#Just about every gender and sexuality reading of the character is valid

[for-a-longlongtime]

To all the fans in the Pedro fandom who feel like they don't belong

I see you. We see you. You have a place here among all of us, and we want you to be here - we really do.

No, this isn't a Kumbaya post, I'm fuckin' for real.

To all the writers...

... who receive racist messages, death threats, are being told their reader insert isn't good enough, that this and this character wouldn't be with someone who looks and sounds like you, that you're not using the right words or that you misspelled something --

I am so fucking sorry people had the fuckin' gall to direct that hate at you, because you don't deserve it. You share your stories and characters with us, and they are adored and read and celebrated exactly for who they are - not despite of who they are.

To everybody who lurks, reads, but doesn't feel like they can participate...

... who see how their skin tone, language, identity, gender, body type, sexual orientation, culture, type of relationships, and so much more is underrepresented or actively treated with hostility --

I'm so fucking sorry, and I - as many of us - understand completely why you feel that way, because it's absolutely valid. But I promise it's not how the majority of people feel about you. I know that doesn't make up for shit, but I do want you to know that most of us care a lot.

Nobody should stay in an environment where they feel like they're not wanted, or where remarks are made carelessly without regard for how hurtful stereotypes are. But if this has ever happened to you, be it out of ignorance (or at times malice), please know - your presence matters.

To everybody who has ever felt insecure about their kinks or liking smut... ...please don't. Seriously. Your kinks are what they are and they are completely fine. Liking smut is fine. Liking Pedro characters in smutty fic is fine too. Kink exploration in fic should be a safe space and respected.

Don't shame others here, especially not as an anon. Yes, certain topics that writers address in fic may be challenging for you for a number of reasons, but guess what? You don't have to read it! You don't have to dissect *why* someone wrote that! Don't like smutty fic? Cool, so don't wade into fics marked as explicit. Don't like certain kinks? That's cool, just read the warnings and skip fic when it doesn't appeal to you. Sure you're entitled to your own opinions, but you do not need to air them out in public or trash an author because you didn't like how they wrote something.

To everybody in this fandom...

... especially those of us who are white, able-bodied, straight, cisgender, had formal education, are a native English speaker, and/or many of the other privileges that a lot of us carry in our backpack every day:

We need to do better. Please. For so many reasons.

We need to be aware of our blind spots, biases, the fact that at times everybody fucks up - because we live in a racist, homophobic capitalist patriarchy -, and that occasionally means admitting we were wrong. That we unintentionally said something that was hurtful and that we're sorry for hurting people with our words. That ignorance can slip so easily into words that we type, and that the only way. But own up to it and please don't pull the 'I'm sorry you feel hurt' card - no. Take actual responsibility. Particularly when underrepresented voices explained to you why something is wrong.

And please, call out your friends on things like this - especially if you're white/straight/cis. It's your responsibility to speak up because you're closer to them. White people should be the first to call out racism; it's not up to the people that already are on the receiving end of prejudice (or worse, hatred) to fight that battle.

Exclusion doesn't only happen if you're actively spreading hate - it also happens by not taking accountability for when you fuck up, or when you are erasing and ignoring identities. If the word 'representation' doesn't mean much to you, that's probably because you constantly see yourself reflected in the stories and people in society (that, in itself, is privilege too) - and hey, good for you! But there are many of us who that doesn't apply to in the same measure.

I've had many conversations lately about this with fellow queers as well as brown/black/Latinx folks, so I really wanted to post this. Not as virtue signaling or whatever the hell, but because I know a lot of people are seeing and reading things that are understandably make them reluctant to engage.

So hey, let's do better and look after folks in our community whether we directly engage with them or not. The amount of comments that are always gushing about 'I love how Pedro cares about others/is an ally!' is very disproportionate to seeing similar support expressed for creators and fellow fans. Let's also not forget he's a Chilean man, the son of socialist refugees, who has always actively been on the barricades for LGBTQIA+, rallies against white supremacy and the toxicity of patriarchy -- so if you appreciate his dedication to 'causes', lets apply that to the very real people in this fandom too. And fyi, this isn't just about a single instance or a single person - it's so much bigger than that, and we all know it.

(oh, and if you feel like I'm being a moralist about this - feel free to unfollow or block my ass. You do you! I don't care. I care about the people here who don't want the community harmed by anons who get their kicks from being a bully.)

[cryoverkiltmilk]

Ranma identifies as a problem, and the pronouns are screw/you.

[makiquas]

Its Butchtober. Bear with me for a second as I rant about children's cartoon ships, butchphobia, the conditional acceptance of butches in sapphic spaces on the basis of desirability, and feeling erased as a butch kid.

It's so funny that I realised early on as a 2000-2010s teen/kid how a lot of so called "sapphics" of social media are really, really anti butch4butch, only by interacting with certain subsets of Catradora and Appledash haters. It may be flippant to connect butchphobia with children's cartoons, but you cannot deny it is there. We finally had two canon butch4butch and masc4masc lesbian animated ships. And the fandoms decided that the best possible reaction to this is to violently hate on the ships for bullshit reasons and write up masterdocs about how the butch character actually looks better with a femme character instead (in both cases–Rarity and Glimmer, who is arguably feminine but not femme, but that's a conversation for another day, how the SPOP fandom waters down gender identities for aesthetics).

This is not just about two cartoon ships; this mindset of seeing two masc lesbians and immediately going "actually they act like bros; but this BUTCHFEMME couple has real chemistry" comes off sounding really, really bad in 2024 when you have no idea how butch identity operates, outside of depicting us as pants-wearing sexually aggressive muscular women. Butches ARE bros, even the ones who kiss each other. Camaraderie and tomboyish swagger *is* a part of their life. It's not our fault you are too fanfic trope-pilled to read these interactions are sexless friendship bantering.

It's also quite concerning, given how there are only a handful of butch4butch books in the market, and almost all of them talk about the stigmatizing of relationships between two butches/studs/masc lesbians. There are many butch lesbians who themselves face internalized butchphobia because of societal standards and expectations of being turned into the "gallant" provider of femmes. Butch and femme are not always inherently complementary, butches can be attracted to other butches, there is no "natural order" model of lesbian/sapphic attraction and your thinly veiled butchphobia is really off-putting, given you guys don't seem to extend that same rhetoric to mascfemme ships like Korrasami or Caitvi, or femme-femme ships like Harlivy.

Here, I must mention relationships like Rei and Kaoru from Oniisama E, or Jess and Lupe from A League of Their Own, who have bucket loads of chemistry but still have some vehement antis only because both the lesbians are masculine. (What's funny is the new wave of lesbian Oniisama E fans are almost all Rei/Kaoru shippers despite the show putting them into two butchfemme pairings.) Something something to be butch4butch is to be failing the tests of palatability and desirability according to conventional models of societal norms. Forever.

Again, one may have valid reasons for disliking these fictional ships (what, I genuinely don't know). But it *is* weird that you guys can watch fifty white fem4fem sapphic shows in a year and read 100+ GL with the same feminine girlish blonde and brunette/pink haired archetype and not bat an eyelid, but conjure a world of made-up "platonic" dynamics just because you read every butch4butch interaction as fundamentally platonic.

