#even cishet poc are barely allowed that

[absolutelyunsupervised]

I mostly don't get it, compared to what white cishets can post while not getting flagged.

a white cis girl in skimpy bikini can be on huge billboards around the city and on all the ads on the site, but a trans person or poc in swimwear usually gets flagged.

cishet women can protest half naked and end up displayed in newspapers or tv without problem, but a trans person or poc doing the same will get attacked for "exhibitionism"

a white cis guy can walk publicly shirtless no issue, but a trans person or poc doing that is seen as doing something sexual or violent

sometimes (mainly on Tumblr) I don't feel like putting actual labels on my art if I feel it's not even remotely sexual but rather showing skin. yes I got 18+ warnings everywhere, and if I feel something is too risque, or actual nsfw(on Bluesky I will use the nsfw tagging) I will tag it.

that said and aside, I do feel like people and website moderators especially, become a little *too* pearl clutchy with the idea of seeing a body that's partially nude or nude at all, cuz not all nudity/half nudity is inherently sexual.

and even if it was, I just absolutely hate the cultural shift of trying to censor anything deemed "sexual" in the guise of "protecting the kids" because not only is that mostly a fascist dogwhistle, my main concern is what corps think is considered "nsfw"

are you talking about an actual sexual activity, or a trans woman posting an image of herself fully clothed???

[tateisntcute]

Jegulus - an Unserious Critical Analysis

My two cents on the Jegulus ship. Dead dove, do not eat, shippers.

In my opinion, Jegulus (the James Potter/Regulus Black ship) is the culmination of about two decades of the general fandom practice of ignoring all other characters in favor of shipping two white men. This isn't a new phenomenon, we've seen it in every fandom since the beginning of time (time started when fanfiction was invented, right?).

On its own, there's nothing wrong with crackshipping. It's someone looking at two characters that don't interact or barely interact in canon and thinking, "Hey, wouldn't it be crazy if they smooched?" And that's not inherently (sorry in advance for using this word) problematic. It's just for fun!

But then a trend starts. You start to notice that all these ships are between men, and almost always cishet white men. And again, not inherently an issue, but it's weird that that's the overwhelming majority of crackships and even regular ships, right? Anyone who has taken a look at the AO3 yearly statistics knows what I mean. Most ships in most fandoms are between two white men who are canonically cishet. Less ships are m/f, fewer are f/f, and most of the POC in these ships are headcanoned as such or paired with a white person.

So: Jegulus. What is this shit ship? We don't know all that much about the 1970s era of Hogwarts aside from a handful of characters and the fact that four of them were best friends. It's an era of the canon that is primed as a playground for headcanons, fanfiction, and fanart. It's been a popular era to speculate and write about since the third book came out. James Potter is the father of Harry Potter (duh, no one that's read this far is unaware of that). Regulus Black is his... best friend's little bigoted brother. They never interact canonically.

In canon, James is in love with Lily Evans. It's kind of the main thing we know about his character. His job is just... loving Lily Evans. And their relationship is, arguably, the single most important romantic relationship in the entire series. Without them, we wouldn't have a series. There would be no story. Their love quite literally saves the world that they inhabit.

And no, that doesn't mean that nobody is ever allowed to ship either of them with anyone else, ever. But... Regulus? Really? It seems to stem 50% from the "best friend's brother/brother's best friend" romance trope and the fact that Timothee Chalamet has become a popular fancast for Regulus.

And what do we know, canonically, about Regulus? Next to nothing. The main things we know are that he's Sirius's younger brother, he hates Muggleborns, and he sacrificed his life to steal one of Voldemort's Horcruxes. And while him being Sirius's younger brother is an interesting tidbit for fanfiction purposes and sacrificing his life is noble, it's kind of hard to overlook the fact that Regulus Black was a fucking Death Eater. But I guess if you can overlook that little factoid, it's easy enough to ignore the Muggleborn character James's whole character is based around and ship him with Timothee Chalamet a Death Eater instead of her!

