#and by extention they won't notice my queerness

[lincnok]

not gonna lie, the eclipse was a masterpiece.

like, yeah, khao give us flirty teenage badboy, but, heck, man. first really nailed the exact feeling of being closeted.

[ditizygirl]

Editblr is a breeding ground for idolatry, ableism, racism and so much more all for a community about putting images together.

I've been here for only a year but I feel like I've seen it all, and the excuses oh my god the excuses. You are all 15-19, you should not have the mental capacity of a 8 year old. Your common sense is non existent and almost all of you guys are so fucking stupid it's pissing me off more than any god can understand. You are old enough to have logical thinking skills, you may have a disorder and it may be a reason but not an excuse.

Alot of you have forgotten the saying "Think Before You Talk" and I've sure as hell done alot of thinking. This is my deep dive into editblr.

Ableism

Typing quirks are a way of personal expression but why do so much of you hate to add plain text. I can understand to extent because plain text hates my head because of how long it can be but I'm not gonna act like a little bitch about it. I'm gonna add my typing quirk or even fonts itself to it.

I'm gonna ask someone to help me, or to do it for me. Stopping making excuses for ableism. Alongside with the typing quirks, your psds are ugly and eyestrainy. Psds also fall under racism because I have no idea why you guys are ignoring the fact some make dark skin characters lighter but in the case of ableism most of them are really bright and makes it hard to see.

Orange and brown? Green and yellow? Blue and brown? Why are you putting colours that can be so much eyesore together? And won't even tag as eyestrain and when someone does ask you only do it for one post.

Romanticization

This one is weird as fuck and I see no one mentioning it. Editblr highkey has a ddlg problem, this "little girl" aesthetic you guys have going on borderlines ddlg alot and its icky. The baby talk typing quirk is disgusting, stop it.

I'm not one to judge how someone copes with their trauma but what I DO judge is how you act when majority says its uncomfortable. Now this section I'm a bit unsure how to phrase it, gotta love dyslexia, but that isn't going to stop me.

There's alot of very uncomfortable romanticization of stalking which I've seen so much of alongside abusive relationships and the justification of these things.

Racism

Really can't escape this one unfortunately. Many of you are like kpop idols, you're too dyslexic towards the difference between appropriation and appreciation. Incase you forgot let me remind you.

You can not gift japanese names. Gifting names is a native practice therefore you can only gift native names. Also I've noticed you weirdos befriending people just to use their cultural names. I can't even say it east asian fetishization because its only Japanese.

Also for the love of God can you guys stop saying nonmem and non women especially when referring to sexualities. It's not hard to simply say "queer attraction to women" and "queer attraction to men".

Coming back to the "gifting" names thing, I think it's interesting how all of you conveniently have a Japanese friend who "gifted" you the name of a cute pink anime girl. Maybe I'll do a post later on how much of a bad liar you guys are.

Closed symbols is also another big problem you all have. No matter how much times you're told you can't use something you always cry "but my friend from xyz culture said it was ok!" One person can't speak for a whole culture. You're nothing but a coloinzer in disguise hiding behind the idea of aesthetic. If you want to know if a symbol is closed just use this site.

Goddess Personas

Yea this one is getting a whole section of its own. Like any people I am uncomfortable with goddess personas, especially being someone with biblical sources. Now the idea that a teenager on the internet is making people call them a goddess is strange isn't it?

In my opinion, they're all annoying, copy and paste, and I think not a lot of people talk about how the really bad ones get. You all love to indulge them, make them think they have power over them. You put them on a pedestal and praise them and get surprised when it all goes to their head?

Stop giving 14 years old power, stop indulging in their habits and letting it go their head. Forcing people to refer to you as their goddess? Their Lord and saviour? Their idol? Someone they must listen to? It creates a power inbalance which always leads to the weirdest of manipulation. Also all the engagekiss copiers are so obvious why would you want to copy the identity of a groomer? It says alot of about yourself if that's what you think is ideal.

Callout Posts

Now, personally, I believe that the only reason a callout post happens is because someone was affected, does it not? Very rarely would a callout post would be a fake one, especially if someone has more then one. If you defend someone who has more than one call out post that's on you and you're gonna end up making one some day I can genuine you that. People don't make them for no reason.

This is all I have to say for now. I hope you guys really consider what I have written here, or not, considering the fact you guys have shown multiple times you lack reading comprehension

@starriesse @dollicous @doveinne @firstgf @kiochisato @lamboll @cherryshh @narcbf @lavendergalactic @npditary @sprinkleoverdose @necroangelz @eskeys

[doberbutts]

I think the terms TMA/TME work best when they're used as rules of thumb, rather than expected to function as strict categories. They're often helpful, but occasionally they can become obfuscatory, and there are edge cases where they can't be neatly applied. In those cases, they should be set aside, but with an understanding that they will be brought back into conversations when helpful.

To give a personal perspective - I'm a trans masc individual who has, upon occasion, experienced misdirected transmisogyny. I was on T for 5 years, then came off it (partly due to health problems, partly due to starting to identify as nonbinary rather than as a man) and began presenting in a more feminine manner, and people would regularly mistake me for a trans woman.

When people thought I was a trans woman, I did notice an increase in hostility, harassment and unwelcome advances from strangers. Groups of men would shout at me in the street, mothers would glare at me and physically pull their children further away from me if I came near. I also started getting catcalled and couldn't enjoy a night out in a club without being groped. I'd experienced some of these things as a trans man and as a girl, but probably never at such a high frequency or so intensely.

I definitely think I got a taste of transmisogyny and people do still assume I'm trans fem from time to time. But I still wouldn't describe myself as TMA. I don't shout it from the rooftops, but if it feels relevant in the context of a conversation, I will say I'm TME. Because I think the terms are about overarching dynamics, rather than whether or not an individual has ever faced a single instance of transmisogyny.

For me, there was always a sense of distance between myself and any negative experience, that came from knowing they'd misread my AGAB - "that lad just called me a chick with a dick! How funny! I'd be so lucky!" / "You're harassing me for using the female showers at the gym when I am literally menstruating. Are you going to stop being a creep, or do I have to show you my bloody tampon?" There's a degree to which I can sidestep or disavow their idea of me in a manner trans women can't.

I also don't know what it's like to deal with many other elements of transmisogyny, or deal with it as an overarching narrative in one's life rather than a freak episode.

I think it's fair to say I have at times been a grey area and I could use my experiences to argue against the validity of TME/TMA, but I don't want to do that. I don't like it when the terms are just used as a way to say AFAB/AMAB while being perceived as less problematic. But I think it is helpful to have little shorthand reminders about specific power dynamics that do have an impact in our communities. I have absolutely seen transmisogyny play out in queer spaces, both online and IRL, and I think it's worth having vocabulary that emphatically reminds people to check themselves and to not assume they don't have internalised bias against trans women just because they're trans masc.

Trans women are a boogeyman in popular culture and the collective unconscious in a way trans men never have been (at least, not to anything like the same extent). Trans women face an intensity of monstering that I think most people won't understand unless they spend a lot of time sharing space with and listening to trans women. The rapid adoption of TMA/TME feels like an attempt to fast-track that understanding en masse. Maybe it's a bit clumsy, but I do think it's having an impact and important conversations are happening. I don't know if the terms will stick or fall out of use. Having been in the trans community for over a decade and seeing how our vocabularies evolve, I'm inclined to think they'll stick around for a few years and then largely disappear. But I feel that while trans women are finding them useful, we need to be respectful of that fact.