A lot of you love to throw around Stone Butch Blues as a catchphrase to educate strangers on the internet about 1950s-70s blue-collar bar culture and USA butch femme history, but how many of you actually know that within the book itself, the lead character acts prejudiced and hates on another butch for being butch4butch? How many of you know that she apologizes to her friend at the end for her hateful remarks? Fun fact: when you ostracize a butch for not fitting into your butch-femme subculture aesthetic, you're no better than lesbiphobic bigots actually.

Anyway, here are some butch4butch resources if you are a baby butch4butch and feel alienated by these kinds of weird rhetoric in online and fandom queer spaces too:

Butch4Butch romance books

My Butch4Butch books masterdoc (**being updated regularly**)

Leo Wilder's Butch4Butch writing (18+)

Butch4Butch photography archive (insta)

Boyish² Butch4Butch yuri anthology (insta)

@milsae Butch4Butch artist (tumblr/insta)

This post is made by a trans masc butch of color. Terfs, racists, biphobes and radfems kindly do not derail or interact.

[nekropsii]

Wild how when I call Shipping Culture oppressively pervasive and awful for any Aro/Ace with the gall to enjoy anything on the Internet, I get called a Fun-Hating Killjoy and told to just shut the fuck up or off myself, no matter how mild or polite my comment is. Wild how when I say a character either is textually Aro/Ace or is easier to read as Aro/Ace than Alloromantic/sexual, people start talking down to me like I'm a child who doesn't know anything, saying "Friendly reminder that Aro(s)/Aces can Date/Have Sex too, just like us Normal People!". As if I don't know anything about my own identity. Wild how when I do either of these things or even just say I'm not into a pairing or uninvested in shipping in general people call me fucking homophobic, even if the (at least popularly perceived - let's be honest, people are wrong half the time) genders of the characters is never once made relevant. Even though their reasoning for me being homophobic is lack of investment in a gay pairing they like, and nothing more. Wild how people throw little baby tantrums at even the gentlest criticism of Shipping Culture, or someone choosing not to engage heavily in it. Wild how they have the audacity to ask, with hostility, what the fuck Aro(s)/Aces are talking about when they say Shipping Culture is hostile to Aro/Ace fans, or ask what's wrong with them when they say that they aren't into Shipping.

It's almost like Bigots don't realize they're being Bigots when they do Bigotry, so just saying you're not a Bigot isn't enough. It's almost like Aro/Ace people know what the hell they're talking about. It's almost like we have a fucking point. It's almost like we're valid in expressing contempt and frustration with the constant expectation to engage with Romance and Sexuality at every waking moment, even if we're Romance and/or Sex Favorable. It's almost like we're tired of getting our identities erased, and we're tired of expecting to "act normal", and we're tired of just taking it when Allos use the Favorable members of our communities as a scapegoat for why they should be allowed to totally erase any of our representation just for their "Harmless Queer Fun" - deliberately, and I mean DELIBERATELY, failing to recognize or acknowledge the character's orientation, and how an A-Spec's personal relationship with and expressions of Love are going to look drastically different from an Allo person's - and call us the Bigots when we even glance in the direction of objection.

It's almost like Allo/Amatonormativity are oppressive forces.

Alloromantics/sexuals are constantly looking for any reason they can to call Aro(s)/Aces unloving, unfeeling, frigid, soulless, cruel. Inhuman. They're looking for any reason they can to call us whiny children, stupid, people who "just haven't found the right one", addressing us only as "Works in Progress", or someone who can have their sexuality corrected with the right stimulus - Conversion Therapy and Corrective Rape are okay when it happens to us, after all. Any reason at all to call us heartless monsters. AlloAces are confused children. They can be fixed. AroAllos are manipulative, unfeeling sexual predators. They can't be fixed - just kill them. AroAces are frigid, mean bitches. They can be fixed. God forbid you're Aplatonic. God forbid you're part of the Repulsed spectrum. God forbid you're one of the Loveless. God forbid you hold any pride in your identity, God forbid you don't keep your mouth shut, God forbid you critique the overinflated importance Allos place onto Love as a concept. God forbid you critique something as asinine and juvenile as fucking Shipping Culture. Do any one of these and you've put a bright red, blazing neon target on your back.

Wild how the only real humans amongst us are the Romance, Sex, and Friendship Favorable who put their head down and mask as Allo, and side with the Allos when their fellow A-Specs get too loud for the comfort of their Allo friend's delicate little fee-fees. After all, Vitriol and Harassment are warranted when an Allo's feelings get slightly hurt that an Aro person says, on their own account, to no one in particular, that they're sick of every tag being 80% Shipping Content. Which is a vehemently evil personal attack, clearly.

Wild.

[foryoupeko]

(Depressing rant, I mention Twitter drama and DR3 hate)

Y’all lucky I found that fuyuhiko post I just reblogged bc lord I was spiraling.

Twitter been making it real tough being in the DR fandom. I was thinking about leaving TBH.

I already cant go in the Fuyuhiko tag on tumblr without finding someone who hates me for shipping incest (I’m talking about kuzu/peko, it’s not btw)

Every Peko stan I find hates me. The ones on Twitter thinks I endorse child grooming and the ones on Reddit thinks I’m homophobic

I expressed on Twitter that reading too many “Butch Lesbian Fuyuhiko is the only correct interpretation” gives me gender dysphoria. I’m a transmasc enby who was forced to go to an all girl school. So it’s tough reading about a character I relate to heavily is only likable as a girl. Somehow that turned a lot of kuzu/peko shippers on Twitter against me. I saw some of them make fun of me but I thought that was fair to a certain extent. I’m a biromantic asexual, not being gay enough for the LGBTQA community shouldn’t be new to me.

Last week was just really bad bc I said I didn’t like Chisa. I admitted it was for petty reasons and I only saw two episodes of despair arc. This was in 2017, it was too confusing to watch DR3 without SDR2 knowledge and the anime wasn’t newcomer friendly. Then a popular dr3 account made fun of me and their followers dog piled me. I went down a rabbit hole of trying to block everyone harrsssing me but then I kept finding people who were calling me retarded and slurs. Then I found ppl screenshotting my old tweets just to make fun of me and kuzu/peko.

It’s not fun watching people make fun of your race, sexuality, age, interests, all because I said “DR3 isn’t newcomer friendly”. None of them even disagreed with me, they just called me stupid for not thinking I needed to watch SDR2 before watching “The End of HPA”.

I’m just glad I have nice people like Cosmo, Twinkle, and Neuro who makes me feel like I’m not just a complete blight in this fandom

And reading that Fuyuhiko post made me realize that I don’t do anything in this fandom for validation. I really should accept i can’t please everyone and to doesn’t matter if the whole fandom hates me.

In closing, I’m not gonna acknowledge DR3 on this blog for a while. But I’m not leaving anytime soon. My opinion is never meant to hurt anyone. When I say “block me if you don’t like my content”, this is not saying I don’t respect your opinion. I’m saying “block me because I can’t take another person hate following me just to make fun of me”

[spaghettiposts]

How do you feel about men writing for Jenna Ortega?