After decades of fandom, we have finally found what I believe is the most egregious example of the "ignoring a woman in favor of shipping two men" trend. In a move that is both darkly hilarious and objectively cringe, the new young wave of Marauders fans have decided that the best possible ship for Harry Potter's father is a man who hated the fact that Harry Potter's mother existed. A character he has no interactions with, a character he only knows by proxy of being his best friend's brother, a character that is part of a group that is an allegory for Nazis, a character we know nothing about besides the fact that he was a Death Eater who drew the line at Horcruxes. Everyone give yourselves a pat on the back, it doesn't get better than this.

In conclusion, would this be the worst thing on its own if it wasn't part of a long and storied history of fandom spaces ignoring women just to write smut for two random men? Not really. But if Regulus can draw the line at splitting a soul into seven bits and hiding them in historical relics all over Britain, I think I can draw my line at erasing Lily Evans from the narrative of James Potter's life.

[formulatrash]

Sorry for dropping something non-F1 related in your inbox but you are one of the first people I have ever seen acknowledge that in the harsh light of hindsight, baby Ryan and especially Shane do come across as a bit thoughtlessly dickish and insensitive in their older videos.. And how lovely it has been to see them mature into genuinely thoughtful, sensitive people who clearly value each other and what they’re doing all without needing to call attention to it. Your tags are just a nice little tribute to underrated growth <3

never apologise for putting non-F1 in my inbox tbh. (and sorry for not replying to the rest of the SM asks brain has been on low power mode)

idk what went on at Buzzfeed but the men who've come out of it - Ryan and Shane, Steven and Andrew, the Try Guys - have all emerged as very thoughtful versions of themselves. they're goofy idiots, also but I think it's interesting proof that cishet men, in particular, benefit massively from diversity. once they're allowed outside their regimented boxes they don't freak out, they grow.

Ryan and Shane are particularly sharp because Ryan's easy to point to as a no-homo jock but he was also the one least able to hide his emotions. whether that was excitement that he got to tell people about something or pretty deep empathy for the victims and circumstances of cases, which he often seemed quite distressed about even in the early BFU episodes, to the fear that he barely gets a grip on. he didn't have to get taught vulnerability and there's probably all kinds of things from being (relatively speaking) short and a PoC and coming from two different, non-white cultural backgrounds and working on all those muscles cus he seems like he was probably a bully magnet but when he wasn't scared the frat guy mask did used to slip down pretty fast.

Shane was a much worse, IMO, kinda dick in that he had a real or acted superiority complex in that nerdish self-defensive way where he had to be The Smartest Guy In The Room. he often went way over dismissive into outright rude and was insensitive about real-life cases. I don't mean the thing where he laughed at the woman in the Bellaire house saying her dog had been thrown - tbh, I can well imagine having some weird laughter response that was half-awkwardness and half-panicky there myself, confronted with a serious conversation about something that I don't believe happened and in such weird circumstances. I mean he used to be a bit snipe-y and often excessively cynical in a quite invasive way about the true crime cases and the same in searching for a slam-debunk on supernatural. the kind of guy your friend brings to the pub as their new boyfriend and he spends all night telling you everything you enjoy is wrong and stupid.

both of them obviously always had redeeming features and the flashes of them being dicks were small enough it wasn't actually off-putting. there were a few BFU moments where they'd either get snobby about crime-heavy neighbourhoods or have some weird cop-loving moment that gave me the heebs but also: standard 2016.

every time they got called out for shit, they seem to have learned from it. every time they were pushed to consider other people, they did. it turned out even though both of them had massive on-paper dickhead potential, they only needed the tiniest push to tear through that paper and find something much more interested in not just the world and people around them but who they are and what they really like/want to be.

a really interesting thing, I think, is the contrast between Ruining History and Puppet History. in Ruining History (which I really enjoy, I wanna emphasise) Shane is the smartest guy in the room. in Puppet History, he's at best the weirdest. using the Professor as a weird little blue ballsack avatar means Shane doesn't exactly disappear but gets more space to do his strange little bits as a production he creates, not something about him. it obviously has weird roots in the horrors of the Hotdaga and the determination to keep doing a bit whether anyone likes it or not comes from that standoffish superiority but in Puppet History it becomes a sandbox to play in, not an emotional straitjacket.