Idk sorry to rant in your askbox, I wanted to give my two cents. Feel free to ignore lol

I'm going to be a bit blunt here: in the span of time I've been off tumblr to, you know, sleep... I've gotten 20 different asks trying to convince me to like the usage of tma/tme and also several transphobic asks about my top surgery. The transphobic ones I blocked and deleted because I'm literally 3 weeks out and will not be dissuaded. But I'm simply not willing to continue arguing a point I've made very clear that I don't love the usage of this particular theory the way it's currently being used.

You can like it for yourself. I have said this over and over again. I do not like it for me, and do not think it is accurate for my life or my experiences or the reality that is what I have to go through on a regular basis. True to everything else that I've posted, I don't really care what you call yourself. If you want to call yourself TME and you believe that framework works for your experience, more power to you. Just don't label me that, because I don't think it works for mine.

Trans women are absolutely a boogeyman in a way that trans men often aren't. That is, unfortunately, one of the ways that hypervisibility is such a curse. Everyone knows what a trans woman is, and a good majority of those people also think the only good one's a dead one. That's bad. That's transmisogyny, and we should ally with trans women to help fix this problem.

Also unfortunately, as trans men become more and more visible to the world, instead of facing mass erasure and dying in silence or escaping to live in stealth, trans men are also beginning to become a boogeyman as well. Now we are a social contagion, a craze, with rapid onset gender dysphoria, mutilating ourselves and ruining our precious bodies, carving out our wombs, simultaneously debasing ourselves and also becoming predators lurking to snatch daughters up and forcefeed them our ideology, betraying women by becoming a mockery of men. What's worse, we tend to politically close ranks with trans women and cis women alike so it's harder for transphobic lawmakers to divide and conquer as they're used to with cis men, so instead they have to demonize us to prevent any further allyship.

That's the conversation trans mascs are trying to have.

Genuinely, I do agree that trans women face an othering that most people do not grasp without understanding transmisogyny theory, which is why I think everyone should have at least a basic understanding of it. But I also think that's true of many other demographics, and that if we want to get out of the pit that bigoted society put us in, we've got to work together to do so. It was, after all, the combined efforts of Marsha P Johnson AND Storme de Laverie that brought us out in the open. And among me friend group, we have people from all different races and backgrounds and genders and more locking arms to ensure the safety of each other, wanting to understand and know each other, lifting each other up.

[liesonthefloordramatically]

sorry if this is a weird ask, but i was thinking of jolymes today and was wondering what you think attracts jolyne to hermes/what she loves about her? (though i absolutely love them together, it feels easier to come up with answers for the other way around, and i've realized that all of my favourite jolymes fics are written from hermes' POV) (you're one of my favourite writers for them (and foolymes) so i figured i'd ask!)

Anon, I am SO sorry to be answering this uhhhh 3+ months after you asked--the semester started and I low-key died and am still kind of dead but HERE WE ARE!!! 3+ MONTHS LATER!!!! And I maybe have answers???

I realized that I've only written one fic that's definitely from Jolyne's PoV ("Contact" is...either alternating or semi-omniscient--definitely not what I normally write) which I WILL fix someday (when I have more than zero energy and my やる気 returns from the war). Anyway, some scattered thoughts, with the caveats that 1. I feel squidgy writing "proper" meta and generally am much better at conveying thoughts about characters via fic and 2. what is attraction? we just don't know. But HERE WE GO:

Hermes is just like...way more prepared than Jolyne. Not only in the "knows what she's in for when she gets to prison" way, but also Hermes tends to be a lot more...deliberate, especially in the fights she picks. (Thinking about Kiss of Love and Revenge, as I always am.) I love Jolyne, but her brain is usually moving half a second in front of her body, whereas Hermes definitely can and does plan ahead. (Some fics cast Hermes as "the stupid one," but she is absolutely not.) Competence can be VERY attractive.

Hermes's loyalty and protectiveness. I feel like this is an obvious one, but the fact that Hermes immediately sees Jolyne and goes, "oh, this kid has no idea what she's in for" and tries to help in whatever limited way would make an impression on Jolyne! And the fact that she again IMMEDIATELY decides to help Jolyne when she goes searching for Jotaro's disc. Also the fact that Hermes TRUSTS Jolyne--deferring to her decision re: trusting F.F., for example. When Hermes decides to care about someone, she is dedicated (in a way that Jolyne is probably noooooot used to, given her life experience up to this point, and probably finds both amazing and a little overwhelming).

I feel like I have sort of written about this sideways a couple of times, but I think that Jolyne sees Hermes's loyalty to Gloria (when she eventually finds out about it) both as something admirable and as something that she can't quite grok. (Jolyne also doesn't really understand their relationship because Hermes won't/can't explain a lot of it, which doesn't help.) (Sorry I am thinking about Hermes & Gloria always. Join me in the pit.)

Hermes has had a pretty wildly different life arc and life experiences than Jolyne--I don't know if that's attractive, per se, but it is definitely something that both intrigues Jolyne and winds up being a gap in her understanding of Hermes. But also it means that there's definitely an extent to which Hermes is a LOT more mature than Jolyne in some respects at the start--although Jolyne catches up along the way.

Related to that point, Hermes is MUCH more settled into herself/knows ("knows") who she is and what she wants than Jolyne at the beginning of the arc. And I do think that that winds up changing over the course of the arc, but that's another thing that Jolyne would definitely notice: the extent to which she is very much still growing into herself/figuring out who she is in the world whereas Hermes is Certain She Knows Who She Is. Again: people who are self-confident can be very attractive! Especially when you're not quite sure of yourself. I think this is also maybe a queer thing, where you see someone who is very comfortable being themself and you're like, "oh dang." (There is a reason that I tend to write Hermes as MUCH more settled into her queer identity than Jolyne.)

she's hot. I feel like that's obvious but I will say it. buff girl hot

traumabonding. it's a thing.

...hopefully that's enough to get you started because writing meta makes my blood run backward.

(oh my god it's so obvious that I'm ace reading this, I am so sorry, there's a reason that all my revision notes for ship fics start with "what is attraction? we just don't know" or "make them actually attracted to each other")

[trickarrows-bishop]

also, on top of her internalized homophobia and realizing that she would never like guys in the way her mother wanted her to, trini has always been scared of the idea (which slowly turns into "fact" in her head) that, if someone sees the full of extent of her, they won't want to date her. both because baggage reasons and because, well, how can people love someone who doesn't even know what love feels like? and her biggest fear, that the things that set her apart from everyone else but don't even seem to be able to connect to other people the way her queerness can, is that her mother will be right, that she'll be simply too strange for them.

so when she starts dating kimberly, she starts hardcore masking again, trying to smile at the right times, stop flinching away when kim wants to hold her hand but she really doesn't want to (because what kind of fucked up girlfriend is she if she doesn't want to hold her girlfriend's hand?), trying to talk more even when speaking feels like chalk on her mental chalkboard.

contrary to what most people would think, kim doesn't get relieved at dating a "normal" person. in fact, she gets very, very worried, thinking that something's really wrong that she would act like this, act like she never has before. it gives her a gut feeling, something dark and clenching in her stomach, and she can't figure out what it is about it that makes her so on edge about it. plus, trini seems more tired now, too, responds on her phone less when at home, is more aggressive in training, and she doesn't know what to do.

after weeks of worry and conferring with the others (who have noticed and are equally concerned) about it, she sits trini down and asks her what's wrong.

following her denial for a few moments, she breaks and finally explains everything, from how she hid her real self when she was younger, to how it basically sucked the life out of her and so she just... stopped after they started moving, to how all these fears swam back up to the surface and breathed into her once more, and apologizes.

it's the apology that snaps kim out of her horrified silence, because she's just fucking devastated at the idea of trini learning that she was less loveable because of who she really was. she reassures her, through tears, that she would never ever leave her for something like that.

it takes a while, but after more and more talking about it, her fears are laid more to rest, and she starts to unmask and unwind more. kim is extremely happy about this, about how much trini trusts her, and shows her affection as much as she can, in the ways that make trini comfortable. and they r very happy <3

all this is to say that. i <3 autistic trini in trimberly

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA YES OH MY GOD YES

[vtori73]

Alright so... hot take? If a piece of media has good rep for one but is terrible for another, like basically to the point of being flat out bigoted? It should not be considered a good rep then, or you can't just make a blanket statement of it being good rep.

