#I grew up around gay men in the 90s

[ryuutchi]

Jewish gay men were some of the first to reclaim the pink triangle, and it's been a symbol for Gay Rights on and off for decades. Just because Jews and Roma were the main targets of the Nazis doesn't mean we have inherent right to dictate how other people use the triangle symbols that were designating other inmates. Jewish gay men were labeled with a pink triangle AND a yellow triangle, after all.

I've always personally been very uncomfortable with queer goyim using the pink triangle. I am curious if any other Jewish and/or Romani people have the same of diffrent thoughts.

[buttercreamdicks]

I guess if I am going to gather my thoughts about Link and the Eagle, I first have to gather my thoughts about Link and gender and expression. I have been through a lot of fandoms, I have been through a lot of ships, and I have always been against the oft-pervading logic that "This man is gay because [insert stereotypes of gay men performing femininized behaviors or underperforming masculinized behaviors]." One of the reasons I interpret my feelings on Link and gender as #my lesbian queen link neal is -- well, okay, because it's nonsensical and funny, but also because I specifically do not really want to fanon that he is gay because he wears a purse or whatever. One of the other reasons I interpret my feelings on Link and gender as a joke about being a queer female is because when Link says he is an unserious man I feel that unseriousness in manhood as hewing close to my own experience as a queer female; I recognize a lot of my own self or at least my own self's willingness to be "weird" (i.e., plainly honest) about gender and sexuality and affection in the idiosyncratic ways he expresses these things as well.

The main thing that hooked me into Rhett & Link was finding out that they grew up in the Southern conservative Evangelical culture in the '90s. Something that I think about a lot is how Rhett has talked about how Link was the weird kid, how people found him annoying, how he stayed at home and played with his wrestling dolls, how the moment they really became best friends was when Rhett punched that kid for making fun of Link. How in high school everyone thought they were gay. Rhett spent almost all his time with Link anyway. How even now Rhett talks about having to protect Link from himself, from embarrassing himself. And how Link talks about himself as someone who commits faux pas, and about liking that he has a safety net in Rhett, someone who will watch out for him.

Like the thing about Rhett is he performs the masculinity they grew up with well, and apparently always has: good grades, good athlete, just enough unexamined toxicity to his masculinity that he often doesn't pass my vibe check. I didn't grow up in the South or in Christianity but I grew up in the late '90s and I was steeped in enough of same culture of gender that I can recognize the mannerisms that Link has even today that would have been labeled as "weird," and the names he might have been called: sissy, mama's boy, fag. Rhett could have gone through life without ever encountering that, but he didn't. He chose to stick with Link, and he chose specifically to stick with a conception of himself as protecting Link.

And the thing with Link is he continued to be the way he was. He kept enough of those same mannerisms and ways of expressing himself that even now, as a grown man, he is the one a fandom will say is gay, is the twink, is the bottom. Whether he explicitly chose not to change, or is just one of those people who is incapable of not being exactly himself, I don't know. Probably both? Most of us who are queer (in the sense of sexuality or in the sense of being seen as strange) are both.

I also think sometimes of what Link's conception of himself would be if he weren't surrounded by people who have known him forever, or people who know someone who’s known him forever. If everybody's first impression of him wasn't mediated by a bunch of people who carry around his old teenage self crystallized in amber, who grew up in the same culture that thought he was weird, who still spend their time thinking they need to run interference for the way he talks and acts and feels. Because another thing that hooked me into Rhett & Link was how nearly every person in every piece of media they produce says "This guy is weird and awkward and makes people feel bad" when everything I took from watching him was This guy is honest and open and makes me feel good. Like if you just met him, on your own, would you even think anything was strange? If it was just him, without his past, would anybody think he wasn't enough?

[queermania]

Ok so I have a real question not trying to start discourse or any thing. If Dean knew how he felt about Cas slash knew he liked men why was he always so weird about gay people. I can see a reading where Dean knew how he felt about Cas but not one where he knew he was bi

this is totally a fair question and i don't think there's any one True reading or interpretation of the show/characters so it really just depends on what version of events resonates the most with you. the way the picture makes the most sense to me is that dean is a guy who was raised in the 80s-90s in a hyper-masculine environment with zero stability. i think all of those puzzle pieces slotted into place in his brain in a way that said "sex with men is okay, feelings are not." a furtive hookup with a dude in a seedy bar bathroom is fine. going on a date with a guy is prohibited.

and the thing is that this is kind of true for dean when it comes to women as well. a one night stand is a-okay. falling in love and settling down is not. so, you take that sort of mentality and then apply all the homophobia of growing up in the eighties and the nineties and a life lived out of a car bouncing between truck stops and, well, you get a dean who is absolutely flabbergasted when confronted with the fact that not only are you allowed to want something romantic with a man, you're allowed to say it out loud to other people. you're allowed to have it.

dean wasn't weird about gay people, necessarily. he was weird about people who were able to just be themselves. he didn't know that was an option. also, i don't know about y'all but as a queer person who doesn't necessarily read as queer at a glance, i too get Very Awkward when confronted with another queer person in the wild and it's not because i'm homophobic. it's because oh! new friend! must send telepathic signals that me queer too! my behavior around other queer people in queer spaces does not match my behavior around other queer people in random public spaces. i'm embarrassing and i see that part of myself in dean lol.

and dean being weird about other people making comments about his perceived queerness, to me, is a very normal reaction for a closeted person (or even someone who is selectively and/or quietly out). you can be perfectly at peace with who you are and still not want to be clocked. like???? homophobia is not a thing of the past. dean grew up during the AIDS crisis. he was, what? nineteen years old when matthew sheppard was killed? his reactions to people insinuating he might be anything even close to queer make perfect sense for someone his age, living the life that he did.

