#diversity live

[pickled-flowers]

Sex positivity is also about not calling Ace people prude and using virgin as an insult 👍 hope that helps

[lesbworth]

anyone making an adaptation of the life of wolfgang amadeus mozart for some reason

[soup-mother]

desperately need to forcibly beat the terra nullius out of how people on this website talk about Australia. you fucking cannot be saying shit like "oh everyone lives on the coast because it's the only habitable bit" in full seriousness.

doubly so for how everyone acts like indigenous tasmanians don't exist anymore. even fucking UNESCO said that shit for like 40 years and only got rid of it recently.

[gean-grey-blog]

What makes White Collar hold up so much better than other police procedurals:

It was part of the "pretty happy shows with gorgeous ensemble casts and a charismatic weird guy" USA network era but it somehow used that to be about stuff that is so REAL

What is justice? Is our system fair? Can you be a criminal and still be a good man? Can you be a good man and still work for the system?

The bad guys are rich assholes, and people defrauding families out of their homes, and unethical pharmaceutical companies. People manipulating energy supply out of greed resulting in blackouts which are showing *harming a dog,* aka how to show something is monstrous in a pg show written by a white person. Class exists in this universe in more ways than having a cardboard concept of a "rich guy."

The bad guys include police, FBI agents, prison staff, judges, senators. Those people cause real harm, obstruct justice, plant evidence, kill people. It's shown how the system protects them and harms regular people.

The harm that causes the main character to go from wanting to be part of the system, to subverting and working against it, is him finding out about an act of police corruption, brutality, and murder--and what's more, that if he became a cop, that's what he could become.

The harm that causes the main character to be outside the white picket fence is that the system failed his family after that act. What happened to Neal's mom? Why did nobody besides Helen step in? They had to check in with US Marshals, did nobody notice this kid didn't have an adult fit to parent?

So Neal turns to found family. And let's be real, heavily polyamory coded found family at that. But he keeps chasing the idea of a girl who will be everything. But he's got all this attachment trauma so he never does. But because found family is real family, even the people who freaking played the characters are still connected a decade later

[avephelis]

just wanted to say it's really awesome seeing the positive reception to chunky mikey LOVE YOU ALL 🧡🧡

[nothorses]

What do you think gay men are attracted to in men that they can’t be attracted to in women?

It can’t be anything about femininity or masculinity obviously. That’s both sexist, and cultural so can’t be what drives men-only attraction.

It can’t be anything about stated identity because someone could lie just as easily as they could tell the truth in such a statement, and it makes no sense because homosexuality and heterosexuality exists in other species with no stated identities. It’s not like other animals without gender are all pan.

Saying idk it’s the vibes or some indescribable trait men have that women can’t but “I can’t explain” is a nonanswer.

Soooooooo what is it? Or do you think any sexuality but bi/pan is just cultural performance or an identity rather than an inborn orientation?

- [ ]

I think trying to find one perfect answer that applies universally is the critical mistake here. I mean, I am a gay man. I say this because as of yet, that's the clearest answer I have for myself personally; maybe there's a possibility I experience attraction to a woman at some point (maybe I already have???), but I don't really have clarity on that right now, and it doesn't serve me to shape or explain my identity around "maybe"s.

Trying to pinpoint exactly what it is that attracts me to other men, specifically, is also like... not that useful. I used to find myself really attracted to feminine men specifically; not feminine women, not masculine women, not masculine men, not androgynous anyone, but feminine men. Specifically, men who were feminine in a very particular, long-hair-certain-attitude kind of way.

Recently, I have found myself appreciating, more and more, a certain kind of masculine body type and gay masculinity that I was never really interested in before. I find it incredibly hot. A lot of that coincides with things I appreciate about my partner, too, and things I find myself appreciating more about my partner as time goes on- as well as things my partner expresses appreciation for about me!

And I haven't even touched on attraction to nonbinary folks here because, like, it's a massive spectrum. "Nonbinary" means something different for every individual nonbinary person. To my mind, of course there's a possibility I experience attraction to a nonbinary person; how they identity, present, and what attracts me to them are all even more impossible to know for certain than the "maybe"s and the "why"s around my attraction (or lack thereof) to men and women.

