#and the queer side carries the community honestly

[elliotteque-exe]

half the guts & blackpowder playerbase is queer teenagers on tumblr making fanart of the characters being gay and the other half is edgy 14 year olds that have military defenses from at least 3 countries memorised and thats hilarious to me

[bri-the-nautilus]

Come To the Dark Side, We Have Hot Guys: A Star Wars Story

Spoilers below for S1 of Ahsoka and the first six episodes of The Acolyte.

I'm writing this with The Acolyte most of the way through airing its first season, with episode 6 having released earlier today. Say what you will about the show, but it's really brought out a lot of the uglier sides of the Star Wars fandom. Everyone and their mother has seen videos or Reddit threads dunking on the Critical Drinker or SWT and their mouth-breathing misogynist audiences at this point, so I don't feel particularly compelled to retread that ground. Instead, I want to talk about the... other side of the fandom, the hypocrisy therein, and how we're all being played for absolute fools by the creative team at Disney Lucasfilm.

Yes, this post is about Qimir.

Now I want to say that I have no problem with villain simping/shipping. Far from it. Most of my posts on this account are me simping for Shin Hati (we'll talk more about her later) or various Soulsborne bosses. Hell, my mutuals and I have a running joke about me having a weakness for evil blonde women. While I personally am too gay for my own good and couldn't care less about men as a concept, I absolutely see the appeal of characters like Qimir and Kylo Ren. I absolutely get why people thirst over them and love making fandom content for them. I think Qimir/Osha has the potential to be a really fun ship, actually. The point I'm making here is not "simping for these characters is wrong and bad," and I want to make that crystal clear before we continue.

That said, let's talk about Qimir, and how the landscape of the show and its surrounding discourse has changed since his reveal. Again, I'm ignoring the chud sphere here, partly because their little corner of the Internet has remained remarkably stagnant since then. The podcast bros still think it's woke, fucking Shadiversity is still whining about fight choreography (which as someone who actually has done HEMA/stage combat, Shad annoys me to no end, but that's an entirely separate can of worms), and it all seems to be business as usual over there. No, the most marked changes have been on the Acolyte-positive end of the fandom space. Here's what the top posts in "hashtag TheAcolyte" on Twitter look like tonight:

You get the idea.

Again, no hate to any of these people. This is tumblr ffs, we've all engaged in a little simping for a morally dubious hot person. I love seeing fans having fun engaging with something, and again I kinda dig the Osha/Qimir ship.

Anyways, if you were around for the Acolyte-positive discourse before the Qimir reveal, and especially the show's marketing and the reponse to that, you'll have noticed a marked difference.

Fans quickly began to see The Acolyte as " the gayest Star Wars ever." Showrunner Leslye Headland is an out lesbian, and her wife was cast as Master Vernestra Rwoh. Archetypical girlboss Carrie-Anne Moss was cast as Master Indara, immediately drawing comparisons to her role in the Matrix movies. Leads Osha and Mae Aniseya are played by the nonbinary Amandla Stenberg. The lesbian witches of Brendok were talked about in press releases before the show aired. Dafne Keen (Jecki Lon) stated in an interview that she portrayed the short-haired, serious Theelin as having a crush on Osha, something that fans were picking up on in their first interactions in the premiere before Keen even gave that interview. While Headland said in a post-premiere interview that she didn't set out specifically to make "a capital Q Queer show," it's an objective fact that no Star Wars movie/show has had as much potential in that area, and fans (especially the queer community) took notice. (For what it's worth, in the same interview Headland commented that she was proud of creating something that so many queer fans identified with.)

The show came out, and Master Indara was killed off in the first sequence, which I'm honestly fine with. It was a good scene and works on a lot of levels. Headland's aforementioned interview came and went. Episode three aired. The lesbian witches turned out to be even gayer than was previously thought possible, and people ate that shit up while the Critical Drinker's brain suffered a major cascade failure. Jecki became a runaway favorite in the premiere and episode four, as did lovable himbo Yord Fandar and the wise, paternalistic Master Sol. In Acolyte-positive circles, this was basically how it went. People thought Brendok was cool, the Yord Horde became the show's biggest social media sensation, Jecki and Sol cultivated devoted followings alongside Osha and Mae, there were a wealth of different ships involving various combinations of Jecki, Yord, and the twins... you get the idea.

Then episode 5 happened.

The writing was really on the wall when the Brendok coven was abruptly wiped out. Introducting such an interesting (and queer) Force-wielding culture only to exterminate them in the same episode was certainly a choice that somebody made. But episode 5 was a shock to the system for many fans, as the show's resident Sith revealed himself and killed Jecki and Yord in some of the most brutal recent onscreen deaths in Star Wars. To be clear, I think this was a great sequence. Two beloved main characters being suddenly and gruesomely killed off was a masterfully executed shock to the system, especially after viewers were lulled into a false sense of security by all the redshirt deaths in the previous scene.

This, understandably, completely changed the landscape of the Acolyte fandom. Virtually overnight, much of the simping and shipping involving Jecki and Yord dried up, and once the dust had settled as far as the "rip blorbo, gone too soon" posts went, what remained were the usual Sol/twins offerings and a wave of Qimir hype. Which is understandable. He's a badass emo Sith boy with a cool helmet who brutally murdered fan favorite characters in front of us and has palpable tension with the female lead. Who wouldn't love... wait a minute.

This feels familiar somehow.

But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all?

And just like that, "the gayest Star Wars" is all about the (straight) sexual tension between an edgy, murderous Sith boy and a light-side girl plagued by dark thoughts whose friends said boy just killed. This is all eerily similar to how the Sequel Trilogy focused on Rey and Kylo while abruptly dropping Finn and Poe's character arcs. Even the fandom discourse is the same. I mean Reylo was so ubiquitous back in the day that it became a derogatory catch-all for good girl/evil boy shipping. Multiple authors now have either gotten their initial start/fame writing Reylo fics, or straight up published legally distinct Reylo fiction after the fashion of Netflix's After. You had the occasional person piping up to say "hey they kind of just left Finn and Poe hanging after TFA, it would've been cool if they got together but at the very least don't relegate them to being side characters/comic relief in separate story threads," and that was it. The same thing is going on with The Acolyte now, only the sequel trilogy wasn't marketed on the strength of being a queer story by a queer creative team. The Acolyte is, which makes it all the more baffling that by the midway point of the first season, all the gays have been buried and the show seems to be heading straight for Reylo 2: High Republic Boogaloo. And the fans are eating it up.

As an interesting aside, I think it's an interesting exercise to contrast the Kylo/Qimir pattern with the broader fandom's treatment of Shin Hati (told you we'd circle back to that), and the ship between her and Sabine Wren. On paper, Shin is very similar to Kylo and Qimir. Villain? Check. Edgy-looking armor? Totes. Emotionally damaged/stunted in some way? Sure looks like it. Tension with the heroine? You betcha. If anything, the only major difference is that Shin isn't as evil as the others. Compare her actions in Ahsoka (clearing out part of a light cruiser with Baylan and making repeated attempts on Sabine's life) to Kylo (oversees multiple war crimes, kills his fan-favorite dad) or Qimir (orchestrates the murders of several Jedi before brutally executing two fan-favorite characters). She's definitely bad, but I struggle to see her as on par with Qimir, let alone fucking Kylo, in terms of evilness.

Which makes it all the more interesting to me that the Shin/Sabine ship has received so much more mainstream skepticism/criticism than the Osha/Qimir or Rey/Kylo ships. "They have no chemistry!" "She's an evil murderer!" "She's a blank slate!" "Sabine is taken!" I may be a touch biased, but from where I sit a large part of the fandom, even the ostensibly progressive side, seems to look down upon Shin/Sabine shippers while swooning for heterosexual variants with far more evil villains.

This isn't a monolith, and I can't stress that enough. I'm not trying to start shit here. Villain shipping is awesome. We support women's wrongs in this house. You do see the occasional person decrying Reylo or Osha/Qimir as toxic, which I think is fairly unnecessary. Like yeah, maybe it's a toxic dynamic, but these are fictional characters. For these specific characters, part of the crowd appeal is the toxic badboy side of things. I don't think we should really spend much energy attacking any fictional ship (between adults, mind you) as toxic, which is why it puzzles me that an as-yet-unconfirmed lesbian ship in a niche show receives such a large proportion of this sort of criticism compared to the canon relationship between two main characters of a blockbuster trilogy.