also, like, here's the thing: i realized i was queer when i was about eleven and i freaked out about it for about a day and then promptly suppressed the whole thing because of a deeply traumatizing childhood. being queer was the least of my worries and there was never any time to unpack it and deal with it so i just didn't. and then when i was about nineteen i started to have queer sexual/romantic relationships but continued to suppress the fact that EYE was in fact queer because, again, i didn't really have the space to unpack it. it wasn't until i was about twenty-three and surrounded by other queer people (in a platonic way) that i finally felt safe to fully admit to myself and to other people that i was in fact queer. and then i never really did a whole coming out thing. i just... lived my life openly as a queer person and let other people figure it out.

my point in all this is that i feel like my general experience/trajectory lines up really well with how i view dean's. he had a very traumatic upbringing so while he knew he was attracted to men, he had no time or space to deal with it. that didn't stop him from having sex with men, but he never really unpacked what it actually meant. it wasn't until he was older and had openly queer friends that he felt safe enough to fully acknowledge that part of himself. and then.. that was it. he just lived his life as a queer man. like, i feel like we actually watched that happen over the course of the show???

most importantly, i cannot handle any reading where everyone else knows dean is queer but dean does not know himself. i especially loathe the idea that sam Knows and has to explain dean's own sexuality to himself. that is so ugly. dean is a very self-aware person. you could even argue he is perhaps too self-aware at times.

anyway, this is all obviously just a watsonian explanation of dean's relationship to his queerness. it doesn't even touch on the doylist stuff but that's a whole can of worms i'm not really interested in opening on tumblr dot edu right now.

so, yeah. that's my personal reading.

[chuuzmii]

People saying gay/queer Eddie wont happen is blowing me because... what else could Eddies storyline be building to like?? It is most definitely happening brother😭 like mama lets research:

-They said we could have gotten bi buck in season 4 and queer Eddie in season 5 but it was scrapped.. we got bi buck season 7... gee i wonder what they're re cooking up for season 8 🤔🧐

-They made marisol a nun just to give eddie even more catholic guilt and catholic guilt? It's historically gay sorry i dont make the rules eddie boykisser. (Im joking but this arch seriously had eddie analyzing the toxic masculinity he was raised with/grew up around which is something that a lot of queer poc men or queer military men do before coming out. Im also like 90% sure this guilt is the reason he had a breakdown and started dating his ex-wife's evil twin but who knows 🤷🏾‍♀️)

-Eddie and Tommy were supposed to be together S7 but they scrapped it because they didn't think it fit. I see people using this as a reason to think RG or production don't want queer Eddie but I am genuinely confused by that because in MY mind it's another reason why S8 gay Eddie is going to happen. I dont think they scrapped it because they didn't want it but because it didn't fit Eddie as a character like there is no way Eddie 'i cant be honest with myself unless i have a mental breakdown first' Diaz is going to be out and proud in an 8 episode season. And also I think they knew the writing and episodes were going to be a bit wonky this season and that there was NOOO way they could write a coming out that fit Eddie with the strikes going on.

Ntm all the shit the production/crew does to make me think its going to happen. Oliver only posting Buddie content, members of the crew liking and replying to Buddie tweets, and that one insider going on the Eddie rant on twitter (this one barely counts for me because i have no clue who this person is but ik some care about what they have to say.)

gay eddie is going to happen i can feel it in my left ball u guys just STAY STRONG.

[gaskarth]

one of the things that i think surprises people about bob's burgers is how gay the show is. like yes bob is canonically recognized as bi but also gene is so coded to be a young gay boy and is all the stereotypes from the 80's/90's of what a gay boy in tv is!!! there's a whole episode based around the belchers going with one of their family friends to visit her ex girlfriend!! bob's father's restaurant (the one he grew up in!) was next door to a gay bar and the men who were bob's examples of masculinity included a butch gay man!!! one of the friends bob makes when he's a cabbie (originally framed as a joke & then retconned into something more serious) is a trans woman & a sex worker!! one of linda's close friends is a gay guy who does brunch reviews under the name "dame judy brunch"!!! definitely not something you'd expect from the show walking into it but it's pretty cool that it's there but also makes so much sense once you realize the VA for linda is an openly gay man :) anyways i love you bob's burgers

[devotioncrater]

Do you think the writers were originally gonna make Ted bi but chickened out? Literally what was up with the bi-angles around Ted's head? Was it bait? Or was it just a queer easter egg or subtle nod to Colin and Trent's conversation earlier?

the past week i have been wondering this, too. and tbh. i think the more i settle into the ending we were given (while trying to let go of the What Would've Been endings in my head) the more i think the writers did make ted bisexual. they didn't chicken out, either.

here's why:

i think if the bi triangles were the only queer imagery/reference with ted throughout the show, then, yes, they would've been a nod to the earlier colin+trent conversation. because it would've been standalone. there's no other basis for it, no other throughline attached, no reason for viewers to go "HOLY SHIT" when that symbol pops up in ted's epiphany. the triangle would've been meaningless to ted's character outside of the Total Football Boxes analogy, while narratively threading colin's queer arc to others in Richmond.

but no, that's not the case. the bi triangles were not the only queer thing tied to ted.

there have been multiple allusions to queer culture throughout the show in relation to him. freddy mercury, oscar wilde, walt whitman, dolly parton, shania twain, "be curious not judgemental", wizard of oz, etc. they're never explicitly expressed to be queer, though, not like the triangle symbol was thanks to the trent+colin conversation.

