#also you know. they had different standards of Effeminate for men than we do

[marzipanandminutiae]

The worst of that "fancy effeminate brits vs. manly american patriots" view you mentioned in th is probably The Patriot, which stars Mel Gibson (shudder) and fucks up histort so bad (even by usual hollywood standards!) to make the brits look as evil and poncy as possible.

My middle-school history teacher. Who was supposed to be ACCURATELY AND FAITHFULLY REPRESENTING HISTORY. Put on a faux-Posh British accent whenever she talked about things the British generals did during the Revolution. Made a huge deal about General Cornwallis- who was shitty for other reasons; see also: Irish genocide and the British Raj -taking his china with him on campaign. Of course she never ONCE mentioned that, you know...most of the American generals had trained with the British army, too, and did similar things. Washington's sleeping tent had freaking servants' quarters inside, among other interior rooms, and he traveled with eighteen wagons' worth of stuff at one point (source).

Women are subject to this, too: everyone knows Loyalist ladies were fancy, frilly, useless creatures who were all rich, and Patriot women were strong, salt-of-the-earth farm wives (but still Baseline Acceptable Levels of Feminine!) who had no interest in aesthetics or- heaven forbid! -fashion. </s>

[meraki-yao]

That question was super serious im trying to figure out what's going on, love that taylor got all that exposure but it was a bit surprising, Im from a super homophobic country (illegal/death penalty type homophobic) and china is probably more progressive from where i stand but by western standards its still a lot conservative. So it was odd that an actor who's only popular in certain groups for playing a queer character is getting hyped up there.

Heads up, I went on a rant lmao

I agree. And I was really freaking anxious the whole time he was there because of it.

Okay, for those who don't know, here's the thing about LGBT+ in China. And I'm only gonna talk about the sexuality aspect because the gender aspect is a whole other topic and a lot less progressive than the sexuality side (that being said trans lives matter)

The official stance promoted by the government, ergo the public, is condemning it. Thankfully not in an illegal/death penalty type, but more in a "if we ignore it and don't talk about it, it will go away" type.

There were a couple of years I think in the mid-2010s where significant progress was being made in terms of both representation (see shows like Guardian, the Untamed, Word of Honor) and pride organizations and support (see Shanghai Pride)

But starting in mid-2021 the government suddenly cracked down on queer representation. "Effeminate" men were publicly condemned and called "sissy" BY THE OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT NOTICE (I was fucking fuming when I read it). Dangai (BL, or simply, adapted from gay novels) shows were banned. Multiple LGBT+ organizations were shut down without explanation. And just this year, when a singer with a famous song about being an LGBT ally supporting the community held a concert in Beijing, anyone with anything remotely resembling a rainbow was banned from entry and had to hand in the rainbow object, even if it was their clothing. And those stuff were never returned. The older generation, such as my parents' generation, condemn it. It's not an optimistic sight.

But here's the fucking truth: queer people, have always existed, and always will. So actually, younger people, I'd say 30 years old and younger, the vast majority accept queerness. Gay couples are sharing their lives on Bilibili. Danmei (explicitly gay) radio dramas, novels, and comics are still being produced and consumed. There are so many people watching Western gay shows and movies such as RWRB as well as producing gay fan content. And honestly, part of it is due to the shipping culture here (which is a whole other topic I can write a dissertation on).

Either way, what I'm trying to say is regardless of whatever the "official stance" is, the demographic that's active on social media is accepting of it. Which is why RWRB could gain such popularity in China.

As per my last ask, I think the main reason for inviting Taylor is his willingness to try things the local way. A lot of times Chinese capitalists/executives don't really care where the star got their fame from, they just care that they are famous.

The difference with Taylor is that actors in China of a similar level of status locally to Taylor and who have been in queer productions don't talk about it after the promo period is over. If anything, gaining fame from being in a Dangai is kind of considered shameful. In fact, they actively avoid it. Taylor is of course, more than willing to talk about RWRB. In fact, during the videos, live streams and stuff, I was actively observing if RWRB would be brought up by the Chinese side/host. It wasn't. During the Little Red Book livestream, despite basically everyone in the live chat spamming RWRB comments, Taylor was the one who said "Oh I see talk about RWRB, what do you want to know?" And I understand that there are several potential reasons why RWRB wasn't brought up by the host, including time constraints, pre-set questions, pre-set agendas etc, but latent homophobia is also a potential reason.

Either way, yeah. I don't really know what the conclusion of this ramble is but here you go 😅

[beatrice-otter]

@thisauthorisscreaming​ said in the replies:

The only thing I definitely remember is that TikTok was wrong and yes Hebrews had words for homosexuality, can you imagine a language that met the GREEKS and didn't have a word for gay?!

Well, no Western language (including English) had a word for homosexuality until the 19th Century in the same way that we mean it, because they categorized things differently than we do. We today see homosexuality as a thing you are a part of your identity. They conceptualized it as a thing you do. They had lots and lots of words for various sex acts between same-gendered people, but none for the category of being that we recognize as queer or gay or homosexual or whatever. And they did not consider all of those same-gender sex acts to be the same type of act, there was a lot of nuance that we don’t always understand even with Greek culture, which talked about it a lot more than ancient Jewish culture did. And the word we’re not sure what it meant? It’s actually a Greek word, not a Hebrew word.

So let’s talk about the translation issues that cause problems when we’re looking at what the Bible has to say about homosexuality.

Leviticus. (In this case we know what the words literally mean but there’s a debate over what the larger meaning of the phrase is.) Christians do not follow the Levitical laws. Many Jews do follow those laws ... but with 3,000 years of scholarship/theological discussion about "what exactly do they mean in a modern context." When Christians pull out words from Leviticus to condemn LGBTQ+ people (or anyone else), we're saying "WE don't need to follow these laws, they don't apply to us ... but they do apply to people we don't like." It’s pretty blatant hypocrisy.

At any rate, there are exactly two verses in Leviticus that mention homosexuality. Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13. Leviticus 18 is mostly concerned with nakedness and the shame it brings. Leviticus 20 is about being pure so that you can go to the temple. A man having sex with another man is called an “abomination,” but in Leviticus that term is not given to sins, but rather things that break the purity clean/unclean laws in an egregious way. Christians tend to equate sin and impurity but they are very different. (Touching a dead body is a righteous thing to do, if you’re preparing the body for burial; it also makes you ritually impure.) There is some translation ambiguity here, but it’s not because we don’t know what the words mean; when the Bible says it’s an abomination for a man to lie with another man “as with a woman” it probably means “any penetrative intercourse between two men” but it could also mean a number of other things including a condemnation of adultery (it could also be translated as “in a woman’s bed”) And the other thing to consider is that in much of the ancient world they believed that when a man was penetrated sexually by another man, he lost status and became feminized, and that no free man would allow himself to be penetrated (slaves were a different matter, as they couldn’t protest), so a standard assumption was that any penetrative sex between two men of the same social status was automatically rape because no man would ever consent to be feminized. So are the authors of Leviticus making that same assumption? I don’t know! Nobody does! There are legitimate issues of basic translation here even though we know what the words themselves mean on a literal level. The context is what we don’t know.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10. The Greek word malakoi (μαλακοὶ) is a word we know but which can mean many different things depending on the context. It literally means “soft,” and sometimes it referred to a physical characteristic (such as a soft, fine fabric), sometimes it referred to general moral weakness, but it could also mean lazy, delicate, feminine, or effeminate. It was sometimes used to describe catamites—men (often slaves or lower-class boys) who were the “passive” partners in sex with other men (i.e. the ones who were penetrated). The translator must choose which of these meanings Paul meant. The New Revised Standard Version translates it as “male prostitutes.” And it could mean that! But it could also mean a lot of other things.

1 Timothy 1:9-10. Here’s the passage the TikTok was probably talking about. The Greek word arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται), translated as “sodomites” in the NRSV, is a really rare word, and unfortunately because of that we don’t quite know what it means. (This word is used in both 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10.) One way of figuring out what a word means is by looking at the roots—is it made from some other words whose meanings you know? Arsenokoitai is put together from two words meaning “bed” and “male.” Put that together and it probably means something about males having sex or male sexuality. However, we can’t be too sure about this. Root words are not always literally accurate—for example, consider the English slang-term “lady-killer.” (Imagine that a historian 2,000 years from now finds a book in which a character is described as “a real lady-killer” and had to figure out what they meant—is the character a lady who kills?  Or someone who kills ladies?) There may be other figurative ways to interpret arsenokoitai that we don’t know. And, since this is a dialect of Greek that hasn’t been spoken in 1500 years, we don’t have anybody we can ask.

Maybe Paul was talking about a certain, really specific type of sexual activity. Maybe he was using local slang. Maybe it’s got nothing to do with sex at all. Paul is the first person to use arsenokoitai that we have a record of. (Of course, we only know what people wrote down that survived to the current day—it may have been a common word that just happened not to be used in any of the other ancient Greek writings which have survived.) It was only used 73 times that we know of in the six centuries after Paul. In virtually every instance the term appears in a list of sins (like Paul’s) without any story line or other context, which makes translating it difficult. Here are some of the ways it was used and what linguists can deduce from them:

Arsenokoitai was used to describe “the sin of the gods” in a few retellings of Greek myth, possibly referring to Zeus raping Ganymede (a teen boy).

Arsenokoitai was also used in a legend about the Garden of Eden in which the snake used a variety of methods (including sex) to gain power over and destroy Adam and Eve. In that story, the word describes seduction from a place of power. We can quibble whether or not it was rape (no physical force was used, although the snake used other forms of coercion); it was at least sexual harassment, and it refers to something that the snake did to both Adam and Eve. (In other words, it was not dependent on the gender of the victim or the abuser.)

In the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures that Gentile Christians used in Paul’s day, Leviticus 20:13 (which condemns men having sex with each other) uses arsenokoitai’s two root words next to each other when it talks of men who bed other males.  There is some speculation that this is where Paul got the word. If that’s the case, then he probably did mean it to refer to male/male sex in general.

Patriarch John IV of Constantinople (an early leader of Christianity whose writings we still read) used it to refer to anal sex, and something husbands and wives did together, having nothing to do with homosexual encounters at all.

Clement of Alexandria and John Chrysostom (other early church leaders whose writings we still use today) both condemned same-sex sexual activity in many of their writings. They never used the word arsenokoitai in their discussions of same-sex behavior. It shows up in their writings, but only in places where they quote the list of sins found in 1 Corinthians 6, not in places where they discuss homosexual activity in particular. This suggests they did not believe Paul’s term referred to homosexual behavior. On the other hand, it may indeed have been a rare word, which they didn’t know the precise meaning of or didn’t believe their readers would know, and so they only used it when quoting Paul.

