#are both the first instances of lesbians in media i saw

[shiningstarlight101]

Madoka Magica and Glitter Force Doki Doki actually have so e things in common for me

-Some of the first anime I ever watched

-First magical girl animes I watched

-First lesbian media I watched.

[flansterthefilm]

Wokeness

One of the most mind altering cringe things I've seen my entire life is a grown men, maybe in his thirties, losing his shit over the option to select your pronouns in Starfield. He yelled at the screen, he turned the game off, you could see the fires of rage in his eyes burn with the fury of a thousand suns. And one of the most captivating things that I saw said in response to this was that what he was facing mentally had to be some sort of cognitive illness. Holy shit, you're right.

I think that now more than ever there's a strong pushback against the inclusion of any type of marginalized group in media unless they submit to extremely tight standards: Women are fine as long as they're beautiful, black people are okay as long as they aren't too present and don't overshadow the white main character, and the LGBT community are tolerable permitted they aren't at all present. When media doesn't submit to this they face review bombing, unsuccessful boycotts, and even real world threats.

Most commonly we see that these aforementioned qualities not being stuck to birth Twitter rants made by people who paid $8 for a blue checkmark to appear next to their name. They'll write as much as the character limit permits about how whatever studio is responsible for the downfall of the West because some movie had a gay kiss scene or a video game let you play as a deaf black girl.

What you'll see as a pattern in a lot of cases of apparent "wokeness" is that the issue isn't so much what a character says or does but rather a character's inclusion in the first place. In a game like Horizon Forbidden West the main character, Aloy's, sexuality was met with harsh waves of criticism. She wasn't straight and that was an issue. The game didn't make a statement about gay validity vs straight validity, Aloy was just bi or lesbian, end of story. And in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 we have Hailey, a deaf black character who has an OPTIONAL side mission where things were as down to Earth as possible in a game like Spider-Man. She didn't save the day in the end, she didn't use her powers of being black and deaf to overpower the Spider-Men, she just existed. Both of these instances were met with controversy from former FASD babies who accidentally tricked themselves into thinking their opinion was worth hearing.

This criticism, however, goes beyond just dipshits on Twitter. A lot of the time we see major news outlets like Fox News take any given instance of non white, non straight, non male inclusion and turn it into a news story. Most common when Mr. Carlson was on the air, stories about the Little Mermaid being black or the Green M&M no longer being boner fuel because Mars doesn't want people to make their own salty M&Ms before they get their recipe right flooded the air. Tucker doing this unleashed the concept of wokeness unto his millions of fans, and from there conflation began.

Tucker's framing of wokeness made it seem as if any inclusion that didn't fit his ideal standards was inherently bad and worth fighting against. And his ideal standards often made it seem like marginalized groups aren't welcome when compared to straight white men when it comes to their involvement in media. Both are true. And when you have a man like him, the former most watched news personality in America, not only make it seem like the devilish concept of wokeness was just the inclusion of minorities but also validate those who already thought that way, disaster will and did strike.

(I don't believe Tucker is solely to blame however it stands to reason that he certainly didn't help the spread.)

So now we have the mere act of including and in some cases simply acknowledging these minority groups being framed as woke, and woke=bad if you haven't sumised by now.

This rather easily paves the way for any and all representation of marginalized people to be labeled as woke, and when it's labeled as such a pushback from a larger group of people is easy. Those who begin the pushback are simply angry that someone who doesn't look like them are in media they want to enjoy, that's what they see as woke. By using the word "woke" they enlist the help of the uninformed, those who think that the issue is the presence being forced or pandering, that is their version of woke. What they don't know is what they're rallying behind isn't a simple expression of proper inclusion, it's the erasure of inclusion.

From there and with repeated pushbacks the uninformed begin to conflate any inclusion with wokeness. They get mad that a gay person was on Sesame Street or The Simpsons is pro BLM. They think they're at war with pandering. This is not true, they've been radicalized.

Large, public, and vocal outcry leads to executives listening. If they believe that having a black main character is going to drop profits whereas a white one wouldn't, guess which path they'll take. And this will continue with two outcomes for each instance: the minority is replaced with future media or the minority stays and further radicalization happens.

With those who fall into the bigoted category of warriors against the "woke mob" in congress and various positions of power, fighting against what boils down to minorities being present in anything, with them being radicalized just as the uninformed had been or being radical to begin with, I hate to see what's on the horizon for my friends and I.

[scatteredraysofhope]

SAME LIKE IDK THE OWL HOUSE IS LITTERALY MY FAVORITE PEICE OF MEDIA EVERR

I feel like The Owl House was the first oeice of media to ever understand me. Ive never felt so seen before. Its also kinda helped me realise I'm lesbian

LIKE there are other shows which are good but seriously nothing hits the same way. The Owl House is just so unique as special unlike any other show. Definitely feels like one for all the weird kids who never fit in, the queer and nurodivergent teens trying to find their way though life. Each character and relationship whether (platonic or parental or sibling or romatic) is so so special.

Like I love Lilith and hooty's relationship so much like it's so underrated. Both of them are people pleaser who are always trying to help others but were not shown enough love or importance by the people around them but then they found eachother. Like they literally wrote letters to each other after Lilith moved away encoraging and understanding eachother. They have nicknames for eachother. LULU. HOOTSIFER. We even see lilith takes her taking hooty around with her everywhere with the house backpack durring the final.

Like you can't tell me that's the most sweet queerplatoinic relationship ever. They're just there supporting one another and keeping eachother company all the time. I want that :3

I love all the relationships shown each character design is so beautiful and we can see so much growth in them. I love lumity and huntlow and eda and raine ahhh

And their friendship together wether it be king and luz or hunter and gus or amity and willow. All the way to gus and mantholomu or king and the collector durring the finalle. I love the portrail of parental relationships so much as well. The way eda grows from hating thd idea of being parental, to their not technically *my* kids, all the way to sacrificing everything in an instance to save them. Also mama noceda is an absolute queen and i love her. Also the way we find out kings father was watching him all along broke my heart like he saw king try to reach out to him, desperate to know where his father might, be but he couldn't do anything but watch him find his way from afar im crying. i loaf you :')

thinken. abt it. and I rlly rlly think watching the owl house and finding it in that point of my life was so so important and conducive to the way I am and the way I do and the way I feel things these days and I will never discover another piece of Media or even just piece of Thing that will change me in the ways and multitudes that this show has……… and that kind of breaks my heart and puts it back together in a million different ways…….. just thinking……….

[kirain]

Hazbin Hotel and VivziePop Drama

I've been hearing/seeing a lot of drama concerning Hazbin Hotel and it's creator VivziePop, and while I don't know her personally or really care what people think, I do hate slander and the spread of misinformation. Truly nothing in this world upsets me more than when people believe rumours while making no effort to fact check, and that's exactly what's happening right now. That said, I wanted to try and clear up some of the rumours going around about Vivzie and the show, because I think some of them are absolutely outrageous and need to be addressed.

1. Vivzie hired an abuser onto the show.

Now, I’m not here to burn anyone at the stake, especially since I don’t know anything about Chris Niosi (the alleged abuser), who I believe openly admitted to the allegations? Regardless, this is a moot point. He’s not credited anywhere at the end of the episode. So either he was booted before production wrapped up or he had nothing to do with the show in the first place.

2. Vivzie supports bestiality.

Admittedly I thought this one might be true, since she draws so many anthropomorphic animals. In the very least, I figured she was probably a furry, but I haven't seen any evidence supporting this accusation either. Near as I can tell, this rumour started for two reasons. One, because of her famous Zoophobia comic, which revolves around a therapist named Cameron who gets assigned to work with human-like animals. Ironically, poor Cameron suffers from crippling zoophobia, which makes for some pretty decent comedy. I didn't read the whole comic because, quite frankly, it’s not my cup of tea and I just don’t have the time. But from what I saw there are no examples of bestiality anywhere in its contents.

Two, this message, which blew up all over social media:

To me, this just proves that people are more interested in virtue signalling than checking to see if their claims are actually true. Everything about this message is 100% false, which I’ll touch on in my next point.

3. Vivzie is a pedophile and she’s drawn child porn.

This is hands down the worst allegation and holy shit, I really wish people would stop using it to defame someone when they don't have any proof. This is a life-ruining accusation and you're disgusting if you believe it based solely on hearsay. This rumour began to spread when Vivzie allegedly shipped the two underage characters in the above photo and drew them NSFW-style. At the time, one character was 19 while the other was 14, and the relationship was a very illegal student-teacher relationship.

This is WRONG! The characters were not 14 and 19, they were actually 18 and 19, the legal age of consent! Additionally, the relationship wasn't student-teacher. One character is a student and the other is Alumni (a student teacher). This one pisses me off the most because it’s obvious the person who sent that message didn’t even bother to conduct any research. They said, “He’s a teacher, she’s a child.” Both characters are MALE!

Since then, Vivzie has apologised for any NSFW art she drew in the past and stated that it's not a reflection of her art today, and I'm inclined to believe her. Almost every artist has drawn NSFW content at some point in their career, and hers wasn't even distasteful. Other than this one example, there is no evidence anywhere that suggests she’s drawn “child porn”. In fact, she’s never even drawn explicit NSFW.

Please stop spreading this rumour. It’s dangerous and completely incorrect.

4. Vivzie said the "N" word!

No, she didn’t. It was a fabricated tweet. That is all.

5. Vivzie is copyright striking every video that criticises her!

No she isn't. YouTube’s DMCA is automatically striking people who are using full clips without permission. Vivzie has gone public several times, telling people exactly how to avoid getting a copy strike from the algorithm, which is something she absolutely does not have to do. At this point, she doesn't owe you anything. In my opinion, she should just sit back and watch these channels burn.

6. Vivzie copies and traces other artists’ work.

This is another one I’ve seen going around, but I looked into it as thoroughly as I could and failed to find any concrete evidence to support the allegations. As of right now, there are only two examples of Vivzie “copying” or “tracing” other artists’ work, and both of them can be explained. The first is a gif she made with a character from her Zoophobia comic, which looked a lot like the girl from ME!ME!ME!:

Damn, that’s pretty incriminating. She obviously stole-- oh, wait. This gif was part of a ME!ME!ME! MEP (multi editor’s project) and Vivzie didn’t take full credit, despite the fact that it’s not even a direct trace. It’s supposed to look like the original, which she fully cited. The second example comes from a short dance sequence from her Timber video, which seems to have been inspired by several Disney movies. As Vivzie herself stated, that was an homage to the original animations. Lots of artists and shows do this, including the beloved Stephen Universe series.

Regardless, this doesn’t count as stealing character designs or plagiarising someone’s work. It’s meant to be respectful, an admiration of other projects. Other than these two instances, however, there is no evidence of her tracing or stealing other people’s art. From what I’ve discovered, all other designs she’s been accused of “stealing” are characters she bought and paid for. They’re quite literally HER characters.

7. Vivzie supports problematic creators.

I’m getting really tired of guilt by association. Vivzie follows and enjoys some controversial figures, but who cares? We can argue all day about whether or not the accusations against them are true, but it ultimately has nothing to do with the show or Vivzie as a person. I do the exact same thing, to be honest-- follow and listen to people on all sides so I can learn, understand, and form my own opinions. The fact that some people think this is bad, to me, is absolutely mesmerising. Vivzie doesn’t control what the people she follows post, and if they do something overly questionable she publicly criticises and denounces it.

From Vivzie:

Now that that’s been dealt with, I’d like to address some complaints/claims about the actual show.

8. Vaggie is an angry Latina stereotype and a lesbian stereotype. Vivzie is appropriating Hispanic culture and misrepresenting the gay for profit.

First off, I see a lot of people passing around yet more misinformation regarding Vivzie's race. So many people seem to think she's white? Well, I'm here to tell you they're wrong. Very incorrect. Vivzie is in fact Latina, and Vaggie is meant to mirror some of her own personality traits.

Second, who is Vaggie mad at? Context matters, and if we take a look at the episode, we see that Vaggie is literally only mad at two specific people: Angel Dust and Alastor. Why? Well, for starters, it's her girlfriend's dream to run a rehab hotel for sinners, and Angel Dust nearly demolishes that dream single-handedly. Vaggie has every right to be over-the-top vitriolic. Then there's Alastor, a known sadist, narcissist, and murderer who loves trapping people in his nefarious schemes. He invites himself in, effectively takes over the hotel, and pushes both her and Charlie aside. At one point he even sexually assaults her by slapping her butt during his musical number. So yeah, I think her seething ire is totally justified. Keep in mind, however, that when she's around Charlie she's calm, collected, and happy. I wouldn't call that a stereotype.

