queer people who were very good at media analysis so I think when people comment on my opinions being atypical

[ms-all-sunday]

just popping in to say that i adore your meta posts and i love how you talk about certain characters, particularly nami, usopp, and sanji. so much of op discussion/meta is so stagnant and boring to me because it's all the same. very rarely do i see differing interpretations and i find your specific analysis of them so interesting

Oh you're so nice. Thank you. I've actually never gotten a direct compliment like this before. I'm so glad I can provide.

[lenalvthor]

hey i have a fucking bone to pick with sapphic fandoms

like, i get it okay. i've been on tumblr since 2011, i was in the trenches during the bury your gays nightmare, i grew up on buffy, i watched the 100, i've been through the furious and devastating queerbaits, and i've watched helplessly as the boom of proper progress with sapphic rep has burned and disappeared with the faults of the industry as it is rn and the resurgence of bury your gays in the form of tv cancellations

i even did a fucking guest lecture for a film & tv university course a couple years ago on all of this

we joke about the fact that queer (specifically sapphic) fans flock to any show with the barest hint of rep in it because we're so starved for it, and we talk about the fact that if nothing else, that proves that there's a market and an audience and it usually creates a huge wave of viewership and attention for the show

but i need to fucking point out: acting as though a show exists for the sole purpose of the sapphic relationship you've started watching it for is fucking detrimental to how you'll perceive the show, how it'll get talked about in fandom spaces and then beyond that (bc the line between fandom spaces and wider online discussion of media is a lot thinner than it was ten years ago) and isn't actually going to do any good for sapphic rep! like, at all! because guess what! unless you're watching a show where the entire storyline revolves around romance, this couple you're watching for ISN'T going to be the centre of the story! it's a part of it! and there's such a weird fucking entitled toxicity to how fans act around brilliant storytelling and worldbuilding and writing and characters throwing tantrums about not getting more screentime for the relationship they like because they don't actually care about any other part of the story. and the thing about people who watch something solely for a ship rather than the wider story it exists in, is that a lot of the time, you'll fundamentally misinterpret the characters and their dynamic because you're not taking any of the wider context of the world and story into account at all.

and yes, of course i'm talking about agatha all along in the immediacy. because we knew a long, long time ago that billy maximoff was gonna be an integral part of this story, long before we knew anything about what the vibe of this show was gonna be, long before anyone even had the tiniest whisper of rio's existence. the same way wandavision was monica rambeau's origin story even though the show was wanda's, we suspected that agatha all along would be billy's/wiccan's origin story even if the show focused on agatha. and you know fucking what. that's good fucking storytelling. this show is smart, it's funny, it's curious, it's campy, it's queer, and it's ensemble. that's always been the point. agatha and rio were a delightfully unexpected part of it that added such delicious tension and phenomenal sapphic rep, but you know what else! the point of that dynamic is to flesh out agatha's character! this show isn't about agatha and rio! it's about agatha and billy, who they are, how their pasts and their magic are connected, their traumas and their power and how the road shapes their futures! rio is a part of exploring agatha's past, and it's phenomenal, but i am so fucking bewildered by the ridiculousness of people's reactions to billy now having a bigger part in the story and there being less focus on agatha and rio. you do know that you write scenes and characters and stories in a way that makes sense right? that because of the nature of this show, even if we don't get more than a handful agatha and rio scenes for the rest of the episodes, they're both still sapphic characters, this is still wonderful sapphic rep, and this show is still very, very queer?

like, it's obviously not fair that we have to beg for scraps to have queer shows to watch. but that doesn't mean that any of us get to do such a fucking disservice to the people who make amazing shows and fight to put sapphic rep in them within the contexts of the stories they're telling by whining that it's not enough. what we're getting with agatha all along, what kathryn han and aubrey plaza and jac schaeffer have said with such grace and nuance and intrigue and depth about agatha and rio's relationship, is so fucking rare! and it's nestled within a story that's got so much other intricate storytelling that makes agatha and rio richer characters when you actually pay some fucking attention and care about who they are outside of their sexual tension!

and i'm saying this because this is an issue i see with So many other shows, where the worth of a show gets boiled down to fandoms wanting content of their ship and nothing else and then poisoning the conversation and reception around what else it is that show is doing with its story. idk get some fucking media literacy, grow up and respect artists and creatives.

[olderthannetfic]

Until I read the comments on that one post I had no idea the Bechdel Test was a joke and wasn't supposed to be a serious measuring stick by which you gauged if something was feminist or not. Everywhere I'd ever heard it brought up, it was brought up as a very serious thing, and it was a failure of media if it didn't pass it. I remember the debate about Mako Mori from Pacific Rim and if she was a character you were "allowed" to like as a progressive person despite the fact that Pacific Rim doesn't pass the Bechdel Test, the discourse, the discussion of if the director was sexist for not writing in another woman for her to chat with about non-men related stuff, the camp of people trying to insist that having a fully realized character arc and being as developed as any of the male leads = good writing even if she doesn't talk to another girl...

And I've also had the remark about my writing not passing the test, just not to my face. I searched my fanfic's name once, curious to see if anyone was discussing it outside of tumblr and AO3, and found a Tiktok complaining about it not passing the Bechdel Test. The top comment was "motherfucker YOU don't pass the test but we still watch your ass". I cackled and moved on, but neither the commenter, poster, nor I had any awareness this wasn't Feminist Media Critique 101 theory and was, in fact, a goof.

Right now there's a segment of fandom debating if Blue Eye Samurai is feminist since when Mizu and Akemi talk, they do bring up men, since, y'know. Women aren't considered people with rights in their era in Japan and thus it's something they mention instead of only talking about being cool girlboss badasses who never bring up gender. If something doesn't pass the Bechdel Test, a smug segment of the internet high-fives itself and congratulates one another on being More Feminist Than Thou.

They then get really angry if you disagree, even though by this metric, Sleeping Beauty (the original animated one, where Aurora has only 16 lines of dialogue) is more feminist than Blue Eye Samurai.

--

*DYING*

Okay, so, nonnie....

Dykes to Watch Out For (1983-2008) was a long-running comic and major piece of lesbian media. I grew up buying compiled volumes at the bookstore. To be honest, that kind of 90s-ish lesbian culture isn't really my scene despite me being bi, but it was very nice to have this slice of life-y somewhat realistic, occasionally somewhat parody, look at the queer communities around me. It's up there with Tales of the City for me in terms of being a window into a particular culture and time and place.

If anybody is interested in queer history, in addition to looking up factual info, I think a read of the complete Dykes would give a really good overview of how people were thinking about things and what issues came up a lot. You'll see things like Barnes & Noble increasingly putting feminist bookstores out of business in the 90s, attitudes towards porn in lesbian circles—all kinds of cultural issues of the day.

I drifted away as I got later in my teens and found more genre fiction I cared about, but at one point, this comic was a very welcome antidote to the glurgey coming out stories that made up a lot of the more realistic media.

Anyway, here's the comic itself, reproduced in its entirety because I think it's important to actually understand the context.

This is from 1985, so the era of Rambo, Conan, and Death Wish, each of which you can see being made fun of here. It's based on Bechdel's friend Liz Wallace's actual rule for seeing movies.

That's it. That's the origin of this whole stupid test.

"LOL, fuck 80s action movies". That's it. That's the joke.

The fact that blockbusters still routinely fail to pass in the 2020s is shameful, but that was never the point of the strip.

[starshadyy]

what your favorite splatoon character says about YOU!

obligatory “this is a joke” disclaimer, please don’t take offense i’m only being silly👉👈