This was mostly a thought I had when it came to gay/queer representation but contains racism or is super white centric or made by racists but I was just now reminded of it by someones tweet about not forgiving people for recommending Wandering son because it has horribly transphobic trans masc/men rep because yeah... why are y'all so okay with recommending stuff with horrible bigotry to a group your not apart of? This is especially something I notice with biphobia as well, so long as it has decent rep for gays/lesbians they ignore the rest and even applaud the work with no sort of criticism & get mad at people who do claiming we won't get representation if "we" continue to nitpick. I haven't read it personally but supposedly a comic EVERYONE was going to bat for, praised, and recommended, Laura Dean keeps breaking up with me, is biphobic. And, honestly? If the criticism Ive read about it is true then YEAH... that's gross, WTF? Why would I want to read that shit, why do y'all??? Also reminds me of my sort of recent critique of FNV queer rep and how they do terribly with bisexuals yet no one really talks about it, it just kind of gets ignored.

But to an extent I do understand why y'all don't notice it at first because it doesn't personally affect you BUT that is an excuse at the end of the day and shows how y'all don't have anyone in your life that is part of x group or even follow or listen to someone from x group because if you did you would be noticing these things to SOME degree but don't because y'all just don't give a shit. As for people who ARE a part of the group and just don't see these things as legit bigoted rep... well, that's you! You don't represent an entire group so you don't get to say when something isn't bigoted, you could very well be internalizing bigotry and not be aware of it or are aware and don't care because you personally benefit from it or well something like that I'm kind of running out of what to say now, lol.

[denimbex1986]

'A tiny nod of the head, a release of the door, that's all it takes. And Adam is about to. So close to breaking his monotonous days, letting his handsome neighbor in with his bottle of whiskey, having a drink and seeing where it goes. But something fatefully stops him.

The smallest decisions have cosmic consequences in Andrew Haigh's film "All of Us Strangers." Adam (Andrew Scott), who is in his late forties, will still feel this. He's trying to write a TV movie about his youth. He doesn't make any progress, his days drag on slowly and aimlessly in the high-rise building, which, due to strange circumstances, he lives in almost alone. Until he notices that there is also Harry (Paul Mescal), who is 20 years younger than him.

Vampires and warm colors of hope

Both love men, they know that from the first eye contact. When Harry stands at Adam's door that night, lust glimmers in his eyes and he talks amusingly and drunkenly about this and that. Beneath it, Adam feels a desire for closeness so urgent that he becomes afraid. “I have vampires at my door,” says Harry, before the quiet click of the apartment door banishes him back outside into the night.

There is certainly a strong attraction that will emerge in the next few days. Adam makes up for the missed invitation, the two find each other and quickly realize that they can become a couple. Parallel to this development, which the queer English filmmaker Andrew Haigh portrays very erotically and in the warm colors of hope, something strange happens to Adam.

To fuel his autobiographical writing, he listens again to his childhood music, from Frankie Goes To Hollywood to the Fine Young Cannibals, and drives to the terraced house in the south London dormitory town where he grew up. There, a couple younger than himself greets him like a prodigal son. And you soon realize that the two, played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, are actually his parents.

This ghostly idea comes from Taichi Yamada's novel Strangers, but Andrew Haigh has, to a certain extent, superimposed his own life on top of it. And before you really ask how this can all be (the parents died in a car accident when Adam was twelve), you are already completely captivated by a situation in which Adam now has to explain, for example, what became of him - a gay man.

There is still so much to say and to forgive

The parents, whose world view was virtually frozen with their death in 1987, reacted with concern and even a little surprise. But is the world better for her son today or not? Should they have reacted more strongly when he had already fallen prey to bullies at school? And wasn't the British music of the eighties itself - in a flashback the Pet Shop Boys are recorded with the Christmas hit "Always on My Mind" - a celebration of queerness?

These questions swirl through the memories and conversations that Adam feeds on like an elixir - so much was taken from him too soon, so much still needs to be said, understood, forgiven. All that awaited the orphan later was AIDS, a new wave of homophobia, and a difficult, lonely time. Andrew Haigh's parents didn't die early, they just divorced - but he unleashes his own feeling of lost youth here with full emotional force. And if you don't have a heart of stone, you won't be able to help but think about things left unsaid and missed with your own parents.

Haigh filmed in her own parents' home

“All of Us Strangers” becomes a great study of encapsulated feelings and trauma, of old wounds that open up, and necessary conversations and hugs that can perhaps heal. The director Andrew Haigh didn't spare anything during this witching hour - he shot in his own parents' house in the suburb of Croydon, he once had Adam put on his too-short pajamas from his childhood - and he even talks about the eczema he had as a child , returned for the filming period. You can feel that in the intensity of the film, even before you know it.

The four performances are all breathtaking. Andrew Scott plays a man whose inner hardnesses are slowly loosening. Claire Foy as the mother brings another time back to life with minimal resources, Jamie Bell shows that the silent fathers of that time saw more than people gave them credit for. And Paul Mescal grounds everything with a wondrous, almost selfless need for love.

However, the film is in no way a tear-fest that drips with lard and describes the story in a positive way. He is internally much smarter and more logically built than one could imagine for a long time. Only when Frankie Goes To Hollywood begins the final ballad, singing about the "Power of Love" and the vampires that need to be kept away from people's doors, do you understand it in all its unforgettable, soul-shattering force.'

[milomilesmib]

I don't usually post my ocs but I was productive today so I feel like rewarding myself!

Warning: I'll be briefly mentioning a LOT of difficult topics. I won't be heavily describing them, but they'll be mentioned. (Abuse, self abuse, death, scarring, etc.) If you're not in the right headspace to deal with that, that's totally okay. They'll only briefly be mentioned, but I understand sometimes even a few words can be triggering. Stay safe everyone, and know that you're not alone <3

(all art in this post without a link under it is my art)

Carmine (they/she, 17)

🔥☀️🌶️💥🌹🌋

Personality wise, I could briefly describe her as a fiery ESTJ Aries with anger issues and anxiety. To go more in depth, they went through a lot of religious trauma (catholic) and had their sexuality and masculinity repressed. She's a genderqueer sapphic with a wonderful girlfriend. She's very protective of their friends and family and can be aggressive, but they're also very caring and affectionate to those they love. They're a pyromancer and the successor (similar to being a demigod) of fire, heat, and light, and can control those elements. Her personality and appearance are heavily based on fire: she's passionate and warm, she can be soft and beautiful or destructive and terrifying, depending on how she is feeling. They are a very terrifying person, but they can also be sweet and lovely and make you feel secure. She's very athletic and often uses axe throwing, fighting, running, and basic exercises to stay fit.