I feel like I don’t care. In short. I don’t care what your gender is, you’re writing amazing products and I’m eating them up. That’s what matters to me. I don’t like the idea of gatekeeping, and in the words of Chef Gusteau; anyone can cook. And believe me, the men are cooking 🔥🔥🔥

You can’t stop writing, it’s an art, why would you want to? It just brings us back into their full circle of problematic hate. Repressing someone for creating beautiful content isn’t valid whatsoever. Hating on someone without a reason besides “they just ruin everything.” Isn’t a valid reason. If you’re gonna hate on someone, you better have a good reason for it and not generalize the selected target for your hate.

I see this problem where women complain in the fan fiction committee that men over sexualize characters and the hypocrisy could not be more insane. I, a woman, constantly see characters such as the aforementioned Jenna, Wanda Maximoff and Natasha Romanoff being oversexualized CONSISTENTLY by my own community of women. Therefore I don’t see it as a valid reason when every time I look at the x reader tags I see the kinkest shit ever, written by a woman.

Your brain is built to understand when a problem is a real problem. Men wanting to read fanfiction or write it, is not a problem. If you can’t understand that, it’s just a skill issue atp 🤷‍♀️

[daughterofapollo-official]

Can someone explain to me where the fan theory of Leo Valdez being gender nonconforming comes from? Or that he AroAce?

I mean, I’ve read every book that he shows up in multiple times and all of his chapters because I have had multiple fan theories about him and I knew about these fan theories before I even read the books for the first time and I was actually looking for confirmation on this and I found nothing.

I’m not saying that I think you’re wrong or that he hast to be stray or blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

I’m just saying that from the way he’s presented. He seems to be very attracted to women and seek validation from women a lot. he flirted with every single single girl in the entire series that he met. And when we get the flashback about him with his grandfather, Sammy, it’s literally stated he was born a male. I don’t get where the theory comes from….

Although it is very, very, very obvious that Leo struggles with a very intense body dysmorphia, I think that’s from an eating disorder point of view and an insecurity point of view rather than gender non-conforming.

I’m open to hearing the explanation, maybe I don’t get it just because I’m cis, but can some please tell me what I’m missing, or is this just a case of wanting a character to represent a sexuality or gender identity that they don’t actually represent? Because that actually happens pretty frequently… I remember when I used to watch a lot of anime. There was a a lot of theories about certain anime characters being transgender when there is nothing to base that off of either, the concept of wanting one character to be gay without any implication of that at all.

Just to be clear I’m against the other way around for example a lot of people ship Thalia with a lot of characters, and same thing with Rayna, and I’m against shipping them with anyone either because they identify as people who don’t want to be in relationship relationships, whether they are a romantic asexual or both. The hunters of Artemis literally identify with not dating, not even QPRs, same thing with Rachel Elizabeth Dare.

A lot of times people see characters they identify with a lot and they kind of project and assume that the character represents their sexuality or gender identity when they actually don’t and sometimes make fan pieces of media using those pride flags, even though the characters themselves doesn’t actually represent that community. And I want to do pieces of media. None of the characters are gay although I do think it’s kind of weird in the Percy Jackson universe when a lot of characters represent a lot of people on the LGBT community.

I’m not close to this because I don’t personally see it and I want to know where it came from because I originally thought that was true going into the books because of all the spoilers I received and like looking into like TikTok about Percy Jackson before reading it and I just remember being very confused and the theory came from.

[the-music-maniac]

I haven't watched that much of One Piece yet, so feel free to disagree with me on this analysis, but there's one thing about people's general interpretation of Sanji as a character that drives me a little nuts. And I'm saying this because even though I'm not very far along, I got spoiled for his backstory (because I refused to stop reading fanfiction even though when I first started I was like, on episode 3).

So before you continue, there are spoilers for Sanji's past.

I think people tend to ignore that the differences between Sanji's demeanor towards men vs towards women likely partially stem from severe trauma. I don't believe his actions are entirely intrinsic, its not like he was born acting like this - nor is it an unchanging immutable fact of his character, despite what a lot of people seem to believe.

And for some context on what prompted this - I'm a sanzo/zosan shipper, so I tend to crawl through the depths of the internet looking for fun little videos and fanarts, and one consistent protest I see with this ship is "Sanji DESPISES men and WORSHIPS women, there's literally no way he could EVER be attracted to men or want to date a man he HATES them."

Which bothers me outside of any arguments about Sanji's sexuality or even about any ships - which I will get to in a second - because that interpretation of Sanji assumes his actions are just there for no reason. Sanji hates men, therefore he hates all men with no exceptions, and he will always hate men. Sanji loves all women, therefore he will always worship every single woman he meets. I dunno, I think it's just a very surface level understanding of who he is, and relies on setting a rule for no reason and just sticking to it, as if it's just a mere quirk of his character with no backing to it.

Sanji's first interaction with any people, was in the form of his biological family, as is the case with most of us. Specifically, his father and brothers, who abused him and didn't even treat him like a person, and his mother and sister, who were the only people that treated him with kindness and saw his humanity. Tbh, he reminds me of the way women who have experienced trauma from men act - a general dislike/disdain and distrust for them (for good reason). And I don't doubt Sanji's overall elevation of women was only hammered home by the fact that his first ever father figure - arguably the first man who's treated him with kindness - teaching him the lesson to always respect women. His very illogical need to never fight women probably partially comes from the events in his life, and because it's not just a two dimensional arbitrary rule established for his character - there can be exceptions and growth.

We already know this, because despite Sanji's general disdain of men as a whole, he is capable of caring/loving men that he personally knows. He loves Zeff, and he loves his nakama - some of whom are MEN. Like, it's right there??? In the same way a woman who has experienced violence at the hands of a man probably still has family and friends or even a significant other that they love and care about that are men.

Like if you're using his demeanor towards the different genders as an "aha got you" argument for why Sanji couldn't possibly be queer, its not as strong of an argument as you think it is.

And if we're operating under the assumption that Sanji partially acts like this because of trauma, it brings up quite a few interesting arguments about his sexuality and potential romantic partners.

Which segways into sanzo/zosan, since admittedly I got into this entire debacle because I was looking into fanart (non-shippers feel free to click away now if you wish, I get that not everyone likes the ship, which is valid).

I don't think Sanji's actions means he couldn't be bisexual. Cause I'm bisexual, and you know what would make me very very keen to ignore all my attraction to one specific gender? If I had multiple instances of that gender hurt me severely. In fact I'm not so certain I don't experience that, because while I haven't had anything super bad happen to me, I hear about things in the news, about friends and family who have been harmed, interacted with men who have talked down to me, and I definitely went through a phase in my younger years where i just refused to consider men as a possibility for a romantic partner, because I was just so so angry. And I'm not saying Sanji doesn't like women in truth, because he absolutely does. He's both attracted to them and likes them. But that doesn't eliminate the possibility that he might also be attracted to men, or other non-binary genders. In fact the more he doth protest, and puts on a show when he sees a pretty woman, the more I'm sure he's in denial. Internalized homophobia can also be a bitch. Contrary to making me think Sanji is absolutely straight, the way he acts in the show actually puts me the opposite way.

I've heard Sanji also has an interesting relationship with gender and may be genderqueer but I don't know as many details about that yet, so I'll skip it for now. But regardless, I look at Sanji and go "I don't think this is a traditionally cishet character."