something I think about a lot is in the nearly-70th episode they have that bit where Shane fucking books it out of the body chute in Waverley. properly terrified, running up the stairs because of a frog or something and Ryan chose not to put that in the episode because he knew Shane being unflappable and immune to fear was a more interesting contrast to his own terror. idk I have a lot of Ryan And Shane And Masculinity And The Contrast Between Nerds (Stupid And Jocks (Also Stupid) And How To Exist In The Venn Spaces Overlapping In Between that are mostly about some complex relationship to my own identity.

(which is def woman but also Stupid Car Boy)

anyway wow I will stfu but basically: the BFU to Watcher pipeline is a very good model for how to be fellas (considerate)

[d20trashcan]

i didn’t actually know about the discourse and controversy around CR, thanks for reposting stuff!

No problem! If anything, thank @acatstan for being willing and brave to write these posts and criticized the fandom and the show. Send they some love!

TBH, I was not surprised that the a portion of the fandom got toxic or that a cast of white people would be involved with microaggressions.

This is why its important that representation matters, it allows for minorities to feel welcome in the space and not have to be sidelined in the media or medium they consumed.

It wasn’t their intention, I don’t think, but because of the medium being DnD and they being all white, it is indirectly catered to mostly white cishet males. We don’t want to admit that but its true. They still dominate the ttrpg community and in even in nerd fandom. I’m pretty sure if you look at the statistics of other shows that have minority casts, the ratios are much more even or diverse.

Also the fact they helped start the real play rgp show craze, that has to do with it as well. They tapped into a barely touched market that consisted of white cishet males, which would then cause most of their loyal following to also be white cishet males.

As for the actions of CR, well, as a LGBTQ+ PoC, I’m not surprised. Again, when you are a majority white cast, and from what i know, that does not use diversity/sensitivity consultants all that much, you will find yourself not knowing how bad or distasteful some of your actions are. You are privileged to not have to learn, worry, or care about the troubles of minorities, whether intentional or not. Its so goddamn common to see these kinds of things happen in traditional media

That’s why criticism is so important. No show is perfect, no cast is without fault. By putting a show, person, on that pedestal, it

Prevents you from seeing and accepting the mistakes that might have been made

Allows the show or person to think “I’m on this pedestal that means I cannot do any wrong”

You have to be willing to call out shit when shit happens, even to someone your love and respect. If you want to be better, you have to slap their face with true and not be afraid. You have to be willing to look at the mistakes and issues in the eye and say “No, I won’t let this stand they need to know.”

I even posted a tweet thread on twitter with critique and criticism about somethings said on the D20 charity livestream. I felt it was important to callout actions that many people felt over word choices and guest speakers. I wanted Brennan to know how bad and wrong it was to use DnD analogies for the protests. He might never see it but I wanted to make sure that there was still that chance that he would see it and try to fix it.

I love the d20 fandom and I want us to be able to critic and callout shit when shit isn’t right. Don’t be afraid of making criticism. If you want something or someone to be better, let them know immediately.

[sulkybbarnes]

i know she's too up her own ass to ever do this, but you know what would be effective? m*ggie posting some nice messages or questions she's got from queer fans about pynch and talking about how these are the types of questions she enjoys getting and answering. but why would she do that when she could shame women (including wlw) for not being as woke as she is

So I say this every time I get an ask that needs discussion: I’m going to answer this in parts bc that’s how my brain works so bear with me. 