Appearance wise, she has wavy black hair, later turned red orange at the tips (because fire). They have dark eyes and sharp features. They're stereotypically attractive and quite masc. She's Chinese American with light skin, she usually isn't very expressive, and she's strong but a bit underweight. She's the first character for the story I wrote down and I love her.

Amber (he/him, 16)

🐻🐾🦊🦋🪺🪳

Amber, despite having a completely queer friend group, is the gay friend. He's somehow noticeably the most queer in the group. He can rock any style, whether it's masc, neutral, or femme. He's Carmine's younger brother and has a sunshine boyfriend which I'll get to later. He's an ESFP Gemini and ✨gay✨. He's got ADHD and is working on his anorexia and PTSD (good for him) from the religious trauma he shares with Carmine. He was also oppressed in his feminity and sexuality most of his life, but he's working on it. He's a very energetic and cheery person, partly as a coping mechanism, partly due to ADHD, partly due to that just being his personality. He's the successor of fauna, giving him the ability to communicate with creatures, who all naturally like him, of all types and heal any injury or illness to an extent (though he can't bring people back from the dead.) He can be surprisingly calm when he wants to be, and when he is, he's the most relaxing person to be around. He's also amazing at origami, often coming up with his own patterns.

https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/1706331

As for his appearance, he has messy black hair that was down to his ears at the start of the story and later grows to be down to his neck. He has tan skin with some scars from SH and some larger wounds from an infection that later heals into burn-like scars. He starts out wearing mostly dark colours and masc clothes but eventually starts wearing all types of clothes, including skirts, makeup, and jewelry. He has uniquely bright bronze eyes, just because I thought it would be cool. There's no other reason.

Sunny (he/they, 15)

🎨🍃��️🌤️🪽🐦

Amber's boyfriend!!! Don't worry, his character is more than that. He's definitely neurospicy, I just don't know what kind yet. He's got a pretty sunshiny personality, but he's also ✨depressed✨. They're an ISFP Aquarius with some issues harnessing they emotions, going into fits of rage, depression, panic, and excitement, other than that just being tired, despite keeping up appearances as "the stable one." They're a panromantic asexual demiboy, the only successor with two living loving parents and a happy friend group outside of the successors, though he was in a bad relationship for a few months and ended up with relationship trauma from it. He loves all kinds of art, mainly sketching and painting, and has a pet tomato frog named Ketchup. He's the successor of air, sky, and weather, giving him the ability to levitate and control air to an extent, and his emotions influence the weather, and he can endure any kind of weather and temperature.

As for his appearance: they have slightly wavy shoulder length golden blonde hair and bright green eyes. He's Canadian-American with light skin and a shit ton of freckles. They're usually wearing jeans, t-shirts, zip up hoodies, and converse he's painted. He doesn't own any clothes that don't have paint stains somewhere on them. They usually are quite expressive, despite not actually feeling that much emotion.

Sage (she/her, 15)

🪴🌷🍄🪨🌳🍂

Carmine's girlfriend and one of Sunny's best friends! She's the nice one but also extremely traumatized from her birth mother leaving her and her adoptive mother dying, but she can be very strong if she wants to be. She's supportive and easygoing, but if you piss her off you'd better fucking run because she will turn your internal organs into cacti. Speaking of! She's the successor of earth and flora and can manipulate it to her will. She's terrifyingly powerful, but usually very nervous to use it because if she loses control, she could kill someone. She's an INFJ Virgo with PTSD and anxiety, but she's still quite happy. She's always loved gardening and embroidery, later taking up crochet as well. She's a demisexual transfemme lesbian.

https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/2212965

As for her appearance, she usually goes for a femme style, and she has fluffy dark brown hair. She's African-Indian-American with brown skin (not sure how to describe the shade, but it's kind of like tree bark? It's not very dark but it's also not light so like??? Idk it's brown. Like the shade it is in the picrew above but with way lower saturation) and dark brown eyes. She has rounder features and is more underweight, and her hands are always calloused and dirty from gardening and climbing trees. She often wears a headscarf in her hair to keep it out of her face and cottagecore clothes, including white converse she embroidered with flowers.

Azure (they/them, 14)

🌊🪸🐚🫧⛵🐳

Oh boy I love Azure. They're actually the first character I came up with for the story and they have developed a LOT since they were made. They're autistic and non verbal but pretty expressive. They're the successor of ocean, water, and all aquatic life, though Amber has some influence over aquatic animals and Sage has some influence over aquatic plants. They're an ISTP Cancer and their POV is quite funny and lighthearted, and they spend a lot of time "spacing out," a.k.a. staring into space so it looks like they're spacing out when they're really not, they just don't want to be bothered. They're aromantic asexual non binary queerplatonic and it takes them forever to trust someone but when they do they get very clingy and attached. They love the beach and they love gifting people shells and rocks and coral to show affection and are generally very physically affectionate when they trust someone. They're energetic for about five minutes a day and rarely ever laugh, but they smile quite a bit. They're like a sibling to Amber and Carmine, although they're not biologically related to them, and they're good friends with Sage, who helped them learn to read.

They're Mediterranean-American with blonde hair, light tan skin, and many freckles (not as much as Sunny but still many.) Their ears stick out a bit and their eyes are ocean blue (because I'm so creative like that) and they wear mostly baggy clothes: cargo shorts, loose t-shirts, flowy skirts, oversized sweaters, stuff like that, and Vans that have been drawn on by Amber. They also almost always have rocks and shells in their pockets to give to people if they feel like it.

Periwinkle (she/her, 18)

☄️🔭🌌🧠🌙🔮

Periwinkle I'm still kinda figuring out. When I wrote her down I was getting tired of writing. But I really like her character! She's interesting. She's quite monotone and unexpressive, but she's got a lot going on in her head. She has struggled with disordered eating, anxiety, and stress, but she doesn't feel the need to get a diagnosis or anything. She's the successor of the mind, the cosmos, and interdimensional travel, so she has the ability to influence people easily with her words. She's an INTJ Aquarius and her POV I'm still figuring out, but it's mostly chill. I struggle to write her because she's a lot smarter than I am, so it's hard for me to write her POV accurately. She's easily annoyed, but very supportive and sweet and often the one people go to when they're struggling. She's aromantic asexual and queerplatonic, and she did have a girlfriend at one point but she viewed her more as a queerplatonic partner while treating her like a romantic interest. She does a lot of stargazing and is an expert on astronomy and astrology. She's quite witchy in her behaviour, style, and beliefs, though she's also a realist and thinks about things logically. She's mostly just chill, even though she's surrounded by eccentric teenagers, and has the same kind of vibe of that the one queer teacher everyone likes, even though she's around the same age as all the others. She's best friends with Azure to the point they're basically one unit, and she helped teach them to read, write, and sign. She's also a big support to Carmine, Sunny, and Sage.

She's Libyan-American with dark skin, dark afro-textured hair and dark eyes. She wears baggy purple and black masc clothes, usually consisting of oversized jeans, a sleeveless shirt, a baggy jacket that falls off her shoulders, and combat boots. She wears some simple gold jewelry with moons and stars. She has medical supplies and survival gear in her jacket pockets and is knowledgeable in medicine and survival.