Of course, this is by far not the only interpretation you can have of Sanji. It could be that he's traumatized and also heterosexual. That's absolutely fine. But my overall point here is that I don't think what we see in canon negates the possibility that Sanji can be queer.

As to why I like Zosan in relation to this:

1. First, a relatively minor thing, I enjoy the sheer amount of bickering/fighting. People hold that up as a reason to not like the ship and I'm like, my dude that's one of the only reasons why I'm here. My love language is annoying the people you love and occasionally having homoerotic battles. duh.

2. Zoro is one of the aforementioned men that Sanji cares about, one of the exceptions to his "men are horrible" thing. Like they argue and fight a lot, sure, but you're not convincing me that they don't love each other. In whatever capacity - platonic or romantic - is up to your interpretation. Sanji loves all of his nakama, that's not really something I see as up for debate.

3. I honestly believe that until Sanji gets a less extreme viewpoint of the different genders - he won't be able to be in a healthy romantic relationship with a woman. For one thing, I know Sanji has self worth issues for days. For another thing, his hero worship for women as a whole - his refusal to fight women, even when they're actively trying to harm him - I don't see that translating well to a relationship. Moreover, I can see it being exhausting for the woman he ends up with, to always be treated like she's made of glass or agreed with, regardless of what she says.

Essentially, he wouldn't really treat that relationship as a partnership between equals, and I think when that happens, you run the risk of the individuals hurting each other, even on accident. Of course, we can also see this as a facet of his character with exceptions and possibility for personal growth. Maybe if he gets with a girl he'll grow and learn and still end up in a good relationship. You could also just interpret his demeanor as over the top flirting that he'll reign back in for an actual serious relationship. Sky's the limit when it comes to fandom interpretations.

But because of this, regardless, I just don't see any potential between the female characters I've met and Sanji. What I do see potential in, is Zoro. Here is actually a character Sanji not only trusts to watch his back, is on equal footing with, but is also unafraid to speak his mind and fight with. He doesn't walk on eggshells or worship the ground Zoro walks on, he has no qualms about defending himself if Zoro crosses a line. That is what a relationship can be built on.

4. Zoro has a contrasting way of interacting with women that I find super interesting. He comes off as the kind of character that doesn't actually care about the gender of the person he's fighting or interacting with - he cares about their ability. Which kinda explains his reactions when he hears Kuina's thoughts about being a girl - and I think Tashigi as well if I'm remembering correctly. There could be a clash of beliefs there that might be quite interesting. I know Zoro and Sanji do fight about how they talk to women, but I meant like something not just played off for laughs. Maybe there is something like that later in the show, who knows, I'm still early on.

5. Again the entire reason why I like enemies to lovers is the need for personal growth. I heard someone say that Zoro would be fine with being in love with a boy if it wasn't Sanji, and Sanji would be fine with being in love with Zoro if he wasn't a boy, and man do I think that's accurate. And here's the crux of the matter - in order for them to get together, they need to get over their hang-ups. Sanji needs to unpack the ten million tons of trauma he keeps repressed under his curly noggin, and Zoro needs to figure out why Sanji rubs him the wrong way. That shit is INTERESTING. People forget that the reason why this trope is so popular is BECAUSE it's a fixer upper - there's work to do. Nothing is perfect. It may even be a little toxic. That's the appeal.

Anyways this is getting TOO LONG. Thanks for reading!

[ouidamforeman]

This may make me look like an idiot bc I can’t articulate myself BUT!!!!!!!! Big Queer Good Omens meta incoming

I want to talk about This Neil Gaiman ask for a minute because I figured out why I really like his blanket response to this “discourse” a lot but still somewhat disagree on the nuance, and why fandom attitudes about this bother me much much more than his open ended response like this one

Under a read more because im going to get Insane

First of all this is going to be riddled with my own viewpoints on queerness as a transmasculine nonbinary person who reads too much theory so if u disagree please be polite lol

So like. To begin with I really don’t think Neil is obligated to understand these nuances or even comment on them, let alone explain them to fans desperate for validation, so the fact that he’s been able to answer so eloquently is pretty impressive considering how vicious fandom is. But I want to specifically talk about what I think he means here and why that seems to bother fandom so much sometimes, and how fan interpretation of these ideas he presents can get Really weird and interesting imo.

In my view, Neil is answering this from a Doylist perspective, as in like. To the real life human audience, angels and demons are inherently queer because they don’t fit into traditional human definitions of genders and sexualities. This especially comes across in his insistence that Aziraphale and Crowley aren’t gay because they aren’t human men, but they ARE queer. This literally just looks to me like him saying “yeah so no angels and demons fit into these categories so they’re definitely queer from our perspective but I understand ‘gay’ as being two men and i don’t think that fits because it’s narrow” and while I disagree on some nuances here for reasons I’ll get into I think this makes total sense as an author describing how, from his perspective, an audience is intended to view these nonhuman characters.

However, I’m much more interested in a more Watsonian explanation of how A&C are queer, one that’s much more relativistic and honestly not something I expect Neil to go over every time he gets another ask about this???? My opinion has always been that A&C choosing human queer masculinity is significant and that it gives evidence to them being nonbinary, transmasc, gay, ace, aro, anything that people headcanon really. Because they are presenting themselves as queer in a HUMAN way in universe imo, which makes them queer not just by the standards of the audience but by the standards of other angels and demons in the story? I think that the fact that they were created as sexless and genderless and then CHOSE human gender presentations, whether nonbinary or not, that reflected themselves, and then them being in love with each other in a human way IS what makes them queer, not Just the idea that an angel without a gender or sexuality/romantic or other relationship orientation is inherently queer from the average human’s perspective. People who just want them to be Human Cis Gay Men are really missing this idea I think.

The thing is though. And I don’t think this is Neil’s problem to solve or whatever, nor does it mean “stop liking that angels and demons are genderless”. The thing that annoys the shit out of me. Is that fandom, even queer fandom, took Neil’s Doylist explanation of celestial beings’ gender status and just didn’t think any further about it. To this day people insist that A&C MUST be nonbinary forever just because they’re an angel and demon and were made that way. Like literally just inventing Fantasy Biological Essentialism again which is annoying as hell to me, another nonbinary person. Again, the fact that they were created without any sense of gender or biological sex and then chose any humanish gender for themselves at all whether nonbinary or not is what makes them queer in universe I feel. I think the “they’re an angel and demon so they’re inherently nonbinary and can’t be anything else” is shit tbh.

