im annoyed and a little pedantic so can i just say as a blanket statement
queerbaiting is when the promotion for a FICTIONAL STORY intentionally hints towards two characters having a romantic relationship, without any intention to follow through in the show, in order to get queer people watching without discouraging the homophobic enjoyers of the show
queerbaiting is NOT:
a celebrity who you think is queer because theyre gnc or they have a 'vibe'. that is a real person and they cannot queerbait
two friends of the same gender pretending to flirt with each other for fun. those are real people and they cannot queerbait
a show with two characters of the same gender who are canonically friends that YOU PERSONALLY think would be better in a relationship. that's not bating, that's shipping, and subject to opinion
there are more but those are the main examples of people misunderstanding what queerbaiting is and being mad at something that isn't actually a problem
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imagine having the worst possible nights sleep. unable to get comfy. or fall asleep for ages. your mind racing with a million thoughts about things you should’ve said in those moments. then just being able to roll over into his arms and let him cradle you until you do eventually start to feel tired. your eyes fall heavy to the sound of his breathing mixed with his soothing little hums as he runs his fingers softly in circulation motions across your back. his torso pressed flush against your own as your legs tangle beneath the sheets. he has you totally encapsulated by him. both literally and metaphorically. he leaves the most gentle kisses on your forehead, not wanting himself to fall asleep until he’s made sure you have first. even as his own eyes begin to fail him, and he lets out his own little yawns. he’s determined to get you to sleep first. your head nestled against his chest as his head rests on yours, and he knows once your breathing slows into a steady rhythm he too can finally go to sleep ᰔ
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a half-finished copy of a cytologist, the worlds worst heroine, and a mathematician catboy walk into a bar
ID: a drawing of Jack-O' Valentine from Guilty Gear, Akane Kurashiki from Zero Escape, and Sho Minamimoto from The World Ends With You sitting together in conversation at a round table, each with a drink in front of them. Jack-O' has a curious expression, one finger to her lips in thought. Akane rests her face in the palm of one hand, smiling. Minamimoto is grinning, one hand gesturing as he talks.
Each one has a little box of text pointing to them -- Jack-O's says: "has info from almost 200 years of further scientific knowledge, but in a world where Y2K was real." Akane is "participating in the conversation but also watching Junpei quote Back to the Future in another timeline." and Minamimoto "will leave as soon as his milkshake is finished. Cooperation is garbage." and an additional box points out that he is only 18, and thus probably shouldn't be in a bar. end ID
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the worst trait of me and my family is probably this: we never learned to say the word sorry.
i) my best friend and i, we are no people. knives? maybe. liars? definitely. but people? i’m not so sure.
knives were never forged to be tender (what a shame, what a shame) and we too, fall and slay what we meant to protect. him and i, we go for the throat when we clash. we hurt and bleed and oh, i should be terrified, i should be running for my life, but all i am is tired and a bit lonely and would really like his arms around me.
( “can we please stop fighting now.”
“oh god yes please.”)
because time and time again, this man has held my heart in his hands and cleaned its festering wounds with cotton dipped in alcohol (always the healer, always the lover) and wrapped gauze around them with clinical precision. and i have walked through the maze of his head and tended to his withering garden, have dragged the sun and fresh air and all the oceans to the barren land to make it bloom (always the poet, always the lover).
him and i, we have never needed words because we are knives forged in the same fire and at the end of the day, we both know that he will be the one who wordlessly stitches my broken heart and i will be the one who sings him to sleep.
ii) let me paint you a picture:
blue that fades into red that fades into black that fades into blue that fades into red. loud, clashing and nonsensical. a pit in your stomach that was dug with desperation and blunt fingernails. how do you colour anger that is also pain, grief, hate, love, fear and truth? the smell of the paint is foul and clogs your windpipes. blunt fingernails and blue and black and madness. can you bear to look at what you created without flinching?
that’s what anger looks like on my father. a horror. a mottled bruise. a hellfire.
all his life, my father has been scorned, belittled, beaten, spat on. his mother didn’t love him right because her mother didn’t love her right. my dad loves like he hates. something is fucked in his head and heart and his words fade into black and blue and red and this shitshow always ends with me sobbing, bleeding, dying on the floor. my father watches with his hackles raised and his eyes red and wide and glowing. once wounded, an animal never sheathes its claws. it strikes the ones it loves and walks away with its head held high and hands trembling.
but here’s what happens when the curtains close: he pulls me into his arms and brings me tea. he wipes away my tears with hands that has moved mountains to make me smile. he kisses my forehead and tells me that his mom didn’t love him right. my grief is like anger and indignation and love. i wrap my arms around him and cry all the tears he never had the luxury to. who should say sorry, really? is it him or his mom or his mom’s mom or this stupid fucking world? my father has never said the word sorry. he never needed to. this is what love looks like on us. a horror. a mottled bruise. a hellfire.
iii) despite it all, i am not usually an angry person. i take after my father and my mother, after all. i rage like my mother (quick, loud, fire that burns out almost as quickly as it sparked to life) and fight like my father (aim, shoot, bullseye). my sister does something even mildly upsetting and before i know it, i’m cursing her to be miserable till she dies. not even an hour later i’m draping myself over her shoulder and bugging her till she rolls her eyes and smiles ever so slightly.