At the end of the day, this whole affair has been rather sobering for me on both Disney Lucasfilm and the Star Wars fandom. For all the support the Shin/Sabine ship has received from Ahsoka cast members Ivanna Sakhno (Shin), Natasha Liu Bordizzo (Sabine), Eman Esfandi (Ezra Bridger, the other character people like to ship with Sabine), and Rosario Dawson (Ahsoka), I'm rather sour on the prospects of it becoming canon. The sequel trilogy dropped the ball on what many saw as a promising chance for an MLM romance between Finn and Poe in favor of trotting out the "why do good girls like bad boys" dynamic, and The Acolyte, "the gay show" overseen by a lesbian, has seemingly shifted to center a similar dynamic after killing off most of its prospects for a queer relationship among the main cast. Simply put, I think that Disney as an international company based in the frighteningly divided United States is reluctant to commit to anything beyond lipservice in terms of LGBT representation in their movies/shows, which again doesn't leave me feeling optimistic about WolfWren's canon potential. And the fandom takes the bait. People love the damaged evil badboy/good girl dynamic, and when the queer fandom suggests the possibility of a queer ship taking center stage in a show with no other extant relationships, even the more progressive side of the fandom tends to either ignore it or actively push back on its basis in reality until Disney Lucasfilm inevitably puts the kibosh on it. The amount of times I've heard people dismiss WolfWren for the same reasons they now like Osha/Qimir and liked Reylo (before that ship was fleshed out/canonicalized, anyway) is ridiculous, but at the end of the day you kinda feel stupid for expecting anything else. Again, I think Qimir is a cool character and I'm as much of a sucker for villain romances as the next girlie, but seeing how easily the fandom lets dangling heterosexual carrots lead it away from Disney Lucasfilm's broken promises of queer rep is a sobering ordeal.

[skysmadness]

read tsats and while i did find the pace weird and some part cringy i really do not understand where all this hate is coming from. of course, opinions, but damn

the way y'all are depicting will is just wrong to me, i'm sorry. how do you expect a child of the sun to react to a WEEK in Tartarus? plus, will was never mentioned to be a fighter other than that One scene in HOO where leo saw him carrying a bow – his purpose was always to be a healer.

i saw some people saying that he was always depicted as chill and stuff so it doesn't make sense for him to panic this much. WHAT DO YOU MEAN ??? I AM SO SORRY WHAT DO YOU MEAN. HE'S LITERALLY IN TARTARUS ??? FACE TO FACE WITH HIS INSECURITIES AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT do you expect him to be "it is what it is ig :)"

and of course he doesn't fully understand the darkness the underworld brings, sadly death and the dark will always be depicted as something bad and to avoid – hell, will's a healer and it's his job to avoid death in general !! and this is why i loved his interaction with Persephone cause if anyone could understand him it's her. and talking to her definitely helped his point of view

and about nico as well i am Glad we got to see a more genuine side of him, he's still the nico i remember but we could see how "lighter" he acts, how goofy he could be and sarcastic and honestly? good for him. i am so very happy he got what he deserved: a happy ending and the realisation that there are so many people who love him

this is a queer book for queer teens and seeing will and nico go through VERY real relationship issues and support each other, lash out at each other, communicating through it all is a win to me ngl

[kade0--0]

GONNA TALK ABOUT "I WANT TO BE THE WALL" CUZ I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT THIS MANGA

------------

❧ I Want to be The Wall

(Watashi wa Kabe ni Naritai/わたしは壁になりたい)

- Aroace female MC, Gay MC, Married MCs

Absolutely amazing absolutely beautiful I will forever recommend this manga it's genuinely so good

A story of an aroace woman (Yuriko) who likes BL and fears living alone, and a gay man (Takerota) who can't be with the person he loves. Despite their differences they had amazing communication skills and their willingness to accommodate to each other was honestly peak marriage behavior. I also loved how they tried their best to understand each other's sexualities.

There was this part of the manga where Takerota talked to Yuriko's friend about asexuality and stuff, and it made me cry so hard I had to take a break from reading. When I got to that part I really thought "ah I totally get how Yuriko feels". The way her friend explained her fondness for love as a concept was honestly pretty much how I felt about it. Liking romance manga and feeling happy when we see people who are able to love and cherish each other, recognizing how beautiful that feeling must be, but ultimately unable to experience it the same way everyone else does and yearning for it.

Her friend also goes to explain how she likes BL in particular because both main characters are men, so she wouldn't be able to draw a direct connection to herself as a woman or imagine herself in that situation. I totally got that, reading things I can't fully relate to because it allows me to distance myself from the romance happening in front of me.

I'm really talking a lot but this is just from one chapter HAHAH anyway the whole manga is so so good I really recommend it, the part I ranted about was just the one that struck me the most because I was really going thru it when I decided to pick this manga up. All that combined with the feeling of being seen really set me off so yeah

In the end, I loved how Yuriko and Takerota became a (unconventional) family even though they started the whole marriage for the sake of convenience

Honestly while reading it, I just kept thinking how nice it would be if I experienced something similar. I'm also scared of growing old by myself, and in my case, watching everyone around me fall in love while I can't and making their partners their top priority just fuels the fear that I'll never be that important to anyone or have someone to lean on in the future. The way my parent is also starting to talk about boyfriends and babies is also adding onto the pressure that I need to be normal and get married and have kids someday. But if I did that it wouldn't be for my own happiness, I'd just be doing what other people want me to do.

But this manga kinda gave me hope that maybe I can find someone who'd be content staying by my side without expecting any romantic connection. And maybe one day I'll be brave enough to live how I want to live.

To every aroace person suffering from these fears I really hope you find people you can call family and trust to have your back at all times <3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was originally gonna be on my list of queer manga I read recently (still working on that), but I got carried away with this part and it ended up longer and way more personal than the others so I made a separate post for it yay!!

Happy reading to anyone who felt like picking this up after seeing this post!

<3

[sixbynine-da]

I did the omegaverse thing! :D My @goodomensafterdark Pride exchange gift fic for @mageofthepeople finished just in time! 

And sneaking in to post just before pride weekend is over 😀

They have the full piece as their gift you all can wait for me to slowly post it over the next few weeks 😛

This is particularly special to me because this pride has been the first one I’ve really felt able to honestly participate in even if it is just in this small way.

In part my confidence to do so is down to the @goodomensafterdark community, in general, but also to the many many queer folk I found there who were not only incredibly welcoming but very forthcoming and informative in a way that simply wasn’t an option open to me when I was younger. It’s taken me a pretty long time to find my part of the rainbow but I’m getting there!

<3 ANYWAY. MOVING ON. FIC and stuff.

Summary: 

Aziraphale has finally come of age and is being presented to society to find a suitable alpha to provide children and carry on the Easterling legacy.

To bad she has no interest in any of that, and is more than capable of letting that opinion be known.

At least until she crosses paths with a mysterious stranger who has secrets of his own.

Beta’d by @fuzzygoblin and @onedappercat 

Whom i lured in under the false pretence of it not being that long then spat out almost 30k. Soz. my bad. thankyouthankyouthankyou

Excerpt:

Aziraphale eyed up the window; they were on the second floor, but it would hardly be the first time she’d climbed out a second or third floor window. She looked out of it and down below: gravel and bushes. There was a ledge underneath she could hang off to lower the drop. It probably wouldn’t be very dignified, but there was no one around to see her. Once out, it wouldn’t take her long to walk home. Mama and Michaela would be furious once they came home and found her, but at least she’d be free of this corset and any more banal chit chat from dull boys with dull interests. 

Decision made, she looked down at the long skirt and train of the dress. Tearing it was unthinkable; it was a family heirloom and every Easterling girl had worn it. Muriel was eagerly awaiting her turn. Mama would likely be far more furious over that than anything else. Aziraphale unwound the length of golden ribbon in her hair, letting her curls fall loosely over her shoulders as it came undone. She tied it around her waist firmly and gathered her skirts between her legs, hauling the weight of fabric up and tucking it through the ribbon until her feet were free and her dress resembled very loose breeches. 

Aziraphale put her hands on the side of the window frame and lifted a leg.

“Going somewhere?”

Continue on AO3!

[my-precious-hellscape]

fuck yeah your tags got posted because you said a shit take. own up and learn. bi lesbians are valid. its just another label in the vast sea of labels. people are trying to kill us and are killing us. why bother with such useless and pointless policing?

you aint a terf or whatever people are calling you, but you start siding with the exclusionists when you spit that shit. why separate the community even further? did you ever actually ask a bi lesbian (or any mspec lesbian or gay for that matter) why they chose to identify that way, or did you just see someone else shilling the fact theyre problematic and that warped your perception and you decided to follow their line of thinking?

Since this is one of the dozen or so messages I've gotten (and thank fuck it's not more, people really just wait for an opportunity to harass a transwoman, huh?) I'll respond to it. Thank you for saying I'm not a terf, it really means a lot. I did own up to the tags I left, I even posted them myself! To be fair, no, I never ask a bi lesbian why they identify the way they do but then again, neither did you, right? Or any of the messages I've received. No one bothered to ask me why I stand where I do. What I did see though is lesbians that are pissed off they're just not allowed to have a space of their own. Lesbianism excludes men, you cannot be attracted to men and be a lesbian. There are, as I said in my tags, a fair number of terms that could be used instead that don't carry the same weight. I honestly fucking hate that all queer discourse boils down to throwing insults at each other, like I wasn't even that secure in my position on this side of the argument! Now though I feel pretty fucking entrenched.