Thirdly, the lesbian stereotypes. I keep hearing this argument but I really don't see it. Both Vaggie and Charlie have so much personality and trust for each other. Maybe I'm wrong, but the stereotype I know always totes a more butch, tomboyish woman with a ditsy, innocent, naive woman. Charlie is optimistic, but she isn't stupid. She refuses to shake Alastor’s hand because she knows he’s likely trying to screw her over. She’s also not entirely innocent herself and uses words like “fuck” and “shit”. I also wouldn’t call Vaggie butch or tomboyish. She has a cute, girly presentation, complete with a pink ribbon in her hair, lace stockings, and a dress. She's protective of her girlfriend, as I think we all are with our partners, and there's nothing wrong with that. They're flawed characters, as every character is meant to be. This isn't a problem.

9. The show is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, blah, blah, blah.

I’m amazed this is even an argument. The show is supposed to be a dark comedy that takes place in HELL. You know, the place the worst of the worst end up after they die? What were you expecting? Everyone gets a shot or two fired at them, but that doesn't make them bad characters nor does it make the show itself horrible. Take, for example, Katie Killjoy, the news reporter so many people are up in arms about. She says she doesn’t “touch the gays” because she has “standards”. Well, here’s a newsflash of my own: we’re not supposed to like her! She’s an antagonist. Not to mention ten seconds later Charlie insults her and isn’t the least bit slighted by her pretentious attitude. The characters are strong and don’t take shit from anyone, because to some degree they’re all terrible people who can throw down when it’s called for.

Obviously if you don’t like the show or think it’s offensive, I’m probably not going to change your mind. That’s perfectly fine. You’re entitled to your opinions and you don’t have to watch the show. Just stop lying and stop trying to take it away from everybody else. Stop attacking Vivzie and spreading misinformation without checking the facts. I realise a lot of people probably aren’t trying to be vindictive and only want to do something good, but just remember this: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[barbara-gordons-glasses]

Since I’m bored, I’m going to be making a long rant about bisexuality, biphobia, inaccurate representation of bisexuality in the media, and just overall how I don’t feel accepted in my own “community”. To start off with, I’m a bisexual fifteen year-old girl who has a preference for women. I still love men, just in case any of you felt the reason to say otherwise.

Biphobia is the dislike of or prejudice against bisexual people. As you may or may not know, biphobia is everywhere, in more places than most people talk about when dealing with issues in our community and the world outside social media. What may surprise some of you is that not only are a lot of straight people biphobic, but LGBT members are as well. There are LGBT members and straight people who refuse to date bi women/men simply for the stereotypes others have pressed onto us (ex. disloyal, greedy, selfish, etc.).

While some people aren’t aware that they’re being biphobic, there are some people who are perfectly aware of what they’re saying/doing, and that’s the worst part of it. Maybe not the worst to some, but it hurts to hear one of your most loved family members say or do something hurtful and not even realize it. Or maybe they did, and just didn’t care enough to correct themselves.

Inaccurate representation of bisexuality in the media is a subject that isn’t talked about enough, because most of us are too busy about flags and who can say what slurs. Other than that, however, I’d like to talk about Glee, and the few biphobic moments that no one paid attention to. 

Kurt and Blaine were talking about when Blaine kissed Rachel the other night, and Kurt was confused when Blaine agreed to go on a date with her, claiming for him to be “leading” her on. Blaine then explains that he actually felt something when kissing her, and would like to see where it goes. Kurt waves him off when Blaine questions if he’s bi, saying “Bisexuality is a stage gay guys go through in high school to feel normal.” 

Santana Lopez and her soon-to-be girlfriend played by Demi Lovato were chatting at a restaurant about Santana’s breakup with Brittany, her bisexual ex. “I had a girlfriend - she was bi.” Santana said, and the scene I watched on YouTube cut shortly to Santana and Demi’s character as girlfriends. Demi’s character had something along the lines of, “I think you deserve a 100% Sapphic goddess,” which you may not know, but is extremely offensive towards bisexual women. Santana agreed, and then happily explained, “I finally have a girlfriend who isn’t straying for penis all the time!”

(It’s my personal opinion, but if you still like Santana and Kurt as characters after reading this, knowing they hadn’t apologized for what they said, then you’re trash. I’m not sugarcoating anything. I don’t care if Kurt or Santana were the reasons you felt comfortable being who you are. They are terrible people who only have popularity because of how awful they are to bisexuals and people from the Glee club in general.)

Other than the blatant biphobia in some shows, other media likes to cover theirs up by bringing a bi character into the show, but immediately watering down their label (ex. “I swing both ways”, “Maybe I’ll hook up with a hot guy at the party tonight! Or a girl?”). I understand that while some people don’t prefer labels, there is no reason that every bi character doesn’t like labels. Eleanor Shellstrop, for example (The Good Place). Throughout the show, she had no problem with saying bi, lesbian, pan, and gay casually. But although it’s implied that she’s bisexual, the words had never left her mouth, confirming her sexuality. There are some bisexual members of our community that don’t mind, and are simply happy for the representation, but I cannot express how long I’ve had these problems on my mind, and feel like they need to be talked about more.

If you’re looking for positive bisexual validation on websites like Tik Tok, Snapchat, or Tumblr, don’t. There are so many instances of biphobia on those websites (especially Tik Tok) that everyone ignores. Some of it is just blatant (example that I saw in a post - “I just feel like “bi” women in a heterosexual relationship shouldn’t have an opinion on our community”), while others are a little covered up by adding other common features in front of the sexuality (ex. “Oh, there go the cis white bi alt girls again!”). Because of this, I haven’t felt accepted in the community. Not since I first searched up the word ‘bisexual’ on Tik Tok and Tumblr. But the moment you search up ‘biphobia’ on either of those sites, the first videos that pop up are lesbians making posts about how “not everything is biphobic.” and then tagging the video as ‘bi’, ‘biphobic’, etc. And when they’re lesbians speaking against biphobia, the videos always have more views than actual bisexual people talking about biphobia. It’s disgusting, and the reason I hardly ever talk about bisexuality in public.

You are all free to comment or say whatever you’d like, but it will always be my opinion that there is nothing all that great about being apart of the LGBT community these days. We’re all pinned against each other, discussing who can say what slurs, complaining about flags, generalizing and stereotyping certain sexualities, and just overall showing our true colors behind the screen of a computer. There are children and teens in other countries being raped because their parents or legal guardians think it will “turn them straight”, but we’re here in America or anywhere else you live talking about meaningless things like the reasons I’d listed above. Flags, slurs, generalizations. It’s what makes me embarrassed and ashamed to be apart of such a “family” that has no real love for each other.

[nancylou444]

I tried to be nice

Replies to this post:

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Became this:

THEM:  hi! thanks for the answers I really appreciate the discussion. normally if someone ships something I don’t like or something like that, I’ll just leave them alone but.. just to be clear I completely respect all of your opinions, even agree with some of them, even if we might disagree on the incest and Castiel haha. So I don’t mean any disrespect with this at all, please let me know if I’m out of line though!  

 But... I saw some things you said, and they come across to me in a way that I don’t think you intended? I feel really awkward sending this haha, you’re very nice and I don’t think you said anything on purpose, but I just.. wanted to let you know that some of the things regarding your opinion on certain characters come across not very well? I don’t think it’s intentional or anything, and I don’t mean to call you out at all which is why I didn’t want to point it out in the replies y’know?  

 Don’t get me wrong though, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with not liking castiel or destiel. I’ve been watching the show for a while with my dad, and he isn’t a huge fan either, I don’t think that’s a problem :) 

I’d continue without waiting for a response but I don’t want to say something you’ve already been told, or continue without knowing if I’ve said something out of line already 😅

ME:  I'm kind of distracted dealing with my Mom's rehab center. But you can keep going.

THEM: Alright! I’ve tried rephrasing this a million times but I don’t know how to make it seem not antagonistic. I promise I don’t mean that you’re doing it intentionally, it’s just, uh a lot of your criticism of spn feels like it could be read as homophobic? Again I don’t think YOU are I just wanted you to know it kind of reads that way!

That sounded so confrontational. I really don’t mean it that way 😭

ME: HOMOPHOBIC? Really? A lot of the 'proof' your fellow shippers use border on stereotypes but you think I'M homophobic? Considering my top two ships are Wincest and Malec. Yeah, sounds confrontational.

THEM:  I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I guess there’s no other way to say it, but I understand why you feel accused. What do you mean by proof..?

Also I don’t really think having gay ships means you can’t be homophobic. *I* used to be homophobic years ago, and I’m a gay person!

ME:  How old are you? https://nancylou444.tumblr.com/post/154098904136/a-guide-to-dean-winchesters-imaginary-bisexuality

THEM:  yeah this is starting to get frustrating. I’m gonna be real with you, why does it matter if people think dean is bisexual? like, bottom line, that is my question for you

and your answer will determine if your veracity is homophobic. why does it matter that some people think dean is bisexual. not the fans or actors or writers or anything. why does it matter that some viewers will watch, and they will think dean is bisexual?

ME:  My problem isn't that some people think he is bi IN FANON, my problem is that they want CONFIRMATION OF A FANON SHIP. And that some people DENY how the show ended. These same people think that fake weddings are more canon than the FINAL EPISODE.

THEM:  I get what you mean, but how is it a fanon ship when it’s confirmed romantic from one side, and interpretable as mutually reciprocated in Latin America? (I’m going to disregard the bit about the wedding, because I’m a firm believer in Neil Gaiman variety death of the author. Also that’s just people having fun with fanon, who cares?)

ME:  Confirmed romantic?By whom MISHA, who wanted to sell necklaces? Have you never said 'i love you' to a FRIEND or FAMILY member? The dub is not canon, so don't even try using that as proof. Death of the author is just another way of saying MY VIEW OF THE SHOW IS SUPERIOR TO HOW THE CREATOR WANTS TO SEE IT. Jensen has said many times that the ship isn't canon and that Dean is straight. But it's better to believe what Misha says because he agrees with you. You think somebody is bi because of how they sit or the color clothes they wear? That would make YOU homophobe.

THEM:  LOL You know what? I change my answer. I looked through your blog and you ACTIVELY and viscously hate Cas, Charlie, Claire, Kaia and the implication that Jack may not be straight. You’ve said Cas coming out as gay and in love with dean makes the rest of his actions predatory, compared him to a teenage girl, called him creepy, and openly rejoiced in your idea that dean looked ‘disgusted with him’. You said that Claire is awful, that Kaia is a wooden plank, that they ‘shoved them together’ for ‘woke points’ and said that Jody saying Claire was IN LOVE WITH Kaia ‘doesnt count’ and called it ‘lip service’. And it doesn’t end there! After all this, you said that you preferred the old better s4 Claire. Is it because she was ostensibly straight? Are you uncomfortable with queer women? And then you have the audacity to use these characters (Claire and Kaia and Charlie) as reasons to epicly own the Hellers and claim they already have represention. You are a completely disingenuous bitch and I don’t care to be nice to you anymore! I don’t feel AT ALL charitable toward you anymore, and I don’t care if you have gay ships. Gay people aren’t here for you to fetishize! You CONSTANTLY mock and ridicule jokes made by queer people regarding deans bisexuality or Cas being gay or any number of things. You constantly reaffirm that Dean is straight and call people who think otherwise delusional and disgusting, while you think dean is in romantic sexual love with his male sibling. You are openly hostile to the idea of non-binary jack and were pissed that Alcal endorsed that. You devalue Jack’s value and relationship to Cas who is, textually, his father figure. I have NO reason not to think that you are homophobic. I don’t care anymore! You’re a huge bitch and, judging by your prior responses and posts, a genuine dialogue regarding queerness in spn is impossible. You regard any instance of canonically queer moments ‘lip service’ and so regard it. You actively hate every canonically gay character and degrade them using traditionally homophobic tropes and stereotypes.

Feel free to explain how you aren’t homophobic. I’m so sorry if I got the wrong impression.

ME: Wow I see your true colors have come out HELLER.

THEM:  Idc if you think I’m mean. Go ahead and make a post about me lol, have fun with it. Give me a moment to respond to your paragraph it’s... a lot to dissect.

I’ll touch on your comments about the dub and the Spanish language in a moment. First though

I ’m gonna be real with you, I don’t think you know what death of the author is. Neil Gaiman’s variety of the dead author principal is that once canon ends, the story belongs to those that consume and engage with it. That’s... also literally the theme of supernaturals final season. Anyway I really recommend you read up on death of the author and Neil Gaiman’s takes on fanon. It’s a fun way to consume your media, and in the end that’s what I’m here for.

I don’t care what Misha says, and I don’t care what Jensen says! I think they are both queer because I have eyes and watched the show. I think it’s a lovely narrative that is supported by canon, and it’s fine if you disagree with that

On your last sentence there... lol. It’s a common joke in queer circles that gays can’t sit properly, specifically bisexuals. Same thing with the clothing, it’s a SUPER common joke for example that lesbians wear flannel. Maybe you need to go outside and talk to some normal, non-incest shipping queer people. But what do I know!