When arsenokoitai is included in lists of sins, it is usually at the transition between sexual sins and economic ones, e.g. between prostitutes and thieves or fornicators and slave traders. When people make lists, they usually group like things together. (For example, when my mother makes a packing list for vacation, she lists all the food the family will need, then any cooking or food preparation gear, then clothes, etc.) So the location of arsenokoitai in these lists may be significant, given that it comes at the transition between sex and economics. For example, it might mean someone who uses power and money for sexual advantage over other people, a combination of sexual aggression and coercion.

When you put all of this together, we have a lot of speculation but very little hard knowledge of what Paul meant when he chose these two words. Again, this is fairly unusual—in most cases, we may quibble over exact word choice but have a very firm knowledge of what the authors of the Bible meant by the words they chose. But these two words we don’t know for sure—one carries a wide variety of meanings and the other we know little about. How they are translated tells you a lot about modern Christian tradition and the assumptions of the translator, but not necessarily very much about Paul’s intentions. The NRSV translates 1 Corinthians 6:9 as “…male prostitutes, sodomites …”, while the NET translates it as “… passive homosexual partners, practicing homosexuals.…” It could also be “ … moral cowards, rapists …” or “ … unvirtuous, sexual predators …” A translator who is biased against homosexuals might choose something that focuses on homosexuality; a translator who is biased in favor of homosexuals might choose something that ignored the possible condemnation of homosexuality altogether. Or a translator might follow the traditional example and condemn homosexuality because it’s what everyone else does without stopping to consider why other translators choose the translations they do.

I full understand that it is not appropriate as response to talking about the various roles of christianity in colonialism and Christofascism,

However as its own thing, I think its an interesting subject how the Bible is supposed to be the fundamental source of Christian doctrine, BUT most of the "traditional values" of christian conservatives and ideas that are powerfully associated with christianity...just Are Not In There, or are only mentioned as brief, isolated side notes amidst much longer and more detailed passages discussing something different

Whereas many ideas that are emphasized HUGELY in the Bible are just totally and completely ignored by these rightwing political folks 

Much of Christianity is not actually based on the Bible, but instead on a bunch of traditions and later writers, but protestants have problems with admitting that.

And as someone who was raised very "sola scriptura" i don't even get why church tradition matters for anyone. Who cares what Augustine thought about abortion. He was literally just a guy

[rainbowsky]

Hello 🌈

Firstly, I want to tell you that I really enjoy your blog and want to thank you for all your updates and for always helping turtles. I really appreciate your efforts.

Secondly, I wanted to ask about DD. Some time back I read somewhere that DD isn’t comfortable with people mentioning his younger days especially his blonde phase. I was a little surprised when I read this because I absolutely adore blonde little DD. Anyways, I have no background knowledge on this.. I don’t even know if it’s true or false. I did ignore it for some time, but it often pops up in my mind whenever I come across old photos so I feel like I need a bit of a clarification, I just want know if it’s true and whether DD did actually mention this in the past or whether it’s just made up BS by people.

Thanks so much for your kind words, Anon! 😊

Anon is talking about the 'White Peony' look that DD debuted with.

There has been a lot of fan talk about that look...

Standard disclaimer: This is my own perspective on things and could be totally incorrect. I don’t have any special insight into DD’s thoughts.

It's actually a pretty controversial look in the fandom. Some fans love it, some fans hate it. Some fans are really judgy and awful toward fans who like it and will practically label anyone a pedophile who speaks adoringly about the White Peony or thirsts over that DD (because DD was 17 when he had that look).

Just a reminder to everyone that there is never any excuse for being a dick. You're not protecting DD from predation by bitching people out for thinking he is pretty with long blonde hair. Don't be ridiculous. The man is in his 20s now.

I’ve never been a big fan of the look myself. It just isn’t very aligned with his personality and demeanour. Not to say that he doesn’t look stunning in some of the pictures from that era. He does. It would be pretty much impossible for DD to ever look anything less than amazing. He’s just a handsome guy.

However, I think the White Peony is just a fantasy. A beautiful, sweet fantasy, but a fantasy nonetheless. It’s not representative of DD's personality, AFAIAC, and it can't hold a candle to the DD of today.

And there has been a lot of talk about DD being oversexualized and often lowkey sexually harassed back then because of the look. I don’t doubt this is true. We all know women are treated this way, and so are young beautiful effeminate men. This type of look strikes me as the sort of thing that would have made him a target for a lot of unwanted attention.

It would be understandable if DD hated the look. While he seems to enjoy exploring genderbending fashion, we also know that he is the sort of person who likes to do things on his own terms. This look would have been created for him based on how the management team wanted to market the group, and might not have reflected the type of image he wanted for himself.

He was marketed as the maknae of the group (the youngest), and the look accentuates his femininity and beauty and makes him seem younger, even vulnerable.

We know he loves being the cool guy and hates being seen as cute, and absolutely bristles at being called ‘beautiful’ or having a lot of attention drawn to his 'youth'. I think it’s possible that his sensitivity to those things is exacerbated by how he was treated as the White Peony.

We also know he is a hip hop guy who loves that culture, dance, music and fashion - even back then. This look is practically the polar opposite of 'hip hop'.

Just as one example of how he was treated back then:

When he was being interviewed as part of Uniq, a host told him he looked 'more feminine than a female' and that women would be jealous of how pretty he is. He reacted by laughing and that was interpreted as him being 'shy', but it looks to me like he's positively squirming with discomfort, and the smile never reaches his eyes.

Other people might have a different interpretation, but that's how it lands on me.

I realize that a lot of this is just conjecture based on my own understanding of DD and his career path. In terms of actual evidence that he hates the look, I have seen a couple of moments where he spoke negatively about it.

At one point he was talking about how awful the bleaching process was. He said it was painful and burned his scalp and the fumes hurt the eyes and nose, or something along those lines.

In another interview he referred to his blond years as his 'dark period', or something to that effect, and said that if he could he would delete all photos from that era.

Unfortunately I didn't save them, and after a lot of digging I still cannot find them. If anyone knows which interviews I'm talking about and can link these clips, that would be very helpful.

How does GG feel about it?

There are multiple rumors that GG loves the White Peony look. Obviously we can’t verify whether they’re true or not.

At one point GG is seen in the Untamed BTS saying that he prefers DD's 'natural' makeup look, so a lot of fans interpret that as meaning he wouldn't like dyed hair, earrings and makeup on DD either.

I personally think people tend to run away with that comment from GG and read far more into it than he clearly stated, but everyone has their own interpretation. Ultimately we will probably never know how GG feels about it.

Any discussion of this look and of this era of DD's career usually leads to at least some friction between fans. Just a reminder to everyone to be kind to each other. There is never any justification for social toxicity. A little humility goes a long way.

Ultimately I think DD looks so much better now, so much more mature and more distinctly 'himself', but there's no denying the White Peony was beautiful, and still captures fan hearts even today.

[farlynthordens]

Is Gen gay-coded or just an entertainer? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ random thoughts/observations about his speech in Japanese

Warnings: LONG. mentions of gendered language and homophobic characterizations

The concept of “role language” is super important in Japanese fiction, because how a character talks can tell you a lot about their personality. Unfortunately, it’s often lost in translation because languages like English don’t have the ability to play around with formality levels, pronouns, etc as much.

Ever since I first watched the dcst anime like a year and a half ago, I’ve had no idea if Gen is intended to be the “gay friend” character or just the “quirky famous guy,” or maybe both? I figured that writing out my thoughts might be interesting for some people! Take everything with a grain of salt tho since I’m not a native speaker

1. Backwards speech

I want to first cover backwards speech (localized as pig latin in the English manga) because this used to confuse the fuck out of me. It felt like a quirky teen thing or internet slang, but it’s actually [zuuja-go] (“jazz” written backwards + “language”) which originated in the 40s-50s.

It was revived primarily by male TV stars and comedians in the 80s-90s, and to this day zuuja-go is regarded as a type of [entertainment industry-specific language]. However, it’s hardly used anymore. It’s kinda weird then that Gen, who’s too young to have lived in the revival period, would use zuuja-go, but my guess is that it’s a funny and somewhat original way to show his “popular entertainer” background. I personally don’t know any other characters who use it as regularly.

2. Choice of pronoun + speech patterns

Gen ends nearly every sentence with ~ne, ~yo ne, ~yo, or ~sa, or otherwise no particle at all. Questions almost never have an ending emphasis particle, putting the rise in intonation on the final word (the standard is to end with ~ka, ~no ka, etc). He also always contracts the verb ending ~te shimau into ~chau/jau (Senku always uses the contracted form too, but a more boyish derivative (chimau). It probably sounds crazy but trust me). There’s more I could list, but these are the most notable points lol

This kind of speech pattern is associated with teen girls/young women, so when it’s applied to a perceived male character, it’s used to indicate that they’re an “effeminate man”. In most cases, “effeminate” = gay/trans (yeah it’s shitty and outdated thinking). It’s also been applied to male characters who are idols or internet stars, possibly as a dig at their masculinity or making fun of their attempt to appeal to female audiences.

One example of the latter is Pyotr from Carole & Tuesday, who’s their universe’s equivalent of an Instagram celebrity. His sentence structure is almost identical to Gen’s, with the girlishness turned up to 11 because of the very high pitched, nasal-y voice given to him in the show. More on this later.

We also can’t forget how he calls everyone -chan. It’s diminutive and cute, but literally no one uses -chan that much. Even in fiction, female characters normally use it for female friends or children, and guys almost never use it except for children and maybe certain girls they’re close with. It’s definitely the most exaggerated cutesy trait he has. “Effeminate male” characters often address others - regardless of gender - with diminutive honorifics or cute nicknames even when not necessarily appropriate, so this is just gay-coded behavior from what I can tell lmao

One thing that’s different about Gen compared to other characters with the same "effeminate male” speech pattern (that I can recall, at least) is his pronoun. He uses the masculine “ore”, like Senku, Chrome, and most of the other young male characters. In text, his “ore” is even in kanji (俺) like theirs. Had it been written in hiragana or katakana, it would have given more of a casual or stylish vibe. Just as a sidenote, this is also why his name itself is written in mixed hiragana/katakana instead of kanji! It’s a typical thing for Japanese celebrities to do with their names to seem cool.

Anyway, characters who are meant to be portrayed as “effeminate men” will almost always use watashi or atashi, the standard “female” pronouns, or at least “boku” which is generally male-aligned but softer than “ore” (Pyotr uses boku, as an example).

Pronoun usage is way more nuanced in real life, but for fictional characters, it tends to be broken down into these kinds of stereotypes based on Tokyo-dialect Japanese.