Once again thank you for the kind words and I do hope this gives a somewhat accurate depiction of my side.

[akai-anna]

i saw the ship opinion bingo AND I REALLY WANNA ASK FOR OOFURI so here i am. obviously i wanna know about abemiha, tajihana and akimaru haruna!! but also mihashi/haruna, abe/haruna, mihashi/tajima and any other combo you want to ramble about I LOVE YOUR OPINIONS ON THESE THINGS

hi im back can you add izumi/shinooka and haruna + abemiha to the oofuri ship opinions bingo please

Mikh, you are the absolutely most precious thing, always enabling my Oofuri tendencies, bless your lovely soul, my darling. *whispers* I love you. Thank you so much for this.

Notes still apply:

i interpret relationships in the broadest possible sense

i check everything that makes sense to me, even if they seem contradictory; i view them applied to different situations/universes/possibilities

ship opinion bingo in question

I. Abe Takaya - Mihashi Ren

The No.1. Battery of my Heart they are, Ma'am

Where to even START WITH THESE TWO?

"MOST CODEPENDENT BITCHES ON EARTH" WAS PRACTICALLY MADE FOR THEM (as you could witness it in our reading sessions, god, you are an ANGEL FOR READING WITH ME!) and fits them like a glove. The canon material just provides so MUCH CONTENT FOR THEM already that I feel so well fed.

THE SHEER DEDICATION TOWARDS EACH OTHER, THEY CARE SO RIDICULOUSLY MUCH. THEY HAD TO SPEND A FEW WEEKS NOT PLAYING (NOT APART!!! JUST LIKE!! NOT PLAYING TOGETHER!!!) AS A BATTERY AND YET EVERY SECOND YOU COULD TELL THEY WANTED TO BE PLAYING TOGETHER. THEY ARE RIDICULOUS (already stupid enough on their own, no need for me to change anything there)!!!

ABE TAKAYA WHO CARES SO MUCH BUT ALSO CARRIES SO MUCH HURT FROM HIS PAST, WHO IS SHIT AT COMMUNICATING AND NEEDS TO GET HIS HEAD OUT OF HIS ARSE YET TRYING HIS BEST AND MIHASHI REN WHO WAS BULLIED SO MUCH HE LOST EVEN THE LAST DROP OF HIS SELF-CONFIDENCE SLOWLY OPENING UP AGAIN AND ALSO LEARNING HOW TO COMMUNICATE AND SLOWLY GAINING CONFIDENCE AND GROWING SO MUCH AS A PERSON AND AS PART OF THE TEAM! MY!! HEART!!! I'M FERAL OVER THEM MIKH, FERAL!!! The way Abe needs to learn to TRUST MIHASHI and let him MAKE DECISIONS TOO, and see that respect IS IMPORTANT (MIHASHI BEING BETTER THAN ABE AT COOKING!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, SUCH AN IMPORTANT LITTLE MOMENT!!! MIHASHI BEING MORE COMPETENT THAN ABE AT SOMETHING!!!) BOTH WAYS, and a battery is not a one-sided BUT A TWO-WAY THING (NOT JUST ABE GIVING SIGNS AND MIHASHI DOING WHAT HE IS TOLD BUT ALSO MAKING A DECISION TOGETHER!!!) I'M CRYING- AND THEN THERE IS MIHASHI WHO NEEDS TO LEARN HOW TO SPEAK HIS MIND ABOUT THINGS, WHO NEEDS TO LEARN THAT IT'S NOT JUST ABE THAT MAKES HIM AMAZING BUT HE IS PART OF THAT, IT'S NOT JUST ABE, IT'S HIM (AND THE WHOLE TEAM TOO!!! VERY IMPORTANT!!!) TOO, AND HE IS SOMEONE TO BE RELIED ON TOO, SEE tHAT HE is GOOD TOO!!

I'll be honest, their bond is just so deep and so very meaningful to me. I personally don't view them as romantic, instead I see them as one of the most precious queer platonic relationships. (The very fact that I view Abe as aromantic, thank you canon material, is a big part of this.)

Honestly, as we read we gush about them a lot (obviously), and I still feel I could still go on about them forever. Have one of my favourite moments with them, that I feel started them on the whole journey for becoming so much better, so much closer, CORE ABEMIHA MOMENT, BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT ONLY WERE VERY HONEST WITH EACH OTHER BUT ALSO SAW THAT THINGS CANNOT REMAIN THE SAME AND THERE IS SO MUCH MORE TO A BATTERY THAN THEY'VE BEEN DOING SO FAR (MUTUAL!!!) AND ONE OF THE VERY FIRST MOMENTS ABE'S BRAIN SHUT DOWN (but who can blame him, Mihashi's smile IS PRECIOUS AND HE WORKED SO HARD FOR IT), IT'S JUST SO IMPORTANT TO ME!!

(But I was also so tempted to put the "But you are the one who cares about me the most" scene or the name calling scene here... It was a hard choice.)

⊱✿⊰

II. Mihashi Ren - Tajima Yuuichirou

The Natural Braincell Share Duo

I'm going with TajiMiha next for a reason, which is the VERY FACT THAT IT'S THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF ABEMIHA. (Which I couldn't help but talk about in this post because I ADORE THE PARALLEL/CONNECTION SO MUCH.) So I'm sorry, I'll be talking about TajiMiha in relation to AbeMiha BC I'M OBSESSED WITH THEM.

Compared to Abe, Tajima has no problems communicating with Mihashi, they are on the same wavelength, TAJIMA IS LItERALLY THE tEAM'S MIHASHI tRANSLATOR, there is a mutual respect between them from almost the very start.

Tajima and Mihashi also seem to share other interests outside baseball, and non-interests too (Sir, they are SO STUPID, PLS tutoR thEM MORE).

While there is a solid foundation for AbeMiha battery that solely relies on Abe, TajiMiha battery WORKS TOGETHER FROM THE VERY START, MAKING DECISIONS TOGETHER, LEARNING TOGETHER, GOING THROUGH ThE PROCESS OF DECIDING THINGS, MAKING MISTAKES, ADJUSTING; TajiMiha having battery as equals, while AbeMiha being so ridiculously unbalanced at first (putting everything on Abe's shoulder).

Also the contrast between Tajima-Mihashi. Tajima, the star player with his natural talent, the very definition of Wild and Feral, always as bright as the fckin sun, loud and honest with his every feeling and thought, "he's got one mean presence" thought. Mihashi, the team's Ace (but thinking not by his own ability), lil anxiety birb who is afraid to say what he thinks but also having the loveliest of sunshine smiles if one takes the time to get to know him and ACCEPT HIM, "he's such a nice person" thought.

Tajima-Mihashi are so precious to me MIKH. SO PRECIOUS. The way they are just so COMFORtABLE WItH EACH OTHER. URGH. ALSO THE VERY FACT THAT TAJIMA IS A YOUNGEST BROTHER IN A BIG FAMILY BUT ALSO FEELS LIKE A BROTHER TO MIHASHI, IT'S PRECIOUS? ALSO SO READY TO PROTECT AND THROW HANDS FOR MIHASHI'S SAKE I'M!!! FERAL!!! AND THEN MIHASHI OUTRIGHT TELLING HIM THAT IT'S A MISUNDERSTANDING!!! I LOVE THEM SO MUCH, ONE OF MY EVER FAVOURITE SCENES!!

⊱✿⊰

III. Hanai Azusa - Tajima Yuuichirou

The True Rivals TM

Yes, I'm going with them for the third round because basically, they are my main romantic ship (don't ask why, brain chemistry said so, and idk why). I'm SO ATTACHED TO THEM, THEY REALLY AFFECT AND INSPIRE EACH OTHER SO MUCH, CONSTANTLY MAKING ONE ANOTHER WORK HARD TO BETTER THEMSELVES AND CATCH UP TO ONE ANOTHER.

Tajima being the Force Of Nature that he is, the Natural Talent (not that he doesn't work hard! HE DOES!!! But also the very fact he only needs a few tries to achieve something! GOD! HE'S SO BRIGHT!!) and having so much CONFIDENCE IN HIMSELF TOO, BEING SUCH A RELIABLE PLAYER ON THE FIELD. And then you have Hanai: who can be so awkward, despite trying his hardest, still feeling like he is failing, feeling INADEQUATE NEXT TO TAJIMA, despite the fact that before Nishiura he thought of himself as a good player. Very reliable and responsible off field (TEAM CAPTAIN MATERIAL!!!!), but not feeling so next to Tajima, esp on the field. IT BREAKS AND HEALS ME.