☆ ★ ☆

callie: you are a diehard squid sisters fan. you have an intrinsic sense for design and are probably super creative. you hate it when people misinterpret her. others wouldn’t assume it, but you actually need therapy more than most others on this list…😔

marie: you’re really intimidating but probably super nice. you’re actually good at the game and are well-versed in the meta. you may not be the best at communication, but you have a strong intuition and are good at reading people

pearl: an absolute feral crackhead who needs to be kept on a leash. definitely queer. nasty majesty is your national anthem. you breathe life and energy into every situation you enter, and others appreciate you for it. you are pearlina’s strongest soldier! 🩷🩵

marina: you are a massive nerd /affectionate. you either wanna be her friend or you have a fat crush on her. you listen to splatoon ost all the time. your room is packed with stuff from the media you like, including mountains of plushies

shiver: you join her team during splatfests even when you don’t necessarily agree with the platform. you’re likely very sarcastic and always speak your mind. oh yeah, and you’re a weeb

frye: you loved her from the start and defended her honor back when everyone was clowning on her design. you’re very talented but humble about your accomplishments. you would bite someone if allowed

big man: you act laid back but are probably filled with anxiety. i get the vibe that you would own an unconventional pet of some kind [turtle, frog, ferret, etc.]. you’re for sure the mom friend. you know nothing about splatoon lore

captain 3: you are the BACKBONE of this fandom and i have nothing but respect for you. you’re probably ranked pretty high in competitive and are likely a completionist

agent 4: you grew up on splatoon 2 and were sure that they would show up in side order only to be�� uh, half right? i’m so sorry sweet prince /gn. don’t you worry, your day [splatoon 4] is fast approaching…

eight: you’re very analytical and derive great joy from the story aspects of splatoon. you either write or read fanfiction and maybe cosplay too. you LIVE for the found family trope, and also probably ship them with captain 3. you have amazing taste :]

neo agent 3: you think lil buddy is the most adorable creature to walk the planet. you wish their initial outfit was actually accessible in the game. you’ve probably only played splatoon 3

cap’n cuttlefish: you’re an og who’s been around since splatoon 1 but still know next to nothing about the lore. you don’t main a weapon, and instead prefer to bounce around. you are… an inscrutable crackhead who i want to study

dj octavio: you’re willing to die on the hill that he is not a villain and only did what he did to support his people [you’re right btw]. you’re actually really chill and fun and i have a lot of respect for you. also, i’m liable to believe that you ship him with cuttlefish, don’t you? DON’T YOU?!?

commander tartar: you’re… ME??? villainous characters are always your favorites. you think octo expansion is a masterpiece [and you’re entirely right]. you’re a splatoon scholar and scour every obscure twitter post and artbook note to satiate your hunger for that sweet sweet lore. there’s something deeply wrong in your head.

mr. grizz: you play a lot of salmon run but are actually kinda bad at it [shhh i won’t tell]. you suffered through after alterna just for his backstory log and the bear ears. i’m going to go out on a limb here and say… you have daddy issues

smollusk: you LOVE the idea that marina and pearl are its adoptive moms. you’ve beaten side order with every palette. you overuse the “🥺” emoji. you miiight be a little annoying, but your heart is in the right place… probably

acht: either the chillest person you’ll ever meet or the most insane. probably both. you’re 100% queer and probably neurodivergent too. i bet you listen to will wood and / or tally hall. i wanna be your friend

harmony: you know every chirpy chips song by heart. you’re probably really sweet and i know you make banger fanart. you have an affinity for cute things and i bet your favorite pokémon type is fairy. DEFINITELY neurodivergent.

cq cumber: ???you both confuse and frighten me!!! what can i even say? you’re a cryptid! but honestly, you’re kinda iconic. i salute you, you freak of nature🫡

iso padre: I LOVE YOU. you’re accepting of all people and are just an absolute saint in general. daddy issues, but you’re coping way better than the grizz fans. also, i’m betting that you’re neurodivergent

sheldon: i didn’t think you existed, but turns out that you do? you actually listen to his rambles. splatoon 2 is your favorite game in the series. you’re able to see the value in things that others tear down and y'know what? i respect that [not saying i approve of your character choice though]

judd: wait, why him? ohh wait, i know! you probably just don’t care about splatoon’s story at all and / or love cats. there, that’s totally it, right?

lil judd: you either DON’T know his lore and just like the cute little kitten, or you DO know his lore and you’re unhinged. i’m scared of you

spyke: you’d bark for him without hesitation and DON’T pretend you wouldn’t. you clown. you absolute freak. i know what you are. /j

murch: if i had to bet, you’re probably the shy type who prefers to let others do the talking for them. you might secretly be a little freaky though, and i think you should embrace that side of yourself. you’re safe here. be free.

[northsoulss]

the media thinking reader is in a relationship w some popular male footballer but she's actually with elisa and they soft (or hard) launch their relationship 🤭🤭

mon amour - elisa de almeida

(a/n : here it is! hopefully this is what you had in mind lol. this is quite a long one. writing this hit home, so i quite like how it turned out! thanks for the request xoxo)

growing up in a relatively conservative town, you never had the chance to express your identity as a queer individual. it was a constant internal battle, thinking something was wrong with you for liking someone of the same gender. things became more complicated when you began liking football, it being seen as more of a boy-ish sport.

thankfully, your hometown had a small women’s youth football club, and you begged your parents to allow you to sign on, which they begrudgingly accepted. hoping to meet other queer women, you went into football hopeful, but your ideas were quickly shut down when you realised a lot of them were straight. you continuously struggled with your sexuality as you grew up, fear taking over whenever you had the opportunity to come out. so you never did, remaining closeted for all your teenage years.

as you began to advance and become better at football, you wanted to make it a career, to do it professionally. eventually when you signed with psg a year ago, it was undoubtedly the best decision of your life. after moving to france, you finally got to experience a proper queer community with supportive people. you still made no move to come out, for you realised that there was no need to put it out there; to let everyone know that you were queer. so long as you were contented with what you identified as, nothing else really mattered. or so you thought.

over time as you became more popular and well known, you began to see that there are many upsides and downsides to being a public figure. on one hand, you have formed close bonds with other footballers of both genders and experienced nothing like you could have ever imagined. on the other hand, every time you posted something vaguely couple-ly with one of your friends, especially the guys, your fans would go nuts.

“is she dating him?”, “i knew they were together!” were the very common comments you would get when posting pictures with you and another footballer, who happened to be one of your very good guy friends, _(insert male name)_ , whom you hung out with quite often. you decided that one day you were sick of the comments, and posted something for pride, saying that you were proud to be a queer woman. lo and behold, that did not stop the comments.

lady luck must have been on your side for your team has been nothing but incredibly supportive of you coming out. at the same time, one of your teammates took this chance to snag you, and surprise, surprise. you fell head over heels for the woman and have been dating ever since.

you have decided to lay low for the first few months, trying your hardest not to post anything that would make the fans suspicious. however, one day you decided had enough of the speculations.

it was a lazy saturday, you and elisa were out at a quaint neighbourhood cafe having brunch, just enjoying the warm summer weather. it had been a few days after your 6 month anniversary, and you just couldn’t get enough of her. so, as sneakily as you could, you snapped a picture of her looking off into the distance, watching the kids at the playground goofing around with a small smile. too bad your phone wasn’t silenced, so a loud shutter sound was made and caused elisa to whip her head around.

she locks eyes with you, and you must have had the guiltiest expression on your face, because she immediately broke out in laughter. “what are you doing baby?” she laughs harder as your face reddens, her taking your hand in hers and rubbing small circles with her thumb.

“you just looked really good okay!” you defend yourself defiantly, showing her the photo that you took. she gives you a knowing look, before turning away to continue looking at the scenery around, a small smirk on her lips. there was a comfortable silence amongst you two, but your mind started to wonder. for a while now, you’ve been meaning to ask elisa about announcing your relationship. you were sick and tired on hiding things and being so secretive, but you were scared. you enjoy the privacy, the intimate looks given to each other across the room, the subtle electrifying touches on the pitch when you’re standing next to each other. you just don’t want to ruin things-

“what’s going on in that pretty head of yours?” elisa breaks you out of your thoughts, head tilted slightly to take a look at you. you were oddly silent for a while, and when elisa turned back around to see what you were doing, you were just staring into space, a dazed look on your face.

you swallow dryly, taking a deep breath. “i think i want to announce our relationship.” you say quickly, averting eye contact with her. you felt her hand tighten around yours, interlocking your fingers with hers. you look up at her timidly from your lap, and you see lines of worry etched onto her face. her brows furrowed slightly, her mouth in a taunt line.

“are you sure about this?” she questions, concern clear as day in her voice. she knew about your past, and you were the one who was more worried about the relationship compared to her. now that you were bringing this up, she had every right to be concerned.

“well, i’m just sick of people thinking i’m dating that meathead. i’m not. i’m dating you. you’re the one i love.” the moment the last sentence left your mouth, elisa swore her heart skipped a beat.

“a-are you very sure? there’s no going back after you announce this you know?” she looks into your eyes, searching for any signs of uncertainty or hesitation, but all she saw was determination.

“i’m sure, baby.” you smile at her, pressing a chaste kiss against the back of her hand. at that moment, elisa was so proud of you. you have come so far, and she knew how big of a step this was for you — to publicly announce that you were in a relationship with another woman.

“i’m proud of you, mon amour.” she wore a warm smile, eyes crinkled, the midday sunlight hitting her facial features just right. you pick up your phone to snap a picture, and this time you did not shy away from her, even asking her to give you her best smile.

before you left the cafe, you quickly posted it, tagging her and titling the caption as “the love of my life, @/elisadealmeida5. mon amour.🤍” of course, the fans were not impressed, but you didn’t care, for you were finally proud to be loud about your identity and your relationship, and the press and media are not going to get in the way of that.

later that night, as you lay in bed with your head on her chest, you get a phone call from your good guy friend. elisa raises a brow at you, and you shrug, picking it up and putting him on speaker.