more overt are ted's comments on men's physiques. "muscular thighs caked in mud" and "you're strong"/"you're tall" and every other word he says about pep guardiola. there's a short scene in s2 where he's losing it over nate looking good in a suit. in fact, there are so many of these Seemingly Harmless Appreciation Of The Male Form Moments sprinkled throughout that it's time-consuming to compile a complete list. it's such a contrast to how he expresses his interest in women because with women he's not as outright -- for lack of a better word -- horny.

he also seeks out emotional intimacy with other men. "honey" "sweetie" "babe" are all terms of endearment he hands out freely. which is! good! healthy! fuck toxic masculinity! i only point this out because he begins doing so directly as a result of michelle divorcing him and it's his way of seeking comfort for something he'd otherwise not get.

this all ties into his conditioned sexuality. the social programming he would've grown up with in the Midwest during the '80s-'90s. traditional values type beat.

in regards to women, the traditional culture is: treat women with respect, don't make inappropriate comments about them, sex is an act reserved for a relationship (last point is alluded to when he confesses he hasn't ever had a one-night-stand before sassy).

in regards to men, the traditional culture is: don't be gay lol

but ted grew up with sports culture, too. and men, while in a Sports Culture Environment (gym/pitch/locker room/etc), are more physical with one another and more complimentary of one another's bodies because sports culture gives them a pass to do so. a dude can be as horny as he wants and say shit like "muscular thighs caked in mud" or slap a teammate's ass after a score, and it's accepted (provided he's tight with his teammates like that). it's an easy, innocuous outlet for gay desires which may be otherwise repressed or hidden (think of colin's "i'll have sex with zava" or "he's mine" jokes).

granted, in sports culture there are lines that aren't supposed to be crossed. kissing other men or dating other men, for starters. sports culture is notoriously homophobic and tends to treat gayness similar to how Traditional America treats women's sex & sexuality: hypersexualized by acting displays of it, but with a very strong undercurrent of shame, intolerance, and This Is Wrong when confronted by the real thing.

we know ted to be a Represser. he represses his anger, he represses his father, he represses anything that might Disturb The Peace or Rock The Boat. while he's making progress with this in season 3, there are still instances where rebecca calls for "Oklahoma" to get ted to actually face his feelings/truths.

worth noting here that it takes way more than a year of therapy to let go of that defense mechanism. especially in ted's case, since it's been in use for over 25 years.

so if we combine these three things: ted's cultural upbringing, his penchant for repression, and the way he interacts with other men, it is not a far reach to come to the conclusion that he's deep in the bisexual closet.

he uses sports as a metaphorical bridge to vocalize his desires for other men, physical and emotional. something he can explain away as being part of normal team culture. but we get roy's homophobic dog looks in s3 and beard's "eehhh" in s1 to let us know that this -- praises about men's bodies and terms of endearment usages, respectively -- isn't a part of normal team culture. this is just ted.

there's also something to be said about the way ted looks at trent when no one else can see -- not even trent. most notably it occurs during their alone scenes in s3 ep2 and s3 ep12. the look is affectionate, open, and fond. the exact same heart eyes trent's been giving him all season, unabashed, in front of everyone.

the juxtaposition is clear here: trent is an openly gay man, therefore his adorations are made known to others. ted is a closeted bisexual man, therefore his adorations are not made known to anyone.

all this to say, anon, that i personally believe ted's written as a closeted bisexual.

[battybriefs]

Remember kids, it's only grooming when it's gay.

But for real heres personal story time. Let's talk about actual grooming.

I grew up in the Mormon church in the 90s and early 2000s. Like a good child, I participated in all the church activities including the young women's program. My parents wanted me to do it, i was told the church leaders were good people so I didnt question anything.

While the guys in the boyscouts and young mens program were learning survival skills, learning woodworking, learning how to fix cars, and learning financial literacy ... we were learning to do our makeup, can food, bake bread, sew clothes, cook large meals, and learn about changing diapers. It was hammered in our heads from a young age that our entire purpose in life was to get married, serve the husband, have kids and raise a family.

I remember when I was a Beehive, around 13 or 14, our ward was invited to participate in a fashion show for one of the local bridal stores. They dressed all the young women up, did our makeup and hair, put us in wedding dresses, and invited all the men in the ward to come watch us runway walk in the cultural hall. I was a literal child. I didnt even have tıts yet. Men in their 60s and 70s in our ward came to watch us parade around in our little wedding gowns. That's straight up a pedopagent and grooming child brides, y'all, and I didn't even realize it because things like that were so normalized in the church.

I remember sitting in the bishops office interviewing for my first temple reccomend so I could participate in the young women's activity to do baptisms for the dead. He asks me if I live by the laws of chastity. I was young, naive, sheltered and didn't even know what the word chastity meant. I remember him aggressively, explicitly asking me questions about my virginity- had I ever kissed a boy, touched a boy, thought about a boy, touched myself, touched a girl, thought about a girl, felt tingly down there, had a hymen. He kept asking me over and over if I was sure about my answers, and would elaborate on what he meant like he was fishing for a specific answer. It felt so dirty and invasive. In hind sight it felt more like he was trying to get spank bank material than trying to find out if I was being a "good girl".

Fast forward a few years. Im in Junior High, probably about 15 years old. I'm a closeted homo sitting next to my girlfriend in church, trying my damndest to hold my tongue and not let people catch on that I was crying. The young woman's lesson was about a woman's worth.

They opened up by talking about how we're getting old enough to go to college in a few years and that that's great, but a career and college education should be a hobby and not a goal. They stressed that we shouldn't put our educations and careers as a priority over finding a man, getting married in the temple, and starting a family. They said as soon as we found a man, we needed to drop out and become stay at home mothers. It was the mans duty to provide for the family. We were told that the reason God sent women to this earth to serve men and raise families, and that it was a divine and sacred calling.