AND THEN AS TIME MOVES ON HANAI BECOMES BETTER, MORE SURE OF HIMSELF. TAJIMA BECOMES MORE CONSCIOUS OF HIM. LIKE GOD LORD. IF YOU ASK WHO THEY ARE COMPETING AGAINST? THEY HAVE EACH OTHER AS THEIR IDEAL, AS THEIR RIVAL, I'M!!! FCKIN FERAL, MIKH!!!

HANAI "I DON'T LIKE MY NAME" AZUSA, FROM THE FIRST MOMENT HE SUSPECTS GIVEN NAMES ARE GOING TO BECOME A THING FOR THE TEAM, FREEZING UP AND PALING AND ABSOLUTELY FREAKING OUT BC HE DOESN'T WANT TO BE CALLED AZUSA, REFUSING TO SAY HIS OWN GIVEN NAME WHEN IT COMES UP, INSISTING ON BEING CALLED "HANAI", AND EVERY TIME WHEN SOMEONE SAYS "AZUSA" YOU CAN SEE HIM DYING A LITTLE INSIDE, ONLY TO SAY IT OUT LOUD THAT HE DISLIKES HIS OWN NAME (discreetly to a couple of his teammates only, INCLUDING TAJIMA), FOR TAJIMA TO CATCH ON HE DIDN'T WANT TO COME TO TRAINING AT THE TAJIMAS' BC OF THE NAME CALLING THING, AND THEN ONLY FOR TAJIMA TO BE LIKE "OK I'LL TELL EVERYONE NOT TO CALL YOU AZUSA", WHICH LEADS TO HANAI "AWKWARD AND EMBARRASSED" AZUSA TO DIE MORE INSIDE. REST IN PIECES SON. (THIS BIT IS SO IMPORTANT TO ME, I'M RAMBLING, I'M SORRY. TRAINING AT THE TAJIMAS' IS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE ARCS IN THE WHOLE OF OOFURI.)

Already went through the whole ship tag, both on AO3 and FF.net and i'm dead inside. (oh why OH WHY IS OOFURI AND A SMALL FANDOM IN WESTERN PARTS!!! WHY IS TAJIHANA A FAIRLY RARE SHIP!!! A CRIME, YOUR HONOUR, A CRIME!!! I'm still digging around for more fics, but those 2 sources are out now. *cries tears of blood*)

Hanai's whole Internal Crisis during the Nishiura VS Sakitama game? IT HAS MY HEART, I LOVE MY BOY SO SO SO MUCH. (Not to mention the little moments you can see how big a crush he has on Tajima. Everyone has a bit of a crush on Tajima Yuuichirou, but Hanai's is the biggest. God, bless his heart.)

I'll be honest. I wanted to include like... *checks* 6 different scenes (some a few pages long) for TajiHana. But I'm trying to limit myself bc 30 pic/Post limit so. *coughs* I'm only leaving these 2 here (A side and B side, if you will). (Also, sorry for the mild spoiler, bear with me.)

⊱✿⊰

IV. Akimaru Kyouhei - Haruna Motoki

Most Ridiculous and Devoted Childhood Friends TM

I LOVE LOVE LOVE THEM MIKH. THEY ARE SO RIDICULOUS, SO ENDEARING, SO STUPID, and definitely in a relationship (is it just friendship? is it romantic? is it the Annoyer and Annoyed? who knows, but THEY ARE DEFINITELY TELEPATHICALLY CONNECTED AND IN A RELATIONSHIP).

God, Haruna wanting Akimaru to be as serious about baseball as the rest of the team, TO BE ON THE SAME PAGE ABOUT IT AS HIMSELF, IT HAS ME SHAKING, HE CARES SO VERY MUCH, and the next second he kicks and smacks him (LOVE LANGUAGE, IT'S HARUNA'S LOVE LANGUAGE!!), God, GOD.

Akimaru, who is so very laid-back (at FIRST, WE ARE CURRENTLY READING THE TURNING POINT MATCH MIKH CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT INCOMING!!!), only was there to help Haruna out, only to start THINKING later on, after he sees how much Haruna CARES, how the TEAM CARES, IT'S SO DELICIOUS!!

Akimaru is a Good Guy, really, I love how he sucks at baseball outside catching Haruna's pitches (for the time being), but he is SUCH A CASUALLY NICE PERSON, and the way he can so easily get on Haruna's nerves is one of my favourite things, YET ALSO REMINDING HARUNA OF THINGS HE FORGETS!!!

Haruna caring so much that he CAN GET ANNOYED AT THE SMALLEST OF THINGS WHEN IT COMES TO AKIMARU, I LOVE AN IDIOT, WHO FORGETS SHIT SO MUCH.

TO BRING BACK SOMETHING NICE FROM OUR READING: THEY ARE JUST SO STUPID, MIKH, I LOVE THEM-

⊱✿⊰

V. Haruna Motoki - Mihashi Ren

Abe's Ex-Pitcher and Current-Pitcher

Not much to check here, but, but... I really love their dynamics. Obviously, the connecting points for them are 1) Abe and 2) Pitching.

I absolutely love what a different perception they have of each other! From the first moment, Mihashi thinking that Haruna is awesome (despite everything Abe says about him), even sort of having him as his goal as a pitcher, and Haruna looking down on the weird lil guy, talking about dichotomy LMAO

Only for it to be not Looking Down as time moves on (and interactions happen) and a sort of more Realistic admiration on Mihashi's part. (HE COULD GO AGAINST HARUNA IN A WAY!)

THEIR INTERACTIONS ARE SO UTTERLY FUNNY AND RIDICULOUS, I LOVE THEM!

Another Mihashi translator (pitchers are a weird species, but they get each other it seems).

⊱✿⊰

VI. Abe Takaya -Haruna Motoki

The Bitter Exes TM

I cannot believe my FIRST BINGO TURNED OUT TO BE "HE'S THE WORST PITCHER" AND "HE HAS A NASTY PERSONALITY" DUO, HOLY SHIT-

As we already established it at our lil Oofuri talks: They Are The Bitter Exes (bless you Mikh). Even if (usually) I don't see them in a romantic context, they are still Exes TM. (Ex-Friends surely exist too, right? And so Ex-Battery Mates.) And they totally didn't end well. And totally stupid and fcked up.

The very fact that they have such vastly different opinions of each other, all based on their perceptions and misunderstandings, just makes this dynamic so layered and delicious. All the hurt Abe is carrying with him EVEN NOW, while Haruna is like "Oh, you talkin' about that!"

The fact that Abe cannot help but COMPARE all pitchers to Haruna, being so affected by the experiences, that he cannot let go of Haruna in a way (which is also a backwards way to say he cared and respected him so much that the BETRAYAL hurt him so much, it wounded him for, if not life, but even till the current timeline).

While for Haruna, Abe's presence and perseverance actually helped him so much through his hardships when he was injured.

AND THEN THEY FINALLY TALKED ABOUT IT, AND THEY BOTH HAD TO REALIZE THAT THEY WERE SO WRONG ABOUT SHIT, I'M IN TEARS, MA'AM-

Moving on from this section, I could put the whole conversation they had in here bc GOD THAT WAS SO GOOD, SO NEEDED, SO BEAUTIFUL, but have only these 2 pages to save space.

⊱✿⊰

VII. Abe Takaya - Haruna Motoki - Mihashi Ren

The Old Battery and The New Battery

I LOVE THESE 3 TOGETHER, THEY ARE JUST SO SILLY TOGETHER, and I already talked about them separately, so imagine all of that put into one bowl AND MIXED.

Abe's complicated feelings towards Haruna, his hardworking personality, how his bond with Mihashi is so very different from Haruna's.

Mihashi's admiration for both Abe and Haruna, and wanting them to get along because he SEES HOW MUCH ABE HAS BEEN HURT, and seeing that he still CARES about Haruna.

Haruna, thanks to his current team, being in much better spirits, and admitting he was at fault too (and that he was also in a bad place, but that didn't make what he did ok!), appreciating Abe in his own way.

And yet Abe and Haruna still just going "he's the worst control" or "he'S NASTY" IT'S HILARIOUS, while Mihashi is there "They are amazing!"

No particular scene comes to mind (aside the ones I shared in the HaruMiha section) for these 3, no caps this time.

⊱✿⊰

VIII. Izumi Kousuke - Shinooka Chiyo

I'm going to be pretty boring this time, because as I'm nowhere near invested in them, I don't have much to say. I can only say that they ARE ADORABLE.

Hope you enjoyed this Rambling Session, my dearest Mikh, and hope you had fun reading this absolute word-vomit.