-~*-~*-~*-~*-~*-~*-~*-~*-~*-~*-~*-~*-~*-~*-~*-~*

So those are my main six OCs! Feel free to point out any plotholes/inaccurate descriptions I have and I'll look into adjustments I can make. Thanks!

[raavenb2619]

Tl;dr: QPRs aren't inherently amatonormative, but they are sometimes (occasionally? semi-frequently?) talked about in an amatonormative way, including by aros talking to other aros. And when aros complain about QPRs being talked about in an amatonormative way, everyone (other aros included) should take that seriously.

I've sometimes seen aros talk about QPRs in an amatonormative way. It's hard to say how frequently it happens, but it does happen sometimes, and I'm definitely not a fan of it. That shouldn't be the way that we (aros) talk about them. And if someone says something is amatonormative, we should treat that as a serious complaint instead of brushing it off because "well I'm aro and I'd never be amatonormative".

I'm in a QPR and I try my best to make sure that it's free of amatonormativity, but occasionally amatonormativity has cropped up in my own thinking too, and it takes someone else pointing it out for me to even notice it. Maybe there's a lesson there that "you are not immune to amatonormativity" applies to aros too, even the ones that think they've totally unlearned it. Or maybe, unlearning a societal pressure isn't a one-time thing; it's a continuous process that requires you to stay vigilant, to self-reflect and think critically about your own thoughts and actions.

I also wonder to what extent this is caused by the aro community being too small and not having enough awareness about aromanticism in the queer community/world in general. Because it is worth talking about QPRs and making sure people know that they're an option, but it is super super important too to make sure people know that not being in a relationship is an option, that being nonpartnering is an option. And maybe if there was more awareness and discussion of how aromanticism can be different for different people, aros wouldn't feel so much like they're struggling to tell their own story and have their story be heard.

I'm also reminded of the aro census making me spend 10 minutes choosing between "yes", "no", and "unsure" to answer "are you single?". Even though I'm in a QPR, I still feel an attachment to the idea of singlehood, and making sure that people can know they don't have to be in a relationship is really important to me personally, because "you don't have to be in a relationship" was really helpful and impactful for younger aro me.

In these discussions, I also wonder to what extent seemingly innoculous phrases can have a bigger impact than one might expect? Let's compare (1) "aros can still be in a QPR", (2) "aros can be in a QPR", and (3) "some aros want to be in QPRS, but other's don't". I find (1) to be amatonormative and arophobic, with the word "still" contributing the most to that. (1) feels like it is trying to correct an amatonormative/arophobic assumption held by the listener (maybe "aros are always lonely" or "being aro is sad because you won't ever be in a relationship with someone"), but the way in which it responds to that assumption validates the assumption. (1) feels like it is saying "your amatonormative assumption has merit, but aros can still be happy". I find (2) to be similar to (1), not as strong due to the lack of "still", but generally in the same boat. I find (3) to be the only good phrase out of the three, because the word "some" usually means "some but not all", and "but other's don't" explicitly highlights the diversity of aro experiences. Also, (3) doesn't validate (or even suggest the existence of) a speaker's harmful assumption; it only points out possibilities. (*takes off linguistics hat*)

I think there's a genuine conversation to be had about how aro spaces have begun pushing QPRs in a similar way that amatonormativity pushes romantic relationships onto people but a majority of aros just refuse to engage in the discussion because they see it as an attack on QPRs or people saying QPRs are romantic relationships lite instead of actually looking at the fact it's critiquing how some Aros have begun pushing it almost like an alternative to romance and something all Aro's want.

No one is saying QPRs are bad but rather that there is too much push that the idea of a QPR will fix people's problems. "oh you're lonely? just find a QPR!" "You dont have to be in a romantic relationship you can be in a QPR!" "QPR is MORE than friendship" etc etc.

There's a genuine critique here of QPRs being used to continue to push amatonormativity by again assuming that every aro wants a partner - even if not romantic - and I think we can have a genuine conversation about this rather than going at each other throats over a fake argument of "QPRs bad"

[john-laurens]

Is there any record of Henry Laurens’ view/stance on queer people specifically? I know he was pretty religious but of course back then nobody was really accepting as far as today’s standards regardless of religion. Just curious :)

To my recollection, Henry Laurens never outright discussed his views on queer people. A quick skim of The Papers of Henry Laurens also did not produce anything. Keep in mind that the queer culture of the 18th century was different than the world we know today. While most people today have an opinion on queer marriage, gender transition, and other queer topics, these weren't really topics of discussion to the same extent in the 18th century. We can certainly guess at what Henry Laurens's views on two men engaging in a romantic/sexual relationship might have been based on his Christian views, but it's not something that he likely would have ever discussed much outright.

In regards to Henry's view on his son John Laurens likely being what we would consider a gay man - again, there's not much to say. John was not "out," and any of his intimate relationships with men could be dismissed as the typical romantic friendships of the day. The closest thing we have to Henry commenting on this matter is the following quote:

Master Jack is too closely wedded to his studies to think about any of the Miss Nanny’s I would not have such a sound in his Ear, for a Crown; why drive the poor Dog, to what Nature will irresistably prompt him to be plagued with in all probability much too soon. - Henry Laurens to James Grant, in a letter dated October 13, 1767

So Henry seems to have noticed that almost-13-year-old John wasn't interested in girls, but he wasn't very concerned with the matter - he figured such attraction would come about soon enough.

Transitioning from genuine response to borderline crack theory here, I do find it interesting that there are multiple instances of Henry possibly recognizing John's attraction to men and just staying quiet/being mildly supportive about it (if you read way too into it). My points:

1. The above quote about John showing no interest in girls and Henry saying "that's ok, I won't push him into courting any girls."

2. "I purpose [Jack] shall go to Britain & there be first initiated at Winchester which I am told has greatly retrieved its character for Learning & discipline & from thence to such University as my friends who are better Judges than I am shall advise, among whom I am permitted to number Your Excellency & if nothing very cross interposes to hinder, either Jack or I or both will go to Augustine before he goes to England, but the Monkey insists upon being Major of the Clyster pipe." - Henry Laurens to James Grant, in a letter dated November 24, 1770. A clyster pipe was a device used in administering an enema, so this was a reference to John wanting to enter the field of medicine. But, as one might imagine, "clyster pipe" or "clystering" could be used as a sexual reference, particularly in regards to sodomy (Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of Sexuality in America by Thomas Foster includes a couple examples of this). That's probably not the connotation Henry was aiming for here, but also - why did he specifically reference enemas when he could have referred to any medical practice to get the point across? John also often copied his father's letters for writing practice, so imagine his reaction if/when he came across this passage.

3. Henry let John know that Francis Kinloch was going to be around, both in Geneva and at Army headquarters:

From a hint which Waag dropped at Bath tis expected by the freinds of the young Eatonian that he will find a freind in you at Genevé, tho none of 'em have Said a word to me on the Subject. - Henry Laurens to John Laurens, in a letter dated January 14, 1774. Francis Kinloch is the "Eatonian" (he had studied at Eton).

Your friend F. Kinloch will probably salute you in Camp this day sinnight, another friend of yours R. Berresford is in New York. - Henry Laurens to John Laurens, September 17, 1778

4. There is the likelihood that Hamilton sent THE April 1779 letter to John through Henry. Who's to say how much (if any) of the letter Henry actually read, but it's interesting to think that Henry once possessed the gayest letter of the 18th century and just casually sent it along to his son.