My relationship to my own orientation was vastly different pre-testosterone versus post-testosterone, too. I was much more reserved and uncomfortable with relationships and attraction before I started T, and the only dynamic I ever felt was even a little bit tolerable was one where I was the "masculine woman" in a lesbian relationship. I didn't realize until very shortly after starting T that, actually, I like men. A lot. I felt comfortable with my body and my masculinity in a way I never had been before, and I felt comfortable in relationships with men; I no longer felt like I was The Woman By Default in contrast.

And that's all just me! This is my personal, specific, individual relationship to attraction, and how gender- both others' and my own- factors into my relationship with orientation.

I don't think it's necessarily inborn, or completely unchanging for everyone. I also don't think the same factors apply for everyone. I think a lot of different things can be true for different people, all at once, and it's not really useful to try to pinpoint a specific, universal explanation for orientation.

Everyone has a different relationship to orientation and gender; everyone will be influenced differently by cultural factors, by their own ways of processing and understanding the world around them, by the ways different aspects of their culture, identity, personality, and inborn traits and how they all interact with one another, and sure, maybe even by biological factors and tendencies.

Trying to solve this puzzle for the entire world of diverse human beings isn't going to make it any easier to understand yourself. Focus on what this all means for you, personally, and accept that you will never, can never, fully and perfectly understand anyone else's internal world and workings. Things get a lot easier when you can let go of that & just appreciate the diversity of human experiences, y'know?

[relaxtimestwo]

⊹ . ݁˖ Stelle x Firefly (part 2) . ݁₊ ⊹

Firefly is introducing Penacony's various attractions to Stelle! ✩

I hope we get more dreampeek calls in future updates. Especially for past characters that don't have much lore like Qingque and Luka. It's nice getting little scraps of characterisation!

Also, I love how the consumables look in Penacony! They're so fun and colourful! I just had to draw the two of them interacting with the items.

[sponge-eating-goblin]

I’m LOSING MY MIND so I’m playing Jedi Survivor, right, and I see one of the live slug reaction aliens so I go up to interact with him

Y’all.

“Lifelong partners” there’s a GAY LIVE SLUG in Jedi: Survivor

[schoolidolfestivals]

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

community that has only seen themselves represented in a small handful of romance stories that aren’t explicitly about their real-world oppression, watching a new show or movie where they are represented in a romantic story that isn’t explicitly about their real-world oppression: getting a lot of “that other show with a queer romance that isn’t explicitly about real-world homophobia” vibes from this

[nuka]

I think what makes Our Flag Means Death so remarkable in terms of representation is not just the broadness of it, but the depth.

We have an indigenous lead character, but he's not only that. He's also queer. He's a romantic interest. He's middle-aged. His arc portrays surviving trauma and abuse. It also portrays mental illness. And it portrays breaking free from toxic masculinity. And it never tries to put him in a box when he explores his masculinity and femininity.

We have a non-binary character, played by a Puerto Rican NB actor, but their arc is not about their gender identity and their coming out is simply a case of "Just keep calling me Jim". They have a romantic/sexual relationship with a black character, and never is this relationship or either of their sexual orientations or Olu's sex appeal as a fat person or "who even is the man in this relationship hahaha" questioned. When they get into a poly relationship, it's just accepted, instead of questioned or even defined.

These are just a couple of examples. It's not that Our Flag Means Death is the only or the first show with queer/BIPOC/disabled representation, because it's not. What makes the show remarkable is the unique combination of queerness, ethnicity, age, disabilities, life experiences, etc. that each character carries within themselves, yet none of these characters exist solely to appear as representation of any minority on screen. Their identities are not glued onto them, they're ingrained, but in the end, they're just people. Just like in real life. Identities do not work as plot points. Being queer is not a plot point. Being non-binary is not a plot point. It's just a small part of the whole complex experience of life.