[endless-sketching]

Caution: I'm an idiot so many things I say here might be inaccurate

A title that describes a story accurately compared to a title that echos the feeling of the story is such a compelling case

Painoko for example, the original Japanese title is called "Senpai wa Otokonoko" and Otokonoko is often used to described girly boys, a male daughter if you will. Despite that, the word itself is shrewd in a rather undefined mystery because of how Japanese queer people, like trans people, would use it to describe themselves in some fashion. So using this word tends to beckons the reader's past history to these types of gender nonconforming people, be it tomboys or femboys, otokonoko carries history but not a solid definition. At least from what I've seen a commonly agreed upon definition. If anything Otokonoko has sort of become a code word for trans safety in Japan of sorts. I'm sure that there's more history behind this that I'm ignorant of since this is basically just the tip of the iceberg to how Japan handles gender.

In short, Otokonoko is an accurate description word but a word that echos a feeling.

And when Painoko announced their anime, I was really excited about it until I found out that the title is done different from what I wanted.

A brief background check on the mangaka of Painoko, Pom (or Pomu from certain sites). More specifically what they created before Painoko, is a manga called Menhera Shoujo Kurumi-chan and how often Kurimi is used in a lot of trans memes.

(This is going to heavily focus on the trans femme side of things so my condolences for my transmen out there)

Im sure that it's pure coincidence that the many trans girls on the internet started using Kurumi specifically and that overtime people had just associated her with being the default anime trans girl rep aside from the other ones. But to go from that manga to Painoko surely means that Pomu knew about the trans memes that's been made with their character right? That in some way these trans memes had incfluenced them into exploring and making Painoko. A story that has very heavy queer coding with Makoto with how they present themselves and the turmoil that many trans girls will heavily relate too, that's just heavily intertwined with other stories within it.

Surely Pomu at least knew about the trans memes before making Painoko right? I mean people went out of their way to get Kurumi's Line stickers to make these memes.

I'd be delighted to talk to someone from Japan's side of the LGBT community about this, but as of now all I know that Kurumi is often used in a lot of these trans memes.

So it's just rather hard to see when the chosen English title they gave Painoko is called "this is him (can't be anyone else)"

It's more accurate to a certain degree but the story never directly confirms that Makoto is really trans. We see them dressed femininely without there wig they usually wear at the end but the story still addresses them with male pronouns here and there. Even up until the last chapter.

I honestly would've munched preferred a sequel to Painoko, exploring where everyone is now rather than what the currently ongoing Encounters Arc is doing by retreading old grounds again. Y'know how Yamada to Kase-san is a sequel story exploring the relationship between Yamada and Kase after the events of Morning Glories and Kase-san? Not only did it further expand on the two's relationships but it also went back and addresses a lot of uncertainty about both characters.

So it would've done leagues of clearing up many possible misconceptions about Makoto if they just made a short sequel story having Makoto directly confirming that they are a transwoman.

You've built the story up with how Makoto questions their gender identity and how they very much prefer to present femininely so why the drop the ball at a vague ending? The hints are there but you are basically giving the general masses a deadly tool to use against trans people by making it vague enough that people can twist the story in their favor instead of what you intended.

In Pomu's final afterword for Painoko, it really did feel like they were rather scared of what it'll do to them if they directly confirm Makoto is trans.

Japan in general has a very center focused "Don't break the norm" mentality in a sense. And being trans in Japan is somehow more accepted than being gay in Japan. The push for legalizing same sex marriage in Japan is there but it's been a brutally quiet battle since 2020 but that's going into politics.

If anything I'm just nitpicking over a mere title for a story that's going to be getting an anime soon.

I'm holding out hope that we'll get an interview with Pomu once the anime is out and they'll hard confirm Makoto being trans there while still keeping everything about the story and title intact.

Crunchyroll you better not fucking mistranslate it.

[melbyp]

I have been asked the question “Are you a cat or a dog” thrown to me once or twice and genuinely I cannot possibly answer it with a straight answer.

People have given their answers, some cat and others dog, but I cannot possible tell them which is correct.

“Cat” to me is being aloof, quiet, communicates with eye contact and simple gestures. Sometimes I surprise people with my presence because I seemingly popped out of nowhere when no one was looking. And other things that cats do, like come home with a rat or something to give to you as a gift to show affection.

“Dog” is more extroverted, constantly seeming happy, socially amiable. Usually always by someone’s side, loyally following them around. There also comes with other assumed traits like being loud, excited to do something, and so and so. A metaphysical constantly wagging tail.

I can’t really choose between “Cat” or “Dog”, some days feel like “Cat”, while other days feel like “Dog”. Sometimes, it feels like I can be both “Cat” and “Dog”, while sometimes being neither.

What makes me bring this up is that this is also strangely the exact same way I feel about my gender identity.

Sometimes I’m “Masculine”, sometimes “Feminine”, neither, both, partially both, partially neither.

I sorta danced this fine line between male and female, I wasn’t really sure which side to fall on so I just kept walking on the line. There were things that were masculine about me, mostly my voice, body shape, and appearance, but a part of me resonated with whatever was considered feminine, things like fancy dresses, makeup and jewelry, hell even the colour pink was so appealing to me. I wanted both of these things, but I knew that I had to pick one because the other would make me look weird.

When I was mostly immature and my knowledge of anything queer related was “attack helicopter” and “social justice warrior” (lots of homophobia and stuff like that too), I used to make a “joke” saying my gender changes every two seasons, I’m a male in fall and winter, and in the spring and summer I’m female. To me, this was funny because I knew that lizards changed their genders depending on circumstances, which at the time also meant that I was a lizard.

But boy, I have learned the lessons of “all jokes hold some truth to them” because after carrying the bit for so long I realized something that gave me answers to everything.

I had heard the term Genderfluid from some image I saw online. And at that time my thought process was “pshh, people can’t be that you can’t just change your gender like that”. Completely aware of that fact that I was already doing that, I kept the term in the back of my head. Slowly but surely, the term started making more and more sense. That switching between “male” and “female” was something that described me. I felt like I could be “male”, I felt like I can also be “female”. I can be both, I can also be neither.

This was the mid ground I was looking for, and honestly, I feel comfortable like that.

So….what does this have to do with the question “Are you a cat or are you a dog?”. Well, nothing really, because I haven’t found the answer to that. But I did find out about being Genderfluid and that people out there might have also had some similar experience of the complexity of gender. I just found it silly that a question like that sorta parallels how I feel about myself.

This post got long, so to any Genderfluid and well anyone who’s trans and under the trans umbrella, you are all so valid.

[all-0f-the-above]

DC PRIDE #1 has me living for many different reasons so let's go through it story by story

The Wrong Side of the Looking Glass

the mad hatter storyline being pretty much a retelling of kate's upbringing and the fact that her being a lesbian is one part of that but not everything thank god

wonderland parallels keep you more interested in the story bc you know it's mad hatter, you just don't know why he's doing it; just another one of those "i know the ending so the question is how they got there"

By the Victors

constantine just being like that and trying to get gregorio and his husband in bed with him - my guy this is why you constantly run into exes and one night stands i swear

the fact that m and gregorio just casually team up just gets me bc this just further confirms that m will call his friends on missions not just because they're qualified (ref: m being unsure if extraño could undo the, and i'm paraphrasing here, "time blood magic") and calls his friends to join him just cause he can

m's reference to the love story between patroclus and achilles made my heart hurt since it kind of parallels him and andrew and i almost checked the writer before realizing that it was, of course, the one and only Steve Orlando - midpollo's saving grace

also can i just mention how much i love gregorio's costumes they show in this? becuase BOY are they a fantastic, dignified kind of hot; thank you Stephen Byrne

this midpollo cover art is killing me

Try the Girl

renee being a badass is always amazing

also the fact that she was admiring the defense attorney that would sometimes be arguing against her case is such an Inconvenient Crush that i would love expansion on

i love that you can see the lipstick stain on her mask - that's the reality of kissing in costume, kids

the way they draw all the women's outfits has me so happy and i esp. love renee, valeria's hair as well as the question's coat - it's just so nice to look at (all my love to Skylar Partridge and José Villarrubia)

Another Word for a Truck to Move Your Furniture

ant harley and aunt pam being antiheroes soothes all my mortal wounds

btw i love how Amy Reeder draws them; they have such a bad history of being sexualized and it struck me when i finished reading that not once was i uncomfortable with the angles or body proportions and i got to read two antiheroes who are women and bisexuals! and being able to be comfortable with their framing and writing the whole time

harley having cartoon logic as her meta ability is so close i can taste it

the coloring is gorgeous - thank you Marissa Louise

also this format of people arguing while also beating up a villain or carrying out a complex plan is my favorite - i love the dynamic and the dialogue of relationship speak and fighting a large plant monster

i think harley's mallet is alive and honestly that's great for her

"He's the Light of My Life!"

i'm going to be impressed with myself if i don't cry at alan and todd's story

damon being impatient to meet alan is great and i love the flashbacks to when father fought son like "no duh we have issues making smalltalk"