And finally... ‘the Spanish dub isnt canon’

I am literally cuban. My first language is SPANISH. my entire household speaks Spanish, and my family past 1st cousins don’t speak any English. My Boricua cousins have watched supernatural in full for years, and they watch it in Spanish. Do you think America is the center of the universe? Do you think our media is somehow less than yours, that our interpretations of English language media isn’t valid? What, do you think we are idiots who don’t know how to analyze literature and media? Do you think the people who work at Telemundo, people employed as dubbers and translators, you think they do a worse job than the American crew?

Why, because they aren’t American or don’t speak English? ‘Te amo’ said to a non family member is, in 99% of any instance, ROMANTIC. it’s something you say to your spouse in serious situations like weddings!! Even MARRIED people don’t normally say te amo, everyone uses te quiero unless it is very serious or romantic in context.

All of my family who are Spanish language, they heard dean say ‘y a yo ti, cas’ and think that they were in romantic love. Sorry dude! The United States might be the center of your universe, but Latin America is HUGE. Spanish is one of the most spoken languages in the WORLD. In fact, more people speak Spanish than English. Sorry that you seem to hate gay characters SO MUCH you have to say an entire language somehow isn’t valid to consume media in!

ME: 

Obviously this heller is batshit crazy. 

Some of those things she thinks I said just show she has no idea how to follow a tumblr thread. 

You are a completely disingenuous bitch and I don’t care to be nice to you anymore! I don’t feel AT ALL charitable toward you anymore, and I don’t care if you have gay ships. Gay people aren’t here for you to fetishize! You CONSTANTLY mock and ridicule jokes made by queer people regarding deans bisexuality or Cas being gay or any number of things. You constantly reaffirm that Dean is straight and call people who think otherwise delusional and disgusting, while you think dean is in romantic sexual love with his male sibling.

Wow. 

I have NO reason not to think that you are homophobic. I don’t care anymore! You’re a huge bitch and, judging by your prior responses and posts, a genuine dialogue regarding queerness in spn is impossible. You regard any instance of canonically queer moments ‘lip service’ and so regard it. You actively hate every canonically gay character and degrade them using traditionally homophobic tropes and stereotypes.

Where have I hated canon gay characters and degraded them using tropes and stereotypes? The bitch has me confused with HER FELLOW SHIPPERS. 

Gotta love how she is defending the Spanish dub. Hit a nerve did I? 

It’s a common joke in queer circles that gays can’t sit properly, specifically bisexuals. Same thing with the clothing, it’s a SUPER common joke for example that lesbians wear flannel. Maybe you need to go outside and talk to some normal, non-incest shipping queer people.

Now who is using stereotypes? 

[handlewithkara]

@supercorpizgaybaiting​  heavily, but also not exclusively. It's not like Karadox or Karamel fans aren't also more or less secretly hoping that things could stil go their way or even Superdey fans were hopeful at some pepole. People are going to disagree what counts as subtext.

In the end, if writers put subtext there intentionally (and I know of at least one instance of a writer saying no in twitter to a claim about one of his episodes) then you don’t have to fight for your couple, the writers intend to do them as a couple anyway. However if the writers don’t want to do your couple because they are not feeling them, then they are not going to do them. And trying to force them is not going to lead to good results. 

Take let’s say Mon-El being given Kara’s necklace or Mon-El giving Kara his Legion ring. Would you deny that those are traditional romantic signifiers, the kind of thing that would make a fan expect that those signifiers will come back in a way? Same with the long look and little quirky smile Kara gave Mon-El in episode 100.  And yet at the same time there is a chance that they won’t be in a romantic context. 

Same for let’s say Karadox fan who for example saw something special in the recent Kara and Brainy balcony scene. 

Or who can point to a writer actually confirming that he wrote a Brainy scene back in season 3 as a potential tease of Karadox (the scene where Mon-El leaves the scene and Brainy walks in instead). Does that mean that Kara and Brainy have to end up as a couple? Because there is a good chance they won’t.

Because writers change, storylines change. There is no proof that something somebody wrote in season 3 was ever a promise that it would be back and even if it was meant as a promise it’s no proof that the completely different writers team feels any obligation to cash in the promise a writer who isn’t even with the show anymore made in season 3.

To me “baiting” is not a replacement for an actual storyline. If writers want to do a story, they will write that story. Point blank. 

The complaint here has always been that about the supposed claims of baiting has been that they have never been exclusive. Ie, some scenes have paralleled Lois and Clark scenes from other media but:

1.) The show literally starts out with the show co-opting and reinterpreting and reinacting traditional Superman, including Superman and Lois scenes redoing them with Kara and Alex. And yet you don’t see as many people insisting the show HAS to do romantic Kara and Alex even though the show literally starts out with them reinacting and reinterpreting two iconic Superman and Lois scenes (Kara saving Alex on the plane, kid Kara taking Alex flying). 

2.) A lot of supposed parallel scenes are really generic scenes that exist either for other characters on Supergirl as well (ie Kara saving somebody in a helicopter, Kara carrying somebody bridal style) or they also exist for Superman and non romantic characters. 

Again, baiting or supposed baiting is not a replacement for an actual storyline. Watch Xena and Gabrielle. Xena and Gabrielle weren’t baiting, it was writers writing a full fledged story that they cared deeply about. 

This is what writers do when they really want to do a couple but are denied by a network to make it explicit. They write stuff about a kiss that is necessary to the plot somehow. Twice! They write crazy scenarios where Xena and Gabrielle are turned into vampires and bite each other. They write crazy scenarios where the plot forces them to dance sexily with each other. They find ways. (and yes even they even though they agreed with the shippers about the importance of Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship, still disagreed with the fans when it came to weighing the importance of that story against the importance of Xena’s redemption journey)

I never bought the claim that the same constraints that existed during Xena and Gabrielle still hold true today or that they hold true on this particular show (does lgbt stories for other characters) or network (has tons of lgbt shows including multiple shows with lgbt leads). And with Xena and Gabrielle you can see what writers do exactly when they are under constraints. It was deep, heartfelt storylines with lots of screentime not arguments about what color socks the characters are wearing. 

Kara recently had a line within the show “Who cares about the ratings?” and I’m pretty sure that this is actually reflective of how the writers of the show feel right now. They know that doing social awareness stories about a black lesbian or a trans superhero maybe are not going to get them the gangbuster ratings, but they are going to do it anyway because at this point they don’t care about the ratings and it is something they firmly believe is the right thing to do. It is something they are passionate about. 

If they are not writing couple X, then so me that per se implies they are not passionate enough about them. And you can’t force love. You can’t force them to be passionate about it. Either they are feeling or they don’t. 

There are a lot of instances where people read things into a situation and they shouldn't have.

See the only thing I disagree with here is whether the onus on that is on the audience or on the writers. Especially when I would argue there are tons of cases where fans clearly ignore “anti-bait” moments. ie the show returns and Lena is busy with Lex while Alex is the one obssessed with bringing back Kara. Everybody has a nightmare and Lena’s has nothing to do with Kara. Kara and Lena’s reuinion is not a topic at all where Kara first reconnects with the group. . Lena has her soulful conversations with Nia, not Kara. The writers actually can have gone to considerable lenghts to give them the barest minimum to still consititute a storyline that is part of the show and yet people still insist that a moment was baiting. Completely ignoring the context. Let’s hypothetically imagine a world where the writers genuinely don’t want to write them as a romance, but still genuinely want to write them as a meaningful friendship? Where they appreciate Lena as part of the show, they just don’t appreciate her in the future love interest way. Where they still want to write scenes about Lena doing cool and badass scenes, they are just not interested in writing them as a romance. 

It just doesn’t strike me as fair that fans should essentially force tie their hands that they aren’t allowed to write any scenes, because no matter what scene they write, fans will insist that it is baiting, even if the scene actually doesn’t stick out compared to all the other scenes they write in a non romantic context for let’s say Kara/Alex, Kara/Brainy or Kara/Nia. 

Like let’s say a Karadox fan feeling the balcony scene between Kara and Brainy feeling unfairly like a romantic scene (comnig basically back to back with Kelly and Alex, a romantic couple sharing a balcony scene) completely ignoring the context that people having deep talks on balconies is kind of a staple on Supergirl and Kara has done then with a long list of other characters both characters she was canonically romantically linked with and characters she was never romantically linked with. It’s definitely really nice that Brainy is in the rank of people Kara has great balcony scenes with but that is hardly proof that it has to be read as romantic when Kara has had those type of scenes with J’onn as well. 

IMO the fight of the Lenashippers to me has always made more sense to me as “we are a big and loud fanbase, so you have to listen to us” rather than any claims of “we exclusively get scenes that are promises”. Again, if you were exclusively getting promises for your relationship, then you wouldn’t have to fight for it. It would just be the writers foreshadowing a storyline they are intending to do anyway. 

In the end, if the writers don’t want to do your story, they are not going to do it. If they are not feeling it, if they don’t see the characters, the potential in the same way, you can’t force them. If “I think we should do a bigass storyline about Nia reconnecting with her mom” is something they feel more passionate about than they feel about developing whatever other relationship, then they don’t feel that passionate about that other relationship, at least not more than they feel about “we should tell cool stories about Nia’s dream powers”. 

Because in the end, different people have different preferences and different likes. And you can’t force them to feel the same way you do about characters. There is roughly a million things I wish the show would cover in storylines and that will never happen. Like I think it’s pretty unlikely that the show will do a deep lengthy story on how Alex uses alcolhol in the few episodes we have left, or that they will do a deep dive storyline on Alex’s time before she joined the DEO. Because in the end, I have to accept that the writers just don’t see this topic the same way, just aren’t as interested in it as I am. They likely have a list of things they still want to tackle before the show ends and apparently those things I like or care about are not on that list at all or at least not high enough. 

You can’t force people to have exactly the same interests as you. 

[otterplusharchive]

rey! do you have any recs for kdramas? i have never watched any, but i like lovable characters and romance ? thank you in advance!

I DO IN FACT HAVE DRAMA RECS HII not all of these will be kdramas, but ill start with the kdramas ive watched and enjoyed and ill include all the warnings for them that i can remember off the top of my head and a brief synopsis for u!

kdramas-

1. weight lifting fairy kim bok joo

this was probably one of the first kdramas i saw people post about in like 2015 and i watched a little bit of it in 2016 but then only just got around to finishing it last year. the basic gist of it is its about a young sports college weight lifter, kim bok joo, centering around her navigating through her life and trying to figure out who she is and what she wants in life and what she wants to be. her romantic interest in the show is a swimmer and they have a sort of rivals to friends to lovers, he is SO in love with her and its adorable. i absolutely loved the side characters in this show theyre all so fun and kim bok joos best friends and weight lifting team are especially delightful. my main warning would be that this show addresses eating disorders and theres a lot of mention of both weight gain and weight loss, theres also a plot point early on where kim bok joo has a crush on her eventual love interests older brother but it gets resolved and the older brother literally goes "i didnt realize you had a crush on me and if i knew that i wouldnt have been so friendly with you, it would be completely innapropriate for us to be in a relationship". overall its a really sweet and emotional fun show but if you have issues with weight talk id skip this one

2. tale of the nine tailed

this one is really recent from last year and i didnt expect to be so hooked by it but boy howdy did i get attached to all the characters and the wild plot. it feels hard to explain the plot but basically a nine tailed fox named lee yeon is living in modern day seoul and is working for the underworld finding paranormal spirits/creatures/other rogue foxes that are causing havoc on the world, hes resigned himself to living this life while waiting for his girlfriend who died tragically 600 years ago to come back to life because he traded his status as a mountain god in order to ensure that her soul would one day be reincarnated. a plucky investigative journalist named nam ji ah figures out that hes not human and shenanagins ensue because she looks exactly like his dead girlfriend oooooo whatll happen. the plot beyond that gets really wild and its hard to explain and is easier to just watch. if u enjoy paranormal adventures this one is good. my one big complaint and issue with this is that the immortal mountain spirit meets his original girlfriend when shes a child and she continues to visit him off and on as she grows up which is Hm I Dont Like That! but thankfully the present time romance our female lead meets him when shes about 30 if im remembering right. also warnings for general fantasy violence, references to child abuse, animal death, and abandonment issues

3. extraordinary you

HUGE unreality warning for this. if you have issues with feeling unreal or have paranoia/delusions about not being a real person id avoid this one just because of its premise

ok i know i said tale of the nine tailed was a hard plot to explain but BOY extraordinary you is even HARDER to explain. because its so wild but so good. its about a girl who realizes that she is literally a side character in a comic book, and the story becomes her trying to change the story to save her character from dying but it becomes a lot more than that. the romance in this is literally tooth achingly sweet and the show itself is very pretty, i loved the side characters in this one and the show was engaging and interesting to watch it became really layered and meta. super reccomend this one honestly. my main issues/warnings that i can remember off the top of my head were just one character being the classic controlling boyfriend stereotype, bullying someone specifically for being poor, unreality like i mentioned before, and then at the very end there was this love interest for a side character who got reincarnated from a past piece of writing that they had been in and put in the comic but she was a student and he was the school cook which is weird but thankfully they like barely interact at all and theres no real romance he just like recognizes her and its barely a thing at the end of the show but its still weird