The second half was about how lesbians and gay people were sent by the devil to destroy families. We were told if we "struggled with same sex attraction" we needed to pray, repent and try harder to be straight. That we needed to tell the bishop so they could help us get gay conversion therapy. That even if we liked girls, we needed to find a man to marry and bear his children. They actively encouraged gay men and women to catfish straight partners and trick them into thinking you loved them with the purpose of bearing children. Can you imagine how fucking awful it would be to fall in love and marry a person thinking they felt the same way, only to find out they're gay and living a lie so they don't go to hell?

The church advocating "its ok to be gay but you have to be celibate and single for the rest of your life" was a change the church made a few years later when Prop 8 passed and their members started leaving in hoards.

Meanwhile I've been to drag shows since I was in high-school. It's just a bunch of people with great makeup skills doing lavish impressions of Lady Gaga and Freddy Mercury.

Why is a drag show considered grooming but telling actual children that theyre going to be mommies and daddies when they grow up not? Why is it grooming if a trans person is out in public doing something mundane like grocery shopping, but it isn't grooming watching television shows that has love triangle plotlines that revolve around teenagers making out and exploring their sexuality? Why is it grooming when a children's show has a character with two daddies but not grooming when the children's show character has a mom and a dad?

If people really give a shit about grooming, they need to start in their own backyard. Start by deconstructing straight representation in media. Start by asking why its ok to joke that a toddler is going to be a ladies man when he grows up. Start by asking why child beauty pagents even exist. Start by looking at how your religion teaches and enforces sexuality. Start with comprehensive and age appropriate lessons about the human body and consent with little Suzy so when uncle Bob is being inappropriate at the family reunion she has the knowlege and tools to know whats going on, to assert her boundaries, and the confidence to tell another grownup what's going on.

[clubpresidentsclub-ys]

Hi, and welcome to my memorial eulogy of:

The Few Half-Decent Men That Exist in Yandere Simulator

“Because the developer is an incel and only likes looking at high-school girls.” -Einstein

Anyways, let’s do the thing or whatever. Oh, also send me asks, I’m taking some for the club leaders, so feel free to ask away.

Budo

Y’all remember when this guy was like the pinnacle of attractive for some reason? Like, everyone just unanimously liked him more than the beanpole Yandere-chan went with? Cuz I do, and I still agree with it.

Also, he just seems nice to be around. Genuine guy right there, super encouraging to his friends, he just seems really positive.

Shin

Okay, now try to forget that stuff I said about positivity for a second. When this guy got manifested into existence eight years ago, everyone was like “ooh, cute emo boy” and those people definitely exist still, no doubts about that.

Also, side-note, did people just ship him and Budo together because they could? I genuinely don’t get it besides if they wanted a gay ship and this game’s men are damn near nonexistent.

Haruto

I’m like 90% sure this guy is the reason little closeted me grew up wanting a bad boy. I don’t know what I saw in him other than the fact he was evil, all I know is his hair is marginally good looking.

Geiju

Maybe this is me projecting my autism into someone else, but this guy is neurodivergent. I know Alex would never think of adding an autistic character (much like he doesn’t think of most things) but I swear to god, his attitude is how I talk every day.

Joze

Maybe it’s because I’m Latino too, but I fell in love with this guy back in 2021. I swear to god, I’d make posts and art and videos about how much I loved this man, but looking back at it now I’m just here like “Oh great, Dev is trying to culturally appropriate another culture or just being racist.”

On the plus side, he’s still adorable.

Hazu

I just like him. He’s cute. He’s sweet. He’s shy. He’s perfect.

Ok y’all, send me asks please, I’d love to give y’all my first ask post so you know send those in.

[denimbex1986]

'Six BAFTA nominations, universal critical acclaim, and not a dry eye in the house: Andrew Haigh’s ghostly gay romance All of Us Strangers is already the must-watch queer film of the year.

Based loosely on 1987 novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, All of Us Strangers follows Fleabag star Andrew Scott as a depressed and isolated queer writer in his forties, who is still reeling from the death of his parents three decades earlier.

In one week, his world changes: not only does he spark up a deep and beautiful romance with younger neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal), but he returns to his childhood home and reunites with his parents – despite them being dead.

Across weeks, he gets to have the vital, moving conversations with the apparitions of mum (Claire Foy) and dad (Jamie Bell) that he was too young to have when they passed, as his romance with Harry blossoms.

Though Yamada’s original novel features a straight protagonist, Andrew Haigh recently explained to PinkNews why he, as a gay man, couldn’t have told his version of the story without centring the queer experience.

“What I’ve always been interested in doing, and especially with this [film], is talking about queerness in relationship to family, and how complicated it can be in relationship to family,” he shared, “especially if you grew up in a generation of the ’80s and into the early ’90s, where it was very different than it is now – thank God.”

A turning point in All of Us Strangers comes when Adam comes out to his parents, who are stuck in the deeply homophobic Thatcher era, and their response is initially less than approving.

“Back then, it was a pretty rough time for a lot of kids growing up and growing into their sexuality. I felt like that adds so much to the story,” the Looking and Weekend creator shared.

“[Adam’s] not lonely because he’s gay. But being gay and coming from that time has made him feel separate in the world to some degree. It’s almost like the world has made him feel lonely.”

As part of the discourse surrounding the film, Paul Mescal has been forced to explain why it was OK for him, as a straight actor, to portray a gay character, arguing that it depends who is in the driving seat of the film.

Haigh has now explained that gay actor Andrew Scott was always going to take the lead role in the film over Paul Mescal, because the story needed to focus on a particular generation of gay men.

“It always had to be from Adam’s perspective,” the 50-year-old director explained.