JIMMY AND ALAN I'M GOING TO CRY HE LOST HIS LOVER IN THE TRAIN CRASH THEN BECAME A GL

alan being bad with common slang in the lgbtq+ community is such an Old Queer staple

the fact that they're still kind of awkward at the end but working on getting to know each other is such a breath of the fresh air that is real life familial relationships

Clothes, Makeup, Gift

andy's whole aesthetic is offending me with how cute it is and good lord Lisa Sterle draws us enbys really well

jesse with those suspenders

jesse with those hips! i'm glad we have a non-binary character that doesn't look like a waify cis male

getting real adhd vibes for jesse rn like repeating the same words over and over in order to remember them yes that's my life

Be Gay, Do Crime

whoever pitched the title idea has my ultimate respect - it's not often that queer culture references make it in

plus size queer antihero; dc my guy are you trying to get my money because here it is- take it

they got gen z slang right! i'm impressed; usually i say "bougie" instead of "boug" but hey do you

pied piper being responsible but also not is such a chaotic good move that i love

also drummer boy's costume kind of reminds me of those old rock star ones

Date Night

yes my girl nia's just checking in with her mom during patrol

her little dream journal is such a cute idea that she wakes up and just haphazardly scrawls it in there

"cute face" yes the most important piece of information

her full body panel with the moon in the background is just amazing - thank you Luciano Vecchio and Rex Lokus

this action is pretty hq not gonna lie

love that brainy is just like "well ok i guess we have an unconscious criminal with us; how are you liking the movie?"

tl;dr i enjoyed it

[hypermania]

Thoughts on people saying Misha experienced homophobia on the set of Supernatural even though he's straight?

i wasn't going to answer this because i'm pretty sure it's just bait but fuck it.

first:

i think that you should take someone at their word when they tell you how they identify, no matter what. i think if someone says they're straight, even if they're only saying it because they happen to be in the closet, it's still your job to take it as truth. you don't know someone better than they know themselves and you don't know why someone is identifying the way they are. it's not your job—or your right—to second-guess them.

i think that how someone currently identifies has no bearing on how they used to identify or how they will identify in the future. things can change and that doesn't make someone a liar. i also don't think that a person's sexual history is demonstrative of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

so, with all that in mind:

misha collins has said publicly and with intent at least twice now that he is a heterosexual man. so i'm going to believe him. but courtney! he also said he was bisexual. you're absolutely right, he did say that, and while him saying that was meant to be a joke (and it was, whether or not he actually identified as bisexual at the time, the comment was a joke) i took him at his word when it happened. he has since retracted it and i'm taking him at his word for that too. i'm not going to try to interpret any "signaling" or "flagging" or "clues" i think i've decoded as another queer person. (and somewhat relatedly: he put on a dress like two times. stop saying he's gender-nonconforming just because he isn't crushing beer bottles against his forehead.). point is: i'm choosing to believe he's a straight man because that's what he has said he is.

and straight people don't experience homophobia. i think the term people have been forgetting in this discussion is "toxic masculinity." misha collins, and honestly probably every single other person who's ever stepped foot on that set, was a victim of toxic masculinity.

but here's the thing about that: i think a large part of this fandom wants to paint misha as a victim of something, anything really, so badly because if he's not the victim, it must mean he's the perpetrator and that he's a horrible no-good evil piece of shit and everything he ever did was a lie.

but that's not how the real world works. misha did a lot of good. he fought for queer rep on the show and he raised a lot of money for the community and he made a lot of people feel loved and accepted. those things are all still true. they don't just go away because he doesn't identify as queer himself. but that doesn't mean that he has never been part of the problem. he has made homophobic (and misogynistic) jokes. he has! he just has. (and side note: i would really love it if people could stop painting him as a victim of the all the other evil men involved with supernatural. misha is a rich white dude. if he didn't want to keep going back, he didn't have to. he chose to continue to be a part of that set and he is still choosing to carry on personal relationships with a lot of those people. stop infantilizing him and acting like he's just a poor widdle baby getting bullied. he's a grown man and he makes his own choices.)

anyway, my point is that it's not all-or-nothing. he did good and he did bad and those are not mutually exclusive and they don't cancel each other out.

there are people who are feeling hurt and/or upset and that's valid. they thought he was "safe" and it turns out he was making a joke out of their sexuality, and even if it wasn't malicious, even if it was meant to be inclusive, it was still a joke and sometimes that hits a little too close to home.

but the people who are saying he's either total homophobic scum OR just a poor little victim uwu that got bullied by the real homophobes—i'm sorry but please grow up.

i think as of march we had 16 states pushing "don't say gay" bills and there are currently 35 states with at least one anti-trans bill being pushed. misha collins is just a flawed human trying to do good, who happens to have fucked up. the memes were entertaining but we have got way more important things to worry about right now.

[dream-girls-evil]

Okay this post got very long and messy but!! Honestly can’t believe how sapphic the second episode of The Nevers was. Like they had this whole scene between Penance and Augie, trying to play up their potential romance, and yet the whole thing was really just there to set up Penance leaving the party alone so that she could be kidnapped by Maladie and the whole dynamic is literally full of classic villain-hero-love interest tropes!!! Not to mention Maladie herself being very queer-coded.

I’ll start with Maladie. She’s pretty overtly and inappropriately sexual, but the sapphic side of that is really highlighted in this ep. Her relationship with Bonfire Annie seems flirtatious at least, and there’s a noticeable fondness between them. Despite Maladie’s followers commenting that Annie doesn’t suppose their cause and is only there because she was hired, Maladie seems to care about pleasing her and keeping her around.

On Annie’s side, she certainly seems swayed by her boss’ affection. There’s no real insult when she tells Maladie that she’s being stupid, only warning. And I can’t imagine many other people could get away with saying something like that to Maladie like that anyway. When she stops Maladie from killing Amalia, we see the genuine shock on Maladie’s face and the apology on Annie’s. And yet the action isn’t, I don’t think, a betrayal—Annie’s intervention is what allows Maladie to run off before the cops can catch her.

Then, of course, we have her whole backstory with Amalia.

The whole premise of an “affliction” that upsets the way rich white men think things are supposed to be is broadly applicable to a lot of different societal conflicts, and several are even brought up directly: class conflict, race, women’s rights, neurodivergence. Maladie is a representative of the abuse that could occur, especially to women, under the guise of mental health treatment. And without knowing exactly what it was that Maladie suffered from originally and how much of her current mindset is a result of “treatment” for it, I was really struck by the potential sapphic interpretation.

It’s unclear exactly what happened between Amalia and Maladie. We know Amalia betrayed her trust by what sounds like exposing something about her, and that led to a young Sarah being taken away and having awful things done to her. Amalia says she didn’t have a choice, and Maladie says that’s because she had a mission, but I have to wonder whether that’s the truth or only what Maladie believes. If we consider it subjective, then the rest—trust broken, a secret revealed, sexual abuse by her doctors, the resulting strong religiosity—all really carry the tone someone being outed and subjected to conversion therapy.

As a result of this abuse, the young Sarah turns into a Maladie full of pain and betrayal who wants to hurt Amalia the way Amalia hurt her. And how does she do it?

“Yeah, but I’m not looking for her, I’m looking for her! The entire of her. The fuckin’ soul, eh?”

Maladie wants to strike at Amalia’s soul—something part of her, that completes her—and Annie gets her Penance. Because they’re supposed to be inseparable; this is presented as common knowledge.

It’s a common trope for a villain to kidnap the hero’s love interest and force them to choose between saving them and saving the city/the world/a bus full of school children/etc. Mary, in this scenario, clearly represents the latter, because she is their hope for reaching out to all the Touched. And it’s not to say that the most important relationship in Amalia’s life can’t be a purely platonic one, but I do think that if Amalia was a man, there would be little doubt in interpreting Penance as the love interest. Especially as the rest of the episode is filled with similar tropes.

We have Penance standing at Amalia’s bedside berating her for nearly dying. We have her looking tense and upset and Amalia reaching for her hand as she stands to leave. There’s a moment of hesitation and surprise as Penance looks from Amalia’s face to where her thumb is stroking Penance’s wrist, as if she’s debating, before she gives in and curls up against Amalia’s side. Yet the framing is one of familiarity in how their hands comfortably readjust and Penance smiles and finally breathes. It gives the sense that this is something they’ve done before, that Amalia knows Penance needs this to reassure herself that Amalia’s okay. It’s a scene mostly familiar as one we see in a lot of shows when someone gets seriously injured or sick and their significant other climbs into the hospital bed with them.

There’s a sense that Amalia is drawing comfort and strength from Penance’s closeness as well, preparing herself to admit the heavy shame of her role in Maladie’s history. But Penance stops her with the line “let’s just be alive for a while.” It’s yet another common occurrence between hero and love interest, especially after the hero gets hurt—they want to push on or are still worrying about what happened and what comes next, and the love interest reminds them to be present or sometimes more forcefully tells them to stop, because they almost lost the hero but they didn’t and they just want to have them close while they can, before something else happens. And the hero gives in and just lies with their love.