“yo what’s up! you’re on speaker by the way.”

“you just had to do a hard launch huh?” he cuts to the chase, tone teasing, but proud. you groan, your hand coming up to cover your face.

“ugh c’mon! they were shipping me with you out of all people!” you tease back, looking at elisa who was staring at you, admiration in her eyes. you give her a soft smile, pressing a small kiss on her cheek.

“yeah, yeah, i know. proud of you, short stack. tell elisa i said hi!” and with that, he hung up. not long after, you received an instagram notification where he replied to your post. “i told you so.. what a man child.” you read his comment and smile knowingly, and put your phone away, turning around to face elisa again when she grabs your face and kisses you hard. you gasp into the kiss, melting into her lips. when she pulls away, she leans her forehead against yours, you panting slightly.

“i’ll say this again and again, and i know you’ll grow tired of it, but i’m so proud of you, mon amour, don’t forget that.” she finishes her sentence with another passionate kiss to your lips, smiling into the kiss.

[emmabirb8]

Megamind and Zim

So, I'm a huge nerd (as you all know). And I've recently gotten a bit back into Invader Zim because my hyperfixations are a neverending cycle of whatever happens to capture my interest.

Well, since my brain likes to make connections between hyperfixations, I decided to start listing out similarities between one of my most precious blorbos - Megamind - and Zim. Just for funsies. :P

And uh, there's A LOT, actually. Which shouldn't surprise me considering they're both Very Dramatic aliens, but either way. I'm gonna post what I've gathered here for my own amusement. 😁

So here's what I got:

Aliens

Landed on Earth

Grew up parentless

Outcasts of society

Robotic servants/minions that were given to them prior to being sent to Earth (yes, Minion is a fish, but he does have a robotic body)

Black heeled boots and black gloves

Viewed as "evil" even tho neither are actually evil (Zim is self-centered, chaotic, and destructive but I wouldn't classify him as evil even if he himself might - his mission to conquer Earth is more to please his Tallest and be validated as a good invader than to actually be evil for the sake of being evil)

Have strong relationships with their rivals/enemies to the point where they give their lives meaning and purpose - both became depressed and unmotivated when those enemies were suddenly not around to fight (due to being "defeated" in Megs' case and pursuing "real science" in Zim's case in the unfinished ep Mopiness of Doom)

Both are frequently shipped with their enemies in fanworks (Metro Man for Megs, Dib for Zim)

Intelligent scientists and inventors but they're also goofy as hell and they create plans that continually fail

Speech idiosyncrasies (pronouncing words incorrectly for Megs, emphasizing certain words and poor volume control for Zim)

Very animated and dramatic/theatrical when speaking

Short (Zim more so than Megs but Megs is still, like, shorter than Roxanne)

Big egos that hide their severe insecurities

Significant amounts of angst to both character's backstories

Cool color skin tones

Bullied in school

Affinity for junk food

Many fans of their respective media are in the lgbtqia+ community - both characters themselves also read as some flavor of queer and fans often HC/interpret them as such

Both come across as some level of neurodivergent

Pretty neat, huh? Well, I took it a step further (bc of course I did) and decided to ALSO find as many similarities as I could between Roxanne Ritchi and Dib Membrane. Being the main human characters, it felt more appropriate than trying to compare Metro Man to Dib, even tho Metro Man largely fills the "enemy" role for Megamind (and bc I am a filthy shipper at heart, fight me*).

Anyway, so Roxanne and Dib:

Human (potentially questionable in Dib's case, but still)

Foils and equals to the alien protagonists

Intelligent

Sneak into alien protagonists' bases to take pictures and figure out "evil" plans to try to stop them

Have been kidnapped by aliens

Know the real truth of the alien protagonists, but their peers don't (Roxanne knows Megamind isn't really evil or dangerous, Dib knows Zim is really an alien - in Megamind's case, the people of Metro City do eventually come around, but not til the end)

Have false narratives about some aspect of their lives widely believed by the general public (most the citizens of Metro City think that Roxanne is dating Metro Man, almost everyone around Dib believes he's just crazy for thinking Zim is an alien)

Have companions who are also privy to the alien protagonists' true natures, but those companions are apathetic (Metro Man and Gaz respectively)

Concerned for the well-being of their fellow humans and cities

Like their aliens, both also come across as some level of neurodivergent (you kinda have to squint to notice it in Roxanne, but it's definitely there)

Alien boyfriends* (if you ship Megarox and ZaDr :P)

So yeah! Just some fun comparisons to ponder.

*Although I don't ship ZaDr within the canon universe of the show itself, I do enjoy it in certain transformative contexts. I'm v aware of the controversial nature of the pairing, so I wanna make that clear. I just like having fun with it.

[redheadlesbianfreak]

I know that I'm a little late to the James Somerton thing but I wanted to make my own post about this. I started watching James when I was 20 during the pandemic. It made me feel comforted to watch someone talk about queer theory in film, especially because I found out so many films I never heard about. His stuff did make me very passionate about queer history as well, and led me to start seeking more of it. I took a queer literature class in University (one of my fav classes) and I started watching more queer creators.

I grew up in Texas and Mississippi (the Deep South) in a pretty conservative environment. I started to break free of that in middle school and high school, though I was still very ignorant. I think I knew I was queer for a long time, but it took me a while to come out. I felt that I was around queer people who were somewhat hostile and wouldn't believe me. This is because I identified as ace for a little while. People were either actively hostile about that or they acted like it was a dumb identity that didn't matter. I also don't know if I'm cis or not, all I know is that I really relate to the experiences of the trans community.

I kept watching James' stuff over the years. I fell for the hole "academic queer" vibe. He talked so much about queer erasure that I thought he cared deeply about it. I felt connected to the queer community when I watched his content. He talked about trans and sapphic experiences so I thought he cared about that--turns out he stole all of that. All my favorite videos of his were stolen, word for word, from queer writers. All of the passion, all of the great writing, that was stolen. I thought I was watching someone who cared about queer history, but he was actively erasing it and harming other creators.

There were some things that I noticed. He mentioned the indie movie studio and I thought that was weird. I thought his Attack on Titan video was extremely weird and made a lot of non-points. I also remember disagreeing with a lot of it because he just said a bunch of nothing. I thought that it was weird he mainly talked about mainstream culture (Disney, MCU, etc.) rather than less well known pieces of queer media. And there were quite a few videos I didn't watch because there were so many of them (not sure how I didn't suspect that he was a content mill). Some of his videos were incredibly intriguing (because he stole good writing) while others were boring, so there was a lot of inconsistency.

I'm incredibly pissed at this man, and it's hard not to be pissed at myself. I didn't watch every single video by this dude, but I did watch enough. I think that I have a lot to examine about myself when it comes to picking up racism/misogyny/transphobia. Especially when he dressed up all his points to be "progressive" and "academic." I didn't pick up on things like "bad vibes" from this man. I'm not really sure what bad vibes even look like? I also didn't pick up on the fact that his writing style constantly changed. Even with all the strange shit, I still gave him the benefit of the doubt because he was queer and that was way too trusting and that's something I need to work on.

As for the misogyny thing, especially when it comes to queer women and trans/AFAB people. He said a lot of blatantly lesbophobic, biphobic, and transphobic things while downplaying the experiences of everyone who wasn't a cis gay. What James was saying about women in his videos is how a lot of people talk about queer women in the queer community. Especially in fandom spaces. Misogyny is so rampant on the Internet that it can be hard for me to pick up on it as a queer woman. So many people talk about how lesbians want every female character to be gay or how bisexual women are "fujoshis" constantly trying to fetishize gay men.

I hope this makes sense, but it feels like I'm being gaslit when it comes to misogyny because of how often I see it. It's hard for me to tell if I'm being oversensitive or if someone is actually being misogynistic to me. So many progressive men that I trusted have been misogynistic to me and that can be a lot. James was someone I trusted and defended. I even recommended him to people. It's something I'm still disappointed in myself for doing, but I'd like to think I've grown as a queer person since watching his channel. There are so many great queer creators out there and I definitely need to make a recommendation list in the near future.

[homestuckexamination]

I'm not convinced Mituna isn't bad representation. Of course, there is a lot of dubious stuff in Homestuck. And I'm not saying you can't consume something critically. But I can't help feeling a hypocrite for boycotting Rowling and continuing to ignore the dubious stuff in homestuck (especially the use of the r*t*** word). I guess you could say that at least Hussie developed and learnt from their mistakes (not true for Rowling is it)... Is that a good enough excuse to continue to like Homestuck?

Yeah no, I said I don't think I could say he's good rep, at all.

However, I am going to make my stance on this very clear. 'Especially the use of the r slur'.