4. mystic pop up bar

big warning for suicide, sexual harrasment (which is framed as being bad and the guy whos harrassing the girl literally gets thrown off a roof)

i havent finished this one yet and thats mainly because im not emotionally ready because this one makes me soooo emotional. if you like found family this is a good one. its about a pop up bar run by a woman whos been tasked with solving the problems of a certain amount of people in order to atone for her crimes in the past before dying, shes able to enter the dreams of people and solve their issues using the information she gets in the dreams. paranormal shenanagins ensue, she acquires a son and a husband and it kills me its so fun and quirky and fun despite handling dark themes and peoples problems. also very sweet the found family murders me

5. kingdom (netflix original)

i literally am not going to be able to watch any other zombie media because kingdom and train to busan are the best pieces of zombie media ive ever seen. warnings for gore and violence and just general horror aspects.

i absolutely love this one its so thrilling and well done, i love the acting and the way that this show looks its absolutely gorgeous. a zombie plague breaks out in joseon period korea where the emperor has died and then was brought back to life by the queen and her father in a ploy to try and keep their family in political power, the crown prince must find answers. a lot more happens and its very dramatic and good i love the characters in this one

cdramas

1. the untamed. if you follow me and you havent watched the untamed im begging you to watch the untamed. literally one of the most beautiful stories ive experienced in my life i am not joking when i say i cried multiple times over it. the main characters are canonically gay in love and have a son together please watch the untamed. handles a lot of dark themes, heres a tw guide

2. the sleuth of the ming dynasty

this is another one i havent finished but its fun so far, very gay, found family, food, and solving murder mysteries during the ming dynasty

3. hikaru no go (also known as qi hun)

havent finished this one, there is some propaganda about hong kong in the first episode but as far as i know thats the only instance of something like that in the show

this ones about the game go and so far its very sweet and fun, local boy awakens a ghost who was a master of the game of go hundreds of years ago and eventually is persuaded to learn how to play go with the aid of the ghost. im really liking this one so far its very cute and i love the characters in it. if youve watched the untamed nie huaisangs actor ji li is in this one!

4. the legend of yunqian

this ones very short and on youtube, all the episodes are about 5 minutes long and its a lesbian time travel fantasy adventure with a happy ending! funny and cute

jdramas

1. cherry magic

please please please watch cherry magic. the premise sounds very much like a weird yaoi kind of thing but trust me on this. trust me. it is so heart warming and sweet and i was so emotional about it and the growth of the main character.

adachi gains the power to read peoples minds on his 30th birthday based off a urban legend that if youre a 30 year old virgin that youll become a wizard. after gaining this power he accidentally finds out that his extremely popular and handsome coworker has a crush on him, and shenanagins ensue along with adachi having blossoming feelings in return. this show was really refreshing in a lot of ways, adachi is a main character who like.. is unsure of himself and insecure in a very kind of realistic way, he closes himself off and is afraid to reach out to people and through the course of the show we see him slowly come out of his shell and realize that hes likeable and lovable and that people want to be around him and its so nice to see. my main complaint about this show is that i dont really like the background couple, but otherwise this is a very sweet and refreshing gay romance that has a happy ending!

some others that i myself havent seen but that ive seen people talk about a lot and that i want to watch eventually:

- the legend of fei (cdrama)

- the wolf (cdrama)

- gaurdian (cdrama, not the kdrama one called goblin)

- healer (kdrama, i did watch some of this one but it was in 2016 and i never finished it so i barely remember any of it but i do remember liking it)

- nobody knows (kdrama)

- its ok to not be ok (kdrama)

sorry this is so long but i hope youll be able to find a drama u enjoy!!

[ailuronymy]

Hello! I was searching for some trans warrior cats post on Google when I saw your account, I would really like some advice for handling a trans warrior cats character I'm writing in my AU.

He presents as a she cat at the beginning but later on comes out as trans, I was wondering about how should I approach the transition itself. The first ideas I had are: for him to do vocal exercises with the medicine cat which will help lower his voice (that is one of his main insecurities) , his clan mates will switch to male pronouns and he will get extra food so he could grow larger and more masculine looking (Cats that have a stable diet while they're growing are going to be bigger and stronger) along with herbs that are supposed to stop/repress ovulation in she cats (I'm not that great at biology but I think that would also affect his hormone levels)

Do you have any other ideas?

PS: Thank you for your help and time!

Hello there! Thank you for writing in, but I’m sorry, this blog is not here to provide this kind of help. If you look in the tag here, I’ve done what I can in the past and I hope some of it is useful to you, but as I’ve said before, I’m not looking to talk more on the topic. It’s not wrong to want to write about trans characters, so you’re not in trouble for asking or anything, but I’m not comfortable being consulted for this information.

In fact, if I’m totally and maybe a little brutally honest with you, I think that if you’re at the stage of writing about a complex and highly personal experience where you’re asking random strangers on the internet for advice, you’ve probably got a little way longer to go before you’re ready to actually write about the topic and I’m sorry if that’s difficult to hear. My guess is that you’re probably not transgender yourself, because otherwise why would you be asking me about it? Surely you know your experience better. 

I don’t think that means you can’t write about this topic eventually and I think there is genuinely a good intention in trying to seek out information, but please consider the sources from which you’re seeking this information. There are literally books (both fiction and nonfiction) written by transgender people and I feel like reading work by those people--i.e., the people who have first-hand experience--is a great place to begin learning about how to write on this topic. 

I know you’re coming to my blog because it’s about Warriors and you’re looking to write about a transgender cat, but I think before you can try to transpose this concept onto the world of Warriors, you need to really learn about the concept itself in detail from a variety of sources and then you can focus in on how it might be interpreted in a different context--i.e., in cats. 

For example, you’ve mentioned “male pronouns”--but actually there’s no such thing as male pronouns. He/him is traditionally assigned to men, but there’s a lot of lesbians who also use those pronouns. There’s nonbinary people. There’s a lot of transgender women who haven’t come out. I understand what you mean to say when you say that, but pronouns are actually just one aspect of identity and performance of self and they’re as fluid and open to interpretation as the rest. 

It’s all constructs and I personally think if you want to write in a space that is actively discussing gender and what gender is and what gender can be and the kind of inherent boundary-breaking and remaking and reworking that comes with that territory, it’s worth really sitting down and thinking about these things and being careful with how you actually want to position your character and story and the language you use, etc. etc., and again, I think if you’re asking me for guidance, there’s probably a chance you’re not quite there yet. 

I want to mention as well that “coming out” stories in general are greatly over-represented when it comes to ‘queer’ stories by non-queer writers in mainstream media. You’re writing fanfiction for fun and that’s allowed and okay, but it does seem that the story you’re looking to tell is ultimately about this character coming out. You’ve focused a ton on the transition aspects of this character and if I’m totally honest with you, that strikes me as maybe not a great move, since it’s a very cis approach to writing about transgender characters to fixate on the “process” (often with an invasive, objectifying kind of lens). I’m not saying that your intention or necessarily what your story would be, but I do feel it’s worth pointing out so that you can be sure to avoid it. 

Also, as a side note that might interest you, cat voices don’t actually work like human voices. In human sexual dimorphism, testosterone levels rising in puberty result in a low voice--but cats don’t experience this in real life! Male cats don’t have lower voices than female cats, and the spectrum of “normal” cat voices can span from the very high to the quite low and gravelly regardless of the cat’s sex. To offer an anecdote, I have a skinny old Siamese who has an extremely deep yowl (which his mother also had) and a fluffy ginger cat with a very high, squeaky chirp, and they’re both male and desexed. So basically what I’m saying is transposing human experience onto cats (or frankly any animal) in this instance might be less straightforward than you’d expect, depending on how many cat characteristics versus human characteristics you want to include. 

Anyway tl;dr: I strongly recommend undertaking genuine research into lived transgender experience as written by transgender people before attempting to tackle any kind of story like this. You’re welcome to look through the tag I’ve got on this blog for ideas on adapting that research to a Warriors context when the time comes but I really have to stress that this is a topic that requires effort, humility, and a willingness to both learn and acknowledge the limitations of your own perspective as a writer. I’m sorry if that’s not the feedback you wanted to hear, but I can’t in good conscience not say it. 

[artificialqueens]

Galactica, Chapter 45 (Group Fic) - TheDane/Veronica

A/N: Click here if you’re looking for previous chapters (or here if you’d rather read on AO3). 💫

Last Chapter: Aiden’s jealousy worsened, and Bianca invited Courtney to lunch.

This Chapter: Courtney, Adore and Violet all receive unexpected invitations.

***

It was kind of amazing. How Courtney could be sitting across from one of the most influential, powerful women in New York and feel so...well, comfortable. She knew that any sane person would feel horribly intimidated in this situation, but Bianca just kept on making her laugh so much, it was like she forgot to be nervous. Or...well, she wasn’t exactly not nervous, but it was a fluttery kind of excited nervous, curling pleasantly in her abdomen as they bantered back and forth.

“So...what class are you taking later?” Bianca asked, stirring her latte.

“It’s a street jazz class at BDC,” Courtney replied.

“BDC?” Bianca raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, it stands for Broadway Dance Cen-”

“Yeah, I know what BDC is, I’m not a moron,” Bianca interrupted, and Courtney bit back a laugh, finding her abrasive style somehow endearing. “I just didn’t realize you were a dancer.”

“Oh. I’m not really. I just uh...want to get into music. Eventually. Like, pop music. When I got to New York, I went on a bunch of auditions, and I realized that my dance background was nowhere near strong enough to be competitive-” Courtney stopped abruptly. Was she saying too much? As nice as Bianca was, she was also one of Fame’s best friends.

Bianca didn’t seem concerned though, simply listening, nodding, a soft smile on her face. She really was so beautiful. Courtney’s heart hammered a bit faster.

“Do you mind...um...not telling Miss Fame about that? I don’t want her to think I’m not committed. I just, feel like she’d disapprove, and I really need that job, so-”

“Your secret’s safe with me.” Bianca’s smile deepened, dark eyes shining.

“Thanks.” Courtney smiled back as the waitress set down their food, relieved.

“So how’d you end up at Galactica, anyway? It’s not exactly a direct path from there to being a pop star.”

“Uh, it’s kind of a long story. I was applying for like, any job that would let me stay in the country, and when I saw the opening with Miss Fame, I was thrilled. And then Adore and I were at this club, and we ran into Violet, and...I guess she kind of put in a good word for me.”

“Huh. I wouldn’t have expected that,” Bianca mused.

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s just… Violet’s always seemed a bit...uptight as fuck?”

Courtney had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing out loud, explaining, “She takes her work very seriously.”

“Oh yeah?” One of Bianca’s brows raised a little, challenging. “Do you?”

“Of course! I’m so lucky to have that job, a million girls would kill to be in my shoes. And Miss Fame, you know, she’s a great boss.” Courtney blinked at Bianca, watching her muffle a laugh with her hand. “What?”

“No, nothing. You’re just cute when you lie.”

That fluttery feeling was back in Courtney’s belly, stronger than ever, as she insisted, “I’m not lying! She’s great! You’re her best friend, you should know-”

“Exactly. I’m her best friend. That’s how I know you’re lying.” Bianca bit down on a sweet potato fry, eyes twinkling.

“Okay, maybe she’s a little…”

“Yes?”

“Well, she’s not the easiest boss, or the most predictable, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a good one.” Courtney crossed her arms, a pretend little pout on her lips.

“Fair enough.”

And with that particular landmine safely side-stepped, Courtney let out a relieved sigh.

“Hey, uh, here’s a question. Do you have any Thanksgiving plans? I know you’re not American, so-”

“Really, what gave that away?” Courtney asked, lashes fluttering.

“Lucky guess,” Bianca laughed. “Anyway, Adore and I usually go home to New Orleans. But my sister Liz is going through a divorce and she’s apparently just an absolute cunt to anyone who dares even look at her. So we decided to stay in town and avoid that nightmare altogether.”

“That’s nice. Very supportive.”

“Hey, I’m paying for her attorney,” Bianca defended herself, and Courtney laughed. Of course she was paying for her sister’s divorce attorney; she was quickly proving to be one of the most generous people Courtney’d ever met. “But yeah, so...would you have any interest in joining us?”

“Really?”

“Sure. I know Adore would love to have you there,” Bianca said quickly, and after a moment of hesitation, added, “And hey, I’d like to encourage her to hang out with people who read. So, you know, win win.”