It’s just...all so painfully obvious how this would be presented if it were a heterosexual couple, from Maladie’s anger that borders on scorn and bitterness about Amalia’s “new best friend” to Penance and Amalia’s dynamic throughout. How easy it is to imagine a more overt romantic tone and how naturally they could have segued into a love confession or emotional speech or kiss when Penance was sitting at Amalia’s bedside. And yet also having the subtext that’s so particular to queer relationships and characters: the ambiguity, the intensity, and all that’s communicated through touches and gazes but left unsaid.

[tahitianmangoes]

I binged Uncoupled over 2 days which is unheard of for me as I don't usually have the staying power for TV shows and hardly ever binge watch.

I really liked it. I didn't think I would as I'm not a big fan of what I would call white American dramas but I saw that this was written by Darren Star who also write Sex And The City so I had to give it a go. SATC was something I found when I was around 14 on late night Comedy Central and although I couldn't see myself in these white, wealthy (despite what Carrie would have you believe), cis women characters, I was able to relate to aspects of them: a bit of Miranda here, a bit of Charlotte there. Of course it's all pretty dated now but still a comfort show of mine. SATC taught me about sex being normal (not talked about ever in my home), about sex positivity and about the importance of friendship - how friends can be your chosen family. I saw that very clearly in Uncoupled, too.

I loved seeing Jai Rodriguez who I've loved since OG Queer Eye. I think think pretty self aware and a lot of the jokes shouldn't be take at face value for that reason. I like that it focusses on older people and not a bunch of squeaky clean twinks. The male gay community is very often (and unfortunately so) vain; there is an emphasis on being young and skinny and beautiful and I know that exists in media in general but I often feel it's quite toxic in gay male spaces.

What I didn't like about Uncoupled was the lack of diversity which is something I look for in shows. I found the 4 black characters tokenistic at the beginning but I was glad their characters weren't as throw-away as they seemed in the earlier episodes. I do think their character development could have been done sooner, however. And I'm salty that there were 0 Asian characters but ultimately, I knew what the show was.

I've seen a lot of reviews from a few places and the majority seem to come from straight, white, cis women. I see why it would appeal to them as usually, these sorts of characters (queer men) are marketed towards them and often in heteronormative shows, there's a gay best friend getting up to hilarious hijinks somewhere. Always the side character, the comic relief. Many reviews from these people did seem to unfortunately fetishize queer male relationships. Some seemed to come from people who disliked men in general and were unhappy that a show that focussed on gay male relationships had "so many men in it" - I guess they hate women(!) But the majority of the reviews whined about the show. Whined that it wasn't "realistic" because the characters were too rich, too goodlooking, whined that it didn't feel "representative", whined that Michael was a "drama queen". Jesus fucking Christ, was SATC ever realistic or attainable to the majority of it's audience? Was Sam's sex life ever realistic? Were the clothes any of them wore ever attainable to a normal person? Could the apartments they lived in ever be lived in by a person on minimum wage? Was Carrie not over dramatic in every single episode but she was excused because she's a straight woman? We got 6 series of Carrie over reacting (not including the reboot) and she became an icon. It feels like condemning Michael for the same behaviour is perpetuating harmful stereotypes.

Saying the show is not representative of queer relationships is just misinformed. The show is literally written by a queer, Jewish man. How more realistic do you want it to get? Just because you might not understand hook-up culture or you're not a part of it does not mean that it doesn't exist. Just because you don't see yourself 100% in a character does not mean you can't relate on some aspects.

That seems to be what it boils down to. The inability to look at someone "different" and see any part of yourself in there.

Imagine complaining about not being able to see yourself represented in a piece of media, huh? Imagine not everything being for you. Imagine that.

Honestly, as a queer, mixed race, non gender conforming person I'm here to say get a fucking grip. Heteronormative, white relationships have been the norm onscreen FOREVER and Uncoupled, as I already pointed out, doesn't exactly push the envelope of diversity yet the mere mention of gay culture makes some people back away quicker than if they'd picked up a box of cockroaches. It's pathetic.

[paradisetemporarilymisplaced]

Book recs: Similar to but less sad than TSOA

Hello everyone! @lordeteams requested some book recommendations that are not as sad as The Song of Achilles so here we go. I read a lot of books and since 2019 I've kept a running list of what I've read so honestly I'll take any excuse to subject people to my interests🤗 List is below the cut, not in any particular order (except from the first entry which is my current favorite), and includes NA, YA, and adult fiction. If you're curious about the distinction I'll refer you to this (sadly, now-deleted) tweet from Maggie Stiefvater:

One Last Stop (Casey McQuiston, NA): This one is brand new and instantly became a favorite. F/F romance in which August Landry, newly transplanted to Brooklyn, meets Jane Su on her morning commute. Turns out, Jane is stuck on the train and has been since the 70s, but has no memory of how it happened or of her old life. Part romance, part time-travel mystery, but entirely a love letter to queer communities everywhere. Found family trope abounds with August's roommates and coworkers, which include drag queens, people of every flavor of queer, and a real life psychic, all of whom are ready and willing to help solve the mystery of why Jane is on the train and how to fix it. In the process, August learns things about her own family, as well as events in American queer history that few people remember today. I really cannot express enough how much I love this book. Please read it.

Red, White, and Royal Blue (Casey McQuiston, NA): Odds are, if you've heard of Casey McQuiston, it was because of her first book (this one). M/M romance about Alex, son of the first female US President, and Henry, prince of England. Enemies to friends to lovers, featuring queer self-discovery, coming out, PR/corporate closeting (hello, larries!) and just a delight. This is a very different queer story from OLS - OLS is a romance, but more plot-heavy and the romance isn't the entire focus. In RWRB, the romance is the plot and it reads like fanfiction which is very fun.

The Raven Cycle (series, Maggie Stiefvater, YA): This series is a character-driven, coming-of-age, found family story about a bunch of weird-ass teenagers (affectionate), magic, prophecy, and Welsh kings. This is the rare story in which every single main character plays a critical role in the plot and grows and changes with the story. You will fall in love with all of them and their relationships with one another. Plus, the worldbuilding is incredible and has such an intricate mythology that you'll want to reread just to get the details. Followed by the Dreamer Trilogy, of which two books have been published, but I've only read the first one so far.

All for the Game (series, Nora Sakavic, YA): This is the series that got me back into reading for fun five years ago and as such it holds a special place in my heart. The plot is wacky and convoluted - college athletics, a made-up sport, a kid on the run from his mob boss father - but don't let that discourage you. Hella found family. (Are you seeing a pattern?) I will warn you, this deals with some pretty heavy stuff, including torture, abuse, addiction, sexual violence, and more. Here's a comprehensive list of trigger warnings, with detailed descriptions at the bottom. It's intense, but the friendships and romances make it worth the read imo.

Grishaverse (series, Leigh Bardugo, YA): This is actually three series: the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, and the King of Scars duology (which I haven't yet read). If you've seen Shadow and Bone, the S&B trilogy covers the Alina storyline, while SOC covers Kaz, Inej, Jesper, Nina, and Matthias. S&B is a chosen one/coming of age story, while SOC is found family committing heists. It's great.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Benjamin Alire Saenz, YA): Coming of age M/M romance. Set in the 1980s in El Paso, it describes the friends to lovers journey of Ari and Dante over several years, as well as Ari's journey of self-discovery. It is the most beautiful book and one of my comfort reads. There's some themes of homophobia and violence, but with a happy ending.

Carry On (Rainbow Rowell, YA): This is basically Harry Potter fanfiction, but better because (a) it doesn't take itself too seriously and (b) the author is not a violent transphobe. Seriously, this book is so fun. It's a twist on the chosen one trope because Simon, said Chosen One, is just spectacularly bad at what he is supposedly destined to be. Plus you have an enemies to lovers storyline, which is my personal favorite trope. Followed by Wayward Son, which is literally a road trip AU, and Any Way the Wind Blows, which will be released next month.

The Queen's Thief (series, Megan Whalen Turner, YA): Fantasy series centered on Eugenides, who is very proud of being a great thief but also wants to be famous, two goals which are not really compatible. This series is interesting because every novel is told from a different character's point of view in an increasingly zoomed-out lens such that you're seeing how Eugenides' influence grows over time and space. The setting is vaguely based on the ancient Mediterranean region, but with a mythology all its own.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (Taylor Jenkins Reid, adult): This is a frame story in which aged Hollywood star Evelyn Hugo, famously tight-lipped about her personal life, hand selects a young journalist, Monique Grant, to finally tell her story. Evelyn tells Monique all about her life - how she became an actress in the mid-twentieth century, how she got involved (and uninvolved) with all seven of her former husbands, and who was the true love of her life. There are some sad moments for sure, as it's a retrospective on the very long and very full life of an actress at what she knows is the end of hers. But it's such a good story and worth the bittersweet tones.