First of all, mst*ef would never post these types of questions because she isn’t interested in treating p//nch as an actual romance. I hate to say it but it becomes more and more evident to me the more she talks about her books that p//nch were never meant to be the main romance of her books. Every scene of them together pushed the narrative forward or was used for exposition and plot points, whereas blu*/gans*y were allowed chapters of phonecalls and scenes that were purely ‘romance’. Please note I’m just comparing the writing here, not stating an opinion on either ship. To post these types of questions would be to confront the fact that most important p//nch moments happen off-page and are mentioned only in passing. Even their second kiss and the following night and conversations just fades to black. Which leads me to my next point:

Posting these questions or acknowledging asks from lgbt fans and minorities would shine into painful light the fact that her books are severely lacking in terms of representation. Mst*ef did the bare minimum of including lgbt characters then sat back expecting praise and gratitude for having them in her books at all…. and she got exactly what she wanted from the majority of her fans. This tactic of posting only bad asks and ‘calling out’ people for sending them is a way to get herself out of having a real discussion, and garnering sympathy. She does it every so often to shift the focus from the homophobic undertones in her writing, and from the fact that sexuality and racism are dismissed in her narrative, and that she queerbaited people into reading the Op//l story only to double back and criticise them for expecting what she promised (remember her saying there’ll be a “sexy p//nch scene” then writing a voyeuristic scene instead?? yeah… that).

My third point is that she isn’t “woke” or socially aware but she sure does like acting like it. Much like Blue’s feminism in the book, mst*ef’s handling of any serious issues (sexuality, lack of poc characters, bad treatment of an lgbt pairing) is to get loud and high and mighty. A friend just mentioned that she blocked comments on her latest instagram mess, which I believe says a lot on how willing she is to hear anyone out. In all the years I’ve been in this fandom I never once saw her actively listening or acknowledging any point made by her readers unless it’s something that agrees with her. She always chooses the select few from a minority who agree with her and boosts the shit out of their posts, then posts the bad asks she gets as soon as anyone disagrees to garner sympathy and divert attention. I’ve seen her doing some version of it too many times to count at this point. I want to say again that her claim that gay men agree with her and have never sent her any asks is a flimsy excuse to keep being dismissive towards wlw and garner sympathy points from fans who are too young or too uncaring to view what she says critically. It’s a tactic that cishet and white writers have been using to dismiss minorities for years. 

I’m sorry if this got long and harsher than I intended it to be, but I’ve been struggling with the fandom and mst*ef a lot lately and almost deleted my t*c content a handful of times. The fact that she’d compare wlw to straight men watching p*rn on a public platform when wlw are already treated as a dirty taboo thing just… truly enrages me. And I’m fed up with cishet writers speaking for me and my existence when they haven’t been through 0.05% of what wlw have to go through every day of our lives. Overall, I think I’m currently staying for Adam and R*nan but I won’t be engaging with any of her future content that’s for sure.

[takaraphoenix]

Odd question but what do you think of the “fujoshi” community? Harmless fun or harmful fetishization?

Oh, oh I’m getting a headache just reading that question…

No, it is not fetisihzation that is utter bullshit. No it is not harmful, that is even more bullshit.

The people accusing fujoshi of fetishization do the exact same thing. They write the exact same stories and draw the exact same fanarts about the exact same gays. But because the creators in one case are females, they are the devil and they are fetishizing.

By every definition of the word, I am a fujoshi too - a female fan of mlm ships. Yaoi or shounen-ai, if you wish to continue using Japanese terms.

What fujoshi discourse boils down to is a group of people being misogynistic crybabies and not allowing females to have genuine interests.

The term “CIShet woman” is thrown around like a slur in this discourse - disregarding that not all fujoshi are CIS or het. I, for my part, am a lesbian. It’s literally only about those people’s hatred for women, really.

Because the exact same content is totally fine if it is made by a gay man.

They don’t even realize how ridiculous that is.

If we would ever only get representation if it gets written by a person from the group in question, we would literally barely get anything.

Most gay stories were written by straight men and women. Most stories involving characters of color used to be written by white writers. Someone has to pave the way - and it is the group that is most “accepted” to do the job. In the case of writing for Hollywood, those would be the white men. Does that mean we have no right to see movies about women or characters of color or non-straights? No, no it does not.

As a lesbian, I can still enjoy Willow and Tara as a lesbian couple on Buffy even though they were written by a CIShet man. I still get to enjoy Elena’s coming out story on One Day at a Time even though the show was not written by a lesbian.