Courtney bit her lip, Bianca’s sarcastic deflection as she folded up a napkin in her hands making the whole thing painfully cute.

“No pressure, I just, uh...wanted you to know you’re welcome.”

“I would love to,” Courtney said, feeling a bit overwhelmed at the invite, knowing that this was a holiday people spent with family. “I should warn you though, I just went vegan.”

“Oh shit, invite rescinded.”

Courtney giggled, twirling a lock of her hair. “I know, I've already lost 3 friends over it. And I think I’m on very thin ice with Adore. Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s no big deal. I actually eat a lot of vegan food, even tried it myself for a few years,” Bianca said. “I am a lesbian, after all.”

Courtney leaned forward, intrigued. “Is that like a thing?”

“Oh yeah,” Bianca nodded.

“Why do you think that is?” Courtney asked, lifting her glass to her lips, trying to find the straw without looking.

Bianca thought for a moment and then said, “Well...part of it is probably just lefty-feminist politics. And then of course there’s the purely unscientific belief that a plant-based diet makes your pussy taste amazing.”

Courtney choked, spitting out some of her smoothie, cheeks flushing hotly.

A mischievous smile spread across Bianca’s face as she handed over some napkins. She looked both terribly amused and a bit proud of herself.

“Sorry,” Courtney sputtered, wiping up the mess. “I was...not prepared for that.”

“I hope I didn’t destroy your innocence,” Bianca said, voice soft and teasing.

“I’m not that fragile. I’ve been Adore’s best friend for 4 years, remember?” Courtney reminded her.

“Right.”

As Courtney set down the napkins, she looked up and caught Bianca’s eyes again, both of them breaking out into matching grins. She couldn’t quite explain the way her heart thumped faster every time they looked at each other--all she knew was that looking into Bianca’s warm brown eyes, she felt better than she had in months.

***

“Fame?”

Patrick toed his shoes off, resisting the urge to dump his tennis bag by the door. He played tennis every other Saturday morning, tennis and his occasional swims the only form of exercise he had ever found bearable, even though Fame had tried to get him turned into yoga more times than he could count.

Patrick waited for a second, either expecting his wife or his dog to come down to greet him, but neither happened, instead,  all he could hear was the faint sound of the TV.

“Fame? Darling?”

Patrick put his bag down, vowing to himself that he’d remember to come back and pick it up, before he made his way into their townhouse.

He found her in the living room. Fame was sitting on the couch in a silk robe, the TV on, the curtains drawn, Charles' head resting on her lap.

“Did you have fun?”

“We finished 5 sets.” Patrick smiled, Fame not actually asking how he had done at tennis, the rules of the game on the long list of things she didn’t care about, though she had shown up to watch him play, the shorts apparently making it worth it. He walked over to the couch, sitting down and leaning in to give his wife a kiss on the cheek, when he felt Fame’s hand on his face, blocking him.

“Don’t-” Fame turned her head, pulling herself away from her show as she looked at Patrick through her fingers. “I just had my skin done, and I refuse to let you mess up my microneedling.”

“Ah. Glad it’s not a chemical peel month.” Fame always looked absolutely insane after those, her skin flaking off. It was rather disgusting, and he tried not to be around for those, seeing your wife shed like a lizard weirdly enough rarely doing wonders for a sex life.

“Shut up.”

Patrick grinned, and Fame smiled as she pushed him back, Patrick settling in on the couch so Fame could snuggle up against him, her head resting on his shoulder. “And what are we watching?”

“Snapped.”

Patrick had to hide a snort, Fame absolutely devouring any and all true crime media. When she’d first gotten addicted to that particular show, all about women who murdered their partners, he’d wonder if she was trying to tell him something. Her response when he’d asked, “Keep asking questions like that and you’ll find out,” had made him burst out laughing, his wife’s sardonic, grisly sense of humor one of the things he loved the most about her, only coming out in rare instances but always a delightful surprise. Almost as surprising as her porcelain chicken collection.

“Your bag better not be flung anywhere.”

Ah.

Busted.

***

Katya hummed to herself as she was setting the table, a bottle of wine for Trixie and sparkling water for her chilling in the fridge.

Trixie was locked up in their bedroom, working away on the cost predictions for the Spring prêt-à-porter collection, sweating over numbers and doing everything he could to make sure everything was running smoothly.

He had promised her to come out for dinner, so Katya had arranged a surprise, a gigantic order of Chipotle on its way.

“Hey Katya?”

Katya looked up from where she had been folding the napkin, to see Pearl leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed. She was wearing a pair of drop-crotch sweats and a sleeveless jersey tied up around her midriff, certainly not her typical going-out clothes. Was it possible that she was staying in? On a Saturday?

“Everything okay?”

Pearl gave a slow, unconvincing nod, walking forward a few steps.

“Are you sure about that?”

“How did you know that you wanted to be with Trixie forever?”

Katya paused, the napkin still in her hand as she considered Pearl’s question. Normally, she would have made a joke about Trixie’s luscious butt, but judging from Pearl’s face, this wasn’t the time.

“I honestly…still don’t know.”

“Please,” Pearl sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs. “I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Katya smiled. Pearl and Trixie had been friends for forever, but they didn’t become best friends until after Katya and Trixie had started dating, Pearl moving in with Trixie while she was in rehab for that final time. “I liked being single. I liked having little whirlwind romantic flings and then going back to starfishing across the bed when they were over.”

Pearl laughed, shaking her head, and Katya declared a small victory for making her crack a smile.

“If I’d been single forever, I’d have been perfectly fine.”

Maybe not perfectly fine, but Pearl didn’t need to know that, the things Katya had done before Trixie came into her life not really things she was particularly proud of.

“I liked being free.” Katya shrugged, trying it out.

“Mmmh?”

Bingo.

Katya hid a smirk, Pearl straightening up the moment freedom had been mentioned.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Pearl was struggling in her relationship with Adore, that her friend was probably freaking out about being with someone for any extended amount of time, since Katya had never seen Pearl do anything like what she doing now, long-term relationships not really the Liaison brand.

“But I met Trix, and I like him more than freedom. Or, well, that’s not really accurate. Actually…” Katya sat down beside Pearl. “The truth is, I feel my freest when I’m with him. Knowing that he’s in my corner. But I mean, knowing for sure? I just don’t think certainty is in my nature. Luckily, it’s in his. That’s why we’re a good team.”

“Yeah. That makes sense. You guys are a good team.” Pearl sighed.

“Do you feel like you guys are a good team?” Katya asked carefully.

“Sometimes. I mean...we’re a lot alike. Maybe too much alike. I dunno.” Pearl avoided Katya’s gaze.

“Here’s a question...are you happier with her, or without her?” Katya asked.

“I...don’t know.”

Katya reached for Pearl’s hand. “Pearl, listen. I like Adore, a lot actually. I think she’s sweet and beautiful and funny and she obviously cares about you so much. But I also think that stringing her along when you’re feeling like this...it’s not fair to either of you.”

“I just don’t want to give up so fast!” Pearl exclaimed. “I always do that. I promised myself that I would actually try this time.”

“Well, then maybe you just need to be reminded of why you got together in the first place.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Also...now I don’t want to sound like I’m preaching here,” Katya began.

“No, it’s fine. I asked for your opinion,” Pearl said.

“Well...in my experience...it’s really hard to maintain any kind of real relationship--friendship, romantic, whatever--if you prioritize your ego over the other person’s feelings.”

Pearl blinked at her for a few seconds, letting the comment sink in, before dropping her head to the table with a soft, “fuck…”

Katya chuckled and leaned forward to kiss the top of her head. “You’ll be alright.”

***

“Drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink YEAHHHHHHH!” The girls cheered as Adore finished her beer and slammed the empty glass down on the table.

Adore laughed, wiping her mouth, looking around at the group. Originally, when Courtney had introduced her to these girls years ago as “my sorority sisters,” she was picturing stuck-up, prissy little spoiled brats, who would judge her and never accept her - the punk rock lesbian who walked around in bare feet and no bra most of the time.

She was pleasantly surprised when they ended up being fun, and mostly turned their Mean Girls Judgement on others, or each other. Somehow Adore became the untouchable and beloved mascot of the group, the cool, alternative one who gave them all street cred. Tyra loved her because they were both from the South, both from big families and both of them possessed deeply developed bullshit detectors. Tati enjoyed doing shots with her and wreaking havoc (and was good for a sloppy drunken makeout session at least a few times a year) and Morgan - well, Morgan was kind of a cunt, but in the very best way. It was part of her charm, and, as she explained it, part of her Scottish heritage.

This night out with her friends was exactly what she needed to take her mind off her current relationship drama. She’d only spoken to Pearl once since their fight the other day, and it was tense, Pearl claiming to be running into a meeting. After that, nothing. No messages, no calls--she still wasn’t 100% sure where things stood between them.

Adore turned to Courtney, who absentmindedly stirred her drink with a straw, staring into space. She’d already noticed a bit of a change in her mood from a week ago - there was definitely something lighter about her. Still, quiet wistfulness wasn’t her general M.O. in a club - usually she was the first one on the dance floor. Adore nudged her gently with a hip.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Courtney turned to her with a little smile, green eyes soft.

“Are you having fun?”

“Of course! I always have fun with you,” she said, wrapping her arms around Adore’s waist and cuddling closer, laying a head on her shoulder.

Adore pressed the kiss to the top of her head before asking the other question on her mind, “So...um...what’s going on with you and my sister?”

Courtney’s head snapped up, eyes wide. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I heard you hung out today…and that you’re joining us for Thanksgiving?”

“Oh. Right. No, I just ran into her by chance.”

“Where the hell are you hanging out, where you run into someone like that?” Morgan asked. “The fuckin’ SoHo house?”

“It was a bookstore.”

“Ugh, smart bitch.”

“And like…she bought me lunch because she knows I’m poor,” Courtney explained, “and since you guys will be in town and I don’t have family here, she just asked if I wanted to come.”

“Oh yeah, no big deal,” Tyra cut in, “She just took you on a date and then invited you to a family holiday…”

“It wasn’t a date!” Courtney said, laughing. “It was really all just very casual. She was just being nice.”

“Being nice for no reason. Sounds like Bianca alright,” Adore said, one eyebrow raised, and Courtney giggled again, shrugging.

“Maybe she’s nicer than you think.”

“Listen, Courtney, I’m glad you’re gonna be there because I love you. But just...you know, my sister is very...uh…”

“Yeah?”

“No, she’s great. Like, she’s the best. But…” Adore trailed off, grabbing a shot from the round Morgan was setting on the table and tossing it back.

It felt weird to be having this conversation. Did she really need to warn Courtney about Bianca? After all, B had joked about hitting on her before but never actually done anything. And what would she even say? ‘My sister is very good at charming the pants off every girl who catches her attention--especially the blondes’? ‘Beware the dimples’? She was certain that Bianca would never make a move on someone who didn’t want it, so...why not just leave it alone?

“You know what? Nevermind. Whose phone is that?” Adore felt her pocket, realizing that the out of control buzzing was her own phone--hopefully not her sister being an impatient cunt about Courtney’s number.

PEARL: Hey. I’m sorry about how I acted on Thursday.

PEARL: And yesterday

PEARL: There’s a warehouse party in Brooklyn tomorrow

PEARL: At the navy yard. Wanna go?

PEARL: It’s right by Grimaldi’s…

PEARL: Best pizza in NY

PEARL: My treat

ADORE: So you like pizza again, huh?

PEARL: It’s my favorite ;)

ADORE: Lol, okay, I’m in. <3

Adore looked back up at her friends, grinning at the group. “Let’s go dance!”

***

Sutan wasn’t nervous.

He wasn’t, because that would be ridiculous.

Sutan took a sip of his coffee, watching people walk by the cafe he was sitting at. It was a surprisingly sunny Saturday for October, the air crisp and fresh. He had already waited for 20 minutes, Violet once again late, but Sutan had asked for a chocolate croissant with his first cup of coffee, his girlfriend's time management skills surprisingly terrible.

Sutan was planning to invite Violet to Aspen with him, Raja and Raven for their annual ski trip. It was a tradition of theirs, Raja and he owning a cabin together that they visited every year. He wasn’t a brilliant skier, but he liked the mountain air, the sense of freedom, and of being disconnected while out on the slopes.

He had thought about inviting Violet along for weeks, Raven needling him about whether or not Violet would be coming with him.

Sutan wanted Violet to join them. Wanted to see her all dressed up in winter wear, wanted to teach her how to ski and have drinks by the fire in the evening.

There was just the teeny tiny insignificant detail, that the last time he had asked someone to come with him and Raja to Aspen, it had been a terrible time.