Homestuck is an indie Fandom Internet thing, that started as a parody of CYOA comics of the era, and has humor that is very of its era, as well as inherent biases of Hussie being a white American- Including, as you mentioned, the use of slurs, or racial insensitivity, and ableist stuff through the entirety of its run.

It doesn't matter how much you hate Homestuck. It doesn't matter whether you think any of this is redeemable or forgivable. Without even looking at the Authors and what they've done with their fame, Harry Potter is a mainstream franchise to an extent Homestuck could never be. Homestuck is an Internet Meme. Harry Potter is a Cultural Phenomenon. If you find a lone Homestuck reference in some new TV show, you point at it in surprise like "WHAT?". If a series has an Entire Episode parodying Harry Potter, it's almost basically expected. Even if they were equivalent in what they do wrong- With they're not- The reach and impact of these two franchises are entirely incomparable.

But then take, also, the Authors of the content. Hussie grew up alongside their work, work which queer youth related to, and they embraced it, and even eventually came out as non-binary themself. They let WP handle the franchise, with Hiveswap and HS^2- Regardless of what your personal opinion on the WP Team and any of what they've done may be, it's a largely queer group of artists and writers and musicians, who were given an 'official' blessing by Hussie to go wild, and they brought a lot of creativity and good rep to the table and interesting talking points. Take Homestuck. Take Psycholonials. At its core, there's an inherently queer, leftist narrative, interesting conversation regarding identity and what it means to Be, and growing up in different circumstances, and being friends with a bunch of people online, and dealing with the climate of world around us.

Then take Rowling, who's used her fame to promote blatant transphobia and cause harm- Tangible, real harm in UK Politics, to trans youth, who's emboldened transphobes and strengthened the TERF Movement, and whose work is entrenched in antisemitism, among other things, whose most recent work reads like an 'I'm not owned, I'm not owned!' scream villifying trans disabled youth and painting an analogue for herself as some helpless victim, and it's like...

I'm not saying Homestuck is perfect, god no. I am not saying you have to like it. I'm not saying you have to forgive Hussie for any of the times they have fucked up, or that they're beyond criticism. But dear God they're not the same, they're on two completely different scales, and if your sense of morality makes you feel that liking Homestuck is the same as liking Harry Potter, you need to re-evaluate how you gauge morality and harmful media.

And on that topic...

'Is there an excuse?' Why are you seeking, externally, for an excuse to consume media? Why do you need external validation in order to determine whether media is 'redeemable' before you can consume it? Only you can determine how much you can put up with Something until it becomes Not For You. Personally? I think what Hussie tried to convey with Homestuck, its themes, its characters, and the kind of author Hussie has shown to be, as well as how Homestuck has developed in general over the years, is really nice, and I still enjoy Homestuck, and I am going to keep enjoying Homestuck, no matter how many prior points are framed as problematic, or how many times something Hussie said once is brought up, unless Hussie did like, a 180 turn and started weaponizing Homestuck for queer hatred and an overt call to genocide or shit like that, which... Doesn't just happen, you know- Meanwhile in that same vein, Harry Potter has become entrenched, in my mind, with all the harm Rowling has caused, its monetization is being actively used to harm people like me, and Terfs have co-opted it entirely as a Dogwhistle. Those are my values. That's what I believe. Your values and what you believe may differ from mine.

Don't look to the Internet and Popular Opinion for advice. Don't look for 'problematic points' and 'redeemability'. You can enjoy absolute trash that has a lot of problems just because you like it and you don't think it's like, harmful. You can be uncomfortable by problematic points in a series others tell you is good, because you can't handle that kinda stuff, and decide not to watch it.

There's no gauge.

This is not to mean you shouldn't trust people's opinions or anything but like... Don't look to others for morality trying to excuse yourself like it feels shameful otherwise. Inform yourself through what they say, but make your opinion yourself, once informed.

[capitaletele]

Both inexperience takes were so good and the way Johnny just casually goes "oh yeah ive mostly been with guys" and Cristal has to reconsider some things is interesting because it implies Cristal didn't really know a lot about queer people(i mean bi Cristal for the win but maybe she didnt know idk) and saw it as unusual while it's just perfectly normal for Johnny (i may be overanalysing i apologize). Also i cant quite put my finger on what gives off that impression but i feel like the way theyre acting shows they have different concepts of sex, like it's treated kind of like a taboo subject/something you shouldnt talk about among the people Cristal grew up around and with the Etoiles Noires its just normal and people wont get shamed for wanting to have sex (same thing for not wanting to and/or being repulsed by it)

Okay i think i overanalysed sorry for that essay i just really liked it

Heeeeee thank you! :D :D :D (I'm guessing you were the original prompter? If so I'm glad you enjoyed my takes!)

And neverrrrrr apologize for analysing, my god, I'm pretty sure anyone who writes fic would talk about all the possibilities of the universe 24/7 if they could!! This is what I *want* to be doing so you're doing me a favour here :p

I'm definitely torn about the queerness aspect tbh, because I love the idea that in Monopolis there is no issue with gender and sexuality doesn't matter (this is certainly emphasized I think by the 2022 mise-en-scene where you see male dancers in skirts during the Opening and Naziland for example.) So it follows that there should be no "whoaaa you're queer??" from Cristal (or anyone else.) And I also (obviously) adore the idea of queer!Cristal.

But I also *love* exploring different variations of the world and the characters; that's how you don't run out of ideas, you know? I don't really have one fixed headcanon, I like to think "Okay Cristal is [A]" and then "Okay this time Cristal is [B]" and seeing what happens if you move the cursor slightly one way or the other :D

ANYWAY this is not what you were talking about.

YES I love thinking about the way the Towers people and the Underground people might think about sex and gender in all their configurations. I left the ending deliberately pretty vague so it could be interpreted anyway you wanted :p

Like, perhaps the Towers are supposed to be a Puritan society where Marriage is Sacred and you must Preserve the Bloodlines or whatever, but people in the tunnels don't care and are fucking like bunnies out of wedlock and it's all very "savage" and "uncivilized" (and thrilling.)

Or, on the contrary, perhaps sex is normalized in the Towers because it's like the Roman orgies of the elite, very blasé and consequence-free, but it's more controlled for "regular people" because they have things to consider like how they're going to find the money to raise a kid if they get pregnant?? (And then we get into the whole question of like, how dystopian is Monopolis, really? Is there population control? Massmedia and I have talked about this *so much* haha.)

Or perhaps Cristal was simply taught that people in the tunnels are not "as advanced" or as "open-minded" as people from high society, and so she expects Johnny to be a sort of basic play-boy like she's seen in old movies, but it turns out that he's just as liberated as anyone from high society (and perhaps even more than her).

Or she's still struggling with the media image of him as a violent, uneducated, boorish criminal, and she thought he would also perhaps be a bit homophobic.

OR, her mind is boggling because Johnny just outed a bunch of people to her which shows that he's maybe a little dumb of heart 🤣

OR.... something else I haven't thought of yet, but perhaps you have, and which is just as valid!

[tinstol]

My Experience with Feminism and Womanhood Growing Up

I was born in 2001. For me as a child, my relationship with womanhood was complicated right out of the gate. I was never drawn to very 'feminine' things as a child, mush to the disdain of my mother who always tried to push pretty dresses on me. As a result, I hated shopping and never really developed a sense of style or even a sense of what looked good on me. Compared to my peers, I was a bit masculine. I struggled with socializing a lot due to unaddressed neurodivergence, so I didn't particularly have a lot of female friends. I was an outcast, and I felt it. I wasn't like them. I was Not Like Other Girls.

At times I was insecure about this, but at other times I took great pride in it. What else could I do? Pretend to be someone else? I couldn't do that if I tried. And believe me, I tried to be a normal girl. It only led me to further isolation and self hatred.

Luckily, there was a light on the horizon for me. In 2012, movies like The Avengers and The Hunger Games were hitting theaters, and they were huge. Fandom spaces were growing online, and I had my first ipod touch, so the internet was mine to explore unabated. I found people like me. People who were weird and outcast. People who shared labels I was ostracized for being: tomboy, queer, atheist, mentally ill. It gave me a home where I was celebrated for who I was. And as the years went on, we only became more mainstream. More understood and respected. The first half of the 2010's felt like a rollercoaster of positive change that only went up.

But around 2016-2018 something shifted. Well, lots of things shifted, but one thing in particular. A new term was introduced to me: internalized misogyny. Because of my experience with women up to that point, I wasn't fond of other girls, especially very feminine ones. They were everything I was expected to be but could not be, and I hated them for it. So I gassed myself up by being proud of being Not Like Other Girls. After all, why shouldn't I ridicule feminine women when they for so long ridiculed me? So the concept of internalized misogyny made me angry at first, but I eventually came around. I used my empathy to see that not every girl who wears makeup isn't the Mean Girl Stereotype and I wasn't making myself better by acting like I was above them by not being feminine.