So if you, as a gay man, can not accept seeing a mlm couple written by a woman, then the problem is not the woman who invests her time into writing this, it is with you.

Especially since we are talking fandom here.

We’re not even talking Hollywood. We’re talking about authors on AO3 and fanarts on DeviantArt and on here. We’re talking about fans, people who love something and dedicate their own time into creating something for free, something that you and everybody else gets to enjoy without getting any form of payment for it.

So instead of being grateful for the content, those people insult, belittle, bully and even threaten the creators.

THAT IS WHAT IS HARMFUL.

A woman creating art or stories is and can by definition not be harmful, because it is fiction about fictional characters and it is on the internet where you can just avoid it if you do not agree with it.

But those people who made this into a “discourse”, they are the ones being harmful because they mistreat people who do something they enjoy.

People crying that “Those women enjoying what I am enjoying and what is clearly aimed only at me because it represents me, they are ruining the thing for me!!!” are the exact same type of whiny babies as the men who started crying this exact same sentence when women started showing interest in nerd culture - you all do remember that, right? The uproar against female fans in the MCU and DC and Star Wars and Star Trek culture because how dare women show any interest in these things that “belong” to men. All this shit about “fake nerd girls” that female fans of those shows and movies have to put up with, just for being female and interested in this thing.

Women aren’t allowed to have interests.

That is literally what this boils down to.

95% of canonically gay anime and manga were written by fujoshi - most of the things those antis consume was created by fujoshi.

The most ridiculous thing I ever saw on the topic was an anti making a post that fujoshi aren’t allowed to go and see Love, Simon because it is not meant for them, it is meant for gays.

It is not.

I, as a lesbian, wish to see this movie about a gay teen romance, because heaven knows I won’t get my lesbian teen romance any time soon on this big scale.

And the wildest part? Love, Simon was literally written by a fujoshi. By the very thing they hate - the CIShet white woman. The very kind of person they want to forbid from seeing this movie. That is the author of the book.

It’s a ridiculous double-standard and it baffles me that so many people on this hellsite don’t seem to grasp that.

Representation only matters if it is written by the minority represented and no one else aside from said minority is allowed to enjoy this.

That is literally like saying white people and non-black POC aren’t allowed to watch Black Planther or make fan content to it because it solemnly belongs to black people? Aren’t allowed to see Coco because it is clearly only aimed at Latinx people…? Oh yes, it is very clearly created for this group of people and from everything I’ve seen on this site, they’re the ones who get the most enjoyment out of it and out of the representation it brought with it - but that… that doesn’t mean that no one else is allowed to enjoy this.

I saw Coco five times by now and I’m white as fuck and I highly doubt that Latinx people in the fandom will give me shit for writing fanfiction for it, or accuse me of “fetishizing” their culture just because I’d write fanfiction for this movie. Which I am, literally working on a fic for that, hence the example.

Just because something is aimed at a certain group does not mean only they can enjoy it.

It’s a ridiculous concept of double standard that is being used in the fujoshi discourse.

I’m a woman, but I’m still allowed to consume media aimed at men - holy shit, aren’t we literally trying to break gender norms these days, like, seriously?

I’m a lesbian, but I’m still allowed to consume media featuring straights and gays and bisexuals and everything else under the rainbow. It’s not like I am only allowed to watch lesbian shows… because then I would literally have nothing to watch.

I’m white, but I’m still allowed to consume media featuring and focusing on characters of color. Because holy shit, I also don’t want the all-white casts anymore, it’s intensely stale and boring and outdated?? We are literally glad that we finally broke this kind of writing when it comes to representation in this aspect, so how could you want to revert back in the case of representing sexualities…?

If everyone is only allowed to consume media that focuses on representation of themselves, then you are really living in the stone-ages. They do know that this led to Hollywood and TV shows being predominantly white and male, right?

Fujoshi are female fans creating content for other fans.

Fujoshi discourse is overgrown babies crying about women having interests, using bogus claims like “Stop fetishizing ME!!!”.