To reiterate, I think Neil is responding about this from a Doylist perspective aka “to the real life audience all angels and demons are queer because they don’t fit into human genders and sexualities” but I am focused much more on the Watsonian idea that A&C are queer in universe bc angels and demons can choose their gender presentations like humans can and everyone else hasn’t figured it out bc they haven’t been on earth to figure out what gender even is. I feel fandom gets weird about this because lots of people still see gender as something solely internal and inherent, when I genuinely don’t think that’s all it is. It’s internal feeling, external projection/behavior, and both of those as a reflection of social experience all at once. The feelings and internal sense of Knowing your gender or lack thereof is inherent to your self identity, but your gender is also informed by what you understand genders as, and what presentations you understand and have access to! Aziraphale and Crowley can be Human Genders because, because they’ve been on earth, they 1)know what gender is, 2)can see those feelings reflected in themselves, and 3)through that understanding choose how to present based on their feelings! They don’t just have to be genderless celestial beings in the sense angels are if they don’t feel like it anymore! They can be like “oh actually I’m a queer man” or “oh I’m nonbinary but in the way that I’m among humans and I’m not a man or woman.” I just feel like only considering them queer from a human or angel perspective but not both is sort of undermining the themes in the text against bioessentialism in favor of the instant validation of “oh they’re angels so they must be nonbinary.” Perhaps having any human gender presentation is queer to the average angel. Our internal feelings and sense of self knowledge as queer people is inherent. How we act on those things and assign meaning and labels to them can be anything! A&C can be anything they feel like! They don’t have to be the classic celestial beings above gender! I feel like they would love and have fallen into human gender customs just from so long on earth, and that doesn’t mean they can’t be nonbinary or agender. It means they, as a part of humanity, saw and understood human genders and realized what gender they were in relation, whatever you headcanon that to be. And that’s more queer than “god made them without sex and gender so I guess their species makes them inherently one thing”!!!!!!

[nyahuaisang]

@reidhershel put this accurate af take in the tags of my post about heavenly delusion being a genderqueer series and I just wanted to further elaborate on it as the original post has a nsfw label because it does talk about topics such as intersex and the such so most people don’t see it. Please turn your nsfw filter off if you want to read it.

Anyways what you need to know is that a) there is a boy who’s consciousness was transplanted into a girl’s body and b) a group of children has been raised within a facility with no concept of gender their entire lives with at least half of them being biologically intersex and one of the children who has female features has been presented to the viewers by author as more male-presenting or androgynous and is referred to as “a young boy” in the manga’s synopsis.

Because of these more unorthodox executions of queer characters there is already a multitude of discourse from both anti-lgbt bigots as well as some of the lgbt+ community itself purely because of how unorthodox it is. Like Reid says, many people invalidates Kiruko(the boy who’s in a girl’s body)‘s queerness because of his unorthodox situation and a lack of explicitly statement that he is trans or queer I can imagine some people also invalidating Tokio in a similar way.

Cishet characters get to be cishet despite never once stating they are cishet. A male character kissing a female character is labeled hetero despite never saying they’re straight. A cis character is labeled as cis, again, despite never saying they are cis. So then why do queer characters have to explicitly state they are queer if they are already exhibiting queer traits?

A girl character should not have to explicitly be stated that she is gay or bi or pan if we see her kissing another female character. A gender neutral or non-binary character should not have to be explicitly stated as such if it is shown that they do not have a concept of gender. A character who has been presented as androgynous or masculine should not immediately be labeled a girl just because they have boobs. A trans boy should not have to be labeled as trans if he literally says he has a boy’s mind but within a girl’s body. A queer character should not need to state he is queer if he is professing his love to someone he knows is the same gender as him.

Cishet characters get to be as fantastical and magical and unorthodox and still be cishet so why are we trying so hard to strap queerness down to realism? Queerness has been discriminated against by almost every community and has had everything gatekeeped from it, please don’t gatekeep queerness itself from people and media you don’t deem as “queer enough” for you personally.

To be queer means to not conform to or being in line with what society’s expectations of gender or sexuality dictates you to and to then place expectations on that ideology itself, to place expectations on what being queer should be, goes against it entirely. It’s doing exactly what queer people are trying to break out of: having to fall in line with certain expectations to be seen as ‘valid’ in other people’s eyes.

Heavenly Delusion is a queer story, a really unique one where queer people gets to simply exist in a world instead of needing that world to be labeled as “queer” for them to be able to exist within in. It’s a chance for queerness to be normalized within media, don’t ruin this chance.

[thelioncourts]

https://x.com/jamreiderson/status/1863413868715737454?s=46 please share your thoughts on here they are so appreciated 🫶🏻 need to hear from likeminded fans, some of this discourse is just…

I'm afraid to get too into anything right now because I feel like when I answer rashly my words reflect that rashness and my ramblings become just that: rambling. But to get something "on paper" right now I'll start by saying that I have been part of the show-fandom since the day it started, possibly even earlier if my ravings about Sam and Jacob from February and July 2022 are anything to go by. I have also been in the book-fandom for over a decade. I have been here since I was in high school and I, myself, have grown and changed drastically in that time (makes sense given I'm now far beyond my university days and am a full-fledged adult, nearing her third decade alive, wow) and in turn my thoughts on these characters and these stories have grown and changed drastically too. I have witnessed book-centered conversations, I have witnessed everyyyy show-centered conversation, and I have been in fandom spaces my whole life yet I still cannot wrap my head around the people I share fandom spaces with.

I won't ever pretend to be any kind of expert on gender and sexuality; I took some classes in college that I really enjoyed about the subjects, and I love perusing literature and academic writings on the subjects as well (more since getting into Interview if I'm being honest) but that doesn't make me an expert, I get that. I also won't ever pretend to be any kind of expert on race; again, I took some classes in college that I really enjoyed, and I also peruse literature and academic writings on race (also even more since getting into Interview, which is great regarding what it's introduced me to and also a highlight on how little education focuses on anything but white-centered writings unless taking a class in college specifically centered on writings not by white people) but I am by no means an expert. But something that is so glaringly and alarmingly apparent in this particular fandom space is that a majority of this fanbase cannot uncenter whiteness from gender and sexuality, cannot empathize or even sympathize with a black lead, and will talk over black voices in the fandom over and over and over again and will take the clapping and cheering of the loud and TikTok-brained masses as validation.

The topic of gender and sexuality in this show (and I'm talking just the show, let's leave the books as their own thing in this regard) is simultaneously really simple and also incredibly complex. There is enough material to write papers and papers on every single character and gender and sexuality, there is enough material to write papers and papers on every single relationship in this show and gender and sexuality. And so, with that in mind, I also won't pretend that one tumblr post I'm typing out on a Monday night has answers, but there's definitely more coherency here than what is available on Twitter with its limited character-count and the skill issue of its users to not read entire threads/to address only one Tweet of a twelve-part thread.

There is always a huge pushback in the fandom when any conversation of femininity, gender, societal roles, etc. regarding Louis is at the forefront. And the pushback is almost always a majority of white fans talking over a majority of black fans. Now, is that a generalized statement? Yes, of course; there are white fans on both sides of this conversation, and black fans on both sides of this conversation (and it's crazy and sad how I'm talking "sides" like this is just that, but yet it is), but the fact is that it is a majority of white fans pushing back against a majority of black fans.

This pushback happens every. single. time. conversation about Louis in these basic parameters happen. And what I've noticed a lot this time around is that insane statements like "These Louis fans only want Louis to be a trad wife" gain momentum like crazy as though that's a commonality and not like. three fanfics total, garnering more people to invalidate Louis fans who are discussing his femininity, gender, societal roles, etc. (and, again, these fans are predominantly black fans who are getting invalidated by the loudest voices in the fandom). But not even bringing those statements into the mix, it's as though people cannot remotely stomach the thought that there are a million things about Louis that are feminine, that there are a million things about Louis' gender that point in a million directions, that Louis' societal roles are complex and also so explicitly written in so many ways, that Louis likes and craves and enjoys certain parts of submission, etc. etc.