[kickassfu]

going through all those trending ao3 posts and something I always notice is how quickly people are to deny they read any problematic or dark content while also being pro ao3 and anti censorship. idek but if you have to put a disclaimer about how gross and repulsive you think that content is while defending it's existence you might just be more on their side than you think

oh sweet, lovely anon have you perhaps infiltrated my brain for a bit? lol

the moment i go into the comments on the posts to see what ppl are saying (and why the fuck do i keep doing that??) i get pissed off :) and not just at the anti's, 'cause that's normal right? but at some of the ppl that are on ao3's side.

because that's literally it!!! they say "yes that is awful and shouldn't exist, but we cannot censor ao3, because censoring is bad. and if they don't post on ao3 where they can tag properly and we can avoid it, they'll just post elsewhere without the proper tags"

AND ITS LIKE?????

i get not liking something and feeling weird about its existence because you relate it to real life? fine. but babes it's not that serious. it's literally fake. fake little people doing fucked up things!!!

you sound like a puritan even as you defend ao3. and if the whole "they come for this first, and then for the queer stuff" argument (because it's true. that's how censorship works, we've seen it happen multiple times) i feel like a lot of these ppl would be on the anti's side real quick.

but i'm gonna draw the line in the sand right quick now. yes censorship is bad. but that's not the whole point. reading/making "problematic", dark, fucked up shit is not a bad thing. it does not make you a bad person, and that content should freely exist online without ppl debasing it, without ppl online just tolerating it because censorship is a bad thing, that will snowball until everything is policed to the extent of nothing being pure enough to read or write.

As long as it's tagged properly idk why they're all bitching about it. They won't come across that shit unless they look for it.

...anon i apologize for the rant but the older i get the more pissed off i get about all this shit. and you literally just dove face first into my brain so LOL

[gregorygerwitz]

And he can't let anyone's unhappiness be his fault.

Yeah, uh wow, um, am I Mouse?

But seriously, I love your metas, I really get a feel for these characters in a way that will enrich them to me when I finally can find somewhere to watch PD. I just want someone to sit Jay down and explain to him that Mouse loves him and these behaviors, because I think that would just be so interesting to have Jay be aware of Mouse rather than oblivious, and to have Jay's reaction to finally understanding his friend. Mouse would probably hate whoever told on him though.

* (like when he makes his comments about drugs in 4x05, because we saw how Jay reacted to that)

I can't find where you covered that but I'm sure you did. Is that the incident where Mouse says he did nitrous in college? Or is this another incident I don't remember?

[ this morning's meta ]

Mouse is a mood at all times, he's just very fun and relatable.

I'm glad you're enjoying my babbles! I'm glad someone is reading my essays about this made up little guy. Honestly, sometimes I don't want to make them public because it feels like the only people who read them are the people I've already babbled to in DMs and messages like a dozen times (with new information each time because there's always new details to notice).

Thank you for appreciating my babbles. Here are... so many more babbles.

warnings: discussion drug use and addiction, brief mentions of death (nothing graphic or detailed, it's just a cop show so there's crime by nature)

I think, to an extent, Jay isn't nearly as oblivious as I poke fun at him for being. I will absolutely joke about him not picking up on the undertones and double meaning of "you seeing somebody?" but at the same time, he does know Mouse. That's his best friend. They've known each other for over a decade, they almost died together, they pulled each other out of the roughest parts of their lives. Which means he knows that Mouse doesn't do relationships, has never done them and doesn't intend on changing that any time soon. So, that comment in the tech cage that's only meant as half a joke, lands as a joke.

Jay doesn't pick up on Mouse flirting with him because it's teasing, it's a decade of friendship, it's jokes that he's been privy to for years. Why is that going to change just because they're working together again? They're still best friends, Jay just got out of a relationship like an hour ago, and Mouse is a flirt outside of all of that. All Jay sees is Mouse being Mouse, which is what Mouse intends for him to see.

Even if someone was to sit Jay down and be like, hey, Mouse is fully head over heels in love with you, he would probably brush it off, because what information is that based on? Mouse being a flirt? Mouse looking to him during something stressful? Mouse hanging out in his space and sitting on his desk? That's just Mouse. That's just how they've acted forever, and it doesn't necessarily mean anything.

It's almost to the point that Mouse himself could say it to Jay's face and he'd still be like "that's funny, let's go out for drinks." I think they're hopeless but I love them anyway. They're doing their best, even if it's messy.

Although the angst that would happen if Jay knew all of the details about why Mouse acts the way he does and what it means? I would eat that up. I'll take nine, actually. Especially working in my headcanon that part of the reason Mouse left was because watching Jay be happy with someone else hurt to much (which they don't say in canon, because that would involve confirming that Mouse is queer and they won't do that, but the timing of him deciding to reenlist the episode after Jay and Erin decide to move in together? *chef's kiss* lovely angst my absolute favorite)

this is why I write AUs where their communication is a little better

As for the drugs, there are a few mentions of Mouse's addiction and drug use throughout the show. Four that I can list off the top of my head, but I'm probably missing some.

The first one is during his very first appearance in the show. It's not said outright (because why would CPD ever give Mouse any development, especially in his very first scenes) but it's kind of implied that he's high the entire s1 finale. We meet him as Jay's informant, a contact within the criminal community of Chicago, and Jay and Adam use his connections to plan an undercover meeting with someone to get information for a case, which isn't relevant really, I just think the scene is funny because they were immediately identified as cops.

The second time is the comment about nitrous in college, in season 3. yes that's the tiny shirt that isn't his. Which is so minor compared to the painkillers we know he got hooked on later. I just love the little detail that Mouse was, presumably, a party boy in college (they do also kind of imply in another s3 episode that he smokes/smoked weed, which tracks. one day I will write college era party boy Mouse because it just sounds chaotic and fun)

But that scene was very light hearted. Jay was joking around with him, sitting on his desk, letting the topic change immediately after that because it's not a big deal. Mouse is fine, and sitting right there next to him, and in one piece, and all of that is in the past. And then we look at the next couple times that Mouse's drug use is brought up.

The third and fourth time are both in season 4, in 4x02 and 4x05.

The little mention in 4x02 is kind of throwaway, in the grand scheme of things? But it starts with the discussion of Mouse wanting to reenlist, and it's this very brief talking point for why Jay doesn't want him to and doesn't think it's a good idea:

"Do you forget what it did to you? Depression? Can't sleep at night? You want that? You want to be- you want to be calling me at three in the morning? You can't sleep, you're popping pills?"

It kind of establishes what we already knew - that Mouse did drugs and got hooked on them, which led to the version of him that we saw in season one - and gives us just a little bit of backstory as to how, exactly, he got to that point. That conversation is kind of meant to set up what we see in 4x05 (which I don't think I've written a public meta about yet), when Mouse has just had his fight with Voight and is worked up and talking to Jay in the breakroom because it's private enough that he can cool down after that, and he can kind of blow off steam and Jay can talk him off of some angry ledge.

M: "You know, maybe Voight's right. Maybe I just need to clear out of here." J: "What are you gonna do with your felony record? You gonna go back to boosting stereos?" M: "That guy on the board? That could have been me when I came back here - high, doing something stupid and dangerous." J: "Greg, that is not you. That's not you now." M: "I am telling you, Jay, if I lose my job because of some bender or whatever, I'm looking at Tyler, and that could have been me. It still could be me."

For reference, Tyler is a character in 4x05 who we only see on the evidence board because his body is the one at the crime scene at the beginning of the episode. He died after getting caught up in running drugs to make money.