(“do you have no shame?”
“yeah no i don’t think so.”)
my family and i, we never learned to say the word sorry. because the word sorry never meant sorry, not to us. because at the end of the day, that’s all it is: a word. and it sticks to the back of my tongue and the dents of my molars and gets tangled in my mouth when i try to spit it out. so i grab it by its throat and thread it into my being. i find it so much easier to hide my pathetic inability to do one thing that doesn’t scream that there's something wrong with me with the truth of another three words:
“i love you”
and they are always echoed back to me, just a few million times more tender, in ways only we can understand.
“yeah, i know.”
“that’s great, but there’s no escaping dishes duty.”
“oh, shut up, you.”
“what’s that for?”
a pause and a hum.
“i love you too.”
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i have a pretty major gripe with portrayals of kabru as a twink or even certain transmasc portrayals (mostly because they tend to play into the idea of him being a twink), because hes not really a twink. people think hes so feminine in comparison to laios and other male character in the series, but hes pretty generically masculine. this is, in part, why im not the biggest fan of certain labru content (dont kill me).
but thats not all of it. sure, some of his portrayal as a twink is because he's not as masculine in comparison, but thats not it.
much of this is because he's brown. people expect hypermasculinity from brown people and characters, so when kabru doesn't give them that, they perceive him as the exact opposite: the twinkiest mfer to ever exist. if kabru was a white* character, this wouldnt happen as much (it would still happen, thats how fandom is, but it would still be less often). if he was a white* character, he would be perceived as some generically masculine dude-bro who's oddly charming and chillin'. but because he's brown, people catch onto his lack of hypermasculinity and decide to call him a twink when he is objectively not.
making kabru into a twink, not only plays into the expectation that brown men need to be hypermasculine, but it also tends to make him into an accessory for the leading white* characters that he is often shipped with (laios and mithrun).
* since it is a fantasy setting, they very likely have a different view of race. im using the term "white" because that is how the characters are perceived by the (english) fan base.
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Something beautiful about the word transsexual is that contrary to popular (often by transmeds) belief, it has always included people who don't medically transition in anyway. It simply is an older word for what a lot of people would now call transgender and there are so many transsexual elders who never went on hormones and never had surgery but have identified as transsexual for decades and still do. I know transmeds have been around back in the day too, claiming that transsexual is only for medical transitioners, but many elders will disagree. Even if you look at some trans glossaries from 15 years ago they will define transsexual the same way that we define transgender. Transsexual and transgender are largely synonymous with different connotations to different people. The beauty is that we as trans people get to choose whether we want to reclaim a term that was put on us by cis people, or if we want to claim a term that was created by us for us, and both are beautiful and radical in their own way.
The thing about the history of transness is... we have documentation of trans people having existed for at least a thousand years. Trans history is ancient. We are a fact of humanity, not an option.
The interesting thing about transsexual is that it's a new word - coined in German as Transsexualismus by Magnus Hirschfeld in the 1920s, introduced later as transsexual. Around this time, more people were interested in what would be known as transsexualism. It's around this time and after the war that more and more medical transition options became wide-spread and practiced. Medical transition is by no means as experimental as people fear monger it to be, but in terms of trans history, we're living in a vastly different era than our trans ancestors.
The understanding of transsexual depends on who you ask, but it's my opinion that we ought to include as many transsexuals as possible. The idea that transsexuals are the Good Trans People, the ones who Put In The Work is an idea that's based on transphobia, not the language that's used. The attitude is the problem, the idea that we are inherently broken or must prove ourselves worthy is separate from the words that we identify with or are used to describe us.
It's for this reason that transsexualism is important to me. It's for this reason that I want as many people to be transsexuals as possible, whether or not you medically transition. I personally started preferring transsexual because I see it as political, as personal, as a community of beautiful people I want to help make good. If you don't identify as transsexual, that is great! But, please, know that transsexuals are also not stereotypes. We're not the Good Ones. We are part of the broader trans community, and thus, we should all work together.
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ive been really tempted for ages to write a fic from mu qingfang's pov about how sqh's injuries gradually get more and worse. trying to subtly approach the subject, leaving certain medicines within easy stealing access. desperately trying to talk about it when he comes in one day with a dislocated shoulder, a shattered elbow, and an arm broken in two places. hes just clumsy! he fell down the stairs! nothing to worry about shidi everythings fine! he said its fine. stop. asking. questions. please.
Mu Qingfang is so worried about him, He's really only trying to help and Shang Qinghua definitely seems the type to just straight up not go to the doctors if he can help it so he probably had WAYY more injuries that he hid
Shang Qinghua definitely would just laugh it off like "I'm fine. Im fine! I do so much work I'm bound to get an injury here and there!" Except he's been continously getting injured and to such a degree it's CONCERNING
I would love to see a fic about a concerned Mu Qingfang trying his best to help the resident god that can't seem to control his shit very well
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