“I’m the same age or a little bit older than Andrew Scott’s character. That was the generation that I wanted to talk about.”

The contrast between Adam and Harry is an exploration of how gay men of certain ages live their lives differently, even though they are all profoundly affected by the same trauma that can come with growing up queer.

“In many ways, [Harry] is slightly more liberated in the world, and hasn’t been burdened by some of the things that [Adam] has been burdened by. He releases some freedom in Andrew Scott’s character, which I think is really interesting,” Haigh shared.

“Once you’ve seen the film, you realise there’s also a sorrow and a sadness inherent in [Mescal’s] character too.”

Though it’s emotional, All of Us Strangers also highlights the beauty that comes with being able to live as your true self around those you love the most. In opening himself up to his parents, Adam is able to heal the wounds of their complicated relationship.

“I think it’s amazing how often we aren’t our true selves to people, even if people are still alive,” Haigh reflected.

“You still probably don’t have those difficult conversations that you need to have. I understand why we don’t have those difficult conversations; I think there’s a world inside [all] of us that is tormented and a little bit broken, that we’re trying to deal with almost every day of our lives.”

Haigh hopes the film will show that there is an alternative reality out there for those who don’t feel able to be themselves.

“I think the film for me was to say: ‘You know what, it’s OK. I get that you will feel like that, and there is a way out of that. You can find love and intimacy and be known and be understood.”

Rightfully so, All of Us Strangers is pulling in an impressive slate of award nominations – including a BAFTA nomination for Best British Film. It may have been shockingly snubbed by the Oscars, but Haigh is more assured to see the film resonating with so many queer people worldwide.

“It’s always quite surprising to me when something with queer content actually manages to break through and get talked about,” he admitted.

“Now I’m alright with it not being some big mainstream billion dollar because clearly, that’s never going to happen, and there will still be lots of people out there that won’t go and see this film because of the content, or what they think is the content.

“That’s a shame, because I feel like this is a film for everybody,” he added.

“But it’s amazing that it has been taken under the wing by a lot of people and I love that.”'

[lexcellence]

BANSHEE???? THE COP?????

look, i went from the available choices, and my vote went to Beto anyway

Let's break these choices down, yeah?

Cyclops - tl;dr There are specific periods of time where Scott is "hot," and the vast majority of the time he isn't! Is he my blorbo? Yes. Do I run a sideblog where the header is his Foxy Grandpa Ass jutting out? Of course. Can I vote him in good conscience? I don't think so.

Colossus - the man spent how much time trying to fuck a fourteen year old? He heard Mutants were moving to a sex cult island and was baffled because his dead pal Jeff was a human. Pass.

Gambit - not even with Rogue's dick.

Wolverine - I only barely believe he can find the clit, and have ZERO confidence he could locate my prostate, and I'm unsure enough about his grooming habits that I wouldn't willingly put any part of myself in any part of him. Pass.

Iceman - Closeted Iceman? Maybe. But out Iceman is an overcompensating baby gay written almost exclusively by straight dudes, and I have a strict policy of never touching white gays who have "BBC" in their search history.

Warren Kenneth Worthington the Third - do you know what happens to Angel's love interests? I'd rather not be hatecrimed by Cameron Hodge for a few sweaty minutes of underwhelming halfhearted bottoming from a princess who provides the own stuffing for his pillows. Keep flying, birdboy.

Nightcrawler - I know, I know, the man is a sex icon, but I'm not getting involved in any of that family drama. If it's not his evil lesbian moms trying to kill me, it'd be his step-sisters trying to get back in his spandex. Not worth it, especially after all that shit in Way of X.

Havok - Matt Fraction's Clint Barton: The Mutant Flavor???? Listen, I adore a broken man who knows his place as much as the next nigga, don't get me wrong, but if I'm not picking Scott, I'm definitely not picking his Luigi.

I do appreciate his commitment to the bit, though.

Banshee - let's jump back to Cyclops for a minute. Without getting into shipping war bullshit, most of the times he's been "hot" are when he's playing off of Emma Frost, right? Emma's tertiary mutation is the ability to make everyone else more interesting just by association, because she's fucking great. I mean I just read an Iron Man book for her, for fuck's sake. Back in the 90's, when she was newly not-evil, she and Banshee were essentially the co-leads of Generation X, a book that, when it wasn't being the New New New Mutants, about two unreasonably sexy people who couldn't stand each other being unreasonably sexy at each other. Even putting that aside (and if you read a few issues, you'll get it), the man's spent decades dedicated to flying around with his tits out due to mysterious clothing damage, amd I appreciate that.

Sunspot - look, I fixated on him when I was nine, as the only character I could find who was like me at all, and that was ignoring all the gay subtext with his best friend even before it turned into outright queerbaiting. I grew up with him, and he's only gotten better since then. He's the only dude in my top 5 muties. He's flawless (give or take bad taste in men and a propensity for being whitewashed), he's perfect, he's hilarious, he's my vote AND yours, he's Sunspot.

Cannonball - in my seminal 2020 fic, "How Many Times Would You Say You've Been In Love," I summed Beto's Best Boy up thusly:

Sam laughed, a quiet, gentle, chuckle that crinkled the corners of his eyes, not that Roberto could bring himself to look at them. Instead his own eyes travelled everywhere else, from Sam's mess of a mop, to his strong jaw, to the gap in his front teeth, his okay-for-a-white-boy lips, the freckles that covered his nose, and ending up… 

Do I love Sam as a character? Absolutely, he's one of the best. But he's not hot, he's a lapse in taste. Love conquers all, they say. 😔

Bishop - as one of exactly two Black men the poll listed, I want to give Bishop his flowers, but I have never read a good Bishop story where he wasn't awful. No baby gays, but no self-hating Black genocidaires, either.