OFMD is a perfect example of telling a queer story that doesn't focus on telling a story directly about the queerness itself. Because we have stories about queerness already. We have so many of them that it just feels like tokenism at this point to see yet another story about coming out or forbidden love or anything like that, even if it's well made.

This show took me by surprise with every new way of representation it offered, because each time it did the total opposite of what I expected. It took all the tired tropes and said, "Yeah, see these? We're not gonna do any of that." It delivered something I never thought I'd see on screen.

It never explains the characters' identities to the audience. It simply shows them exactly the way they are and lets you decide whether you see yourself in them, and I think that also allows the audience to question their own identities, to explore gender and sexuality freely without immediately putting labels on things.

People who never thought they might be trans or non-binary or queer in any way discovered their identities through the show. People who struggle with mental illness or trauma saw someone like themselves portrayed with kindness and respect on screen and were finally able to extend the same kindness to themselves. People who are always left out of romantic stories because of their age or body shape or the color of their skin finally saw themselves portrayed as desirable and worthy of love and romance.

That is why so many of us feel that, in the words of Ruibo Qian: "OFMD woke me up."

[scltbvrns]

homogenising something that has always been inherently diverse will kill us all one day.

[yaoiconnoisseur]

It’s 2023 and Castiel is trending under Politics on Twitter. This timeline gets weirder and more cursed every single day.

[taro-pdf]

I don't have a lot of the aro/ace experiences growing up. I was and am a creature of comfort, and things that made me uncomfortable I avoided; since my school was small, religious, and I had trusted adults, I never felt enough peer pressure to do stuff I didn't want.

I never realized I should have a crush. I only realized people actually had crushes in college.

I never realized sex was a thing people desired because it was discouraged. I only realized, again, in college.

I never realized how much kissing on screen really bothered me because I didn't continue watching shows that i didn't like. I only realized yesterday watching the bachelorette with my roommates.

... though I do remember crying when talking about my wedding night with my dad one time lol. (edit to add: assumed future wedding night)

[kankuroplease]

are you going to draw a drawing of Sakura with Sumi "not a couple 💀 Tajina won't like it" just 2 beautiful women together ✨

I wasn’t going to, but it’s kinda fun to see the founder era wife and the new generation wife 🖤💗

[jesncin]

In a recent post, you talk about how certain media will have QPOC characters that "feel white." Are you willing to explain more on how that happens? I'm a QPOC person that writes a decent amount of QPOC characters, and it's always interesting seeing other people's takes on how to handle that in stories.

Sure! Most of the time when I say a QPOC character "feels white" is that it lacks intersectionality. Intersectionality is about acknowledging how different marginalized identities manifest in a person, creating a unique experience. Most writers assume QPOC are just "white queer person with a palette change" instead of "we go through similar things but in an entirely different way".

A good example is Heartstopper (A show I like btw!! I can only speak for the tv show and season 1!). It's often incorrectly dismissed as fluff/escapism when it's actually a show that talks directly about marginalization (transphobia, homophobia, etc.) specific to Britain, and some really dark topics come up sometimes. But I was surprised at how little (if not at all?) racism was brought up as something QPOC struggle with. The plot with Tara (a Black girl) and Darcy (a white girl) coming out as a lesbian couple but Tara ended up struggling with the backlash was the perfect opportunity to talk about how she deals with compounded racism, sexism, and homophobia (perhaps even from her own community). But it wasn't brought up at all in that season. I'm sure this gets expanded on in future seasons but it did feel like a huge missed opportunity to me, especially since the show was so open to directly talking about queerphobia. It ends up looking selective about what issues the writer is comfortable talking about.

Intersectionality connects with everything, including joyful stories. A queer paradise to me is a world where we reclaim indigenous queer culture that was suppressed by colonialism, a place where we don't have to cut our cultural ties and end up embracing a westernized version of queer identity, where our language expands to include queer people, where we acknowledge that things like "body positivity" and disability acceptance are inherently linked with racial justice, where we can be whole. In these narratives with QPOC that "feel white", something is always lost. Whether that be culture, language, religion, anything. In She-Ra, the QPOC are just that. We get a dumpling once and a while as "representation" but that's it.