He also is missing some other key points in his speech pattern that would more clearly identify him as gay/trans-coded, like using the feminine ~kashira (”I wonder...”) instead of ~kana.

3. Voice acting in the show

I love Gen’s Jpn voice honestly, but it does play into the “effeminate man” stereotype a little. His voice is a bit higher pitched than the other guys and somewhat nasal-y, which are both common traits of this stereotype when used with the speech patterns I talked about above. The way certain syllables are stressed also highlights his feminine speech pattern. However, he’s comparably tame to “effeminate” characters in other series. For example, his Jpn voice actor does raise the pitch of his natural voice for Gen, but it’s not a falsetto imo. It’s pretty common for male voice actors to do falsettos for “effeminate” characters.

Gen also doesn’t fall under a lot of the tropes that plague many gay/trans-coded characters and quirky celebrity types - such as being a “diva” or uncomfortably flirtatious - which tend to get amplified in voice acting.

---

This stuff combined with my previous post about his clothes makes me wonder even more about what was intended for his character. There’s a lot about him that is notably “feminine” without him leaning too hard into gay stereotype territory. And it’s just like, why did you do that.

If you survived reading this far, I’d love to hear your thoughts<3

[transhawks]

Let's talk about Mineta and masculinity. Just my thoughts as bi trans man.

Real talk, I've said for years Mineta was disappointing because Horikoshi could do a lot with him. He could have easily subverted the 'funny drawn comic relief' with him because clearly Horikoshi has commented on insecurity in personal life and as a man, knows that there is a lot of pressure on young boys to prove that they are capable of attracting girls to other boys.

That men who can't get girls are derided as weak, emasculated, and ostracized but that is a very acceptable form of bullying. We judge people by their partners a lot in society and teen boys who don't fit conventional standards of attractiveness get the message that unless a girl likes them, they're not real men. That's why you see this bitterness in nerd boy culture - there is a societal expectation on men to be virile, and why so often 'nerd media's has sexist tropes that focus on the 'undesirable' man getting the girl.

It's the thought process that fuels everything from 80's scifi tropes that gave us 'alien/not from here girls' to 2010s Isekai anime that really have a ostracized nerdy boy becoming their own power fantasy. It's the foundation of incels - which in their original conception and meaning are 'involuntary celibates', mostly men who are 'denied girls' and therefore everything else that comes with that. We have a society that priorities romantic relationships, where families are assumed to be blood-tied, and this does indeed cause real issues in how people who cannot or do not want to achieve that live their lives.

What I'm trying to say is, yes, Mineta's behavior was always disgusting. You have every right to hate him for his actions, but there's complexity here, too. And part of me really hoped it was for a point. That finally someone would write character whose growth meant realizing that his worth as a person was not about getting girls to like him and being girl crazy, that the perversion was a bad way of expressing his insecurities and frustrations. And working through that.

And, surprisingly if the translation is true and the Japanese fandom is right, we ...just might have? I mean I'd want to see an apology from Mineta about his behavior, but if Horikoshi just did all that because Mineta wasn't just facing this sort of pressure and societal expectation as a straight man, but also a queer man, well, that's... Shocking. But not as untrue to real life as many people think.

A lot of people younger than me (I graduated hs in 13) and might not understand how common closeted and being downlow was recently in the US. In Japan it's much more like that now. A lot of queer people do end up performing heterosexuality 'in excess' in both denial and cover up. All those jokes about 'compensating for something' did and do have some basis. When straight male masculinity is general dependent on virility and asserting dominance, is it any wonder that an attempt at performative cishet masculinity ends up being far more toxic than the usual? It is born out of insecurity and, added in the queerness, fear. To be seen as weak or effeminate is very much a big fear on boys' minds, because it comes with repercussions, loss of status. There's a safety that being out removes from you.

So I understand there is a lot of anger about 'of all the representation, Mineta..' but actually, this is incredibly realistic and not as bad as you think. Not all queer characters are meant to be likable. And perhaps coming to terms with their queerness is essential to them stopping bad behaviors and becoming better people - and that is representation.

There is a lot to be discussed on how damaging our narrow views on masculinity are for all genders, and there is also a discussion to had about how many of us queer and trans people often perform 'roles' or present in ways that mask our insecurities with confidence. Sometimes it's like sliding into two different sides of the spectrum - when closeted, performing rigidly the gender roles we are supposed to confirm to, and often when first coming out, going all the way to be as visibly loud and as possible/or rigidly conforming to the new gender roles if you're trans and binary. Is it really so surprising a young boy confused about his sexuality went out of his way to try and prove he was the straightest boy there?

I see many people wish it was Aoyama as a very clear cut and confident 'GNC' boy, but the truth is, wouldn't that just gather the 'we already knew' comments? What about those of us who didn't know?

So, while I still think so much of Mineta's harassment played as a joke was awful and in line with a lot of the other sexism Horikoshi routinely puts into his own manga, I ask people to think a bit more about what it means to be a queer boy when they express revulsion at the fact 'it had to be Mineta'.

There are way more insecure boys with unconventional looks who find bad ways of coping with their queerness than you think and a lot of the commentary I am seeing veers into that reinforcing 'eew no one wants him'. Yeah, I don't think many people would want the Mineta who climbs onsen walls to peep, but Mineta does not have to be /that boy/ down the line. And maybe feeling something for Deku is helping him do just that - and isn't that what we wanted from Deku, who has changed so many of his friends into better people? Isn't that better than Mineta staying what he was?

[revenge-of-the-shit]

Racism, antisemitism, and anti-Jedi sentiment in Star Wars (Part 3/4)

Part 3: Antisemitism and Anti-Asian racism

via @shadowaccio6181 :

There is also an article here regarding more current stereotyped perceptions of both Asians and Jewish people that I’ll quote larger sections from, because I think context is important:

This type of “faulty and inflexible generalization” that associates an individual with the perceived wrongs of an entire ethnic/racial group is almost the textbook definition of prejudice. Princeton University psychologist Susan Fiske and her collaborators published a series of articles examining stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination. They show people usually assess a group along two dimensions: warmth (are they sincere and sociable?) and competence (are they capable and intelligent?). For example, her work finds the elderly are stereotypically perceived as warm but incompetent; middle-class white Americans as warm and competent; Asians and Jews as cold but competent, and homeless people as cold and incompetent.

People who are not friendly are more dangerous to others than are people who are not competent, who are more dangerous to themselves. When majority-group members with high levels of bias encounter members of minority groups they perceive as cold, biased individuals can feel they must react by verbally harassing, bullying or attacking them. That’s especially true if that minority group is being touted or perceived as threatening — the way some leaders are painting Asian Americans as responsible for spreading the pandemic.

Using a nationally representative, random-sample telephone survey that interviewed 571 respondents in the United States in 2003, Fiske’s research found Asians, along with Jews, are consistently stereotyped as competent but cold. Biased individuals, confronted with people stereotyped as competent-cold, often feel envy and resentful admiration. Envied groups are often scapegoated during periods of widespread social instability, because biased majority-group members perceive those groups as having both the ability and intention to disrupt society.

We also shouldn’t ignore the stereotype of Asian parenting: “the notion that the Asian American parenting style is authoritarian—devoid of warmth, controlling, unfeeling, and undemocratic—versus Western parenting, which is viewed as the more positive authoritative style—firm, but warm, highlighted by intimate parent-child relations… our perceptions of parental warmth are culturally concocted and notes that what is often perceived as “strict parenting” in non-Western or non-Caucasian families is often misunderstood.” Obviously, not all parents are perfect, but this is very much a racist stereotype.

Commentary from Annessarose:

Exactly this.

It is indeed true that some Asian parents are undeniably strict to the point of toxic helicopter parent. I know this for a fact, because I have so many (Chinese) friends who experience it. It is also true that there are Asian parents who are not like this, and that there are many parents who are not toxic, who are supportive of their children.

Ultimately, it's important to note that for many parents, their actions come from good intentions even when it manifests itself in decidedly toxic ways. They are human. This does not excuse toxic parenting in any ways, but painting Asian parents with one brush and portraying all of them as harsh and unfeeling and authoritarian does a disservice to the many parents who are supportive, who listen, who try their best to help their kids. Ultimately, people are complex. Reducing them to stereotypes is dangerous and toxic.

To Jewish Star Wars fans: please please please feel free to add to this conversation! I don't feel qualified to speak on this but I would love to hear & amplify your voice on this.

We also shouldn’t ignore the common stereotypes of Asians in film (source):

I really feel I need to point this out, but as an Asian American, I’m actually thankful Obi-Wan is played by Ewan McGregor, because if he were played by an Asian actor, it would make so much of fandom’s characterizations of him Significantly More Yikes.

Ewan McGregor is known for being naked on-screen and having sexually suggestive scenes. However, there's a stereotype of "the Asian man as effeminate and asexual", or if sexualized, they're "categorized as exotic and different... foreign." This stereotyping "both feminizes Asian-American men and simultaneously constructs alternative gender and sexuality as aberrant." And "it seems as if Asian men are also victim to extremes: In some portrayals, they are cold-hearted villains and ruthless Kung Fu masters, while in other films, are portrayed as “losers” who have all the brains but no social skills or clueless immigrants fresh off the boat." "...men were portrayed more negatively than women; Asian men are perceived as less socially skilled or seen as the enemy." And Asians are often paraded about “as an example for people, showing them to be intelligent, overachieving" but "Asians were more likely to also be perceived as antisocial, awkward, and lacking proper communication skills."

Annessarose's commentary:

Oh, boy. Do I have thoughts on this.

I grew up in a an Asian diaspora. And. Despite living in a primarily Chinese area of that community, these stereotypes still wormed their way into us. At school, many (Chinese) girls would talk about how none of the (Chinese) men were attractive, and how they were dreaming about the white boys they saw on television instead. As we grew older, I had several in-depth discussions with several of my close female friends, and we'd end up talking about how the reason we thought the white guys were more attractive was because the media we watched told us that that was what the beauty standard was.

On top of that, we also had that stereotype of Asians being intelligent overachievers internalized as well. Do you know how many people would cry over an 85%? Do you know how many people would complain about a 92%? Many people ended up placing their self-worth into their academic marks, and it was disastrous. Mental health was all over the place. Bullying based on marks abounded. Granted, this stereotype was not the only reason this happened; it's true that there are indeed parents who take nothing less than 100%, and let me tell you, it really fucked some of my classmates up. It was horrendous. But many parents were not like that, but the constant peer pressure + societal pressure to be perfect in academics and extra-curriculars and everything just so we could feel like what society told us Asians were like was tremendous even in an Asian diaspora.