So, Jay has this conversation with Mouse where he is outright told drugs could still be the thing that kills me and it's... a lot. He's reasonably very concerned about this. And the way Jay sees it, Mouse reenlisting and essentially retraumatizing himself will trigger the same things that it did the first time - Mouse will go back to the pills, and anything stronger, and potentially relapse and spiral and end up in the same position he was in the first time we saw him way back in s1.

and he's probably right but my rant about why the way Mouse was written out of the show was bad is a different essay

[rappaccini]

In your Allison meta about assimilation you mentioned that in the show there was (accidentally) parallels between powers and queerness and being ordinary and heteronormative. Could you expand more on it, please?

oooh i have wanted to YELL about this for a long time

so like... off the bat, talking queercoding and the siblings... it's accidental, but based on what we have to work with, every single hargreeves is queer:

luther

luther's devotion to allison rings a lot of bells for demi/asexuality. being indifferent about sex with anyone but allison (to such an extent that the only time he fucks, he's absolutely out of it on drugs and seems uncomfortable with it after the fact), being totally uninterested in starting a relationship with anyone but her?

luther totally losing out on his adolescence because of being stuck in a house with an abusive parental figure who won't let him express himself sexually (see: how reginald shuts his date with allison down), and then overdoing it as an adult to compensate for the time he lost

his body dysphoria

luther is literally unable to pass as a 'normal' man [read: as a cis man] because of a traumatic surgery his abusive guardian inflicted on him without his consent, trying to 'fix him,' and only succeeding in making him feel profoundly isolated from everyone and convinced no one will ever love him because of his body

(and then getting fetishized by that rave girl for said body)

what i'm getting at is, luther is a prime candidate for a narrative about being intersex.

(him being trans is also a valid reading, though i don't go there because the optics of the man with the post-op mutilated gorilla body being trans are just... too bad for me to be comfortable with. just my opinion though)

diego

the very homoerotic charge to his rivalry with luther (do you want to fight him, diego, or do you want to fuck him?)

add that to diego's narrative skeleton: he claims to be totally over the abuse and the only one who's broken free of reginald, yet he's a wannabe cop who is the only one of them still crimefighting. he's lying to himself about a lot and he does it by performing toxic masculinity.

notice how in season one, diego makes a big show of How Totally Into His Ex He Is Did We Mention We Fucked in public, while in private being the most physically and emotionally intimate with klaus?

and notice how he doesn't deal with that toxic masculinity at all, and his gf in season 2 has klaus's mannerisms and humor? who straight-up tells him 'you want someone to peg you [fuck your ass] and you're in denial.'

basically, diego feels prime for metaphor about how toxic masculinity goes hand in hand with performing heterosexuality and repressing queerness (if anyone in this group of characters is straight-up gay, it's him)

allison

allison's story is about assimilation versus liberation, which is a dichotomy queer people find themselves on constantly

specifically, allison's ability to pass as an ordinary woman, and her having done so at least twice for her own survival, seen through a queer lens, means her plotline discusses the complications of being a queer/bisexual woman who can pass for straight, who tries to assimilate into greater heteronormative culture, thinking it will make her safe and happy, only for it to lead to pain for her the second her sexuality becomes known to her straight partners

using her rumor in sexual situations, as she's canonically done with patrick (whether she coerced sex directly from him or not, tricking him into a romantic relationship means they're gonna fuck) and as raymond accuses her of doing, could be read as allegory for the 'predatory/manipulative bisexual' stereotype-- how the mere presence of bisexuality leads to accusations of cheating or manipulation, and how sometimes we do use our sexuality in less-than-pale ways-- especially in order to pass as straight.

allison's relationship with luther, someone who cannot pass as 'ordinary' [read: as straight], is literally illegal in texas in 1963, and there are a lot of intersections between how interracial and queer couples are treated.

klaus

i mean he's textually queer, and has a gender nonconforming presentation (and in the comics, where these things originated, he literally has a scene where he stares luther in the face and goes 'why does the way i dress make you think i'm gay' when luther questions why klaus had an affair with a woman)

but aside from that, his power speaks to fluidity as a whole. seeing beyond a veil, being a conduit between two worlds, even possession is in both show and comic explicitly linked to sex

it makes sense that the man who can't differentiate between living and dead half the time doesn't care at all about the trappings of gender

essentially his story speaks to gender/sexuality fluidity, how presentation affects how people let you move through the world and who they assume you are, and exploring how malleable the categories we sort ourselves into really are

five

his discomfort with his too-young body as a dysphoria reading

five having to 'go through puberty twice' to get the body he wants, and his being swayed to join the commission with the promise of a brand new body that matches how he looks on the inside + the struggle of being taken seriously when you don't quite pass as what you are

but does gender even exist when the world ends? what's it like to grow up in a world with no one to tell you what to conform to, and then return to one that sticks you in a gendered uniform and tells you what you look like determines how you'll be perceived?

his power. like with klaus, simply ignoring barriers and boundaries. leaping through them at ease and at will. (and having his abusive father try to control the way he does so)

... and potentially, his regrettable time leap can be read as a detransition metaphor: he thought this would be what makes everything click, but it wasn't. he still hasn't found where he needs to be.

ben

off the top of my head, how asian masculinity and queerness can tie in with feeling invisible or overlooked in favor of dave other men who are considered more conventionally masculine

his relationship with his tentacles (a... 'portal' in his body that makes him viscerally uncomfortable and potentially tore him apart, said portal in action making others horrified of him) as an allegory for dysphoria

... and ben sticking around by klaus's side for years, refusing to move on to stay close with him. that shit's gay as hell.

vanya

vanya's repression of her powers can easily be read as a repression of her sexuality-- especially with her being isolated from the other [queer] kids, and put on a medication that gets rid of her libido

and vanya's emergence of her powers is linked inextricably to the emergence of her sexuality-- the person who awakens them is her love interest, and the first time the audience knows vanya's powers are out and here to stay is when vanya fucks leonard at the end of 1x05, when the sound of her orgasm literally cracks the window.

yes, i'm counting her awakening her sexuality through her feelings for a man, because queer people who aren't gay exist and matter too, not that this fandom understands that.

it's allegory for awakening repressed queerness-- not uwu lesbianness. i mean queer as in rough, ugly, undesirable, unconventional and defying labels. a sexuality that makes people (straight and gay) feel frightened because they can't pin it down. and when they get frightened they either try to shove it in a box, medicate it away, or destroy it.