As I entered young adulthood, I joined in with other people laughing at how ridiculous we were in the past for thinking femininity was evil. We started embracing some of the more feminine things we had been excluded from. I started wearing pink and dresses and I grew out my hair because I wanted to. And it was nice.

But in this current decade, the same thing that happened for nerdiness in 2012. It became the Most Popular Thing. Ads are everywhere saying 'buy our beauty thing because you want to!" Tiktoks making fun of girls who are Not Like Other Girls, saying they just do it for male attention and validation. Bimboification. Girl math. Girl dinner. Hyperfeminine concepts that started ironically that gradually lost their irony and just became girls linking their womanhood with stupidity and vapidness. People acting like no feminine woman has ever put down a nonfeminine woman. People acting like Girls Who Aren't Like Other Girls are Just Pick Me's and aren't being "Girl's girls". Complete invalidation of what I experienced growing up.

Teens today were still learning fractions when I was a teen grappling with the concept of internalized misogyny. They don't have the life experience of the 2000's when it was more ok to punish Girls Who Weren't Like Other Girls. And they are being inundated with all this media saying "it's okay and totally feminist to be feminine" as if feminity was ever seriously under attack or discriminated against. As if women have not been expected to be feminine for all of history. I try not to hold it against these teens. I know they don't know any better. But that's what makes it scary.

Sorry to sound like a crochety old man, but we need early 2010's era feminism back, but without going overboard. Our young girls need it. Our girls not born yet need it. I've touched on this a little bit before. We keep going through these cycles of perscribing what it means to be a woman and to be a feminist woman but we keep pushing so hard in one direction or another that we just end up trapping a new generation into a singular idea of what it means to be a woman instead of actually letting ourselves be free to be who we are with equal respect and dignity. I'm only 22 and I'm already exhausted by this cycle, and I'm afraid of how many more we might live to see.

[ultfreakme]

Hi.....Do you mind if I ask you some random thing? I used to love shounen and shoujo manga equally....But ever since I found BL manga 3 years ago, my interest in shoujosei (especially het romance) decrese a lot, and what I search for is just the dynamic between mc (male) and male lead...I don't want to read mc (female) and male lead or mc (male) and female lead...And what I want to read mostly are just mlm or wlw stories....

What do you think is happening to me? Is it really weird?

I don't mind at all go ahead with random asks(as long as it's not about my personal life or anything I'm chill most of the time)!!

I remember this happening to me when I was a wee lass about 607 years ago when I discovered BL/GL not straight content. I just fully stopped consuming shojo and josei. I don't think it's weird, I've seen a lot of people say that they exclusively read and watch BL stuff. Nothing strange is happening to you(I remember feeling like that as a kid), it might be a shift in the perspective of storytelling. Or, lbr, the hot boys are being hot and the cute boys are being cute without any misogyny being shoved in our faces all the time so it's fun.

From my experience, I think I made the switch because I found a lot of BLs to be way less toxic solely because there wasn't a female character to impose dumb misogynistic hetero-conforming stereotypes on. I think about 70% of the shojo manga I read was very toxic and I read them when I was in middle school and high school with no ability to parse that what's right in fiction isn't good in real life. Shojo mangas were fun because I used to like romance, and a lot of the stories were about normal or 'ugly' girls finding their perfect prince charming bad boy, becoming beautiful and living happily ever after.

It was wish fulfillment, self-insert a lot of the time, and I wanted what the MC female characters had because apprently getting a hot boyfriend and getting pretty was the key to happiness. Except....as I grew up I realized the perfect love interest guys are actually all weird af. Shojo mangas often reinforce a lot of heterosexual ideas. Like a boy being mean to a girl is romantic interest, losing your virginity is a big special thing, that you just have to dress prettier and wear makeup and have a glo-up otherwise your life will remain shit(oh you glasses-wearing HEATHEN lmaooo). Something in my brain went, "this is what i want? this strange song and dance of tolerating bad behaviour and changing myself entirely is what I should do?". The happy ending was also always a wedding, pregnancy and having two kids(which fucking terrified me). And so, shojo and josei fully lost their appeal.

BL and GL though......there is no self-insert, there is no heterosexual gendered biases coming into play. The couples are made to stand on equal footing without anyone going "you're a girl so I'll protect you" or "you're a guy so I'll take care of you and cook for you" or whatever. I'm not a guy, so all my irl issues are FULLY detached and irrelevant in BL stories. Also I discovered around the same time I was bisexual/pansexual/some fucking queer thing. And around this time, BL webtoons were so different with their plots like I got romance + fantasy settings or sci-fi settings or crime dramas etc. I haven't read many GL, Tamen De Gushi and The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy At All are the more prominent ones I remember, I think for GL i usually consume western media so I can't say much on GL manga.

I just, got tired of seeing heterosexual romance because in josei and shojo, those dialogues and ideas that define their relationship often actively dismissed queer relationships and as a baby queer, that didn't sit right with me. "We're a guy and a girl who hang out a lot, so we have to be romantically interested" or "I'm just girl, I can't help but like being in the arms of a guy" or "She's a girl, and she's tiny and I like holding her" blah blah BLAH.

BL ALSO does this but at least someone in-story would go "actually no fuck you my looks don't mean anything" even if it's once or twice and ultimately it at least looks like a choice that they fall into certain 'roles'. And in the GL media I saw, this doesn't even come up as a thing to discuss. Society isn't forcing them to be anything, in fact their parents and friend circles are weirded out about it at times.

I actually stopped reading BLs now too tbh. I like action/adventure and fighting plots so the romance genre doesn't give me much. I don't know your specific reason for switching to mainly BL and GL, but I gotta say, it's hard to find the really good stuff in shojo/josei sometimes and the kind of romances they have are kind of formulaic if that's the focus of the story. There are a bunch shojo/josei I still remember fondly; NANA, Princess Jellyfish, Kaleido Star, SKIP! Beat, Akatsuki No Yona etc. I'm sure there are a bunch of shojo and josei that are probably really good and explores the idea of being a girl or a woman or femme-aligned in a modern setting well, but I think the irl setting no fantasy days of het romance are over for me.

I'd just like to repeat that enjoying BL and GL and not reading shojo or josei isn't weird. The differentiation of BL or LGBTQIA+ romances and straight romances make less sense to me day after day because shojo mangas and Shonen Ai or Shojo Ai are the exact same genre at the end of the day; romance. You like romance. The configuration of the couple doesn't mean too much because despite the baggage that comes with a queer romance it's still a love story.

[elvenbeard]

5 Facts About Me

I was tagged by @gloryride thank you so much!! :D

I live and grew up in rural Germany

Always been here, in a tiny town (less than 1000 residents) and everyday really at this point I'm torn about wanting to leave or wanting to stay XD Job opportunities are scarce, the infrastructure sucks, it's an absolute pain in the ass to be this far out and away from bigger cities with so many more opportunities and services (be it something as silly as being able to order takeout or something as serious as finding queer-friendly medical professionals). On the other hand, it's very peaceful here. I'm surrounded by mountains, forests, lakes, I can see so many stars at night, it's amazing. Something in between would be cool, where I get nature but also a little more convenience (a supermarket in walking distance would be the dream, having to rely less on a car to get somewhere in general), but I haven't found that place yet.

I have a cat

Her name is Luna, and she is a feisty little menace and one of the sweetest and funniest cats I've ever known! She's been with me since late 2019, adopted from a shelter where she was notorious for getting into fights with other cats and staff apparently XD When I picked her up the first time she immediately snuggled up to me and gave me lots of kisses xD Could say it was love at first sight really. Also, I leash-trained her and we go on little outdoor adventures regularly (another reason why I'd like to remain living near a place where we can keep doing that).

Piercings!!

I have 7, 3 in my face, 4 in my ears altogether. And I want moooore, but I'm paralyzed by all the choices :D One I've wanted for a long time is a nose bridge one, and I think it would suit me, but it would also intensify my resting bitch face by 100% so, I'm a little on the fence still xD I might also be a little obsessed with the one my V has on his cheek, because that's one I'd never really seen on a real life person before. They do exist though, as dermal anchors/implants and I think I've also seen pics where they looked like done "regularly", kinda like eyebrow piercings, so more research and a consultation by a professional are required before I settle on anything XD

I studied Computer Science and Media

I never finished my course though, didn't get a degree, and I beat myself up for it for a long time. I quit in the first place because I was so burnt out and depressed and unhappy with everything to do with uni, it really almost killed my creative drive for good. Not only were we constantly told we'd only have a chance in jobs and fields after graduating that sounded absolutely dreadful to me, the faculty itself seemed to make it as hard as possible for us every step of the way to reach the end of the course (from "killer-exams" to get rid of the students only in it with "the wrong intentions", and a horribly disorganized administration that regularly just lost your grades and scores and tried to blame it on you). I'm someone who loves learning, and I loved learning what I did there. I have many amazing memories of people and projects we got to work on. But it's all overshadowed by the awful strucutures in place around it. I'd still like to study something some day, maybe to do with art or history or film or languages... but currently I'm kinda just happy existing and doing things at my own pace, without too much outside pressure to perform.