I remember being assigned to a group of white classmates in elementary school. I remember them saying, "Oh, cool, you're in here!" and I was like "Why me?" They told me "You're Asian, you're smart, so we're gonna do well in this project." Similar stories abounded with my East Asian friends all across elementary school, and shaped how we felt when we entered our high school.

Even in diaspora, western stereotypes & racism can be destructive and toxic.

This is Part 3!

[Part 1] | [Part 2] | [Part 4]

[nightswithkookmin]

Hi Goldy: I just recently started reading your blog and I would like your thoughts on something. I am 100% convinced JiKook is a real relationship-there's just too much evidence to deny it. :-) I love their connection. I wonder about your thoughts on it being even more difficult for the members/company/fans to accept since JK is often portrayed as the heartthrob/can't do anything wrong member of the group? Do you think that makes it harder for everyone to accept that their Golden Maknae is gay?

Heartthrob who can do no wrong???

Chilee, I can hear Jungkook chuckling in his Itaewon home reading this bit right now. Lmho.

I don't know how to feel about Gay and wrong and acceptance being neighbors in a sentence. Sounds like a set up to an unsolicited, unwanted advice about gender and sexuality.

There's nothing wrong with being gay or queer. If people can't accept Jungkook is gay because they think he does no wrong because they interchange gay and wrong in a sentence then those people need to be castrated and mummified alive.

That being said, I think I understand where you are coming from. Jungkook gets away with a lot within the fandom- not so much within the group. Unless of course, you're counting the messing with his hyungs and making them pay for stuff and him acting bratty with certain hyungs.

I mean being Maknae has its perks.

But I think the group holds him to much higher standards especially within Jikook's dynamic, which to me is crazy because Jimin is the hyung in that group.

Yet most times- untill dynamite era last year- they sort of had this weird Jimin is always right schtick going on within the group. And you could see this especially with RM and Suga when it came to the JK vs JM moments. I have a post saved in drafts on this topic and so I won't get much into it.

But yea, a lot has changed since October and you see this shift mostly in RM and JM's dynamics- I recall dropping hints here and there about how I felt Minimoni needed to spend more time together off cams cos I thought it would be good for their dynamic? There's been a lopsided shift in Kookminjoon's dynamic and I think it's quite telling of how they have handled Jikook's relationship even on that personal level.

I think more than anyone in BTS Jk has gone up against stereotypes and people's assumptions of him and he's always stood his grounds.

People take him as he is. They don't have a choice really. He doesn't bend himself to be consumable. If he did he wouldn't be spotting them tattoes and piercings. I think he is the least consumable member in BTS according to Kpop idol standards- in certain aspects. He don't be moving like a typical idol is what I'm saying- he doesn't sway too far away either.

Do I think he gets away with a lot in this fandom? ABSOLUTELY. A lot of idol's careers have ended for far less- the scandals, the body art, the ghetto gayness etc. He really doesn't give a fuck what anyone thinks of him. If he wants to get a tat he will. If he wants to fuck his band mate he will. Jeikei does what Jeikei wants.

I think if he came out today to say he likes men, or girls, or three breasted aliens- we will say ok and keep it pushing because he's gradually conditioned us to accept and be ok with who he is over the years.

"If army loves me they will accept me as I am. Rather dead than cool."

I don't think he negotiates negotiates his person with anyone. He may make compromises here and there but if push came to shove I think he would what he wants and what makes him happy and not what others want of him. He pushes the boundaries on the limits of what it means to be an idol in KPop and I think more so than Jimin he is the one best fitted to change the status quo in terms of the LGBTQIA discourse.

Jimin is a different case all together. He is an idol true and true and it makes me sad that he used to care so much what people thought of him and that he always tried to make others happy at his expense. And I can understand him because putting himself first and doing what he wants- especially in recent times, have come with consequences. He is constantly negotiating, straddling the line and trying to keep the balance- which is kind of a libra curse so I can't be mad at that really. But it sucks in the grand scheme of the LGBTQ agenda.

Whatever people think Jikook are, I think they are the exact opposite of it. It's just a matter of them showing it or living up to their truth I think. I love Jungkook- as a gay woman. I love that he is with JM because I feel they can accomplish a lot together if only JM will allow him to push his boundaries a little bit more and not resist it so much.

I think a lot of people can't believe and accept JK is gay because they are homophobic period or they have a very narrow view on life and gender and sexuality or they have just been bamboozled and they get thrown off by the mainstream hyper masculine image JK presents- which I think also stems from their being used to the stereotypes of gayness rather than gayness itself. They couldn't tell a gay man if he licked balls right in front of their salad.

A lot of what people see as gay is nothing but tropes and stereotypes of gayness. And so when they see a gay man who doesn't fall under those stereotypes they struggle to wrap their heads around it. In my opinion.

It's easier, for instance, for people to think masculine presenting women are queer than for them to wrap their heads around someone like beyonce being a lesbian- It's a loose analogy but sis work with me- I'm tired. Lol. And I say this from experience, between my sister and I, people often think she is the gay one. Lmho. Yet she is the least likely to be gay in my family. My little brother is bisexual if not gay chilee. Lol. We are the only queer ones in the family I think. But people clock him more so than I because he's effeminate. I often pass for a het- which sometimes I feel guilty about but this is not about me. Focus Goldy. [Also edit n delete ma'am]

I think it's the same for people's perception of gay men though. It's easier for people to wrap their heads around gay Jimin than gay Jk on that spectrum because Jimin fits a more traditional stereotype of gayness.

Truth is, anyone can be gay regardless of how they look or how they present as. Me when I look at BTS, JK is the most likely to dip his dick in some guts or try that gay shit at least once and next to him JM is the most likely member. Put those two together and I don't need my gay crystal ball to figure they might be screwing.

I gotta admit, I know some people who don't want to believe JK might be queer because they know the struggles that come with that identity. It could be they themselves are homophobic and have perpetrated violence and aggressions towards gay people- the karma of them loving someone who might be gay can do a number on them. Imagine that. Imagine hating on something only to find out your fave is that thing🙃

It's a myriad of things really but homophobia is always at the root of it.

I think people should stop trying to beat down their brains to accept something as fact that hasn't been confirmed. They should start with the baby steps- which member is the most likely to be gay in bangtan?

If the answer is any member besides Jikook I am beating you with a sledgehammer🤣

I hope this answers your question?

Did someone send me a Jesus loves me message recently? Y'all are too kind. I'm too gay he's gone wipe me on the hot floors of hell🤧

Signed,

GOLDY

[bungoustraypups]

it’s honestly so funny to me when like. terfs and/or radfems try to claim afab trans people are only trans because patriarchy or whatever makes them “hate being feminine/hate their womanhood” like. bro idk how to tell you, not only do i love being feminine as an effeminate gay man (yknow, the thing a lot of gay cis men are also punished under the patriarchy for because the patriarchy simply views all femininity as bad no matter who is doing it, yes, that includes those “xy males” you keep going on and on about who don’t perform masculinity the way the patriarchy demands it be performed), i also do not hate “my” womanhood because it never existed? i can’t hate being a woman if i never was one and am not one???

even when i thought i was cis that was literally only because i didn’t know there was any other way to identify like. when i thought i was straight, i wasn’t doing it because i really was, it was because firstly i hadn’t realized even yet i was a non-binary man and very much not a woman (in fact i at first thought i was a lesbian! turns out i wasn’t attracted to the women, it was actually specifically masculinity in those women, not even the women themselves), and secondly because i simply hadn’t heard the other terms yet! it wasn’t even that my family wasn’t accepting i just didn’t know any other words because uh yknow that’s. how life works. you don’t know things, and then you learn them, and now you know them! wow! K-12 educations system basics summed up in a single sentence!

i wasn’t brainwashed or convinced by some nonexistant transgender genderist cult or whatever buzzword terfs and/or radfems are using for today’s news cycle. i literally had not met a single trans person in my life when i started identifying as trans! not in real life and not online either! it was a cis person actually who told me, upon hearing what i was feeling and had been feeling for as long as i could remember, that “hey you might wanna look up transgender resources” and i did it on my own!

oh, and guess what? at no point did me being trans, on its own, cause me suffering. i was dysphoric at one point because i had pre menstrual dysphoric disorder, which can affect cis women as well as anyone who is not a cis woman who also menstruates and has that disorder, but once i got the right combination of meds and such, my dysphoria lessened and eventually disappeared, and i don’t have it anymore. (i was on birth control for several years of the hormonal type but i’m not anymore, but even now i still don’t have PMDD symptoms and haven’t in like seven or eight years at least, my periods are also not as bad, but i’m also on like different meds in general from then so maybe some of it is that too idk really but i just don’t have it anymore)

i don’t want to “mutilate” myself or anything, i literally don’t want any surgery at all lmao. aside from general fear of surgery, i like my boobs, they’re fine and not that big a deal and honestly fun to play with too, i don’t want to “chop them off” or w/e, i don’t want a penis, i like the vagina i have, it works just fine and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it lmao, and a penis doesn’t make me any more of a man than your vagina makes you a woman (that is to say, penises don’t make men men and vaginas don’t make women women, no matter what your middle school biology textbook told you). all i really want is testosterone to achieve like... the standard of passing i wanna have, so that if i meet someone new, they won’t automatically assume i’m a woman without asking me and misgender me, which does actually bother me, because it’s disrespectful, not because of anything else. i don’t care about like, forcing anyone to accept me, idgaf if you accept me! you can use my name and correct pronouns without giving a single damn shit about me! it’s about basic human decency and respect and treating each other like human beings because that’s what we are unless yall wanna start claiming trans people aren’t human beings now which. man if you do that i can’t help you anymore LMAO so

[soartfullydone]

No. 4 - TRUST FALL “Do you trust me?” | taken hostage | pushed You/Bastion requested by @zacksfairest

Thank you for giving me an excuse to write more Bastion things. I don’t know if this is good, but here I go, fellas!

*

“After all this time, don’t you trust me, darling?”

Melody should have smiled at Bastion Winalils and answered, “No.” Instead, she’d asked questions, allowing her damned curiosity to take her by the hand and pull her into one of the Jet’s schemes.

This one, she thought, is the one I’ll have to kill him for.

Large, rough hands gripped her arms on both sides. Her bare feet skidded uselessly across the uneven floors as she was half-carried, half-dragged to who-knows-where. A burlap bag covered her head, and they had taken so many turns to get here. At last, she heard a door open. One of the men removed the bag, and the other pushed her forcefully into the room before she could get her bearings. She tripped and fell onto her side.

Melody’s arms and legs weren’t bound, so she scrambled to her feet, wanting to curse at them so filthily their own mothers would shrivel up and die to avoid the words. A pitiful sniffling sound beat her to it. She wasn’t alone in the room.