No one is fetishizing you, unless you are a male celebrity and reading RPF about yourself. Those are literally the only people who can cry out about personally being fetishized. Celebrities who are being directly lusted after and have smut written about them.

Someone writing about something that includes part of your identity does not and will never personally fetishize you.

Hentai anime about big boobed girls? Does not personally fetishize me just because I’m a busty girl. It’s gross as fuck and I don’t like it, but I can just avoid it and I don’t feel personally victimized by its existence.

That is fetishization though. Women with waists that should break under the laws of physique and boobs trice the size of their heads. That is fetishizing women.

If fujoshi would be fetishizing gays, then they would be with such emphasis of their glorious cocks and mighty balls or some shit.

Essentially 50% of the things fujoshi create are soft. Fanfiction, fanart, doujinshi - fluff, about cuddling, two characters holding each other, that 50k slow-burn coffee shop AU you read last month.

Writing about a healthy, slow relationship is not and never will be “fetishization” - and it sure as heck will never be fetishization of you personally, because it isn’t about you.

Now to get back to a point I mentioned earlier.

Not every fujoshi is CIShet. For me, personally, writing about mlm relationships and reading about them was dealing with my own homosexuality - because we don’t get female gay love.

I could walk into any bookstore and thanks to Japanese fujoshi authors, I could just buy a manga about two teenage boys, discovering their sexuality and dealing with it. No sex involved. Not a single manga I own written by a fujoshi is even yaoi. Sex doesn’t have to be in it. Like I said, most content is impossibly soft and fluffy in nature.

And it helped me come to terms with my own sexuality, with the fact that it is possible to not be straight.

It’s harder to write about wlw ships than it is to write about mlm ships by sheer math alone.

Look, say, at the Avengers - you had one female character and five male characters in that lead team. There wasn’t even an option to write about a wlw ship, while you have ten possible mlm ships. So, what are you supposed to write about as a woman? Natasha masturbating for 20k words, or what? Because I, as a woman, am not allowed to write about men…?

Look at the Voltron fandom, where you have five male characters and two female… but oh my, one of the females is literally 15 while the other is an ancient alien; not the kind of ship I sail, so again no wlw ship to write about, but just as many mlm options as in the above mentioned.

And that is a pattern.

Franchises - anime, manga, cartoon, TV shows, movies, books - are dominated by male characters. Most lead characters are male. They are more fleshed out, better developed than the rare female characters.

Even nowadays, the male characters are still mostly more dynamic and more interesting than the females, because the females are either the Mother Character, the mere bland Love Interest who doesn’t get developed beyond being a love interest to the male lead, or the Badass Female whose only real trade is that she can kick ass, but real personality mostly still comes short.

So yeah, it’s virtually not a surprise that fanfiction authors - male and female alike - mostly latch onto mlm ships and write and draw about them, because there are statistically speaking more male characters in fandom and more mlm options than wlw options.

And if you forbid women from being interested in male characters and their relationships, if you forbid women from participating in fandom, if you forbid women from creating for the things they love…

There would be no fandoms.

Literally.

Fanfiction started because women wanted to see Spock and Kirk fuck. While there are many male creators by now, fandom has always been rather dominated by women, who created and set the path.

So we are good enough to put you where you are now, but now we are forbidden from participating in the very thing we created? Literally, the thing we created - because most of your boyslove manga and anime were created by fujoshi. So you are allowed to consume that but you do not allow the people who are like the author to also enjoy it…? Really?

And then there is also still that accusation that, somehow, “we” evil CIShet women get off to fetishizing “you” poor gay men.

I’m ace. I don’t get off to the smut I write. I write the sex scenes because they are part of the relationship, just as I write the wooing and getting together. It ain’t about “getting off”. It’s about the enjoyment of writing.

And while I, personally, don’t identify as a fujoshi because I don’t like the term, others do - and others have a right to. Just like I would never call myself a stan of anything, because I don’t like the term - but by definition I most likely do stan a lot of characters and shows and things.

I think a big problem is that fujoshi, translated, means “rotten woman” and somehow the butthurt crybabies who feel personally victimized by fujoshi see that as meaning something bad.