[delta-queerdrant]

Neelix, I need another pot of coffee (Prototype, s2 e13 & Dreadnought, s2 e17)

I don't have much substantial to say about "Prototype" or "Dreadnought," two enjoyable robot-of-the-week episodes that center on Torres delivering compelling technobabble to a machine for 45 minutes. They are both extremely watchable, and "Protoype" especially worked for me with its first contact moral quandary premise, which felt straight out of pulp science fiction in the best way. And who doesn't love an android who looks like they shop at LL Bean?

So instead this is going to be a meditation on science fiction depictions of women in STEM, and why they seem to be so deeply lodged in my psyche.

The first adult novel I ever bought was Contact by Carl Sagan. This was at my middle school's Scholastic book fair. When I think about my twelve-year-old self I immediately remember that mass-market paperback, which in some hard-to-pin-down way summed up all my aspirations for my future adult life.

I'd encountered Contact as a hardcover book at a relative's house a year or two earlier. For those not in the know, it follows an astronomer who detects a first contact transmission. The book spends a lot of time imagining the political and social impacts of discovering extraterrestrial life, as well as the challenges Ellie Arroway faces as a woman in her field.

In the space of a weekend, I raced through the book but didn't have time to finish it. Soon after, the film came out, and I saw it in theaters. It was a movie that felt like it had been made specifically for me (aliens! science mysteries! an extremely hot Jodie Foster!)

My relationship with science and STEM is contradictory. As a kid growing up watching Star Trek and reading Madeleine L'Engle (shout-out to my other formative science girl, Meg Murry), I was so hungry to learn more about astronomy, programming, math, and electronics, but I never seemed to get my hands on those opportunities. This was before "STEM" was popularized as an acronym, and casual opportunities to be a kid science nerd were slim. At the same time, it was the "post-feminist" 90s, and I was never particularly conscious of being excluded from the sciences due to my gender.

As I grew older, my main STEM interests were web design (as evidenced by many lovingly hand-coded early-2000s websites) and microbiology (I am still filled with rapture whenever I contemplate protein synthesis). I also harbored a deep and all-encompassing love for the Museum of Science in Boston. But my career aspects were mostly in the humanities or social sciences, and I never got around to taking a formal programming class. As I became an adult, I stopped running Linux on my laptop or freaking people out at work with my DVORAK keyboard setup. I drifted away from a conception of myself as that kind of nerd.

It's natural for interests to shift as we age, but something about this particular transition felt devastatingly final to me. STEM is a closed world that doesn't welcome casual interest. There is almost no space for adult women to dabble in a STEM hobby. Science museums are for children, and popular nonfiction about physics and math are, implicitly, for men. (Earlier this month I watched some Youtube videos about astronomy, and immediately started seeing gun advertisements.)

I sometimes think that what I enjoyed as a kid was the aesthetic of science - in other words, the reason we consume science fiction in the first place. Why do we love a science girl? For me this attraction feels very extremely gay, though others' mileage may vary. "Scientist" is, yes, traditionally a male-coded role, but to young me, it felt like a means to escape gender roles entirely. Science girls and science queers are smart and curious and independent; they are hungry for adventure and have no time for your societal expectations.

When Voyager came out, there were virtually no shows that featured multiple women working in the sciences (outside of medical shows). But for me, a kid reading and watching science fiction, it was normal. Roxann Dawson complained that most of her episodes in early Voyager are her alone in a room talking to a robot/missile/herself, but she's very good at it! The troubleshooting scenes feel lived-in and naturalistic, especially in the way they portray her satisfaction from solving a technical problem. She's so tickled with herself when she achieves a breakthrough! I felt similarly when I mastered the art of inline CSS in the year 1999.

Science fiction that accurately portrays the experience of working with technology is rare, and to be clear, Star Trek doesn't always bother. But Voyager seems genuinely interested in dramatizing problem-solving and collaboration skills - scientist as something you do, not something you are.

I still use my computer skills at my day job, and while I don't work in the sciences, I like to think that the way I move through the world owes something to all the hours I spent as a kid imagining myself into starships and astronomical observatories.

And with that, I'm off to watch some more videos about the twin paradox.

4/5 power modules.

[doublel27]

I can’t get me head around Carlos’s wedding, because either it was always set up as a sham for health insurance, in which case how did that get through his Catholic/ law enforcement family, or it was a genuine wedding? And in either scenario how did Carlos’ sexuality never come up? Even if they thought he had turned straight, how are they apparently not surprised when he’s with TK?? I’m not actually that mad at the plot point, it’s entertaining in the absurdity and I’m glad Carlos has his own friends, but I wish there had been even a crumb of set up…

If we ignore *waves hands over season one and many other things since* all that, I believe it was a real wedding.

I want to be very clear, from my personal experience I come from a white upper class family on the coast with parents who lived and worked in San Francisco in the 1980s. My father talked to us about trans people in a positive light in the 90s when one of his colleagues transitioned and was much happier. I grew up with a father who left Catholicism and in a fairly liberal Congregational church which was the first church to include trans rights on their charter. My sister and I fought to get our individual church to adopt the charter out of the national organization and won that in 2005. I came out to my parents in 2007-2008. My sister came out to my parents in 2014. My parents have two trans children-in-law. I grew up exceptionally lucky.

That being said, when I came out to my mom, I got a lot of lines like “You can still change your mind in the future if you want to.” “I don’t want life to be harder for you.” And “I am just so grateful that you can get still married in this state even if it won’t look like I planned it.”

That’s my mother in the context I presented.