Other women were crammed into the space with her, each of them youthful, some more than others. Most of them had pure white hair of varying lengths. Plats. Melody spotted a few Silvers and Golds, even a Jet, though the latter’s skin was darker than what was typical of her caste. No Coppers. And, of course, Melody was the only one here who could pass as a Bronze except, unlike the rest of the women here, she was no Ald.

Half the women watched her just as warily as she watched them. The rest were either staring unseeingly at the floor, sobbing into their hands, or trying to not exist.

The oldest profession, Melody grimly reflected. So far, it looks the same here as it does in Sharteshane.

Before any of them could console each other, forge alliances, or put her own survival first, a side door opened, and an olive-skinned man with black hair and blue eyes entered. His clothes were modest, pressed, and shiny in a way only expensive fabrics were. His mouth was shaped in a permanent frown, and he looked both disinterested and unimpressed with the collection of women—some of whom were barely dressed or were completely nude—in the room.

“Quit your sniveling,” he spoke in a reedy tenor. “Save it for the customers. Some of them like to feel useful. Or cruel.” He snapped his fingers. “Aye, we don’t have all day. Line up.”

The women did as they were told. With the room being small for ten women plus the Jet and his two thugs, two lines were formed. Melody’s body was shaking, but she clenched her jaw and fell in line with the others in the back. She would endure inspection with the rest of them.

The Jet wasn’t the one who was actively performing the inspections. Instead, he directed one of his thugs—also Jets—to manhandle the women for him with lazy commands or the careless wave of a paper fan. He’d be considered hopelessly effeminate in Sharteshane and would pay for it in her streets. Here, he was what Melody viewed as the Foreman, the man in charge, the word of god.

He was also the target.

“If the back tooth’s rotted, it hardly matters,” Foreman was saying, not even looking at the Plat woman he was disparaging. “She won’t be doing much smiling, I expect.”

The worst part of the inspection was the purity test. Melody hadn’t anticipated it, and it happened to the first woman before Melody realized what she was watching. Before she could look away. The Plat gasped as the thug reached under her dress, then flinched hard with a broken, pained whimper as he drove his fingers inside her.

Melody didn’t have to see it happen to know that’s what the Plat endured. Every whorehouse conducted their affairs differently, but there were commonalities. A quality of standards one had to follow if one wanted to stay competitive. And here was Alderode, competing with Sharteshane and competing well. Just because the Alds hid all the dirty business in back rooms didn’t make them any less filthy.

The Plat woman “passed.” In Melody’s mind, it meant she’d failed. It meant her virginity would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Numbly, she could hear Foreman making those very arrangements as another thug led the woman from the room. 

I did not sign up for this, Bastion!

Tough, she could almost hear him saying. They have to endure it. Why shouldn’t you?

She fought the urge to run as woman after woman was inspected and taken from the room, some for the bidding, others to start whoring immediately. Belatedly, it dawned on her that she would be the last.

Melody preoccupied herself with thinking how she could fight back. The walls of the room had plenty of Solidity, which, if taken, would likely result in the khert backfiring on her and killing her. If she wanted to Core Leech anything, it would be simpler to remove the Density from the Alds’ arm bones or something, but she didn’t want to resort to that. She had some pride as a wright, and besides, she didn’t know if she could manage all three men at once. Maybe… Maybe she could take the Edge aspect from Foreman’s belt knife and… Bah! It’d be easier to steal the damn thing. She’d get more uses out of it, too.  

Pymary wasn’t the answer to everything.

The folded tip of Foreman’s fan swatted her under her chin. Her notable blue eyes found his bored ones, though a degree of intrigue slightly warmed them. 

“Thought you were bringing me another semon girl,” Foreman remarked to his thugs. “This one’s missing quite a lot of shit on her.”  

“We like variety where I’m from,” Melody replied in accented Tainish. “Though we have our share of seamen, to be sure.” 

Foreman snatched back the fan, snapping it open with a flick of his wrist. “My, my, a Sharte! You’re an awfully long way from home.” His tone lifted slightly on the end: a question.

“Got a tip,” said a thug. “Found her near one of our storehouses.” 

“And you thought to bring her here?” Foreman sighed. He waved his fan across his face so vigorously that Melody could feel the burst of cool air on her face along with the roasted meat he’d eaten for lunch. Abruptly, he stopped, coming to a decision. “Put her with the exotics then. It’s not like she’ll last any longer than the others.”

Before Foreman was even finished speaking, a thug forced open Melody’s mouth with a bruising grip on her jaw. Other hands roamed her body, and her pulse spiked. She felt murderous, and she tried to fight the feeling down, but then one of the men started hiking up her dress—

“Ach, no need for that!” Foreman snapped, turning back halfway from his withdrawal of the room. “The last thing we need is to advertise we’re putting an illegal’s cunny on the market. Besides, you know Sharteshane. Her own father’s likely had her first. Now, let’s go.”

The moment the thugs reluctantly took their hands off her, Melody lunged forward. 

“Please!” she cried as she fell against Foreman, her hands lost in the front of his robes until she found his inner lapels to cling to. Almost kneeling, she peered up at him, tears running unhindered down her cheeks. She barely recognized herself as she fell into more desperate supplications. “Please, don’t do this! I’m not supposed to be here. Let me g—”

Foreman backhanded her. The force of the blow ripped her hands free from him, and she dropped to her knees, catching herself on her palms. Quickly, she balled her hands into fists, clenching one around the small cylinder she now held in her right hand.

“Whores!” Foreman declared, slapping his closed fan against his palm. “They’re the same everywhere.” He sneered and for once spoke directly to her. “You won’t say one word to the customers. You’ll be silent and demure, like a proper Aldish woman. If I hear even a hint of speculation from anyone that you’re from Sharteshane, I’ll cut out your tongue and hand you over to the authorities. Understand, lass?”

Melody didn’t respond. She wasn’t expected to. She was only to obey.

Foreman had already moved on. “Get her in someone’s bed now before she bruises. When it shows, we can charge him extra for it.”

Without another word, the thugs grabbed her by the arms and hauled her away.

*

Maybe it was the same throughout Alderode, or maybe it was this brothel in particular, but there were no pimps forcing their whores to roam the streets, finding customers and servicing them where they could. Instead, they were positioned in various rooms, often grouped by caste or—in Melody’s case—exotics when they possessed traits that were rarer or “off” within their respective caste. There was a Gold who had fair, blond hair but golden eyes rather than the typical green. Another, that earlier Jet she’d spotted with the warm, brown skin. As for Melody, she didn’t have the brown eyes and light-brown skin a Bronze was expected to have. She fit right in.

All the customers, however, were Jet men, and they roamed from room to room, glasses of wine in hand, searching for the choicest ware to take to bed in a room upstairs. 

Every time she felt someone’s eyes on her, lingering too long, her skin crawled. She fought to control her breathing as she tried to figure a way out, but she was unarmed, and there were so many people. Even being a wright didn’t give her much of an advantage. Unlike Sharteshane, Alderode was full of them. Being a woman with experience in spellery wouldn’t surprise them for long; in fact, it may inspire many of them to kill her faster, lest any of the other women decide to get ideas.

It was Foreman who wound up approaching her. The cylinder burned in her hand, but he didn’t demand it back. Merely said, “Come with me,” from behind his fan. She couldn’t get a read on him at all.

She followed him upstairs, her stomach dropping as he took her to a room. The door swung open, and she saw that it wasn’t the grandest in the place by any means, but the furnishings looked cleaned and dusted.

However, the bed was disturbed, as it was also occupied. A Plat woman was there, her dress falling off her arms as her mouth was ravished by a Jet man with chin-length black hair. He was bare-chested with his black pants unfastened. Foreman clicked his tongue, and Bastion Winalils opened his dark eyes. They fell on Melody standing in the doorway, and she could swear his smile was aimed at her even though the Plat was keeping his mouth well-occupied.

“This will be going on your tab, I trust you know,” Foreman pronounced and pushed Melody forward. “Here’s the one you requested. The Plat can stay if you prefer.”

“Ah!” Bastion replied once he came up for air. “If I only had the coin. You can go, darling,” he directed to the Plat woman fondly.

“You know where to find me,” she flirted back.

Melody, disgusted, shifted aside when the Plat woman left the room. Bastion half-followed her out, his languid gait taking him as far as the new prostitute he was paying for, Melody herself. Shadows still clung beneath his eyes, which inspected her with polite interest. Her dress was scandalously short—for Alderode, at least—showing off her legs. Even though they were acting like they were strangers, heat entered his eyes, and Melody reminded herself that this, too, was an act for their audience of one. She ignored the urge to pull down the dress’s hem.

“And does she meet with your approval, my lord?” asked Foreman. “You don’t usually favor semon women.”   

“You won’t mind, then, if I double-check.”

It was all the warning Melody had. Bastion took her face in both his hands and brought her mouth to his.

She went completely rigid, the edges of the cylinder biting into her right hand as she clenched both fists. But their audience was still here. Bastion’s lips moved against hers, and she opened her mouth, starting to kiss him back. That simple movement seemed to change everything. Bastion moaned, and his kiss turned rough, consuming. Dimly, Melody heard Foreman mutter something and close the door, leaving them alone, but it didn’t seem to matter. 

Bastion’s tongue stroked hers, and she was caught up in the taste of him. The sweet smoke from his pipe. The bitter drink he consumed. The notes were there but faint, saturated by something sharp like mint. 

Or maybe like blood. In a rush, Melody came back to herself and bit him.

“Ach!” Bastion drew back, a hand covering his mouth. “How easily I forget. My favorite Sharte is an Epheby, waiting to strike.”

“You’re a bastard!” This time, she did strike. Her knuckles clocked him under his chin, him moving to avoid taking a full punch to the face like she planned. He seized her wrist in a vise-like grip and brought two fingers to the side of her neck. It was enough to make her stop in her tracks.

“Calm down,” Bastion warned. The faint red light of spellery glowing from his fingers reached his eyes, granting them a deadly coldness. “Or I’ll sever your artery and leave here without you.”

“If you were going to do that, doctor, you would have done it. Don’t act like you’re here just for me.”

“That’s exactly why I bothered coming to this shithole, you ungrateful wretch.”    

Melody huffed a breath of disbelief and tore herself away from him. Suddenly fatigued, she scrubbed her face and shoved past him toward the bed.

“I warned you this would be dangerous. You were all assurances, as I recall.” He was quiet while Melody stripped the bed of its sheets. “What hap—”

“Like you care. Here.” She threw the cylinder at him, which he managed to snatch out of the air. “This is what you really wanted, right? So take it, and leave me alone.” 