I work at a supermarket and am a registered freelance artist

I have a stable, permanent, part-time job at a supermarket (the wine and liquors department is all mine to manage basically, and I don't even drink XD but it's a lot of fun there really. Unless when something breaks...)

Money-wise, this job's just enough to not worry too much about life atm, but I wouldn't mind more xD It being part-time gives me a lot of free time I wouldn't have at most "regular" jobs, but rarely having a weekend sucks big time, especially when most of your friends work "regular" jobs.

I'm also registered as a freelance illustrator, and I'd love to get back into the swing of offering commissions again at some point, or building a small creative business somehow that would make the supermarket job obsolete in the end (just havent quite figured out what and how to pull that off, all attempts so far semi-successful XD). But yeh, that's like, the ultimate dream, really. Just making art and living off of it, and still having the time to follow my hobbies and go on adventures with my cat xD Don't need fame or riches, just want a comfortable, happy life bringing joy to others with what I do. And that joy-part, and feeling useful is what's lacking at my current dayjob. It's a job, it pays the bills, it can be fun and leaves a little bit of creativity here and there even... but it's not as fulfilling as I'd wish it to be.

I've seen a lot of people do this already, so I'm just gonna say: if you read this far and want to share some fun facts, consider yourself tagged to make your own 5 facts post! XD

[filurig]

2, 8 and 20 for the ocverse ask meme :3

2.) if you gave an in depth description of your story to someone who was not all the way paying attention, what would their takeaway be?

A: cruelty is a choice, and the strongest decision u can make is to be kind in a hostile world. also just accept yourself for who you are and stop trying to meet harmful expectations imposed upon u by people or society around u.

8.) what inspired your world building, if anything?

A: i think the biggest inspiration is misc. swedish media aimed at kids, generally folklore is pretty present there which inspired me to make it kind of a Crux in pareidolia. some specific inspirations from that when it comes to vibes are emil i lönneberga by astrid lindgren and pettson och findus by sven nordqvist - these are most relevant to the worldbuilding surrounding folke but yk. art by ppl like john bauer were also very present when i grew up and also depicted lots of folklore which has also inspired my focus on it.

now regarding the actual worldbuilding of creature species a lot of it is based on my Casual Interest In Animals so they often just gather traits/behaviours based upon misc animals. and ofc i gather from the actual folklore theyre based on. ive always liked concepts where the established idea of a creature or concept is different from how it is in reality, so thats what ive tended to aim for for most of the creatures.

20.) your ocverse just got a movie trilogy a la hunger games style. how have they horribly mangled your message/theme so that the movies are now a showcase of what the original was condemning?

A: arvo is 10x more horrible and commits even more crime and manipulates folke for arbitrary reasons completely knowingly and sets out to ruin shit for him for #fun. initially there is no jägarlyan present and arvo is just doing his thang on his own but he then joins up with them in the second movie or something. oh and he no longer acts immaturely sometimes, or genuine, now hes just a Cool and Quiet and Calculating Intimidating Villain for epic badass scenes. at the end folke calls the police and arvo gets arrested for poaching and several other felonies and spends the rest of his life in jail (again, i guess). alternatively selma or god forbid folke just kills him.

oh and they also completely delete all queerness from the narrative at all. arvo = untransed. folke = gets into a good christian heterosexual marriage after arvo is arrested or killed, at some point a forced female love interest was introduced to him to tell him to quit being friends with arvo. adrian = somehow 100% cis despite being part of a species with a very loose view of gender. freddie is definitely forced into sexual overtones with the women at jägarlyan.

[rin7713]

Speaking as someone that trusts people too easily and was subscribed and patroned to James Sommerton, I have some unfortunate insight into this.

So in the afterglow of the Sommerton expose I feel a bit icky honestly. I have realized I have not been paying enough attention to the media I have been engaging with, that I put things on sometimes just to have on in the background, even if there is something more thoughtful being said.

I ignored the red flags of someone looking kind of bored while delivering their video because I thought, "maybe that's just how he is", I know I don't always deliver words with the passion people expect from me. I trust and give grace to people without a lot of thought sometimes, it's something I'm working on to protect myself.

What was appealing about Sommerton's work, to me, was I wanted to engage with more queer content because queer anything was missing or hidden (there's a lot of tangents my ADHD brain wants to make here but honestly my Dad's taste in music was pretty heckin queer and it baffles me to this day that I grew up with such queer music but had no idea the history it represented) from my childhood growing up in a conservative Christian household. So in adulthood I've sought out queer content, sought out content from people with very different life experiences from my own so I can see another perspective and learn from it. Princess Weekes, Lindsey Ellis, Kat Blaque, Jessie Gender, and Khadija Mbowe were some of the first queer content creators I came across. And then there were others that they were in community with like FD Signifier, Foreign Man in a Foreign Land, VerilyBitchie others that I found I enjoyed too. And also I was around for the early days of TBSkyen, this is a funny tangent I just cannot help but add but I remember the very cute announcement Skyen made when they were talking about updating their channel page because people were starting to actually follow the channel and they wanted to have the effort of how their channel page look reflect that the professionalism mattered. Actually I think this tangent will prove a point later, hold onto it.

So I trusted Sommerton, and I even supported him on Patreon because I am a sucker for marketing, and I thought he might be a good cause to stand behind because he seemed to be doing a lot to illustrate a queer history I never knew, and I didn't think to do much work to look further than what was being presented on the surface. But things were starting to feel weird. Like it was weird when he had Mother's Basement quoted for his anime episode but didn't have like a cameo of him or something, just a mention of him. And it was weird how he kept saying straight white women were deniers of the gayness in Yuri on Ice, when that contradicted my own experiences with other women, and despite not being straight or strictly a woman myself, it kind of contradicted me who . It was also becoming really weird how he didn't seem to be getting in community with other creators I knew of (I'm not on Twitter or whatever it's called now so I had no idea about the previous Nebula creator drama he had). It was weird so I did start engaging with his content less, kind of by accident and I probably missed the re-uploaded content that would have been a red flag and I know I missed the live streams because it just seemed to be a bunch of AMAs instead of "Let's talk about X thing" I say all of this to illustrate, I do have taste, I do have some critical thinking skills and I also have a lot of trust in people, and I am probably an example of the average person that watched Sommerton's content.

Funny story I watched Todd In the Shadows' video before I watched Hbomberguy's video and I was appalled at myself that I had missed so much, thought so little beyond the surface of what was being presented, that I had just let my brain just absorb things so uncritically, that I didn't question much even when things felt off, that I had perpetuated the him getting away with it all by being this way. I blamed myself first.

But to others that have been fooled whether it's by Sommerton or other people in your life, it was not your fault that you trusted someone, that you believed them, that you took what they said at face value. The only thing you should do instead of blaming yourself is to reflect and learn from this experience. The power of hindsight can empower you to trust again but to trust with more boundaries in place for yourself.

In hindsight Sommerton's lack of passion should have been a red flag. In hindsight I have not adored his content or his brand the way I adore other content creators I engage with, there is not an adorable memory I can recall with fondness like I can with early TBSkyen giving his channel a facelift for the sake of telling their viewers "you matter and deserve professionalism". In hindsight my own lack of passion for Sommerton's content should have been a red flag. In hindsight there were some big red flags that I ignored just because I go to YouTube just to enjoy myself, because I have the privilege of being perceived a certain way that makes most of the queer history within Sommerton's mountain of plagiarism something I don't have to think about on a daily basis.

Should we have to be this vigilant just to enjoy content on a platform? Well look I'm not going to tell you what to do but I certainly suggest you should if you don't want to feel bamboozled again. I know I don't want to feel bamboozled again. It sucks but just like "Who Watches the Watchmen" was spray painted on the streets in Alan Moore's Watchmen, Hbomberguy's video posed the same question but for YouTubers. And the answer is it's other YouTubers and it's us as viewers. The consequences of not holding people accountable to their actions is, that they keep getting away with it and keep getting to spread their harm. And we should all do better.

re: Somerton

Not for nothing, but I think we should remember that James Somerton's fans and subscribers are normal people, just like you. They are people who received his output in good faith, and extended to him a normal amount of grace and benefit of the doubt, which he took advantage of.