I can only imagine for Carlos who grew up Catholic, a denomination which this year the pope stated that “Being gay should not be a crime but is still a sin.” It’s 2023. That’s their position in 2023. Carlos came out to his parents in 2013, maybe earlier. The position was harsher internationally, and in Texas it was likely just as harsh, even in Austin.

When Carlos called himself the project in 4.02, it’s because while the American Psychological Association denounced conversion therapy for sexual identity in 1997, religions were still using it. The Catholic belief that you can “repent sin” and “try to do better from sinning” is an essential tenant. There is a very real belief that you can change it if you try hard enough. That you aren’t trying hard enough if you give in.

Carlos coming out and then marrying a woman could easily be seen as Carlos resisting the sin of his sexual desires. In Texas in 2013, you could not marry a same-gender partner. People who had children in Texas and were living with same-gender partners were getting their children taken away from them for living with a person they were unmarried to. That’s the reality of Carlos’s context when he came out.

So I think he married Iris for real. But then they fell apart. Again his family never talked about it. Iris moved out. Moved in with a new boyfriend eventually, and Carlos never talked about it. But divorce is a HUGE deal to both individuals of the Catholic faith and individuals in Texas.

If you get a divorce, as a practicing Catholic, any other marriage is invalid in the eyes of the Catholic Church (or at least that’s what I learned from friends growing up). You need an annulment in order to consider the next marriage legitimate in the eyes of God. Now, they won’t consecrate a marriage between two men, but clearly his faith is something that is important to Carlos that he’s struggled with.

I am sure his parents speculated about the reasons for the separation, going back to his coming out. They would have known about Iris’s disappearance. They would have waited to see. I’m sure by the time they saw him with TK, they weren’t surprised.

I agree, there are 60,000 different choices that could have been made to set this up. But as they weren’t, we’re just going to make it through.

[sharpth1ng]

what do you think Billy's experience being trans would be like if he realized later in life? Like 14 or 15 maybe. How would people around him react/would he even come out at all? Scream turning into an ahead of its time coming of age film instead of a 90s slasher.

Alright, so I think things would have been pretty different if he hadn't transitioned young. The blessing of trans children is that they're too young to be mentally limited by socialization.

Like. It didn't even occur to me that someone would say I couldn't be a boy when I was really young, but by the time I was 14 I'd been fully brain washed by the gender binary and I was trying VERY hard to be a girl. And beyond that, trans men were invisible, like I didn't even know medical transition existed for someone like me. I knew that trans women could take estrogen, but I didn't know testosterone and top surgery were things I could access.

So in the 90's when trans men were even more invisible? I don't think a teenage Billy would consider it an option until he got older. Even just dressing in a more masculine way would get you called a dyke, and I think for Billy, who is attracted to men but also probably knows there's something different about him, this would mess with his head enough to make him go the other way.

He desperately wants to be "normal", and coming out or transitioning in high school would make him way more visible than he'd be comfortable with, and I think in an attempt to convince himself and others he would probably be presenting more fem than he would be comfortable with through high school. Like, he would have those classic closeted trans man high school pictures, where you sort of look like a normal girl but just SO DEAD behind the eyes.

Imo in this version of things Billy probably doesn't come out and transition until college when he's not living with his dad anymore and he's mostly away from people who knew him as a girl. Honestly I wrote him as transitioning young because I wanted to give him what I didn't have, that being a childhood in the right gender followed by a puberty that doesn't feel like a medical error (I know this is not how everyone feels about transition, but for me specifically, I think things would have been a lot better for me if I had been allowed to transition young.)

All that said though, there's one nice thing that could happen in this universe: Billy and Stu would probably have ended up dating in high school. Like openly. Because it wouldn't be "gay" (don't be mistaken it's gay, it's definitely gay, and everything between them would make a lot more sense after Billy eventually comes out, but until then Billy would have been able to tell himself he was in a straight relationship. Which y'know, helps with all the internalized homophobia).

And I think in this version of things he probably doesn't resist his fagotry so much. He grew up with it being ok for him to be attracted to men as a result of being seen as a girl, so when he transitions and he's already dating Stu? It's just not such a big hurdle.

[impishtubist]

I mean, it’s hilarious to imagine Sirius babysat Tonks because that’s a heck of a card to have: “oh, you’ll tell your father? I grew up around Sirius Black, do you really want to risk seeing what he taught me?” because Tonks does indeed have two blood relatives imprisoned in Azkaban (both of whom were arrested for horrific crimes, seeing as one was accused of murdering 13 people with a single spell and the other was involved in torturing two people into permanent insanity) so she should at least get to pull that intimidation tactic whenever someone was rude to her. Realistically though, she probably did not get babysat by Sirius. That is a heck of a fic premise though, Tonks remembers this man babysitting her, then she’s hearing he’s a notorious murderer and also her aunt is imprisoned in Azkaban with him so she definitely gets some uncomfortable remarks about her family as a kid, and then this man breaks out of Azkaban and it turns out he was innocent; Tonks is on a heck of a ride

Honestly, I'm here for Sirius and Tonks being besties. I can totally see him babysitting her and getting up to all kinds of chaos when she's young, and then decades later when they reunite she just. has all these fond memories of her favorite cousin who turned out to be a mass murderer but then wasn't after all. If I'd been the one writing OOTP, Tonks would be at Grimmauld as often as time allowed around her Auror duties, keeping Sirius company and cheering him up and causing chaos with him. She'd probably even figure out a way to let Sirius and Harry visit each other without the Ministry or Hogwarts finding out.

Also, when Sirius survives OOTP and gets his name cleared, Tonks is the one to introduce him to Queer Life In The '90s (TM). I can see her taking her favorite cousin to gay bars and whatnot. Maybe setting him up with hot men she knows.