Again, I know I'm missing things. And it's gross to watch it happen over and over and over again. And no one in this fandom (and this applies on a lot of fronts, not just this particular one, but that's a whole other conversation) wants to have a conversation at all, no one wants to think. They want to quote a line out of context from the books or take a line out of context from the show (and completely misread so many lines, I'm sorry, but the reading comprehension in this fandom is atrocious) or take some statement about gender or sexuality or something out of context from a reading that actually doesn't apply to any character whatsoever. If it can't be a hit Twitter blurb, no one cares. Like, I'll be incredibly honest, there are things this fandom talks about often regarding Lestat and gender that I genuinely do not understand where they are pulling their thoughts from. I'll see people talk about something as though it's super obvious and yet I cannot remotely find where they are getting this information, read, etc. And there's a world out there where I could say that and ask to talk to someone about it and have an actual conversation so I could perhaps see where they're coming from and, even if I never agreed, maybe understand it a little bit more. But I don't think anyone can have that conversation without insults being thrown, and I'm beyond wanting to have that conversation when the same conversation about Louis is met with antiblackness and the stereotypes about black men that further showcase how a majority of the white people in this fandom cannot uncenter their whiteness. And I'm still not sure if any of this makes sense. And I'm sure I'll have to turn anon off or something because I can already see and anticipate people sending gross things under the anonymous gift of Tumblr. But yeah. I don't want to have these conversations anymore, I've been having them for three years now, I can't help that new fans are joining and reinvigorating old discourse, but then the discourse, as discourse in this fandom so often does, becomes disgustingly antiblack and it's like -- it's just this cycle of awfulness and it makes things not enjoyable and it makes me angry and sad and it adds to my continued loss of hope that literacy skills will ever improve, etc. etc. etc.

[magicrainbowkitties]

Some of y'all never learned the difference between queerbaiting and queercoding and it really fuckin shows. And even more than that some of y'all will sit there and call something queerbait just because they don't kisskiss.

Characters should not and do not have to actually kiss and/or fuck nasty on screen for a queer and/or romantic reading of their relationship to be valid. Not the least of which reason is that not every relationship such as that involves kissing or sex, but more importantly:

Relationships are more than that. You know this. I know this. We wouldn't be shipping people otherwise, or be so invested in the relationships between these characters we love.

Why is a movie where the characters of the same gender love and care deeply for each other and complete each other's worlds, and yet never kiss or fuck, bait, while the one where the characters are underdeveloped and have no real reason to be together or even like each other than because the plot says so but they kiss and fuck like rabbits NOT bait?

Queerness deserves nuance, it deserves different shit, it deserves messy and toxic shit, it deserves to be scrutinized and analyzed, rather than simply consumed and sanitized.

Would the former film have a kiss/sex scene if the world it existed in didn't force it to be a product in a violently heteronormative society? More than likely. But we can't say for sure.

Queer media has survived since forever thanks to queercoding, which was used to let representation of queerness and queer culture exist AT ALL under homophobic corporations. Queer PEOPLE have survived their actively hostile homes and communities thanks to codes and signals that identified each other and where was and wasn't safe.

That legacy won't go away, even as we gain more acceptance in society. Even if the day comes in my lifetime where queer people all over the world are free to live out our lives in peace and comfort without our very lives and bodies being targets for violence and repression, that tradition STILL wouldn't go away. Because it's INTERESTING and FUN and DYNAMIC and GOOD CHARACTER WRITING.

Not every deeply loving and caring relationship is romantic, just as not every buddy-buddy relationship is platonic. There's so much grey area, so much to look through, to analyze with different lenses, to understand about how we conceptualize relationships.

Queerbaiting is NOT just a stand-in for queercoding you didn't like. And it's not bait just because they didn't kiss or get together or fuck. Queerbait is when something is MARKETED to queer people, but doesn't actually have any queer rep in it at all.

Does that mean some queerbait is queercoding in and of itself? Yes. But not all.

But when it's characters building a deep abiding love for each other over the course of the story, one that changes them and how they see the world, regardless of the fact they don't actually kiss or fuck or say "you are now my partner/spouse..." I'm sorry, that's not bait. That's a love story. And regardless of what kind of love it is, platonic, romantic, sexual, eldritch, whathaveyou, that's what queer stories ARE.

Especially when the characters in question are literally canonically queer, but their relationship isn't made EXPLICITLY romantic. Like guys. Really?

Please read anything at all about the history of queerness in your medium of choice before you start shouting "queerbait" at things that are literally made to be complicated.

[vriskaserketdaily]

thoughts on tgirl vriska ? she’s real to me but ur like the #1 vriska enjoyer on my dash so I was wondering what u think

im gonna be real after going into the tag every day for the past 3+ years and seeing every possible take and headcanon my bar is so low that i'm just happy we're in agreement that vriska is a girl

tgirl vriska is a well-supported read of her character, but not the only valid one in my opinion. that being said, if you're a hardcore cis vriska truther, you do yourself a great disservice by ignoring her dysphoric characterization---whether you read that as early-transition transfem dysphoria, lesbian butch dysphoria, alternian caste dysphoria, or any combination of the above.

i do not, however, read her dysphoria as transmasculine in nature, and maintain that vriska's gender (girl/woman) is extremely important in understanding her role in the story, her relationships with other characters, and how the concepts of heroism, protagonism, justice, and strength impact her narrative. a transfem reading does not detract from this, nor does it particularly enhance anything to me, someone who already read vriska as a dysphoric lesbian & therefore already accounted for some form of Gender to be going on regardless of the hypothetical birth-assignment situation.

basically, my personal opinion is that her trans status is a nice garnish but irrelevant to what already is a fascinating, compelling, and well-rounded (dare i say, strong) female character. the fact that she's a female character is more important to me than the fact (or headcanon) that she is a trans character, because i regularly see and cope with the most asinine and blatantly incorrect headcanons and takes about her on this earth. you're asking a man dying of thirst whether a gallon of ice water or a gallon of merely cool water is better.

my bar for sexuality headcanons is likewise on the floor. y'all don't have to agree with me on the lesbian reading but as long as we concur that she's wlw then everything is a-okay by me. my final message 2 da world: never go into the tags of your favorite character.

[relatableblorbopoll]

Round 1 of preliminaries, group 6

The first two places get a place on the bracket

Little reminder: there will be 2 more rounds of preliminaries, the losing blorbos of this poll still have 2 chances of getting in the official bracket

propaganda under the cut

Jesper Fahey (Six of Crows)

No Propaganda

Crowley (Good Omens)

"He's gender. He's been in love with one guy for literally 6000 years and then royally fucks up his entire confession. He yells at his plants. He drapes himself over every fucking surface he sits on. He walks like *that*. He just fuckin makes sounds sometimes. He's me fr."