I don't think it's helpful to respond to the exposé on Somerton with sentiments along the lines of "wow, how could anyone ever think THIS GUY'S videos were any good, ha ha ha, how did he ever get subscribers?" because 1) you have the substantial benefit of hindsight and a disengaged outsider perspective, and 2) it's a rhetoric that creates a divide between you (refined, savvy, smart, sophisticated) and Somerton's audience (gullible, unrefined, easily taken advantage of, terrible taste), which is a false divide, with a false sense of security.

Somerton's success happened because he stole good writing. He found interesting, insightful, in-depth work done by other people, applied the one skill he actually has which is marketing, and re-packaged it as his own. He targeted a market which is starving for the exact kind of writing he was stealing, and pushed his audience to disengage from sources that conflicted with him.

Hbomberguy makes this point in his exposé video: good queer writing is hard to find and incredibly easy to lose. The writers Somerton stole from were often poor or precarious, writing freelance work for small circles under shitty conditions, without the means or the reach or the privileges necessary to find bigger markets. And, as Hbomb demonstrated, when people did discover Somerton's plagiarism, he used his substantial audience to hound them away and dissuade anyone else from trying to hold him accountable.

He stole queer writing by marginalized people, about experiences and perspectives that people are desperate to hear more about, and even if his delivery and aesthetics were naff, his words resonated with people because the original writers who actually wrote them poured their goddamn hearts and souls into it.

Somerton also maintained a consistent narrative of persecution and marginalization about himself. He took the plain truth, which is that queer people and perspectives are discriminated against, and worked that into a story about himself as a lone, brave truth-teller, daring to voice an authentic queer perspective, constantly beset by bigots and adversaries who sought to tear him down. As @aranock, who works with some of the people he targeted, writes in this post, Somerton weaponized whatever casual bias and bigotry he could find in his audience to reinforce his me vs them narrative (usually misogyny and various forms of transphobia), which is what grifters do. They find a vulnerable thread in a community and pull on it. And while you may not have the particular vulnerability that he exploited, you do have vulnerabilities, and they can be exploited too.

People felt compelled to support him, even if his work was sometimes shoddy, because he presented himself as a vulnerable, marginalized person in need of help, he pulled on that vulnerable thread.

Again, he has a degree in marketing, and just like propaganda, nobody is immune to marketing.

YouTube as a system is set up to push for more, constantly more. More content, more videos, more output, more more more more, and part of Somerton and Illuminaughty's success was their ability to push out large amounts of content to the hungry algorithm, even if it was of inferior quality. The algorithm rewarded their volume of output with more eyeballs and attention, and therefore more opportunities to find people who were vulnerable to their grift.

It is a system which quite literally rewards the exact kind of plagiarism that they do, because watch-time and engagement are easily measurable metrics for a corporation, and academic rigor is not. There is pressure to deliver, and a lot of rewards to gain from cutting corners to do it.

Somerton and Illuminaughty and Internet Historian are extreme and very obvious cases, so blatant that you can make a four hour video essay exposing what they've done, but the vast majority of this kind of plagiarism isn't going to be obvious - sometimes it might not even be obvious to the people who are doing it. Casual plagiarism is endemic to the modern internet, and most people don't get educated on what the exact boundaries are between proper sourcing and quoting vs plagiarizing. We had an entire course module at my university aimed at teaching students the exact differences and definitions, and people still made good faith mistakes in their essays and papers that they had to learn to correct during their education.

All of this to say: it is extremely easy in hindsight to call Somerton's work shitty and shoddy, his aesthetics flat and uninspired, and to imagine that as a sophisticated person with good taste and critical faculties, you would never be taken in by this kind of grifter. It is extremely easy to distance yourself from the people he preyed on, and imagine that you will never have to worry about your fave doing your dirty like that.

But part of the point of Hbomberguy's video is that plagiarism is extremely easy to get away with, and often difficult for the average person to spot and call out, and with the rise of AI tools blurring the lines even further, it is not going to get any easier.

So I think we should resist the temptation to think of Somerton's audience as people with bad taste and poor faculties. We should resist the temptation to distance ourselves from the perfectly normal people he preyed on. Many times in your life, a modestly clever man with a marketing degree has fooled you too.

On a personal note, by the same token, I am resisting the temptation to assume that I am too good to be vulnerable to the systemic pressures that produced Somerton and Illuminaughty. No, I've never made a video by word-for-word reciting someone else's work, but I know for a fact that I could do a better job of double-checking my work and citing my sources. I feel the exact same pressure to get a video out as fast as possible, I have the exact same rewards dangled in front of me by YouTube as a platform, and I can't pretend it doesn't affect my work. To me, Hbomb's video felt like a wake-up call to do better.

[firesalamander]

Book #19

was on a train recently and used the opportunity to read 2/3rds of a book, which i finally finished a day or two ago! Book #19 of the year is Eli Clare's Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation. As someone who grew up wworking class, i think a lot of Clare's analyses of class privilege within queer community holds true for me, and a lot of the second section felt still very relevant for a book written in 1999.

Clare starts with an extended analysis on environmental justice and activism through multiple lenses, largely informed by his growing up in a rural logging town and his subsequent realizations of the environmental damage caused by clearcutting, all complicated by his relationship to rurality due to disability, queerness, etc. a super good read, and definitely not what i thought i'd be walking into

the second half of the book involves a discussion on slur reclamation and knowing the history of one's community (structured around a history of freak shows, images of disabled people in various media, and a bunch of other touchpoints) and the difficulty in tracing one's past to present - and i'm far from doing justice to the complexity and layering of narrative and argument he provides in each of these. i also read the 2009 version, so there were lots of nice footnotes that provided context to how he had grown as an individual and realized gaps and flaws in his own thinking over time, which was neat.

All in all, a really good read =) i have a few open books in my bag right now, including Cameron Awkward-Rich's The Terrible We, a book of Ursula K. Le Guin short stories, and a bunch of new graphic novels i picked up. it's looking more and more like my goal is actually feasible this year!

[c-is-for-circinate]

For a long, large part of my life, being queer in a media landscape--finding queerness in a media landscape--has meant theft.

I'm a Fandom Old, somehow, these days, older than most and younger than some, in that way that's grown associated with grumpy crotchetyness and shotguns on porches and back in my day, we had to wade through our Yahoo Groups mailing lists uphill both ways, boring and irrelevant anecdotes from Back In Those Days when homophobia clearly worked differently than it does now, probably because we weren't trying hard enough. I've seen a lot of stories through the years. I've read a lot of fanfic. (More days than not, for the past twenty years. I've read a lot of fanfic.)

When people my age start groaning and sighing at conversations about representation and queerbaiting, when we roll our eyes and drag all the old war stories out again in the face of AO3 is terrible and Not Good Enough, so often what we say is: you Young Folks Today have no idea how hard, how scary, how limiting it was to be queer anywhere Back In Those Days. Including online, maybe especially online, including in a media landscape that hated us so much more than any one you've ever known. And that is true. Always and everywhere, again and again, it's true, we remember, it's true.

We don't talk so much about the joy of it.

Online fan spaces were my very first queer communities, ever. I was thirteen, I was fourteen, I was fifteen--I was a lonely, over-precocious "gifted kid" two years too young for my grade level in an all-girls' Catholic school in the suburbs--I lived in a world where gay people were a rumor and an insult and a news story about murder. I was straight, of course, obviously, because real people were straight and anyway I was weird enough already--I couldn't be two things strange, couldn't be gay too, but--well, I could read the stories. I could feel things about that. I would have those stories to help me, a few years later, when I knew I couldn't call myself straight any more.

And those stories were theft. There was never any doubt about that. We wrote disclaimers at the top of every fic, with the specter of Anne Rice's lawyers around every corner. We hid in back-corners of the internet, places you could only find through a link from a link from a link on somebody else's recs page, being grateful for the tiny single-fandom archives when you found them, grateful for the webrings where they existed. It was theft, all of it, the stories about characters we did not own, the videotaped episodes on your best friend's VHS player, one single episode pulled off of Limewire over the course of three days.

It was theft, we knew, to even try and find ourselves in these stories to begin with. How many fics did I read in those days about two men who'd always been straight, except for each other, in this one case, when love was stronger than sexual orientation? We stole our characters away from the heterosexual lives they were destined to have. We stole them away from writers and producers and TV networks who work overtime to shower them in Babes of the Week, to pretend that queerness was never even an option. This wasn't given to us. This wasn't meant for us. This wasn't ours to have, ever, ever in the first place. But we took it anyway.

And oh, my friends, it was glorious.

We took it. We stole. And again and again, for years and years and years, we turned that theft into an art. We looked for every opening, every crack in every sidewalk where a little sprout of queerness might grow, and we claimed it for our own and we grew whole gardens. We grew so sly and so skilled with it, learning to spot the hints of oh, this could be slashy in every new show and movie to come our way. Do you see how they left these character dynamics here, unattended on the table? How ripe they are for the pocketing. Here, I'll help you carry them. We'll make off with these so-called straight boys, and we only have to look back if somebody sets out another scene we want for our own.