This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, adult): Sci-fi novel told by Red and Blue's letters to one another across time and space. They are on opposing sides of the Time War and as they perform their respective missions, they leave letters for the other to find. Their letters start out as "I'm coming for you, you better run" but then eventually turn to friendship and then love. Ultimate enemies to lovers. It's a short novel but you'll read it again and again to pick up more details. It's so good.

The House in the Cerulean Sea (TJ Klune, NA): This book feels like a warm hug. Linus Baker is essentially a child protective services worker, overseeing the orphanages housing magical children. He is then assigned to the most remote orphanage in the system, in which six dangerous children reside, to determine whether any or all of these children are capable of bringing about the end of the world. Once more, with feeling: FOUND FAMILY. Also nice because it's a metaphor for queerness that also features canon queer characters.

[grittyreadsfic]

very curious about the new brand of homophobia but also totally respect you not wanting to elaborate?

time is a circle and everything always comes back to people reinventing the wheel except this time the wheel is just homophobia

and you might be asking yourself: grits, we're largely here reading and writing queer stories, how could that be homophobic?

well!

it's not every fic, and it's not every ship, and it's not every writer. you might read what i'm saying and recognize an action you've done and maybe that means what i'm saying applies to you, or maybe it doesn't. this is the internet and it's full of nuance and this isn't a clear cut thing about someone just straight up using a slur (though hrpf did make me read the r slur with no ableism warnings in the last year, so honestly i wouldn't be surprised)

anyway: there's a trend i've noticed, in writing and just in how the community treats the player overall, that if a player displays any "feminine" trait-being on the smaller side, dressing in a nicer outfit, doing more than just basic hygiene, basically anything that distinguishes them from the stereotype of your basic bro-they take that player and make them a bottom. they turn it into an identity that is basically their whole identity and reduce the character to just that one trait.

and you know, there's a time and place. i've said it once and i'll say it again: if something exists, there's porn for it. if it's just porn? whatever, tag it appropriately, do what you gotta, i'm not here to kinkshame anyone. you wanna write force fem porn? sick, go for it

however, when it goes past that-when it's not just porn but it shapes how characters are written, how it influence the perspective on the players-or because this isn't unique to hockey fic, the characters in general-that's where my issue lies

because it's reducing queer identities down to a stereotype. this is inherently homophobic. it's worse than that, actually, because of the issues that arise with that stereotype too when you look at it through an intersectional lens, but that's a whole other can of worms that is for another post.

right, so, this stereotype: the "feminine" guy is a bottom (and like, not to be crude, but i'd argue that for some characters it reduces them further to simply a hole) and it turns the ship into a caricature of queer representation that reminds me way too much of the really limited mlm ships we saw in media ten, fifteen years ago-it feels like someone's about to ask who's the man in the relationship, and who's the woman. and sure, plenty of queer people have preferences about topping and bottoming, and i'm sure for some people it is a part of their personality, but like. i'm seeing characterizations of players getting reduced down to that and nothing else and it just makes me tired.

this becomes a problem when it's widespread. when it shapes entire views of characters or players or, fuck, carries over to how you view the real live gay people in your life.

anyway i was told i should give actual examples of what i mean so here are some of those:

-every smaller usndtp kid is automatically written as a slutty, bratty bottom, generally because of the kind of derogatory side of the stereotypes around twinks. these ones gets reduced to just a hole pretty quick, and like, again, if you're just writing porn, sure, go for it, but it's starting to become to full personality that people are giving them

-i've actually stopped reading tknp fic that isn't by authors i trust or is a fic i've read and liked previously because hrpf people took all the trans people projecting their gender onto summer nolan and essentially force femmed his character both like. in sex and outside of it? i don't know how else to describe it except i kept reading it and it just felt homophobic. it felt reductive and insulting, honestly

-some of you are here just to fetishize mlm and that's really not my business but you might want to unpack that idk

anyway the tldr of it all is that y'all turned top and bottom into secondary genders and there's a lot homophobia (and honestly, some transphobic implications as well lmao) because of it

[tenderloincherub]

Red, White and Royal Blue (Casey McQuiston)

My thoughts on rwrb, a thread (I do know this doesn’t work by threads but it’s such an opening quote)

It’s been a bit more than a week since I finished this book, and it gave me * feelings * but if I let more time pass I’ll forget what I want to say about it. So this is a sort of review/opinion/basically-my-thoughts-on-it

I love how dreamy it can be. I know it may not be realistic but that’s somehow the point of it -to picture a world where Alex and Henry us queer people could be together and accepted and happy and carry on with our lives. I read it along with a friend, and she told me she disliked the ending because things solved too easily -I disagree, we have the right to see such world. I mean, from the beginning it was obvious it wouldn’t be a tragedy, you know?, like it’s that dreamy-happy from the beginning. We human beings have the right to read to daydream and feel hope, just as much as we read to learn and reflect upon the world and upon ourselves. It’s valid, and it’s always bee: that’s why we have Shakespeare’s both tragedies AND comedies, that’s why we have The Count of Monte Cristo (sorry, that one’s not happy for me) AND Jane Austen’s novels too. Literature’s point is also to give hope, to turn on lights. Like Dickinson said: “ The Poets light but Lamps — [...]”

The beginning didn’t really get me, that part did feel like a Wattpad-enemies-to-lovers-trope. I am sorry. I mean the part of the Cake-Gate and how they’re suddenly forced to fake to be friends. BUT I read Casey’s annotations and she wrote: 

“One thing I loved doing with this book is taking tried & true romcom tropes – like forcing two people who “hate” each other and trapping them in a small enclosed space – and making it gay.” (So she convinced me.)

Alex’s sexual orientation crisis just hit me when I was having a crisis on my own. I loved his growth (as a person, in his relation with his bisexuality, his feelings, his relationship with Henry, as a to-be-politican), and it was quite honestly portrayed.

Ok, but Henry. Henry, oh, my. Oh, sweet, poetic, tender, beautiful, strong, brave-hearted, (hot), breathtaking Henry. He’s the one who made me wish to be a gay poet prince. His character is the most beautiful one that could have been written. I’m sorry, I just love him so much. He was so soft all the way in his love for Alex, he was so self-less but had also his growth to take the reins of his life and the way he wrote. Sorry, I sort of fell in love with him but also projected myself in his interests and some stuff. This friend with whom I read the book actually told me: if you were a character form the book, you’d be Henry. And that was * flattering *.

Well, all the characters. There was such diversity but all (most) of them lovable. And the dynamics between them. *chef’s kiss*

Rafael Luna was the portion of reality this book needed. His story was unfair, but his character was so strong, I could picture him in real life, actually. I loved his character as well, all the way long, I hurt for him but I admired him more.

There is this one thing that I didn’t like. Before saying it, I’ll make clear that I’m not into politics, not in the way that they don’t interest me or anything, but that I don’t know about the topic. Now, I feel the way it portrays American and English government is a complete polarization. Okay, I get monarchy is outdated and that democracy is actualized, but you can’t tell me one is black and the other white. I feel Casey portrayed American government flaws being on the people that run it, and English government flaws being on the system (so that, no matter the people, everything is wrong with the crown). *I’m not deffending England, just feeling it gives a sesgated idea.

Back to stuff I love: I am mexican, and Alex’s mexican side was satisfying. I mean, I’ve seen tons of latin characters in books, movies, and tv shows, and they rarely step out of some stereotypes. Alex’s sudden bursts of Spanish, appearance and cultural traits were so natural and meaningful and real. I really loved it.

Besides that, the way Alex’s religion and bisexuality converged was also beautiful. The passages where he compares holding Henry’s face with holding the Bible, and the mail where he talks about sacred places, and the prayer he remembers... Just beautfiul and meaningful. 

“Henry lets Alex take him apart with painstaking patience and precision, moans the name of God so many times that the room feels consecrated.”

Alex’s narration is so deeply Catholic, which I think all Catholics can relate to. (Another annotation from Casey)

Their letter-like mails, the excerpts from historical characters letters were so romantic, poetic, heartachingly beautiful. This really was my favorite thing from the book. It’s a complete new way of communication, that goes so profound into their hearts and feelings, and gives a whole new perspective, exploring Henry and Alex’s relationship so deeply. [Also, I really hated when they were outed and their letters became public :( my babies deserved better). I’ve been searching for Michelangelo’s letters since and because of them. 

So, wow, this why I never write on goodreads, but I feel more liberty and just comfortable here on Tumblr. I won’t extend into my favorite quotes and my playlist and stuff that reminds me of this -there’ll be more entries for that.

Thanks for reading this, and feel free to share your thoughts on my thoughts.

Sending love.