Dave Strider (Homestuck)

"everything that can be said about Dave's relatability will probably sound redundant, clichéd, or overdone if you are at all familiar with tumblrs sort of blorbo culture. this is exactly why he should be in this tournament.

stop me if you think that you've heard this one before: he hides his genuine emotions behind a persona, deflects sincerity with jokes, but also has a deep desire for validation and connection, so that his persona has many cracks where little bits of his true self slip through. deeply insecure, compares himself to others. a defeatist streak, avoids responsibility. does not wish to be troubled by The Horrors. he just wants to hang out and do his lil creative hobbies (making music and drawing comics). talks a lot to the point of being pretty awkward, rambling, and accidentally saying stuff he shouldnt.

all these things I think tend to resonate deeply with a lot of people, especially on Tumblr - that "person who is insecure and struggles with emotional openness so copes by making jokes" sort of trope, it's just like kin bait (affectionate). he also has a complicated relationship with gender which I know many find relatable (shout out to the "Dave homestuck was my trans awakening" homies) but whether it's about figuring out gender or sexuality or trauma or the apocalypse or anything else, Dave comes at it with an initial, learned, fear and reluctance that I think a lot of people have experienced, because it's very human and very much a part of many readers experiences (we live in a society). but he's always good, and likeable and that makes for a very important sort of relatable character. very comforting. even if he's a mess and he's an idiot you can believe he can get to something better, and you can watch him develop and grow.

also, I think he's extremely relatable because he never really knows what's going on in the comic either. I mean, that's gonna be relatable to most people Vis a vis homestuck. he's confused and he just wants to vibe and make his friends laugh. WHO AMONG US cannot relate?? I do not believe you if you say no.

I wrote too much and got way too weird about it. I'm sorry it's late I'd edit down but I really don't have the brain capacity.. which is very Dave core of me actually"

Junior (Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race)

"i relate to him a lot because his whole character is being embarrassed of his dad who tries too hard to be cool, but still loves him anyways. that is literally me"

Kim Dokja (Omnicient Reader's Viewpoint)

"kim dokja. oh kim dokja. so, without going into spoilers too much, kim dokja is very much a character you are expected to relate to and it makes the novel DEVASTATING. here's just a few things about him: - he is obsessed with a particular piece of media, and finds comfort in it when real life doesn't give him any. he's constantly thinking about it and defending it and trying to recommend it to other people (even though no one else bothers reading it, because it is an objectively bad 3000-chapter webnovel). even beyond that one novel, he's been using fiction as an escape for just about his entire life, something that rings true for a lot of people, especially in the modern world. - he struggles with socializing with other people. the first chapter alone gave me so much second hand embarrassment. it's so real but god it's So bad. he has zero friends and has that sort of loneliness where you're miserable but you can't really bring yourself to feel anything but resigned to it. in general he is just very Resigned to his unfortunate life and can't fully understand or accept it when it finally does get better - he has a complicated relationship with his mother. it's the kind of relationship where the parent genuinely does love their child, but they fail to give them what they need & have to accept that they hurt their kid and that they cannot be the most important person in their life. it's certainly not a universal experience but those sorts of parent-child relationships are woefully common but scarcely acknowledged -the insecurity. god there is so much insecurity in that man. it's hard to even completely tell it's there at first, because it's so ingrained in how he thinks that you don't question it until you know more about his character and suddenly it's all too apparent. he cannot believe that he can be loved (or, if that he can be, that they certainly would not be able to love all of him, only what he chooses to show them), and is selfless but like. the literal meaning of the word, where he will throw away all of his being for the people he loves. in general there is a lot of sacrifice as a love language which like. while i'm not off around throwing myself in front of magic death beams for people or anything i sure would give up everything i could if it meant helping the people i love - ok enough of that. here's some funny things i can relate to. the guy meets his favorite fictional blorbo and instead of worshipping him instead he bullies him constantly and internally complains about how unbearable he is both in the book and in real life. it's like a "i love my blorbo. i would not last 2 seconds in a room with him." You know. he gets so caught up in his fanon characterizations and biases about characters that he completely mischaracterizes them like constantly. he literally kills a guy half because he was his least favorite character. -this is a poll about blorbo relatability. therefore i must mention that kim dokja too related to his blorbo (or at least attempted to) and what is more relatable than that. anyways. kdj made me realize far too much about myself and is by far the most i have ever related to a character (and i Hate it). and tumblr would definitely relate to him too so :thumbs-up:"

"(SPOILERS) He is literally all of us. Reader. Just some guy. And then insane tragic backstory. But he’s also just some guy. He’s special and also just a guy. He’s also god. He can be shipped w anyone. He has versatility and interests and motivations. He also never tells anyone anything ever. He is so me."

"He reads a trashy, long-ass novel as a coping mechanism and doesn't think he's capable of being loved. Bro dissociates when he's emoting too much."

"I'm a homestuck fan, a Dave Strider fan even Never heard of Omnicient Reader's before Voted for the kim fellow because judging by the propaganda it looks like he himself would be a homestuck reader therefore making him more relatable than the homsetuck character himself"

"This guy’s been my companion since I was 11, I’ve grown up with Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint and I think that’s pretty funny since he grew up with Ways of Survival (the 3149 chapter novel) and therefore I’m straight up mirroring him. I, too, scare everyone off by being too enthusiastic whenever the webnovel is brought up! His insecurities are severe but I do see myself in some parts of him (which is worrying but whatever.) He is absolutely The Guy Ever. Utterly pathetic wet cat of a man. I love him. He represents the crazy fandom tumblrina in all of us."

Donutella (Tokidoki)

"she's made of donuts basically like me at this point"

[venvellan]

There ARE valid arguments to be made about "playersexuality," especially if a character is written/heavily implied to be gay/lesbian but given a straight romance. That specfic scenario isn't something I'll get into in depth right now to make this as brief as possible, but "it's ridiculous that every character is bisexual" is NOT one of those arguments. I saw it for Dragon Age 2, and I am annoyed but not surprised to see it for Baldur's Gate 3.

This will feature reclaimed use of the word queer. Tagged below, but thought it might be good to mention.

Dragon Age as a franchise is significantly less committed to queerness than BG3. Thedas was built, intentionally or otherwise, to be heteronormative and gender conforming. To a lesser extent than real life, in that same-sex attraction in Thedas is generally considered unremarkable, but oppression and othering of queer people in-universe DOES exist and it isn't hard to find. (The biggest examples: Dorian's experiences in the upper-class Imperium, the framing of Krem's trans-ness as uncommon or atypical). And DESPITE that, the bisexuality of DA2's main cast does not feel forced or ingenuine to me. The party doesn't remark on or make political statements about each other's sexuality. Sexuality is, at least to this group of people, entirely apolitical, and they all just happen to be a similar sort of queer.

PLEASE consider, then, a world built entirely void of the widespread social culture surrounding sexuality, as Baldur's Gate 3 has tried to create. Where bi or pansexuality is the "common" or "expected" orientation, or more appropriately, where the concept of orientation is absent entirely. This person just cares about personality in who they date, this one doesn't really want to date anybody, this one wants to be in a polycule, and those are all completely neutral positions to hold and inconsequential to their greater character as an individual.

In this world you could easily pluck a half dozen or so random people out from the millions and find that they all desire sex and/or intimacy with any gender equally. If there's no erasure of queerness, it follows that open queerness is more abundant. Sexuality is fluid and various as gender is fluid and various and neither are reflections of someone's personality or morals. Being gay doesn't make you effeminate because there's no preconceived notion that straightness is manly, etc etc.