Melody occupied herself with her newest project while Bastion examined the cylinder. Alderode was freezing outside. She would need coverings when she escaped. She began measuring the sheets with her hands, tearing them as she went. 

Bastion came near her, sitting on the bed to watch her work. “I’ll owe you a hell of a favor for this. I’ve been after his seal for years.”

It was like a peace offering or the closest she might ever hear to an apology coming from him. Melody almost asked why he wanted some brothel-keeper’s seal, but she was done with being curious today. “You could have gotten it yourself. It wasn’t hard. It didn’t demand”—she gestured down at herself—”this.”

“Believe me, I’ve tried, but that man won’t let anyone get too close to him. He possesses a touch aversion, you see.”

“I noticed.” Her face still stung from where Foreman had hit her. She felt Bastion’s gaze find that very spot before sliding away. Melody tore at the sheet just to destroy something.

The silence between them grew awkward. After all, they were in a room inside a whorehouse, the sounds of fucking drifting to them through the walls. It would’ve been funny if Melody didn’t feel so fragile. If she couldn’t still feel and taste Bastion whenever she licked her lips, finding she wasn’t as turned off from it as she thought she would be. Not even after he threatened her.

“Won’t it be suspicious, you being here when he finds it missing?” she started, mentally kicking herself for being the first to speak, but her thoughts were becoming too dangerous with which to keep company. 

“Not to worry.” He tossed the seal up in the air and caught it. “Shithole comment aside, this is only my fourth favorite brothel.”

She didn’t laugh. “Right, and you usually just bring your favorites home with you.” Melody glared side-long at him. “I should’ve timed it better. Made you squirm by having to explain to all the vibrant prostitutes that you can’t get it up without a six-titted bird’s permission.”

“Aye, well, you almost had your wish.” Bastion shot a vexed scowl southward. “The Lady is being particularly stingy tonight.”

“Why did you even come, then?”

“Like I said, I could hardly leave it all up to you, darling. I’m painfully aware you have no idea how to whore.”

It always came back to this with the two of them. No matter how much Melody got on Bastion’s nerves or how much he made her want to wring his neck, they always ended back at somewhere level. Easily teasing or mouthing off at the other. Tonight, it was particularly unsettling, and she didn’t know where to place the blame.

Off balance, Melody blurted out, “So are those real pants or a glamour?”

He smiled a beguiling smile. “Would you like to find out?”

“Why bother,” she taunted, “if you can’t do anything about it?”

“Aye, but that’s the perplexing thing.” Bastion stood and leaned over her with predatory keenness. “I felt something when I kissed you. A stirring. It’s happened before, when I’ve looked at you,” he admitted easily, as if it meant and cost him nothing. “But tittybird seems to have no objections if it’s you stoking my desire tonight, and you liked it, didn’t you, my lips on yours.” He placed the tip of his finger on the sheet stretched between her hands. “Don’t I tempt you, even a little? Don’t you want to know what it feels like to be wanted?”  

“I want…” began Melody, her gaze caught on his smiling mouth so close to hers. 

When she processed his final words, it felt like being buried under six feet of Aldish snow. Tonight, she had felt what it was like for men to want her. For them to put her hands on her without her being able to do anything about it. For them to assess her like she was no better than a Plod used for cheap labor or a saddlehound to keep as a favored pet. She’d had enough.

Firmly, she said, “I want to leave. I want to—” She almost said, go home, but Sharteshane was miles and miles away, and the thought of it didn’t stir up much warmth. In truth, she didn’t have a home.

The smile slid from Bastion’s face. He withdrew, giving her blessed space. Shadows wreathed around him until, suddenly, he appeared to be wearing a red, fur-lined winter cloak. 

“Let’s go then,” he said briskly. “We’ll walk a few streets, you playing the part of a proper escort. After that, you’re on your own getting back to the safehouse. I have somewhere to be.”

She expected as much, so why was part of her so disappointed? “Right,” she agreed, lifting the torn sheet so she could wrap it around her. Bastion stopped her with a hand over hers.

“I’ve a better idea,” he offered. “Let’s steal you a cloak and some boots on the way out.”

“And some pants?” she said hopefully.

“Madam Sharte,” Bastion replied, waving a hand to the brothel at large. “Take your pick.”

[bohemiangothwitch]

Gender Bias in Trauma Driven Characters

     So as with most things I find I greatly enjoy, I’m a bit late to the party when it comes to finding ABC’s Stumpton. I ran across it yesterday on Hulu and started it up cause I had nothing better to do. 24 hours later I am deeply saddened to discover there isn’t more to watch.

     For those unfamiliar with the show, Colbie Smlders plays Portland, OR born and raised Dex Parios, a former Marine Intelligence officer turned PI. A mostly funtinal alcoholic with PTSD from her time in Afghanistan and a precious loss suffered there she’s doing her best to take care of herself and her brother Ansel, a 21 year old man with Down Syndrome who doesn’t let that stop him from being the most well adjusted and put together character in the entire series.

     If you watch Stumptown for no other reason then watch it for Ansel, because his character is a gods damn delight and it is beautifully refreshing to see a mentally disabled character who not only avoids getting potrayed as a constant victim or object of pity, but absolutely thrives. Cole Sibus is amazing to watch, steals every scene he’s in, and I really hope to see more of him in the future.

     I enjoyed the show so much I was suprised to see comments on the show, that while overall favorable, considered Dex’s character to be a bunch of basic cliches and that she felt unfleshed out or lacking character growth. It made me think of similar characters who are also largely trauma driven and how their judged and sense a bit of a gender bias.

     For example I love NCIS, I tune in every episode and I eat up the drama and I revel in watching Gibbs tear up the screen and fight for what’s right. However 18 seasons in Gibbs is by and large still the same trauma driven character he has always been and has evolved minimally beyond that. And while there are differences in the characters obviously, we see Gibbs as largely universally beloved and lauded as the stoic, manly man of justice he is, never demanding more from him or his cliches.

     We never ask him or other characters like him to change into well adjusted, happy men with perfect lives and no real problems because we know that doing this will ruin these characters and our connection to them. So why do we somehow expect this evolution in the same manner of trauma driven characters when they identify as female? What makes Gibbs perfect the way he is while Dex needs to get over her shit? How is Klaus Hargreeves the delightfully wonderful mess while Vanya Hargeeves needs to move past her trauma and get over herself?

      Are we incapable of handling flawed women with the same reverence we seem to flawed men? Are we less sympathtic to their curcumstances? Is it somehow more unbelievable for a women to not have her shit together than a man? I don’t know. But I can’t deny that women seem often presented as these near mythic creatures with their lives neatly compartmentalized and organized, all their little boxes labled and put away properly and when they aren’t, they’re cautionary tales, objects of scorn or laughter, or uplifting stories of getting to that majestical all figured out place.

     Meanwhile the opposite seems true of men. The bigger the mess and the burdens they carry with them, the manlier and more desirable they seem to be. The men with their lives in order are often played off as effeminate, or psychotic, or somehow otherwise undesirable while we’re encouraged to lust after the roguish bad boy we need to fix. It’s a dangerous double standard, one I personally hope dies a quick and painful death.

[periakman]

Worldbuilding June 2020

18. What is clothing and fashion like in your world? Fun fact, I actually recently commissioned a fashion model for this world. It’s not finished yet, but here is the neat rough draft for it:

Fashion, aesthetic wise, is also inspired by the Victorian era, with a few changes. Corsetry does not exist, nor does the ideal figure we see with a lot of victorian outfits, in fact the shape we might see is more similar to some medieval era fashion, where the pregnant figure was more emphasized. Things like bustles and crinolines do exist, but not to the extreme extents we would see. In a way this is because one major difference in the real Victorian era and this world, is who is allowed to “peacock” and who is not. Most women are not expected to stand out, even amongst the aristocrats, unless they are the lighthouse core. Towers and chatelaines are expected to wear pale, dull, muted, complimentary colors. Lighthouses can be a bit more vibrant, but even then there’s a fine line with how “much” would be accepted.  Now, that isn’t to say showing off doesn’t happen, just that when it does, it’s not based on the figure of the body. There is a current trend with the aristocrats to wear outfits with lights in them, which is less of a way to emphasize themselves, but their wealth. This is absolutely an arbitrary point and generates plenty of gossip on its own. As another example, jewelry/adornments are considered showing off wealth, not one’s self... until it’s not, especially for the chatelaine core.  Men are expected to dress fashionably, and often in monochromatic, vibrant colors, or with one major color and minimal other colors for the accent. The gaslamp core is allowed to dress down, which often means they just don’t wear the hat. Some do however where glasses or monocles, solely for the fashion. This is the only noble core that can consistently get away with wearing glasses without it being seen as effeminate, a sign of poverty, a sign of unhealthy ruminations, or alternatively, provocatively sexual. Mages are a bit unique, as they will often have a strong duochromatic look (black and white, especially), often padded with utility. All of them carry a sling for their spellbook, even those who don’t actually use spellbooks. Initially, as a fun little spoiler that might have been obvious from some of the fight scenes in the story, the spell books don’t need to be carried. They just appear and disappear as needed, so this is often solely for the threat, or is in fact just a fake, spellbook prop, even by those who have one. As mentioned throughout, accessories can play a huge part in fashion. They can indicate the specifics of what you do with your life, thus signalling to others how enlightened and devoted you are, or can be a sign of being provocative or weak willed. To break it down, it’s good to remember that men and women are subjected to wildly different, contradictory standards, and so are each core. Men as mentioned before are shamed for multitasking or spreading themselves too thin, and thus anything outside their interest will be mocked, depending on their profession and core. Women are allowed to do most things, so long as they never do anything Too much. A woman could be taught how to fence and this would be fine and good, so long as she never focused Too much time on fencing, as an example. However,  they must still focus on something, such as making a family. Therefore accessories on a woman are subjected to a double standard of meaning they might appear to be too focused on any such topic. Or in some cases, spreading themselves too thin. There is at least one lesson out there that talks about a chatelaine who kept carrying a book around, and ended up losing her mind and had to go through an extensive cleansing ritual as a result. And of course, fashion is always changing. For example, in Bricketfriar, we learn that some of the younger nobles are interested in creating a layering effect, and will have their dress be slightly shorter than their understated crinoline, so both can be seen. Whether this is a long lasting fashion trend or merely the gimmick of the summer, who knows. The working class cannot afford vibrant dyes or specific outfits, and thus they work with what they have. Some of the color and style concepts seen in the aristocrats do bleed down to the working class, but they are often much more utilitarian. Some accessories do carry weight and meaning, but not to the same extent. Clothes are often made to last, and heavily reused, especially in places like Bricketfriar where information from the older generations can vanish overnight. Additionally, the working class will often have clothes that work more for the climate. The aristocrats will take existing fashions and slowly adapt them to the areas they live in, whereas the working class often starts from the climate and works up. In some places, the existing clothes and fashion are older than the towns themselves, due to, as previously mentioned, areas being burned down and reconstructed to fit the Kesterline aesthetic.