He didn’t hate Kahmora, at least not any more, their divorce lasting longer than their marriage, but he still felt a sense of dread every time he visited L.A. - which was why he avoided the city as much as he could, Kahmora thankfully relocating once they severed ties.

Violet wasn’t Kahmora though, actually, they were as different as day and night.

“Hey.”

Sutan turned his head to see Violet come walking towards him, her coat closely around her, her new bag in hand, and Sutan was glad he had splurged for the largest model Dior made, the purse already stuffed.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Violet pressed a kiss against his cheek, sliding in on the other side of the table, her dress brushing against him. “Have you eaten?”

“I was waiting for you.”

Violet didn’t need to know that he already finished a chocolate croissant, that sin between him and his trainer.

“Ah,” Violet looked guilty for a second, brushing a bit of her hair behind her ear, her earring of the day a tiny golden hook. “Sorry, I was at work and time just flew by-”

“Work?” Sutan twisted his wrist, taking a peek at his Rolex. “It’s 10:33 on a Saturday?”

“I went in at 6.” Violet picked the menu up, the fact that she tried to pretend that she wasn’t going to order avocado on rye kind of cute. “I know I have to turn my dress over to tailoring sooner or later-”

“But you want to finish as much as you can?” Sutan smiled, emptying his coffee cup. “Of course.”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not,” Sutan held up his hands in defense. “Promise.” He couldn’t help but sneak a peek at Violet’s right hand, her fingertips thankfully not the raw red points he had helped wrap and put ice on. “It’s just very dedicated-”

“This is my first chance to get an actual piece on the runway. It has to be perfect-” Violet was cut off as the waiter came over, Sutan hiding a grin as she ordered avocado on rye, his second breakfast a plate of scrambled eggs and salmon.

“Speaking of perfect.” Sutan moved his chair while the waiter walked away, his stomach tied up in a knot. “I was wondering, if…”

“Yes?” Violet tilted her head, clearly listening, her brow eyes resting on his face.

“If you’d like...” Sutan had no idea why this was so hard, “to come to Aspen with Raja, Raven and I in January?”

“What?” Violet looked genuinely confused.

“Raja and I own a cabin, and-”

“Like, in Colorado? Like Aspen Aspen? Like posh skiing Aspen?”

“Yes?” Sutan lifted a brow. “Do you know any other Aspen?”

“No, but I-” Violet bit her lip, her white teeth sinking into it. “I don’t know how to ski?”

“Oh,” Sutan laughed, the admission not at all what he had expected. “Well, lovely eyes.” Sutan smiled. “I can promise you, that that is not a problem.”

[this-artist-is-screaming]

04/02/21 New Feminist Perspectives and the Emergence of Intersectional Critique

Adrian Piper - The mythic being 1973/74

- First wave feminism looked at the Suffragettes in the late 19th century 

- Feminist critique in the 70s, mid 20th century, second wave feminism

This is a feminist mytholodgy 

Feminists which first emerged were white, middle class, American. This came to an end in the 70s. African American, Latina, First Nation people and minorities ec were all excluded before the 70s. It was a very heterosexual narrative. 

Feminist aesthetics don't refer to a particular aesthetic or style but question assumptions in art and as an aesthetic we’re looking at stereotyping the defined between men, women and gender. 

Feminists argue that despite seeing being neutral or inclusive the way people think about art and a static influence by sex roles eg. men and women. 

Feminist aesthetics:

A tool for analysing how art is understood using gender issues. 

Audrey Lord was an incredibly influential writer. She delivered a conference paper, very angrily. at a feminist conference. She delivered this paper called ‘The Masters Tool will never dismantle the pastors house’ - this changed the way that feminism looked at itself. 

“If white American feminist theory does not deal with the fact that women will clean your house and look after 10 of your children while you attend a conference of feminist theory are poor people and women of colour. What is the theory behind racist feminism.”

Lord was the only other woman of colour speaking at this conference. Both women were invited as an afterthought. 

Unless we address and embrace the diversity between us and see us as a strength, then it will undermine any of the change, changes that we’re trying to make in society. 

“To read this program is to assume that lesbian and black women have nothing to say about the existentialism, about the erotic, about women culture, womens silence, they’ve got nothing to say in developing feminist theory or heterosexuality or power”.

Historical Narrative Recap

Two ways women have been depicted in art:

Botticelli - Judiths return to Bethulia

- Chopped of the 10th invading Palestine generals head

- got him drunk, seduced him, hacked his head off

- picture shows Judith returning to Jerusalem with the head

- No viscosity, there's no blood, no brains dripping everywhere, the maids    just carrying the head along, not a care in the world.

- Judith herself has a very ‘idealised’ Botticelli style face, no emotions, she doesn't look upset or stressed or angry, she's just walking back with a clean silver sword. 

-does not look very realistic, she’s meant to have just murdered this man!

Gentileschi - Judiths slaying Holofernes 1614-20

- Has been raped, not a lot of contact

- very different depiction of women

- these women are strong and powerful

- it is very contrasting from the Botticelli painting, its more realistic and really looks like the man is in agony

Hannah Hoch

Hoch was known for her political collage and photomontage work. She appropriates her images from mass media, by doing this she is critiquing the government in Germany. She was deeply inspired by early collage artists such as Picasso. She preferred to talk in metaphors rather than direct confrontation. She is recognised as a pioneering feminist artist

‘The beautiful gir’l - 1920 looks at the visual reaction to advertising and the ideas of beauty. She takes clippings from car parts, takes female figures from magazines and she makes a juxtaposition of the role of women in a modernising society. She wanted to emphasize this problematic phenomena between the reality of the experience of real women in Germany, and the rise of national socialism. 

Yoko Ono

Her performance interactive piece from the 60s saw Ono sat on a stage, fully dressed with a pair of scissors next to her, she invites the audience to come and cut a piece of fabric from what she was wearing. People started very gently, by cutting only a tiny section of clothes and then as people got more and more involved in this process they started to get more and more aggressive. She was incredibly passive, she sat their, submissively. People started to cut away at her underwear, she does nothing as part of the performance but security guards stop the audience from cutting before she is fully naked. 

Investigating what changes, what makes people who would generally credit themselves as behaving well, what makes them submit to these very predatory and aggressive people who would cut away very intimate garments.

Marina Abramovic

In her performance piece titled ‘Rhythm Zone’  Abramovic is stood in front of a table with different implements on it. She invited members of the audience to use these implements to cause an interaction between herself and the instance of the objects on the table eg. feathers, pens, knives  (someone cut her jugular) also a loaded gun where someone began to pick it up but security would step in. 

Abramovic had been stripped, we have someone here who is vulnerable and defenceless - she cannot defend herself 

- this is a process of transformation of the audience

- The role of Women as submissive and they’re expecting violence accepting these things happening to them - and unable to respond. 

Judy Chicago - The dinner party 1974-79

A collaborative piece, organised by Judy Chicago, it is seen as a seminal piece in feminist art. The narrative of the piece showcases her inviting women who throughout history have been renowned or made a difference. Women such as Mary Woolstonecroft and Mary Shelley. In the centre of the piece are other woman's  names.

Intersectionality 

Is a concept often used in critical theories to describe the ways in which oppressive institutes ( racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, classism etc.) are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from each other. Your not telling the whole story if your not including all oppressed institutions. You are as guilty as I am guilty of leaving people out of the narratives history.

It suggests that we cannot separate the effects of race, class and gender.

‘Personal is political’ Carol Hanisch 1969 **look more at this**

This term was founded by Hanisch in 1969

- it means that political and personal issues affect each other. 

- The experiences of women is in the grounding of feminism is both personal and political

- You bring your own experiences to feminism because it is a political movement

Multi Racial Feminism - Becky Thomson

“This feminism ( second wave ) is white led, marginalises the activism and world views of women of colour, focuses mainly on the United State, and treats sexism as the ultimate oppression. Hegemonic feminism de - emphasizes or ignores a class or race analysis, generally see’s equality with men as the goal of feminism and has an individual rights based, rather than a justice based vision for social change 

Hegemonic: Who has the overwhelming power.

[jyndor]

the tied to a tree scene was funny for me because that's where I realized "OH. I bet people ship them. EW." and I still see that scene as not even remotely friendly, much less romantic, but I just love the GROWTH! zuko needs the redemption arc before he can be with katara. and then I ship them.

a million percent correct take, let me hyper fixate on this shit lol.

so I started watching in book 2, so I was already aware of a bit of the Growth that had taken place when I saw that scene, but it was still... not a shippy moment for me, you know? I mean bdsm isn’t my thing but that scene is not comparable to bdsm which I believe requires consent and communication, none of which is what we see in that scene, and also blegh they’re children LMAO like they’re kids. I feel gross just making that point. but I think that scene is where a lot of the grosser zutara fic comes from, and it just... warms my little queer heart to not see that shit anymore. like I’m sure it is still being written, but people do learn and unlearn, and that is evident in the most popular fanfic sub genres right now not being slave fic or captivity fic (eurghhhh).

people can and should criticize that shit. I am not the kind of person who is cool with uncritically engaging with media, I can’t do it. and that shouldn’t shock any of my followers lmao. but also, that isn’t the whole of zutara; in fact it’s barely a part of it at this point. and it should only be a part of their personal history insofar as he did that to her and then he learned to be better lmao. just like anything he did to aang or sokka or toph, or anyone!

anon, you’re right. part of the reason I love zutara is because of the GROWTH! you’re a million percent correct, zero percent wrong. because zuko works to earn katara’s forgiveness since he recognizes that while he was not directly responsible for the trauma of losing her mother at a young age to the cruelty of the fire lord (a trauma he shares, albeit differently) he IS directly responsible for betraying her trust in the catacombs of change and empathy. he knows that. and I don’t think him being frustrating that she won’t forgive him means that he feels entitled to her forgiveness, he just wants their relationship to be better. like who among us burst from the womb being emotionally mature? not I.

katara is not just willing to forgive people who have both benefited from and also been marginalized by fire nation imperialism - she is pretty quick to do so. like, this might be an effect of white americans writing an indigenous girl’s story in the first place, but she is able to take an intersectional view on oppression - that once it becomes clear that zuko is a victim to fire nation imperialism, perhaps even moreso than he is a benefactor of it, she is like not just willing to forgive him, but actively BONDS with him, despite of their antagonistic history.

katara is not mad at him in book 3 because of how he behaved prior to the crystal catacombs, or because he is fire nation. if she was, she wouldn’t have gone all painted lady for a town of people who have KIND OF benefited from what their government did to her people. the townspeople of jang hui are a pretty decent representation of like, poor people in west virginia for instance. not to say they aren’t capable of horrific racism, but if they have benefited from american empire it is... not very much. they are victims of industry and capitalism, and oh boy I have gone on a tangent LMAO let me get back to the point.

zuko hurt katara PERSONALLY. he betrayed her trust which was fully given because of their shared trauma at the hands of the fire nation. katara wanted zuko to be better than he had been because she could tell that he wanted to be better. but he wasn’t ready - he still wanted his father’s acceptance more than anything. and sometimes people aren’t ready to change, and what zuko and katara teach us that it’s not the onus of forgiveness is not on the wronged party, that “I’m sorry” isn’t always enough. and that when we hurt people, we need to actually do the work to be better, and if we do that, the person whose forgiveness we want might actually see reason to forgive.

and zuko recognizes this by the time he joins up with the gaang - he is finally ready to be better, not just because he knows that fire nation supremacy is bullshit, but because he recognizes that what his father can give him is not worth losing who he truly is.

and we know that when he tells ozai to eat shit, he’s finally ready, which is why that moment is SO GOOD. but the gaang doesn’t know that, and none of them is as emotionally invested in zuko as katara is. I imagine that she feels immense guilt about nearly “wasting” the spirit oasis water on his scar right before she needed to use it to save aang because of zuko’s betrayal of her (and iroh but). part of her anger at zuko imo is anger at herself for trusting him so quickly, without him earning her trust. she was the first to trust him, so she had to be the last to forgive him.

I think that applies whether you ship zutara or you think she takes the place of azula as his sister. none of what I just said is inherently shippy. to me the best zutara fic is about what happens AFTER the show, who they can be to each other when they are adults, who have learned more about what they want in life. especially katara. but the backbone of zutara to me is not the dark or sexy whatever fuckin bullshit bryke thinks it is, but the forgiveness and redemption and personal growth that they both experience with each other.

zuko is a highly empathetic person who cares about what she thinks and listens to her. and I get that aang is also highly empathetic. and I don’t want to go down the anti-kataang road because I’ve said what I think about kataang, and I don’t think zutara has to be to the exclusion of kataang existing at some point. this goes for maiko as well, although lol mai is a lesbian mailee forever ANYWAY

when I was sixteen and furious at the ending of atla, I didn’t feel that way. now that I am nearing thirty, it is hilarious to think that people don’t love multiple people during their journeys. that is also GROWTH. finding out what you want from partners. it’s natural for someone to love a partner and then fall out of love, or demand something else that their partner can’t give. or doesn’t want.

it’s the growth that does it for me. and I think people who don’t know zutara fandom might not get that because they don’t read our fic, they don’t see our discourse, and they’re allowed to feel that way, they are allowed to not interact with our shit. idk I’m proud of the zutara fandom for its growth tbh. no fandom is free of racism (fandoms are people) but we have done better, and it shows. we try not to get into it with kataang shippers now, which is a lot better than what it used to be. like I don’t see the ship wars anymore, I know they are raging but I’m beyond that shit.

growth!