We were thieves, all of us, and that was fine and that was fair, because to exist as queer in the world was theft to begin with. Stolen time, stolen moments--grand larceny of the institution of marriage, breaking and entering to rob my mother's hopes for grandchildren. Every shoplifted glance at the wrong person in the locker room (and it didn't matter if we never peeked, never dared, they called us out on it anyway). Every character in every fic whose queerness became a crime against this ex-wife, that new love interest. Every time we dared steal ourselves away from the good straight partners we didn't want to date.

And: we built ourselves a den, we thieves, wallpapered in stolen images and filled to the brim with all the words we'd written ourselves. We built ourselves a home, and we filled it with joy. Every vid and art and fic, every ship, every squee. Over and over, every straight boy protagonist who abandoned all womankind for just this one exception with his straight boy protagonist partner found gay orgasms and true love at the end.

Over and over, we said: this isn't ours, this isn't meant to be ours, you did not give this to us--but we are taking it anyway. We will burglarize you for building blocks and build ourselves a palace. These stories and this place in the world is not for us, but we exist, and you can't stop us. It's ours now, full of color and noise, a thousand peoples' ideas mosaic'ed together in celebration. We made this, and it will never be just yours again. You won't ever truly get it back, no matter how many lawyers you send, not completely. We keep what we steal.

.

Things shifted over time, of course. That's good. That's to be celebrated. Nobody should have to steal to survive. It should not be a crime, should not feel like a crime, to find yourself and your space in the world.

There were always content creators who could slip a little wink in when they laid out their wares, oh what's this over here, silly me leaving this unattended where anybody could grab it, of course there might be more over by the side door if you come around the alleyway (but if anybody asks, you didn't get this from ME). We all watched Xena marry Gabrielle, in body language and between the lines. We sat around and traded theories and rumors about whether the people writing Due South knew what they were doing when they sent their buddy cops off into the frozen north alone together at the end of the show, if they'd done it on purpose, if they knew. But over the years, slowly, thankfully, the winks became less sly.

A teenage boy put his hand on another teenage boy's hand and said, you move me, and they kissed on network TV, in a prime-time show, on FOX, and the world didn't burn down. Here and there, where they wanted to, where they could without getting caught by their bosses and managers, content creators stopped subtly nudging people around the back door and started saying, "Here. This is on offer here too, on purpose. You get to have this, too."

And of course, of course that came with a whole host of problems too. Slide around to the back door but you didn't get this from me turned into it's an item on our special menu, totally legit, you've just got to ask because the boss throws a fit if we put it out front. Shopkeepers and content creators started advertising on the sly, come buy your fix here!, hiding the fine print that says you still have to take what you've purchased home and rebuild it with your semi-legal IKEA hacks. Maybe they'll consider listing that Destiel or Sterek as a full-service menu item next year. Is that Crowley/Aziraphale the real thing or is it lite?

And those problems are real and the conversations are worth having, and it's absolutely fair to be frustrated that you can't find the ship you want on sale in anything like your color and size in a vast media landscape packed full of discount hetships and fast-fashion m/f. It's fair to be angry. It's fair to be frustrated. Queerbait is a word that exists for a reason.

There's a part of me that hurts, though, every time the topic comes up. It's a confusing, bad-mannered part of me, but it's still very real. And it's not because I'm fawning for crumbs, trying to be the Good, Non-Threatening Gay. It's not that I'm scared and traumatized by the thought of what might happen if we dare raise our voices and ask for attention. (Well. Not mostly. I'll always remember being quiet and scared and fifteen, but it's been a long two decades since then. I know how to ask for a hell of a lot more now.)

It's because I remember that cozy, plush-wallpapered den of joyful thieves. I remember you keep what you steal.

Every single time--every time--when a story I love sets a couple of characters out on a low, unguarded table, perfectly placed to be pilfered on the sly and taken home and smushed together like a couple of dolls, my very first thought is always, always joy. Always, that instinct says, yay! Says, this is ours now. As soon as I go home and crawl into that pillow-fort den, my instincts say, I will surely find people already at work combing through spoils and finding new ways to combine them, new ways to make them our own. I know there's fic for that. I've already seen fic for that, and I wasn't really interested last time, but the new store display's got my brain churning, and I can't wait to see what the crew back at the hideout does with this.

Every time, that's where my brain goes. And oh, when I realize the display's put out on purpose, that somebody snuck in a legitimate special menu item, when the proprietor gives me the nod and wink and says, you don't have to come around the side, I know it's not much but here--there is so much joy and relief and hope in me from that! Oh, what we can make with these beautiful building blocks. Oh what a story we can craft from the pieces. Oh, the things we can cobble together. Look at that, this one's a little skimpy on parts but we can supplement it, this one's got a whole outline we can fill in however we want. This one technically comes semi-preassembled, and that's boring as shit and a pain to take back apart, but that's fine, we'll manage. We're artists and thieves. I bet someone's pulling out the AU saw to cut it to pieces already.

And then I get back to our den, which has moved addresses a dozen times over the years and mostly hangs out on Tumblr now (and the roof leaks and the landlord's sketchy as fuck but at least they don't charge rent, and we've made worse places our own). And I show up, ready for joy--ready for a dozen other people who saw that low-hanging fruit on that unguarded table, who got the nod and wink about the special menu item, who're ready to get so excited about this newest haul. Did you see what we picked up? The theft was so easy, practically begging to be stolen. The last owner was an idiot with no idea what to do with it. The last owner knew exactly what it could become, bless their heart, under a craftsman with more time on their hands, so they looked away on purpose at just the right time to let me take it home. I show up every time ready for our space, the place that fed me on joy and self-confidence when I was fifteen and starving. The place that taught me, yes, we are thieves, because it is RIGHT to take what we need, and the beautiful things we create are their own justification. We are thieves, and that's wonderful, because nothing is handed to us and that means we get to build our own palaces. We get to keep everything we steal.

I go home, and even knowing the world is different, my instincts and heart are waiting for that. And I walk in the door, and I look at my dash, and I glance over at twitter, and--

And people are angry, again. Angry at the slim pickings from the hidden special menu. So, so tired and angry, at once again having to steal.

And they're right to be! Sometimes (often, maybe) I think they're angry at the wrong people--more angry with the shopkeeper who offers the bite-sized sampler platter of side characters or sneaks their queer content in on the special menu than the ones who don't include it at all. But it's not wrong to be mad that Disney's once again advertising their First Gay Character only to find out it's a tiny sprinkle of a one-line extra on an otherwise straight sundae. It's not wrong to be furious at the world because you've spent your whole life needing to be a thief to survive. It's far from wrong. I'm angry about it too.

But this was my den of thieves, my chop shop, my makerspace. Growing up in fandom, I learned to pick the locks on stories and crack the safes of subtext at the very same time I learned to create. They were the same thing, the same art. We are thieves, my heart says, we are thieves, and that's what makes us better than the people we steal from. We deconstruct every time we create. We build better things out of the pieces.

And people are angry that the pre-fab materials are too hard to find, the pickings too slim, the items on sale too limited? Yes, of course they are, of course they should be--but my heart. Oh, my heart. Every single time, just a little bit, it breaks.

Of course the stories are terrible (they have always been terrible). Of course they are, but we are thieves. We steal the best parts and cobble them back together and what we make is better than it was before. The craftsman's eye that cases a story for weak points, for blank spaces, for anywhere we can fit a crowbar and pry apart this casing--that's skill and art and joy. Of course we shouldn't have to, of course we shouldn't have to, but I still love it. I still want it, crave it. I still thrill every time I see it, a story with hairline cracks that we can work open with clever hands to let the queer in.

That used to be cause for celebration, around here. I ask him to go back to the ruins of Aeor with me, two men together alone on an expedition in the frozen north, it feels like a gift. And I understand why some people take it as an insult. I understand not good enough. I understand how something can feel like a few drops of water to someone dying of thirst, like a slap in the face. If it was so easy to sneak it hidden onto the special menu, to place it on the unguarded side table for someone else to run off to, why not let it sit out front and center in the first place? I know it's frustrating. It should be. We should fight. We should always fight. I know why.

But my heart, oh, my heart. My heart only knows what it's been taught. My heart sees, this thing right here, the proprietor left it there for you with a nod and a wink because they Get It. It's not put together yet, but it's better that way anyway. It's so full of pieces to pull apart and reassemble. I bet they've got a whole mosaic wall going up at home already. We can bring it home and make it OURS, more than it was ever theirs, forget half of what it came from and grow a new garden in what remains.

And I go home to find anger, and my heart breaks instead.