[rifcringes]

Yanno not to start up a straight man defense squad because asdfhfh NO but it does kind of bother me a bit when i see people in the queer eye tag talking about "omg these dudes are GROSS THE BAR IS SO LOW HAHA IM GONNA STEAL THESE GUYS WIVES AND GFS"

Like I don't mind the jokes, I make them myself all the time about straight dudes, but like....idk an underdiscussed element of toxic masculinity is how it leaves so many dudes without an understanding of how to take care of themselves. This is for a variety of reasons: self care being seen as effeminate and therefore bad. Parents just not thinking about it. Or, especially for the older generation, an expectation that you'll marry young and then your wives will take care of it for you.

And to be clear, none of these reasons are like, good, most of them are pretty intrinsically tied to a shitty division of labor along gender lines. But like, no one comes out of the womb knowing how to moisturize or pick the right shampoo or make vegan smoothies. Are they skills you can pick up along the way? For sure! But like, none of us are immune to societal conditioning, and I think all of us have areas where we could easily know better and just....don't.

The standards are still depressingly low for straight men, don't get me wrong, but a. That's not really the fault of individual straight dudes, it's more a problem with how culture as a whole treats masculinity and heterosexuality and b.....for the most part the dudes on Queer Eye are on the show for the explicit reason of getting better. They've all agreed to be on this show because they know there's a problem, that the way they are is hurting them and their loved ones, and they want to learn how to do better. It would've been great if some of them had decided to learn that earlier, yeah, but I don't see what the benefit is in mocking someone for not knowing.

There's also a class element in all of this that I think is really underdiscussed. Most of the Heroes are in a lower economic bracket and/or grew up poor or in a general shitty living space. Poverty plays a role in how you take care of yourself. Stuff like going to the salon, spending money on a bunch of different creams, or even experimenting with dishes that you might end up hating and thus have to Chuck...even if you legitimately can afford it the instinct is to not go for it unless you need it. Self-care is a habit like any other, you have to train yourself to make it a part of your day. And when poverty combines with societal masculinity and heterosexuality, it becomes a very real mindset of "if I don't need it, and no one expects it of me, then what the hell am I wasting money on that for when I could be getting more pressing needs?"

There's a reason a lot of reality shows (whether about clutter or weight loss) end up being poverty tourism. If you're poor and grew up poor, and you're forced to work long hours just to make ends meet, it's really tempting to just fall back on the path of least resistance because that's all you have time for. After a ten hour shift McDonald's is a lot more appealing than staying on my feet to cook and when I have to wake up at 4 am for my dead end job it's a lot easier to just take the extra few minutes of sleep than spend time and money on my face.

This is where I'll give the Fab Five a lot of credit for meeting their Heroes where they reasonably can be. Even if the week they have them ends up being a spa week for the Hero you can see them offering affordable solutions that will be more practical in day to day life. I know Antoni catches a lot of flack for giving out such basic recipes (like, hot dogs with a little extra or simple guac) but for a lot of these guys, something simple that they know they'll actually eat is a really useful thing to know how to cook as opposed to something fancy they might never finish or make again.

And thats a problem with a lot of Queer Eye fans. It's a lot easier to crack wise about gross straight guys than to look at the structural and sociological reasons why a lot of these guys might be having a hard time and giving them credit for at least trying to get better.

Again to make this clear I'm not saying "don't make jokes about straight men, guys :( your heterophobia is showing". I have made and will continue to make jokes about straight guys who show up to formal events in basketball shorts while their girlfriends wear a gown. Hetorosexuality and masculinity definitely play a role in all this and I'm not arguing otherwise. But I think if we wanna build a world where that shit happens less, it starts with acknowledging how patriarchy and capitalism can fail men, and how we work to rehabilitate it culturally

[dukeofriven]

Let Boys Love Girl Things

For a deeply depressed, angry, and vitriolic bisexual 20-something who stumbled out of a toxic 2-year intensive college program confused as fuck about his gender and hurting everyone around him, it is with no exaggeration that I say My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic’s low-key stakes, warmth, humour, kindness, and utter lack of cynical irony was my first step on the road not only to recovery but coming even sort of close to having an accord with my identity. So I quite frankly I am exhausted that I have spent nine years being judged on the behaviour of a fandom group from 4chan. Nine years ago there was a gross perpetuation of toxic masculinity where men were ridiculed en-masse for liking a “girl’s show,” a campaign of derision that only intensified as the worst elements of 4chan gave everyone the evidence they seemed to want to justify their snap-judgement that boys liking girls shows was fundamentally weird, gross, and worthy of censure. We like to clap ourselves on the back for how woke we are now. There’s no discourse that says it is “skeevy” that men enjoy She-Ra, and petulant MRAs on Reddit getting upset about the show’s new ‘feminist’ agenda is considered to be representative of nothing other than petulant MRAs on Reddit, not the She-Ra fandom as a whole. Steven Universe is triumphed everywhere as a victory for better masculinity - without anyone ever noting that Steven would love every single moment of My Little Pony: FiM. He’d cry at the wedding, and he’d weep at the destruction of the library, and he’d think the Storm King was an effective villain while Connie rolled her eyes and tried and failed to point-out the weak characterization. Steven would cheer and cry every time a villain was redeemed through the power of love and friendship. Because he’s Steven, and he loves schmaltz, and it’s okay for a boy to like schmaltz. If we truly believe that, as we say we do, it’s time let the habit of shaming boys who liked a cartoon show go. It’s been a decade. Yes: MLP: FiM had a disgusting contingent of its fandom. You know what other franchise has that problem? A little film series you might have heard of called Star Wars. A contingent of Star Wars fandom was so racist it drove actors of colour off of twitter because it piled hate upon them. It was so misogynistic that somebody out there recut the entirety of The Last Jedi so that men save the day and all the women get reduced to bit parts. And yet if I see a Star Wars avatar my first assumption generally isn’t “oh you like Star Wars, so you must therefore be a misogynistic racist.” Because statistically speaking, you aren’t - just like, statistically speaking, the men who liked My Little Pony weren’t 4chan users. Not that most people bothered to find that out, because - shockingly - the worst elements had loud voices and got all the press, and the standard we applied to them was so entrenched in patriarchy that none of us wanted to accept that men could like the girls show without it being some gross violation of the proper order. I’m tired of that. The show’s been on nine years - long enough that kids who grew up watching it are old enough to start entering “The Discourse Space,” and what kind of example do we want to set for them that a show that might have meant so much to them growing up is given a defacto label of deviancy? ”Adult males like this show about the little kiddie ponies - that’s so creepy.” There’s a point I want to make here that I think really needs to be said so I am going to make it large

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a show for children; it is not a show about children.

What do I mean by this? Adventure Time is the story of Finn, a 12-year-old. Steven Universe is a show about Steven Universe, a 12-year-old. Ok K.O. is a show about K.O. a 6-11 year-old. Avatar: The Last Airbender is about a group of kids aged 11-14. She-Ra is a show about Adora who is… 16-ish? 17? And so on.

MLP:FiM is a show about 20-somethings. It’s a show about a grad student, a small business owner, a baker, a farmer, an environmental technician, a… trust fund baby?*... and, later, a former dictator. Yes, there are some kid characters, but the primary cast are all young adults who’ve reached adulthood and found themselves having to learn over and over again all sorts of shit they really ought to have known by now but don’t. It is, in short, a story about Millennials: an entire generation who reached adulthood not knowing what that meant or how to cope. Every time you laugh at the characters and go “how do they not know this [obvious thing that is obvious to adults]” you do so while watching a children’s cartoon rather than paying your taxes because you’re still not sure how to do that properly and are just low-key freaking out about it and hoping the problem goes away on its own. I speak from experience. The list in endless: we might ridicule the ponies ignorance at social graces, but i’ve been on this hellsite long enough that I’m pretty sure most of you are social-anxious neurotics who cock-up just as often and just as spectacularly as any pony on the show.

I’ve grown up in-sync with these characters. I’ve seen them go from floundering at 20 to sorta getting their act together and coming to grips with adult life as they reach 30. I’ve seen them become successful, get new jobs, start new careers. There have been episodes about how to deal with parents who embarrass you, how to get your parents to understand that you’re an adult now and want to be treated that way. There str stories about how to handle deadbeat older brothers who won’t stop mooching off your emotional labour, and how to mourn parents who’ve died. There are also stories about the byzantine nature of school regulation. (If next season is all about Twilight Sparkle reforming the Equestrian tax code it will be entirely in keeping with the adult-life-trend the show has been on for a while.)

My point with all this is that the “liking the kid’s show” narrative is disingenuous in the way it frames fans as creepy. To get tu quoque about it all I could raise my hand and point at all you adults gushing about all these kid protagonists in your favourite cartoon shows and go “Isn’t that CREEPY and GROSS you DEVIANTS” and on and on and on.

But I won’t.

Because it was never really about that, was it? It’s never been about that.

It was, at first, about what it was and wasn’t okay for boys - for men - to like. As a kid who’d been mercilessly bullied for being even the tiniest bit effeminate, openly embracing the fact that I liked this show about the colourful cartoon ponies felt like painting a target on my back. As for the boys younger than me - the boys still in high school in 2010 and 2011 who openly embraced this show? Braver than any US marine. When this all started it was about policing what was ‘appropriate’ for boys - nobody gave the adult Transformers fandom the same kind of shit, I assure you. It was about patriarchy - and how unwilling we all were to let go of it, no matter how progressive we told ourselves we were. Just like any moral panic, it developed a far more disturbing tone of disapprobation because if a handful of fans on 4chan were creepy than surely all the fandom was creepy. I’ve had plenty of fun mail in my inbox as people with cartoon avatars told me my opinion was invalid because I had an avatar from a different cartoon show. If I had an MP avatar that made me a “brony,” which made me a creepy MRA edgelord. Never mind that I don’t even use the term, and haven’t since… well, since the grossest elements of 4chan got it tattooed on their phalluses and trumpeted it to the heavens as the calling card of their misogyny.

There was a moment, I think, back in the halcyon days of 2010 and 2011 where we could have taken this another way. Where, socially, the rise of boys watching ‘the girl’s show’ was treated as a breakthrough, as a paradigm shift, as something to be celebrated and nurtured instead of something to revile like an anti-homosexual PSA from the 1950s. “Can’t let the adult men near that children’s show, who knows what might happen. They might repeat the trends that all fandoms have done for decades upon decades - the horror!”