That's all true in the real world of course, but the difference is that it feels like Larian has tried to craft their narrative around it being the cultural norm. YOU might think it'd be ridiculous for a half dozen random people to be bisexual, if you haven't spent the time in queer spaces to learn that there are gay people everywhere. Even if you have, and there are more queer people in your life than straight ones, you might think it'd be unlikely to pick 6-8ish random people on Earth and find that they're all specifically bi or pansexual. You may even be right, because all over the world there are restrictive dominating cultural narratives that alienate, suppress, and persecute queerness. BG3 doesn't take place on Earth, though, does it? So sit down and think about it for a minute, please.

Of course there'd still be variation. You'd find people that fit the definition of straight or gay or asexual, but there's no expectation of straightness. Sexuality simply is. If you're interested in somebody, either they're interested back or they're not. You find out, you move on. Githyanki even reproduce asexually, so they don't have any flimsy biological reason for straightness, though if you're resorting to "biology" to debate sexuality, you're too far down the pipeline to have read this far anyway. Lae'zel wants a warrior, not a man. You might happen to be both, but it's not your gender she's lusting over.

Also, bisexual men deserve to exist freely without you policing exactly how gay or straight they get to "act." And you aren't somehow less biphobic for invalidating them just because you yourself are gay, so don't think that absolves you. Yes this is about Astarion. He's a bit more overtly queer-coded than Gale or Wyll. He's not gay. Bisexual men are evidently only valid to you if they "act straight." Fuck off.

Gay people exist! Let's put that lukewarm take to rest now, please. If gay people live in a culture that allows them to exist, they exist in much greater abundance. Who would've thought? Left-handedness over time graph my love. The single greatest refutation to Straight People Whining.

Look, you can just say that you're jealous you aren't in an all-bisexual friend group. It's okay. All-bisexual friend groups are awesome.

[arrestmebobbygoren]

Queer Theory Song Analysis: 'Should've Said No' by Taylor Swift

Have we talked Queer Longing? Taylor’s music embodies Queer Longing. Looking from afar, seeing everything, hoping for nothing, and memorizing every detail because you know that this is the closest you will ever get to touching.

On the surface, this song can read as your typical country song: guy succumbs to his weak nature and does a good woman wrong. 

But notice that Taylor never actively genders the character she is in dialogue with as ‘male’; we as the audience, who are socialized into a heteronormative perspective, will do this for her — because we learn to link active traits, such as pursuit of sexual desires, with maleness. 

But the conversation that Taylor is textually engaged with in this song is really one of activeness vs passivity, where the passive position is given the moral weight.

Now the same socialization that teaches us that agency is the right and, quite frankly, the responsibility of ‘maleness’ also teaches us that passivity is the moral essence of ‘femaleness’. Women are damsels in distress who must wait for Prince Charming, who, in turn, may only settle down once he has thoroughly exhausted himself sowing his wild oats (though of course not with the chaste object of his castrated desire).

And while taking on the mantle of female passivity can be too much for any one person to bear, this weight can be particularly crippling for queer women, whose socialization may make them feel simultaneously alienated from and by their own sexual desires. Because when women are only taught how to be desired (and have to learn on the fly how to shield themselves from the often unwanted and sometimes downright dangerous gaze of men), it can feel incredibly disconcerting and even monstrous to discover oneself in the position of desirer, particularly if the object of this desire is another woman.

While the hetero read of this song is perfectly valid, I find that Taylor’s music always gains an additional degree of complexity when examined through a queer lens. 

And this song is no different. What on the surface can read as the righteous anger of a woman betrayed by a man with a wandering eye and an open fly suddenly vaults to a higher gear when viewed as a woman mocked and taunted by her own unexpressed desires, which I think can be distilled down to two narratives. 

On one hand, we can see Taylor railing against the ease with which a man can casually pursue the women he desires without consequence, while she holds herself back from doing the same, due to societal and familial expectations, professional ambitions and internalized homophobia. 

On the other hand, we can see a Taylor who has bifurcated herself for the same of survival, into the passive angel who yearns but never acts, and the devil who lives for the hope of it all and occasionally slips out, only to be chastised and shamed into repent by the part of herself that retains the moral high ground. 

It is this latter point of view I find to be the most compelling framework from which to examine this song.

We begin with the ‘socialized' version of Taylor shaming herself for her newly discovered desire of what she considers to be base and impure impulses. Against a backdrop of immense promise, this precocious golden child can’t help but feel like she has become something grotesque.

[Verse 1]

It's strange to think the songs we used to sing

The smiles, the flowers, everything is gone

Yesterday, I found out about you

Even now, just lookin' at you feels wrong

Taylor finger wags, she shames, she extracts a concession from herself. It was a one-time impulse, a singular loss of judgment, a moment of weakness that she vows never again to let herself repeat.

[Pre-Chorus]

You say that you'd take it all back

Given one chance

It was a moment of weakness

And you said yes

Taylor creates a mantra (turn if off, like a light switch, and if you can’t, well then REPRESS, BY GOD, REPRESS!), strengthens her resolve, and she reminds herself of why she has to keep herself in check. She has a reputation to manage. She shouldn’t even have to have this conversation with herself. Her eye should be on the prize of fame and success at all times. And if this rogue part of herself would be so kind as to just shut up and disappear, she wouldn’t have to beat herself up so. 

[Chorus]

You should've said no, you should've gone home

You should've thought twice 'fore you let it all go

You should've known that word

'Bout what you did with her'd get back to me (Get back to me)

And I should've been there in the back of your mind

I shouldn't be asking myself why

You shouldn't be begging for forgiveness at my feet

You should've said no

Baby, and you might still have me

Unfortunately, she can’t put this genie back in the bottle. She can’t trust herself to stick to the script and behave, now that she’s seen what lies beneath.

[Verse 2]

You can see that I've been cryin'

And baby, you know all the right things to say

But do you honestly expect me to believe

We could ever be the same?

[Pre-Chorus]

You say that the past is the past

You need one chance

It was a moment of weakness

And you said yes

But at least she can handcuff the desirous self to her disciplined self, and blindfold her, and maybe tie her ankles for good measure.

[Chorus]

You should've said no, you should've gone home

You should've thought twice 'fore you let it all go

You should've known that word

'Bout what you did with her’d get back to me (Get back to me)

And I should've been there in the back of your mind

I shouldn't be asking myself why

You shouldn't be begging for forgiveness at my feet

You should've said no

Baby, and you might still have me

Oh, oh

The great escape! The prison break! The light of freedom on her face! The desirous self is not going quietly. And for a second, Taylor loses her resolve. She longs to feel and taste and touch and know! She begs the desirous self to dish! Will she just live vicariously? Or will she throw it all away?  

[Bridge]

I can't resist

Before you go, tell me this

Was it worth it?

Was she worth this?

No, no

No, no, no, no

No! (You knew this was coming). The gag goes on. The desirous self gets lowered into the trunk. This is Taylor’s version. She is calculated. She is a business, man. And she won’t let herself get in her own way. She can do it with a broken heart.

[Chorus]

You should've said no, you should've gone home

You should've thought twice 'fore you let it all go

You should've known that word

'Bout what you did with her’d get back to me (Get back to me)

And I should've been there, in the back of your mind

I shouldn't be asking myself why

You shouldn't be begging for forgiveness at my feet

You should've said no

Baby, and you might still have me