Yes, the words rotten woman do not exactly scream “Oh, this is a nice thing!”, but those people don’t even bother looking up the meaning - because words have meanings, connotations attached to them. And meanings change. Just because something seems to “say” one thing if you do a literal translation of it does not necessarily mean that the word also means the same thing that said literal translation offers. That is not how language works.

And at its very core, all that fujoshi means is “female fan of mlm”. The term itself was coined during times where liking gays and being gay was even more scandalous than today. You were rotten if you liked gays, a disgusting, rotten person - and yet still those women weren’t stopped. They created.

They created things that future generations got to enjoy. They created a pathway.

And if people today want to call themselves fujoshi because they identify with the term, then absolutely no one has a right to judge them, has the right to assign a different meaning to that term.

How do we, today in this day and age where we are all about claiming our own identity, have people out there who think they can dictate the identity and interests of others?

How is the gay community so rotten that there are people not allowing women to have an interest and condemning them for the label they chose for themselves…?

That is the disgusting and harmful part of the fujoshi discourse, really.

[the-bi-writer-blog]

Not all Deaths are Created Equal (Musings on WLW Deaths in Popular Media)

I want to take a sec and talk about character deaths, and the way they differ between queer and non-queer characters. Below are major spoilers for the show “The 100″ and for the game “Life is Strange.” 

So! I just played through the Square Enix game Life is Strange, and I was entirely delighted in the beginning. You start as a high school senior in a cute coastal town, taking photos and solving mysteries via time travel. 

Cool, right? 

What’s even better is that the main two characters, Max and Chloe, are wlw. (It’s sort of left up to reader interpretation if they are bi or gay, but since Chloe at one point literally calls boys, “gross,” and says that no one but her is good enough for Max, I’m going to go ahead and say she’s a lesbian who’s still in the process of figuring that out.)

Anyway! In the first few episodes of the game, you have these sweet story about these two childhood friends reuniting and having adventures. They watch the sunset together overlooking the ocean, they walk along train tracks and reminisce about their shared childhood, they go for a midnight swim after breaking into the school pool. 

These aren’t the best life choices, but the game shows a genuine and sweet relationship that develops between the two. 

Aside from a lot of flirting, however, and a very brief kiss as the result of a dare, the Chloe and Max never acknowledge their feelings for each other. That is, until Chloe’s about to die. (I said major spoilers, didn’t I?) 

The climax of Life is Strange involves Max and Chloe standing in front of a giant hurricane that’s about to wreck their town. Max is given the choice to either save the town, or to save Chloe. For unknown reasons, Max can’t do both. 

Yes, you heard that right. Our lesbian MC either has to choose between saving her childhood best friend/long lost love, or doing what is obviously the more moral choice. How can you save a single life instead of hundreds? The “moral” choice here is meant to be obvious. 

So, here’s the thing about the two endings: if you choose to save Chloe, the two of you wait out the storm, and then drive off together into the sunset. Nothing is acknowledged or talked through, including the fact that you just let everyone die.

More conspicuously, the girls never discuss their feelings for each other, and the game doesn’t end on a kiss.

Guess when the game does end on a kiss, though?

That’s right, you guessed it! When the lesbian is about to die. More specifically, when one lesbian is forced to choose between saving the love of her life, or an entire town full of people.

If Max chooses to save the town, letting Chloe die, you get a passionate kiss from Chloe (finally!) before, well, going back in time and watching her slowly bleed to death as you do nothing to stop it.

Which is bullshit.

It also brings us back to the “not all deaths are created equal” idea. I mean, ideally, the amount of dead lesbians in your story would be 0, but in a mystery story where there are multiple wlw, it’s understandable that death may be involved. 

However.

However. 

However. 

How characters die also makes all the difference. Did they knowingly sacrifice their own life? Did they die a hero? Or were they killed off screen, probably in a brutal way, simply to further the plot? 