[frayed-symphony]

I guess this is just something that’s been on my mind for awhile now and sorry I know it might seem a bit random but since I’m making an R18 doujin I’ve been thinking the way sex ed is taught to girls really needs to change and I wanted to share my experience.

For me ‘sex’ was always a dirty word and the media taught it as being something for men rather than women. Men were the ones who get caught in their bedroom with porn mags or jerking off online, you’d never see a woman doing that. Men masturbated, not women. So many plotlines about guys chasing girls, talking about their boobs and butts rather than anything else while I can’t recall many instances of it being the other way round. I actually thought it was illegal to google porn, though I don’t remember why I thought now. I just knew I would get in ‘trouble’.

I wrote sex off as something not for me before I was even 15 - I wasn’t going to engage in it until I got married so I could make sure the guy I was with actually wanted to be with me. How could I know if he really liked me otherwise? Women’s virginity is always put on a pedastal so I felt it was something I had to be careful to preserve. I never felt that way thinking about a man’s virginity though. It didn’t seem to matter.

Growing up I went to an all-girl’s school and made my first male friend when I was 18. Before then I had a single lesson on sex-ed where we were taught how to put a condom on a banana. We weren’t taught about consent or how it can feel nice for the woman as well, just ‘be safe if it happens’, like some natural disaster that might hit you unawares one day. My views on relationships were even more skewed in Year 8 when I started hanging out and having sleepovers with a female friend and a rumour started that we were lesbians which followed me through most of my school life and I only now realise how homophobic my school environment was. I had a couple of wonderful friends who didn’t go to my school so I got through it but lessons were hell, nobody wanted to come near me and it stayed that way until I graduated. It didn’t really help that I dressed ‘masculine’ by only wearing shirts and trousers with no makeup so I guess it fit a stereotype they had? Any relationship I saw beyond m/f ones made the people around me uncomfortable. I hope it’s different now.

Then at Uni I finally made some guy friends but I had bad experiences. Guys in class made lists on who they wanted to hook up with most and it didn’t really remove my preconception that guys were only after sex. When they made sex jokes in conversation that I didn’t understand they branded me as ‘so innocent and naive’ which left me frustrated. How was I supposed to know this stuff when I was never taught it? I didn’t know what morning wood was, I didn’t understand what doggie style meant. I guess I was naive but again it socially hurt me to be that clueless, I was the laughing stock of jokes at times. All I wanted was to go have coffee with my crush, I wasn’t thinking beyond kissing or holding hands at all. Maybe that’s weird too or at least I was made to believe it was.

And at the end of Uni when I finally did confess to my crush and instead of an outright yes/no he asked if I wanted something serious or casual because he wasn’t sure, wanting to please him I replied ‘whatever you want’. I’m grateful it didn’t go far in the end but I’m upset for my younger self looking back at that. Something casual was the last thing I wanted but I would have done anything to make him look my way. I wish I had more self respect now, it just didn’t feel like what I wanted mattered.

I don’t want to talk about my ex but it was only my current partner who taught me that it should be for both of us. If he saw me feeling nervous or uncomfortable he’d back off and we’d do something else, the relationship just continued like normal. I shouldn’t have been surprised but I still catch myself sometimes wondering why that moment was so important to me.

I just feel like so much of my education was wrong.

Another thing that really helped changed my view as well was fanfiction. There was sexual content but it wasn’t like anything I’d seen in media before. Sex became more appealing to me - there were more stories from a woman’s POV and sex wasn’t something ‘dirty’ or for ‘sluts’ or whatever crap I was fed at the time, it could be nice and exciting and both couples wanted it. Unfortunately I also had a very damaging moment -  I tried to write Frodo/Sam porn which my sister then found and showed my parents. I got told off and I really wish that had never happened, maybe I could have changed my thoughts sooner but any sexual curiousity I had was crushed for a long time. My sister didn’t let me live that down for years and it became a source of shame for me.

I just wish I had been taught that sex is something that can be nice for everyone. That it’s ok to masturbate or google porn, it’s ok for women to want it too. Because it wasn’t until maybe the last 5 years when I was in my late 20s that I started thinking that way and it feels like that’s something men get taught around puberty. So many harmful role models in film where ‘no means yes’ and the women are only there to be arm candy for the guy.

Okay this rant went on too long but I just wanted to get it out somewhere. IT’S OKAY TO THINK ABOUT SEX AND ALL THAT. in case anyone is repressed as fuck like I was lol

[deamabilisworld]

The first thing a gay person should do is find a community.

So blue is the warmest colour.

First things first, Emma's outfits make me fall in love.

We oftentimes understand genres from superficial features. Horror for instance by threatening situations, death, etc.

But once in a while a radical author arrives into the scene and triggers all the emotions related with the genre, without actually repeating any of its tropes.

It is easy to classify lesbianism as girl on girl relationship. And the relationship with sex, and so lesbianism with a girl on girl sexual relation.

It is more difficult for a trans lesbian such as myself to understand what it means and why was I not satisfied with relationships with women who saw me as male, even disregarding penetration and the assumption that I should be the dominant partner.

So when I try to realize what it means, I try, like many of us, to reflect on lesbianism in media. And throughout the past few months it helped me understand what I was missing, even though I'm yet to theorize or put it into words.

The first hour and a half of the movie was all that for me. I connected what was going through Adele. Especially when she sees Emma for the first time. Having a confident butch wrap her hands around you as you walk in the streets, seeing it from afar and longing.

As for her sex with men compared to the sexual fantasy, that's also interesting.

Men tend to be very focused on penetration. What's more interesting is that they almost have no discussion about their own personal enjoyment in sex.

Think about it: the market for male sex toys is very poor, and men freak when you discuss penetrating them, even though the anal region is filled with nerve endings which guarantee enjoyment.

This leads to their sexual interaction begging technique-driven. Very linear and centred on specific tasks in an almost mechanical way.

I obviously also talk from my own personal experience.

Maybe I'm not the right person to speak about it, but I couldn't find much pleasure when having sex as a guy. The experience was stale, repetitive and motionless. I was not driven by my sensations, rather by my imagination and the need to please the other. It reached to situations where I used to throw my used condoms as fast as possible since I didn't really climax in these interactions.

Which obviously also limits the other's capacity to enjoy the interaction.

The most affirming first experience in my transition was when I was treated as a woman in sex, and I actually reached orgasm for the first time in my life.

Having said that, the first actual sex scene with Emma also bothered me.

When I think of lesbianism and sapphic, I think of things I can actually do as a woman, and to what I relate. Which is obviously very gay scenarios, but rarely penetrative sex.

I imagine cuddling in the middle of the night, a dildo pulled out, we both climax and low key going to bed as if nothing.

I imagine looking her in the eyes as she plays with her fingers inside of me, her dominant eyes give me comfort.

Eating her up.

But having said all of that, vaginas gross me out.

I mean penises gross me much more.

I love breasts and buttocks.

But I really find it difficult being attracted to the vagina, playing with it, kissing it.

One time in the army, I sat with someone as she guarded the base entrance and she told me she usually finds the penis appalling, but when she has sex, it becomes the most beautiful thing in the world.

Dejana once made me insert my fingers to her in the shower, but I couldn't find joy in it.

Let's talk about Dejana for a second.

While she saw me as a hetero and despised lesbians, BITWC was one of her favourite movies. And I could see a reflection of our dynamic in that relationship.

I was stronger in that dynamic. I came from abroad, I had more money, I was her boss's daughter.

I read more, especially and of course philosophy.

Our relationship was a form of escapism.

She wanted the classical type of romance, that which doesn't exist in the rural parts of Serbja. Love, warmth, real human affection deeper than sexual lust.

I was looking for a simple relationship. Cooking together, travelling, I didn't want to think about the fact that I was a lonely outcast in an unfamiliar country.

We laid in bed. She was playing some game on her phone, I was reading for a philosophy essay. In truth, I was avoiding the need to interact with her. Because when we didn't do recreational activities, we didn't have a connection.

For someone who often speaks about the need to hear as many narratives as possible, to understand and relate to the earth, and to understand emotions rather than thoughts, I failed miserably connecting with her.

Dejana would have probably been content with such a relationship. She is used to male detachment, and she is very willing to deny issues in a dynamic, but I couldn't go on with it.

I didn't feel guilty when I broke it up. I felt relief.

Emma tried to change Adele, to educate her. But in so doing she clearly doesn't understand her.

Which comes to an analysis of the movie itself.

It is a classical rich-poor romance story. But instead of the American-dream infumed version of the story, we get a cynical, french depiction.

Emma tries to connect with the rural schick. Her last exhibit is presented in very oriental streets, that almost remind me of Jaffa.

Emma uses Adele to relate with this simpleton lifestyle. In all of her relationships, she is strong, in control, and she uses her girlfriends to tell her story.

Emma is open with her sexuality because her family is embracing, Adele hides her true identity because in her society she would be isolated and categorized.

Emma can study whatever she wishes, Adele needs to be practical.

She has the time to educate herself and discuss many worlds, Adele cannot, she has only her own experience to reflect upon.

And Emma doesn't understand why is she content with these lives, how can she live like that.

But is it better for Adele to dream big and see it get crushed?

Well sorta yes.

After all, when they break up, Emma bounces back but Adele is lost. Without anywhere to sleep, no one to love her or to understand her.

And yea, it is partially because of circumstances. Emma is far richer. But with these circumstances came the fact that Emma is groomed to live free.

And let's talk about grooming and praying in the gay community and why Emma is an awful person.

When I started to come out, I immediately joined the BDSM community.

When I had to move and lost my family, I digressed a lot.

I returned to my horse only when I met my rugby community.

A gay community gives you power, a place to discuss, to understand yourself better, friends to relate with and gossip who is dangerous within the community.

Two days ago I woke up a mess after 5h sleep and a lot of packing to do for my new flat.

Right in that morning, I received a message.

I met that girl in the philosophy common room.

She was an economics student. Like many other Bulgarians, she knew her way and got the code for the room from a friend to steal coffee, tea and food.

We became friends. She was always a powerful person, one of those Nietzchiens who understand everything as a power dynamic.

I told her my radical feminist theories and she was dazzled.

She graduated, moved to London, found a boyfriend and started dating.

It wasn't a common relationship.

That person was her feminized slave. I suggested to her that perhaps he was actually a she, but the person denied it. Until recently.

But she messaged me not to ask for help with her transitioning. The opposite, she was overwhelmed by the fact that her bae wants to transition and she wanted confirmation that her transitioning is wrong. I was horrified. That day, the Bulgarian convinced her bae not to go on hormones so she won't hurt her, and so the Bulgarian won't leave her.

In a society where people discover their sexuality and gender only in sexual surroundings, natural predators would abuse them as a means of gratification.

Adele could only discover her homosexuality in gay pick up bars. Emma naturally picked her up and raised her.

Adele, who didn't know anything gay other than Emma, relied on what Emma was willing to teach her.

Becoming Emma's toy, she was dependent upon her.

The first thing a gay person should do is find a community.

Although Emma tried to pamper Adele, pushing her to express herself in writing, she never introduced Adele to friends or to the community.

The only way Emma knew how to pamper Adele, was to try and make her a copy of herself. Which failed.

While the film attempts to escape the male gaze upon lesbians, it flirts very directly with the burgeois-gaze upon the poor and oriental.

Can that power dynamic be non-abusive? and if so, how?

We want to say that Emma should understand Adele's culture and embrace it as much as Adele needs to embrace Emma's.

But Adele's culture has unavoidable ugly aspects. It is grotesque, not refined, narrow-minded and closed. And it is a central aspect to her cultural as much as the other, beautiful, aspects are.

Do gays have any choice? Can you be gay and poor, gay and be part of the ethnic 'simpleton' culture? or are these aspects inherently negating?

My answer was to escape. I lived in poverty in the streets, away from my home, where I could define my own culture as a mix of orientalism, punk and classical beauty.

But not everyone is as lucky to do that.

When I write that 'hetero culture is boring' I fully say that I find it difficult to relate to Dejana. And part of me is sad because there are some morals and beauty in her world which I couldn't connect to.

For while I was attracted to my representation of her culture, I was not attracted to her, she was just a canvas for me, a cynical tool beyond my comprehension.