(i mean in the comics, the girl literally destroys the world totally naked. the sexuality is confrontational, in your face, and unpalatable. it's not for you, it's for her.)

and in the comics, vanya's a punk with an androgynous haircut. there's some genderfuckery going on with her. especially when you consider her chosen name is gender-neutral. (it's masculine in russia... but who says vanya has to be russian? it's feminine in other places, including brazil, where the artist who created her is from.)

as it relates to the show, aside from all of that and in a more general sense,

the concept of the 43(ish, in the show) themselves. children who are unwanted and abnormal/strange. with strange, being a literal synonym for 'queer' and the knowledge that these children are abandoned or surrendered for their strangeness... yeah. the 43 themselves are queer.

pseudo-incest is queer. it's how queer people used to game the system to get familial benefits before gay marriage was even a remote possibility.

and recall how tua in the comics is set in the 80s, when that would've been happening.

the show as a whole functions as a found family narrative. the 'wrong,' strange, unwanted kids who've had to put up with a disproportionate amount of trauma, who the rest of the world won't understand, coming together to make their own family on their own terms.

the only 'ordinary' child, vanya, is the only one left out. aka the presumed-straight kid who was left out of the queer friend group.

in a certain sense, vanya publishing her book and airing all the family's dirty laundry can be read as her outing them (especially allison, given how carefully she'd reshaped her image to avoid discussion of her rumor)

the fact that ben stuck around by klaus's side for years when he clearly didn't need to, and is clearly jealous when klaus starts trying to conjure dave, and when he makes a giant poly sex cult that he favors over him.

allison's assimilation being tied (twice) to marrying cishet men and conforming to their societies' conventional family structures, and it going up in flames when her [queer pals] family show up in her life again, revealing to raymond that she's [queer] from the future.

sissy marrying carl to align with compulsory heterosexuality, the exact same way allison married raymond to get an in with the south dallas community.

the vanya/sissy sexual affair having a parallel in allison and luther getting real emotionally intimate over that exact same span of time.

the way allison and sissy both leave their husbands-who-they-married-because-societal-cues for their [queer] lovers by leaving them notes

the way allison and sissy both glam up hard for their husbands in makeup, dresses and heels, but don pants and subtle/no makeup when they are dressing for themselves

vanya having amnesia that makes her unaware of her powers [read: re-closets her]... which reawaken as she develops a sexual relationship with sissy, who has a literal coming out plot that vanya facilitates, which leads to vanya's arrest, torture and the revival of her memories [her rediscovering her queerness]

the show refers to possession in sexual terms. klaus describes it as such. in that sense, klaus bottoms and ben is a literal possessive boyfriend.

ben refusing to go into the light specifically to stay with klaus because he loves him that much (and asks vanya, the only other textually queer character, to tell klaus that)

the way allmond is pure patriarchal heteronormativity: a husband and wife, who stays at home, wears heels even in the house, takes his name, supports his work (and only socializes with his friends), lets him take credit for her work (the sit-in was her labor, but he's somehow the leader of it) and they live in domestic bliss..... until allison encounters a [queer] old flame, falls hard and in the span of a single week leaves her husband for that old flame and her old queer friend group.

the way vissy is the most palatable, straight-friendly vision of a f/f relationship: a femme blonde housewife in pink having her sexuality awakened by a brunette tomboy/androgynous woman in blue who takes the initiative in the relationship (literally color coded), having nonkinky sex occasionally and raising a sweet child on a farm safely out of sight, and even being ready to drop all and move to Gay California (again, out of sight of the greater community). what is this, diet bly manor? .... it's assimilationist-gay, the kind of queerness that straight people approve of because it matches up with how they live. because it's as heteronormative as queer can get. and it implodes because vanya's powers [queerness] aren't made for that kind of life. because this isn't her world, and she can't be truly happy here.

the way that all the non-43/43 relationships crash and burn, because raymond and sissy can't handle allison and vanya's way of living and powers [queerness and queer lifestyle], and diego/lila survives because 'she's one of us 43ers' [read: she's queer too]

literally allison and vanya leave their monogamous lovers to go off and live dangerously with a queer commune.

it's everywhere. basically the vibe is that the 43 are all queer people and the umbrella academy are one big queer polycule.

it's accidental because if tuatv had intended for the show to be an extended queerness metaphor,

raymond, the guy who immediately accuses allison of tricking him into loving her with her rumor [bisexuality] wouldn't be framed as such a wholesome, perfect good dude who is Always Right.

they probably wouldn't have spent s2 joining in on the 'haha look at luther's gross disgusting fucked-up body' parade

they definitely wouldn't have several scenes where carl refers to vanya's queerness as 'a disease that is catching' right as vanya literally spreads her powers to harlan by putting her mouth on his... and essentially proves him and that rhetoric right.

they definitely wouldn't have written the crux of s2's vissy plot as sissy literally responding to vanya 'coming out' as a superhuman-- after vanya helped sissy herself come out and accept herself-- by saying 'you corrupted my child. this is too much for me, i'm leaving you. but hey, if you get your powers [queerness] under wraps and start behaving like the vanya i fell in love with [the closeted vanya], then you can come back to me.'

they probably wouldn't have derailed vanya's character to cash in on page's sexuality.

the way they wrote klaus (especially in s2) and vanya in s2 tells you they definitely didn't mean it that way. if that's how they handle their textually queer characters (either you're a punchline or sappy awards bait), no way can they actually write subtext that's a complex, subtle allegory about queerness.

it was definitely accidental, but i'm taking it.

[themoonispurple7]

O no Purple! Sorry this is long! I was curious to hear your thoughts. I have noticed 3 schools of thought where Jikook's content js concerned: a) Jikook are together and consciously, positively signaling it to some extent in their performances/content. B) they are consciously signaling a romantic relationship that isn't 'real'. C) They are insensitive to what they are actually putting out/we are misinterpreting everything.

I have heard it argued by extremely intelligent people that what we experience as 'gay coding' or subversive gestures of queer transparency and solidarity may be projections wrought by a culturally biased, re: western, imagination. Of course, we can't KNOW. But to pull the 'cultural differences' card seems like a flimsy insurance policy in case they aren't a 'real' couple. Its a way of having the morality cake but eating the gay cake too. Imo, there is no conceivable way that Jikook, their directors, editors etc didn't realise exactly what THAT Christmas remix looked like. If we call it 'ambiguous' we insult not only our own perceptive and logical faculties, but also those of all staff involved in that shoot. Koreans know what 'gay' is, even if it isn't discussed on public platforms. (I come from an lgbt suppressed country and can attest to that being the case there). Throughout their career (even when they were still super young and evinced an understandable level of ignorance at times) members have made comments implying that they KNOW what looks gay and what doesn't. From Jin getting a back hug and saying 'not like lovers', to a young, maybe not at peace with his identity Jimin whispering to the camera that Jhope 'likes men a little too much'. Taehyung practically outed Jimin on radio. (Tae: 'I think he likes men'. Jimin 'I don't like you' (honestly, my hero for not denying)). Furthermore, Bangtan have spoken out in support of lgbt rights, artists and media. They have paid tribute to , discussed and covered EXPLICITLY queer media (CMBYN, Fools, Love Simon, Confessions of a Mask and many more). So to imply that they are 'ignorant' or 'naive' about what is and isn't queer coded is almost offensive. They engage with queer art, they empathize with it, they 'get' it. Queer symbolism isn't so radically different across the globe that it is URECOGNIZABLE cross culturally. BTS work with and know queer people. To say Jikook aren't making things look a certain way ON PURPOSE is to erase the hard won power and agency they currently hold (I say hard won because they live in a homophobic (by its very policies) country). We are seeing new, BOLDLY queer things from Jikook this year and they feel self directed an empowered. I can't say for sure if Jikook are together, and it certainly isn't my place to do so. But I also won't call them 'unaware', uneducated or insensitive when they layer on the homoromantic subjext. I won't erase their intentionality as artists and human beings. I trust that what they are putting out comes from an honest place.

We can argue that for some moments, like the butt poking and slapping, the hugging and spooning - where in some Western countries they most certainly mean something non-platonic - it’s their culture, and it’s not their business to change what they do because some might consider it “gay”. But when it comes to performances, like the Dynamite Holiday, they must know. Although to me, it seems like a spur of a moment thing Jimin did (from the selfie camera version, it doesn’t look rehearsed or planned at all). But yeah, I don’t have anything further to add except that.