We could have been better - but we weren’t. We mocked, and clutched our pearls, and looked appalled, and in doing so we fed the trolls all the ammunition they’d ever need to turn themselves into The Poor Oppressed Babies who just wanted to be left alone to watch their ponies and belittle women in peace. So the gender-questioning bi boy trying to feel good about himself got rounded-up with the usual 4chan suspects because we both enjoyed the same television program.

Patriarchy is not an external force with its boot upon our necks: it is a collaborative social effort, reinforced both consciously and sub-consciously every day. The internet of the early 2010s was a very different place, and the decisions we made then still live with us today. If we want to stop the perpetuation of toxic masculinity, we have to ourselves cease to perpetuate it. There’s an entire generation of queer boys and non-binary boys and non-bro cis-boys - the kind who cry and care and give a shit about kindness - who have grown up on Steven Universe and Adventure Time and yes, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. These are boys who deserve to have a better place prepared for them than I had, one that isn’t still littered by the baggage of all the dumb stupid crap from 2010 and 2011.

It’s time to let the ghost of Toxic 4chan Fandoms Past go already, and let this show about cartoon ponies be free to entertain and delight without incurring a moral inquisition. Life is so bad right now, the news is so dire. Curl up with My Little pony: Friendship is Magic and let all its goodness, and kindness, and laughter, and caring carry you away and remind you that we can still tell stories about worlds in which those virtues are treasured. Let the show stand on its actual merits, and not the cultural lodestones of long-gone reprobates. And stop granting the phantoms of 4chan the power to say anything meaningful in 2019.

_________________ *Serious question: what does Fluttershy do for a living? Like, as her job? For most of the series? She’s the only one who doesn’t have a meaningful career, and after meeting her enabling parents you just know she’s been living off pre-existing savings for years (she’s thrifty like that).

[Note: this post was originally posted in this thread. It has since been re-edited and slightly modified.]

[anissapierce]

this is apropos of nothing uve posted, i was just blog hopping and needed to share the utter hilarity of ppl trying to redefine the term QB so it applied to canon-gay they're not interested in: a show's gay ship isn't the central focus? QB. a show's gay rep is 'easy'? QB. a trashy show has gay rep? Omg don't you know that's WORSE than no rep at all?? QB. and the kicker? they're all the same st*cky/d*stiel ilk(with the occasional-

- h*nnigram bc that's Proper gay-rep) like it's painfully obvs they want to make themselves Look Better for shipping Basic white m/m, so they throw around words and terms to de-legitimize the rep we're seeing more of bc they're stuck in m/m 'subtext' fandom and instead of moving forwards: tear down out of bitterness instead(plus i just generally disagree with the notion that all gay-stories have to be Good, fuck that we can have trash-garbage fun too, it's Equality)-

- it's just funny to see these ppl writing long-winded posts about why x-Clearly Straight media is actually somehow some Perfect bastion of queerness bc they can't admit they've been kidding themselves for 10+ years, it's both funny and really, really sad. oh and s*n/m*u fans mocking other silly media? lmao, yeah like those are anything other than mid-tier trash-fun and in s*n's case: has only gotten worse over the years and is now ur bog-standard soap opera lvl of quality--

for me QB is a term that fandom in general has watered down too much and gets applied to any m/m ship that gets popular but isn't canon. like no, they're friends and you read too much into it, it IS in fact that simple(and ofc, as i've seen u post, characters/ships that actually would twig fandom's QB!! radar if they were two white guys are never included in these histrionics) but anyway, sorry to descend into ur inbox, i hope ur having a good day or evening :)

_________________________________________

Oh yeah for sure qbait has been watered down ? 110% and this is unrelated to anything I've said tonight but I constantly harangue of the fact tht fans never bring up instances of qbaiting (for humor !) Used in Scrubs,Common Law,Psych,Almost Human, iZombie, Community,Big Bang Theory . Where a man of color (three cases here its south asian men, but most listed here involve black men) is being presented as gay* and the joke is positioning the man as too close to his friend or others assuming their gay or him and his friend emulating a couple. And like occasionally bbt gets brought up as a footnote for those articles but like .. it doesnt deserve academic regur to the subject but it's kind of needed?

And yeah fans deluding them is so fucking true like I complain abt white man worship disease (Google's keyboards next suggested word was 'disease' btw) n thts truly wht it is and also wht causes lesbians to headcanon all these shitty white Canon cishet dudes as like trans women ....bc they feel guilty. When rlly like .... Diversify your pallet. And lol I haven't seen supanastyworld fans do nething bc like entirely different Spheres but the idea of them mocking ne1 is so... And yewh this all just reminds me of ppl praising Neilman bc thts the fandom tht I occasionally bump into now and putting transphobic and homophobic potrayals on like lists of lgbtq rep tht he's contributed to

And i agree w u Abt trashy tv too like I've watched many a websrs bc it had gays of color or just gays n most had subpar quality but that's Fine. Ppl don't appreciate the art of shitty corny trashy gay art nemore.(not to sound like john waters)* (which is different but connected than the trope of the effeminate asian/brown guy where the joke is him not adhering to Western masculinity ideals, bc I could add parks and rec to this along w a bunch of other shows).

[harrynightingales]

i wrote a whole bit on the ~discourse that was immediately banished to my drafts but now i have something else i want to talk about, mainly ~the list~ and the constant question of, if top!joe isn’t inherently problematic, what is the point of collecting and publishing the data?

many people have rightly pointed out that collecting data about who tops and bottoms (the methodology of which was clearly laid out so that readers could assess it for themselves) is simplistic and doesn’t take into account the other concepts we’ve been talking about since almost day 1 - namely, the tendency for joe to be written in a way that feeds into orientalist tropes and stereotypes about MENA men. again, no one on this “side” disagrees with the statement that there is nothing wrong inherently wrong with writing joe topping, or as a dom, or being masculine or violent - that can be done in a way that still treats him with respect and isn’t reductive! 

so then people argue that the top/bottom data is meaningless, and they demand to know whether the conclusion is to “fill the gap” and write bottom!joe. these people are not satisfied with the non yes-or-no answer of “maybe” “not necessarily” or “i don’t know” 

the way i see it is this: the top/bottom data is not conclusive. its not meant to be! the conclusion has never been “more top!joe than top!nicky” --> fandom is racist”. pointing out TRENDS is a way for us to step back, think about thought processes, challenge them in ourselves and in the content we consume in the context of information about harmful stereotypes and tropes that others have kindly provided background on over and over.

an analogy: let’s say we’re looking at data about representation of gay men in TV in a given year. we're going to track how many of those characters fit the trope of being your stereotypical effeminate gay man (think kurt from glee). this is a subjective category but let’s assume we come up with some standardized method to decide. say we find out that 75% of characters fit this trope. is that an inherently bad thing? well, going backwards, a gay man being effeminate is not a bad thing! there are plenty of gay men who fit that category and that is them being authentic and being their best selves, awesome. that being said, it doesn’t reflect all gay men, and there is an unfortunate history of gay men being stereotyped, where that effeminate gay man is also rude, unfaithful, aggressively forward with straight men, etc. once again, the existence of the harmful stereotype doesn’t negate the existence of validity of an effeminate gay man in real life! but we have to consider that in media, these things can very easily get tied up together. so back to our original question: are our findings bad? is this something we have to change? maybe, maybe not! its a starting point for us to look deeper, to look at the quality of the writing, to see if these characters are being written fully-dimensionally, to look at the writers room to see who is reflected there. and even if all those characters are being written wonderfully, the reality is that that one experience of being a gay man is not reflective of the population, and so, without claiming there is something “wrong” with writing effeminate gay men, there may be encouragement for writers to have more variety within their characters.

and to be clear, this is looking at it from one direction. the opposite could be just as harmful! if all our gay men in media are basically carbon copies of the straight men except they happen to kiss dudes, that can also be reductive and not representative of actual gay men. if that is what our findings showed us, that would ALSO spark a conversation for what those trends mean, where they are coming from, and how to move forward productively.

people have said that top!nicky can also be harmful and feed into stereotypes - absolutely! if we did this top/bottom data and found that consistently there was more top!nicky than top!joe, it would start another conversation about trends, where we could critically reflect on the tropes we are seeing in fandom content and if they are feeding into anything hurtful. 

as an aside, this is why the argument of “make a bottom!joe discord! run bottom!joe events!” doesn’t make sense to me. the call to action has never been “write fics in a way that we have a perfect 50/50 split all the time” because that is frankly impossible! i have never identified as a “bottom!joe” or “top!nicky” fan and i think there are very few people who do. from what i have seen, people making similar arguments to mine are interested in joe/nicky as a BALANCED, healthy, loving relationship with an incredibly wide variety of sexual dynamics they could play into to reflect their 900+ year history (i.e. they’re the switchiest switches to ever switch). somehow demanding more top!nicky content is not at all the point.

from the very beginning of this ~discourse, the point has ALWAYS been about being mindful and thoughtful about how fandom content can feed into harmful  stereotypes and tropes, with top and bottom as a shorthand because, unfortunately, those concepts can never be fully separated. my previous long-ass rant hiding in my drafts is specifically related to this idea of “people who prefer seeing content in which joe tops” vs. top!joe only fans. the sparknotes version of that one is that, from my experience reading fic and seeing posts from self-identified “top!joes” and the discord, there is a lot of overlap between that identifier and content that focuses significantly on joe being masculine, aggressive, dominant. again, those traits in and of themselves are not problematic and you can write a joe who is all of those things and not be harmful. but when you reduce his character to only those things and/or simultaneously consistently feminize nicky, overexaggerating their physical differences and arguing until the cows come home that nicky is smaller, weaker, and less physically competent, that’s a problem. that doesn’t even begin to touch the constant power-imbalance fics i see coming from self-identified “top!joe” fans including age difference and slavery-related fic/content. i personally have never been in the discord and never intend to, so i may have a flawed understanding. again, i have a whole other post about this topic specifically but i don’t want to start shit. 

that being said, circling back to the data: when we had these early conversations is july/august, with folks saying the exact same things (being mindful of trends and how top/bottom “preference” can potentially tie into more harmful tropes) the concept of the self-identified top!joe arose, and the discord was created because apparently there was “too much” top!nicky content in response to fandom-wide discussions and the fans who enjoyed consuming content where joe tops needed their own space. on a most basic level, this data shows that that was not the case. if nothing else, it has value to me for that by simply tallying what otherwise is a gut instinct about what kind of content is out there, which the brain can notoriously misrepresent.