I could have found beauty in her only when I painted her in my own likening.

[starberry-cupcake]

It’s the end of Aro Week and I decided to throw caution to the wind and talk about something that can potentially be a polarizing topic. I’m putting it on read-more not only because of length but also because in 2020 this blog turns 10 years of age and I’ve learned to leave a window open for retreat when it comes to Opinions, so I don’t know how long I’ll dare to have this up. 

This is going to be about the aroace experience, fandom, ships, representation, fanservice, amatonormativity, allosexual normativity and transformative fanwork. 

So, basically, a minefield, so tread with care. 

Since the dawn of fandom time, there has been an aspect of it that is known (nowadays) as transformative. There are studies, dissertations and essays about this, and most if not all agree on the fact that the portion of fandom that is transformative tends to belong to the less represented portion of it in the media they consume. 

It’s mostly people whose identities are rarely represented those who tend to transform, making a space in their favorite pieces of media for themselves and others. That has, in tow, created a scene in which authors and content creators are born within fandom and get exposed to these types of content and reproduce them as well.

The cornerstone of transformative fandom, to the point of being one of the main organizational elements in fandom-driven platforms, are ships. And when someone mentions the word “ship”, it most often comes with the added non-said descriptive of “romantic” and “sexual” attached to it. 

Now, like I said, a lot of those who are involved in transformative fandom tend to go for less represented types of identities, and heteronormativity tends to be questioned often. Sometimes, it is legitimately for representation purposes, sometimes it’s for objectifying reasons. 

On the other hand, in the media-creating sphere, there is a thing known as “baiting”. This word is used when pieces of media hint towards non het relationships that end up not coming to fruition. 

This issue has reached paragons of shamelessness with creators using fandom for their own purposes, like making a series win an award, getting renewed or gathering numbers in cons, to then turn against the same portion of fandom by banning transformative fandom from cons, meet and greets and having actors and crew members publicly shame fanfiction or fanart. It became serious shit. 

This, in tow, brought another problem. Baiting (and what used to be considered “queer-coding”) started becoming an immediate red flag for people, a warning to whether getting engaged or not with a piece of media. 

In the mostly legitimate pitchfork and torches march against baiting, canonically aroace characters were caught in the fire, and queerplatonic relationships suffered the price of not fitting in the amatonormative and allosexual normative space fandom created. 

It’s a standard for fandom that one of the most necessary reasons for transformative work, for fanfiction mostly, is to make characters confess the love they never did confess on screen/page and, most often than not, fuck each other senseless as a sort of “necessary guarantee of their bond”. Consummation, if you will. 

Statistically speaking, explicit fics tend to be much more popular than non explicit ones and romantic relationships are what move the main search engines of fanfic platforms. 

Headcanon-wise, anyone can do what they want. If a character is interpreted one way or another, that’s not for anyone to police. 

With aroace characters, though, it’s a bit tricky, because it’s incredibly rare the amount of times a character is explicitly in the spectrum, and any evidence you can gather, which isn’t outright hearing it, is a lack of something. 

A lack that fandom interprets in another way. 

You can have a character be sexually attracted and romantically attracted to another and have that be enough for an audience to understand their orientation, to an extent, but an aroace character seems to have to explicitly state it because the lack of romance or sex in their narratives will be interpreted by fandom as “incomplete”. 

It’s more frequent for fandom to interpret a character who is not in a romantic or sexual relationship as “lacking” it and “fix” it in fic than for it to be headcanoned as aroace. 

An adjacent issue happens with this and the old notion of “queer-coding”. Audiences tend to sometimes interpret that lack as the incapacity for a media creator to explicitly state that the character is homosexual. 

The unintended consequence of years of coding, baiting and censorship of non het relationships in media was the invisibilization of relationships canonically in the aroace spectrum. 

For example, the first reaction to Elsa from Frozen not having a romantic relationship in the movie was that she was an amatonormative and allosexual lesbian rather than somewhere in the aroace spectrum. Not that there aren’t a myriad of overlaying possibilities between the two things, but you get my point. 

The lacking, the incompleteness that fandom most often sees in characters is filled in, most often than not, with gay romantic and sexual relationships, as a result of the years of queer-coding in media. You know, the good ol’ “if she doesn’t have a boyfriend, she must be a lesbian” stance. Fandom is, sometimes, like a family dinner with a 60+ year old uncle. 

This is a problem because it creates, within fandom, instances of tug of war between two under-represented factions who both deserve the due representation and which sometimes, very often, overlay in the same people, who fall in both spectrums. It creates arguments and fights for one or other character between the two, as if they were mutually exclusive at all times.  

I recently came across different levels of discourse and comments on two pieces of media for this reason, in two different sides. 

One concerned Mackenzi Lee’s A Lady’s Guide To Petticoats & Piracy, in which the lead is aroace and there is a girl who is romantically attracted to her and there is a hint of a potential qp relationship. After reading it I found in some review spaces opinions that considered the author hadn’t “gone all the way” with it, as if it was “cop out” for a potential lesbian romance, taking into account that the first volume of the series was centered on an mlm relationship, which gave people certain expectations.

The opposite happened in the webcomic Go Get A Roomie, in which a female lead character who seemed to be aroace for years ended up in a romantic and sexual relationship with the protagonist and there isn’t so far much of a descriptive of where her identity lied to begin with, but with some meaningful conversations that seemed to imply the spectrum after having suffered trauma. And this can be perceived as a sort of “deception” and to the problematic notion of aroace-ness as a “treatable phase”. 

Both stories are valid. Both roads towards self-discovery are valid. There isn’t an immediate denial of the spectrum for one or other possibility and both narratives are experiences that happen to people, even maybe the same people at different times in their lives. 

But the two happen to include female relationships and boy are those underrepresented. Like I said, it isn’t that both things can’t overlay in a myriad of places, Lillian could be a demisexual demiromantic, for all I know, Sim could be homoromantic and asexual, we don’t know the specifics. 

It’s likely and valid to have a gut reaction when you think you’re being represented and then you’re not entirely. And that’s understandable. But it’s a pity that we have tugs of war for scraps of representation. 

So, on the one hand, with headcanons, we tend to get fandom fights, most often than not between underrepresented identities, because we’re fighting for the little there is, when in reality we should be uplifting each other...but anyway, moving on. 

That’s all in the realm of interpretation, up until the moment the author makes the characters explicitly make choices and take action. That’s someone having a headcanon because of things the piece of media was doing and then having it proven right or wrong, or never having it proved at all. 

The other thing, where it gets nasty, is when fandom “fixes” canonically aroace characters. This is also incredibly frequent, most often than not with mlm ships, or what fandom considers mlm ships. 

One of the nastiest last year was the Good Omens debacle. 

Neil stated that Aziraphale and Crowley weren’t “homosexual men” because they weren’t “men” and they weren’t sexual beings (the whole “making an effort” thing that explicit fic writers like to latch onto). Neil also said they love each other, however that wants to be interpreted, opening it up enough for it to be platonic or romantic or anything you want. 

Fic writers have written more GO fics in the last year than ever probably, because of the show, and they’ve experimented with a lot of places of the spectrum. I’m not here to judge anyone because a GO fic was my favorite ace explicit fic I’ve read, so interpretations can be fascinating, I’m all here for them.  

The problem arose when people (mostly cis het women) on social media (mostly twitter) started calling Neil a homophobe for not making them pretty much fuck on screen or explicitly state that they were fucking offscreen in canon. 

That’s where we need to draw a line and reevaluate our life choices. 

I can’t count the amount of posts, tweets and reactions I saw rejecting the possibility of Aziraphale and Crowley not being a) cis men and b) allosexual. The two things created a gutted reaction, to the point that you have to consider the nature and intended result of those comments and, in that case, who’s being an intolerant asshole. 

There was a point in time in which fake woke rep discourse became the excuse for people to demand fanservice from creators, especially in the cis het women + mlm media overlay, and this is a problem. We need to separate the discourses, we need to figure out why we’re here and what we’re demanding. 

Another similar example I saw recently, yet less overwhelming, was with Banana Fish and the queerplatonic relationship between Ash and Eiji in canon. 

I came into BF later than most, but when I read the epilogue manga I found one of the earliest descriptions of a qp relationship I’ve seen, and there were a lot of interesting comments made by the author and other people interviewing her about why sex was never a part of their dynamic and how the bond they had was more of soulmates than romantic lovers and why it was meaningful all the same. 

Still, even if the author doesn’t, Banana Fish is considered among the key “BL” animated series of the last few years, alongside stuff like Doukyuusei, Yuri On Ice, Given, etc. And fandom likes to “fix” that “lack of” situation often, apparently. 

This case isn’t as feral as GO but it is, however, deceptive. Coming into BF I never would have guessed their relationship was to be qp because fandom let me believe it wasn’t. 

And, in this case, the author explicitly stated that this was her intention, this was the story she wanted to tell, it wasn’t her adjusting to censorship or having to code her characters, it was, at heart, what we now can consider a qp relationship. 

And, in all of these cases, in which there are aroace characters or relationships involved, or at least somewhere in the aro spectrum or the ace spectrum or both, there’s one main issue behind it: the lack of belief that relationships that aren’t romantic and sexual can be crucial. 

That they can be storytelling worthy.  

In media-creating and in fanwork-creating, it seems to be the norm to have an endgame romance, or at least for romance to be a key part of your content. It’s the expected box to tick for a fulfilling story, it seems, and the lack of it is the “problem” fandom likes to “fix” the most. 

This is also mirrored in the platforms we use. There is a lack of possibility to tag qp relationships as something separated in ao3: the / is for romantic/sexual relationships and the & is for all-encompassing platonic relationships (described by the guidelines as family, teammates, friends, etc.). In order to write a qp relationship you have to tag it & as per guidelines but you have to add another descriptor because you’re not writing family or teammates, and in the case of fandom-polarizing ships, it can be a problem. 

And all of this influences us as creators, to the point that it’s easier to write something we’ve never experienced, like romantic attraction, than it is to write without it, because we’ve heard the romantic stories all the time, we’ve grown up reading them, and we’ve learned that no kudos will come to your fic if you don’t have them in there, because it’s that / what’s gonna move the search engines towards your stuff. 

Maybe, hopefully, with time and more media around us, we’ll learn different ways of exploring transformative fanwork. Maybe while knowing ourselves and others, we’ll start believing that a lack of romantic relationships doesn’t necessarily mean someone was “too much of a coward to not make these two explicitly x or y”. 

Maybe we’ll learn to coexist because, after all, some of these things coexist within our own spectrums sometimes, and it’d be nice to see the capacity for us to not fight for the scraps of rep that media throws at us but be able to understand each other and ourselves enough to create the media that we need. 

[dyke-fruit]

what helped u come to terms with identifying as butch

so obviously my journey isn’t going to be the same as someone else, but i think my presentation as butch started as something heavily aligned with my self esteem. i thought i liked wearing masc clothing because it hid my body (in hs), but it could’ve been just because i wasn’t comfy in feminine clothing. or the other way around. i started presenting as what i now call butch before i realized what the term was. i cut my hair because i really really felt like i needed to do it (but also -- not necessarily even a thing you have to Do as butch, it just was for me). it was only later that i started using that word in the same way women who like women lean into the word “lesbian” because it’s something so vilified and they themselves want to feel more comfortable calling themselves that so when the world does, it’s not... bad.

i think i spent time knowing i felt butch and i read stone butch blues and was like Wow! Same, but feeling more comfortable about it meant surrounding myself with people who didn’t feel like it was a bad word. my first girlfriend’s whole thing is she’s into butches, so when i called myself that, she wasn’t afraid to call me that. my queer friends say butch wayyy more than i think the mainstream media does currently (for instance, tiktok lesbians are leaning heavily on “masc” as their preferred term). i was just thinking a few days ago about how important it was for me to date a girl who explicitly saw my butchness and my existing outside of the gender norm as something that was attractive. it’s taken a LONG time to feel fully comfy with it, and i do have a lot of days where i don’t feel as comfortable. but i think finding aspects of that community that feel welcoming -- there are so many places on tumblr that celebrate butchness and masculinity in women.

but! i still have huge biases. as a creator, internally i’m so afraid of writing a butch character because a critique of her feels so so close to a critique of me. i also don’t really think butches are attractive, both because of my own issues regarding my self image and the way society hits you over the head with how women outside of what’s typical are ugly, so i have to check myself in the media i watch because having butch representation that’s not just a straight actress with short hair is SO IMPORTANT. AND YET -- when i see people on tumblr who are so sexy and comfortable in their skin and are butch, i’m like !!! i want to be there. i’m still on the journey of loving myself and while i embrace the butch aspects of my identity, a crucial part has been surrounding myself with people who readily will use the world and not act like it’s a bad thing, but also see my favorite characters as having a complicated relationship to their sexuality and identity going hand in hand.