[papirouge]

What’s are your views on “purity culture” among christians

I think it varies between denominations but the idea is still around mainly fundamentalists. It’s definitely important to teach women how important it is to be picky, believe in hypergamy, and ignore probably the 90% of scrotes that aren’t good people but I never really believed in flat out refusing to teach sex ed, what stds and stis are, what Plan B is, and how birth control and condoms work. Which seems like a lot of these more fundamentalists tend to do.

I had this friend who is divorced now. She grew up in that type of environment where they were very strict about her purity but ignored the boys virginity completely. Like she had two brothers who were total opposites. 1 was basically community dick and caught a disease and her parents didn’t care 💀 the other was an incel who was very anti social. And her parents were upset that they couldn’t marry him off because not even the desperate fundie girls wanted his violent outbursts. He’s still single too and approaching 40

She was married young to her ex and had no idea how sex even worked. She was only told to avoid it and it just scared her. So when she got married, she told me how her parents and church counselor were upset that she didnt turn into someone who liked sex immediately. Even kissing was new to her and she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t like it at all/avoided sleeping in the same as her husband and was told by them to suck it up when she expressed she had pain. When she got older she left that church and her husband but was ex communicated by her family for it.

Does that type of stuff happen in France?

Purity isn't much of a thing anywhere else in the world because as I said, most of USAmerican evangelicalism staples are rooted in culture not in Christianism. I've always found fascinating how France & its very liberal "sex culture" was compared to the US (age of consent is 15 years old, birth control & abortion is free, condoms are handed over in highschool, etc.) yet managed to have proportionally lower abortion rate than God fearing United States of America lol

Fundies family don't exist anywhere else in the world beside the USA anon so nope, we don't have this kind of messy affairs here. Catholicism is in a limbo here in France and real Catholic families are very rare. And even when they do, they don't hold such a spiritual grip on their members to guilt trip them into marrying someone. The only stories of people being excommunicated are bishops coming out as gay or being caught dating/having sex with women lol

The story of your divorced friend is very representative of the double standards of women virginity vs male virginity. Although it's quite normal to particularly warn off women about the consequences of sex because, unlike men, they are the ones who'll carry the baby so they have much more responsibility to deal with (as unfair it may sound). But it doesn't mean men virginity is any less relevant.

Many of women will never want a community d*ck, that's why her busted brother is still single at 40 (which is weird bc red pillers always said men got more value as they got older 🤔).

Fornicators are literally filled with demons and should be avoided at all costs.

And yet, I'm sure he's not shamed like his sister was to marry a man she was even attracted to... Her story is so sad.. but she's better off outside of this cult though. She's lucky she if she didn't have any child with him...

I think kids shouldn't be taught sex ed before middle school. I did in elementary school and it lowkey fucked me up. Even when I was 12-13 years old I had a male friend of my age who told me how many times a week he masturbated and it triggered me so bad lmao

Tbh there should be something progressive, like first learning about sexual organs, periods, how babies are made (12~13 years old), than at 15 about birth control(?) IDK the idea of teaching kids sex at school is weird to me but I think I would be even more traumatized if my mom taught me any of this because we NEVER talk about things like that lmaoo I guess it's important to build a trust relationship with your kid from start so that it's not awkward when you actually do? IDK I lowkey hate the sex talk and wish sex wasn't such a big deal in society so I'm probably not the best person to inquire about that lmaooo

[spideywhites]

So i've been going around asking every person i could find how they got into spideydevil, except i lost track and im not sure if i asked you or not but uh YOU'RE NEXT! HOW DID YOU START SHIPPING SPIDEYDEVIL!

You have not (so I’m glad you did)! I could talk about these two for ages. It’s kind of a problem at this point. In all honesty, I don’t entirely remember how I got into SpideyDevil. I’d always had a passing interest in superheroes/marvel, mostly geared towards the X-men at the start—thanks to the 90’s cartoons and the OG 2000’s movies. (Wolverine was my everything.) It wasn’t until like…2014? Yeah. 2014 was when I REALLY got into Spider-man. And I never looked back, lemme tell you. I’ve been obsessed with Peter Parker and Peter Parker only for almost a decade at this point. The reason I’m telling you all this? Because I need to set up the big reveal to your question, obviously.

Anyway, I did what everyone my age in 2014 did. I took to tumblr. (Also, the second TASM movie was in theaters and I watched it religiously. Andrew is MY live-action Spider-man.) On tumblr I was exposed to more comic screencaps, people who knew about comics in general, and marvel characters I didn’t even know existed. I’ll admit, I believe I first started shipping Peter and Matt because of some comic fanart I saw, combined with me innnn 2015(?) just really, really liking the DD Netflix show (having no prior exposure to Daredevil as a character). I liked Peter, I liked Matt, sometimes that’s all it takes for me to smack together a ship.

Then I started actually, actively reading comics, and let me tell you. These bitches gay. It went from “I like these two characters” to “oh they interact and are fruity”. Or at least I perceived their interactions as a dynamic that I both enjoyed and considered …. layered with suggestive intent. They had everything I wanted. A long, tumultuous relationship that began at nearly the very start of their serializations. Trust that grew and came around time and time again. One who never shut up and another who was vaguely amused and annoyed by it. A consideration for the other not often found in their other relations. Decades of them popping in, stirring up trouble, seeing the best in each other, and just genuinely believing that Spider-man and Daredevil are heroes. They just worked. Men who, in a way, mirrored each other in their intricate understanding and implementation of morality, the use of violence, and rage.

I just really love them???? Anyway, I probably would have been shipping them anyway bc of the comics, but shout-out to Netflix DD for starting me early.