If we’re talking Life is Strange, it’s the second one. Rachel Amber, our missing bisexual girl who started this whole mystery, is revealed to have been dead and buried since the game began (which, after giving multiple hints that she’s still alive, and can be rescued if the player makes the right choices, is a really, really shitty way to end things. But I digress.)

So we have Rachel, our first queer woman, literally buried in a shallow grave after a brutal death, before the game even begins. Then we end the game with a choice to either kill another queer woman, who the MC now loves, or to let the rest of the town die. 

As a reminder, to bring this all home: Life is Strange starts out with a light and hopeful aesthetic, and does everything but come right out and say, “Rachel is still alive, and all three queer girls can reunite and be friends if you make the right choices and solve the mystery.” 

Then it reveals a brutally murdered wlw, and heavily pressures you to kill another. Leaving you, the last standing lesbian, utterly alone. The last scenes of the game, if you choose to save the town, are literally of your lady love’s funeral.

Not at all depressing, right?

Bringing this back to message again, I want to underline how many different ways this could have gone: 

1. Rachel Amber (our missing girl) could have been alive, and been found/rescued by the player. There is literally nothing added to the story by Rachel’s death, especially after the audience has been repeatedly baited to believe that she’s alive.

Furthermore, having Rachel (and most likely Chloe) dead removes the possibility of sequels for these wonderful characters. It means that in the new prequel series, you get to watch Chloe and Rachel fall in love...knowing all the while that Rachel is going to die before the next game. 

What value does Rachel’s impending death add to the prequel game? As I said in a previous post, the LGBTQ community does not need a reminder that life is subtle and fleeting. Believe me, we know. 

In a world where wlw are killed and shunned for the way we love, sometimes we just want a little escapism and a happy ending. Especially from a game that all but promised us one.

2. Second scenario: Max could have figured out a way to save Chloe without killing everyone else.

Since the rules of time travel are never established in game, it was a conscious choice on the part of the creators to allow for Chloe’s death; not a narrative inevitability. 

Once again: old white cishet men decided, of their own accord, to kill the lesbian. There’s literally nothing stopping the creators from creating a way to save Chloe. At all. Besides perhaps an understanding that for LGBTQ characters, survival is a far more radical ending than death. 

Question: If, as a creator, have the choice to tell literally any story, and imagine any world, why do you imagine a world where 2/3 of the queer women die?

3. Scenario three: If, for some reason you absolutely had to kill Chloe in game, you reaaaaaaaaly shouldn’t do it immediately after Max and Chloe confess their feelings for each other, and finally kiss. 

From a storytelling angle, I do understand wanting to save all the Big Emotional Moments for the climax, but here’s the thing: once again, not all storylines are created equal. 

For a cishet love story to end this way might be interesting, because there are a million happy cishet love stories out there. A single sad ending for a single cishet couple is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive amounts of happy stories to be easily found. 

But queer love stories are few and far between, and they almost always end in tragedy. Burying your gays isn’t revolutionary; giving them happy endings is.

And if you can’t give them that, give them happy lives before they die.

In Life is Strange, Max and Chloe only ever kiss/confess their love if you make the choice to sacrifice Chloe. That’s right folks; in order to have the “happy ending” of the two characters getting together, one of them has to watch the other die. 

In a world where queer relationships are tested at every turn, that’s NOT the message the LGBTQ comunity needs. 

The message that finding love will only end in death? We’ve heard it. We’ve heard it from The 100, where Lexa dies literally minutes after finally consummating her relationship with the woman she’s loved and been flirting with for several seasons. (Also, she dies from a stray bullet, not in battle like she would have wanted to, as a leader of a warrior people.) 

We’ve heard it from Buffy, where Tara is killed- again by a stray bullet - seconds after reuniting with the love of her life. Tara’s death scene is literally her happy reunion with Willow. 

Are you seeing a pattern? In popular media, the message is, “If two women are happy together, one of them will die.” 

Would these few examples be as big of an issue if there were hundreds of other examples of happy wlw in media? Of course not. But are there hundreds of other examples of happy wlw in media? Nope. Not at all. 

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To bring this all back to Life is Strange: as a wlw myself, I was delighted to play through this game, and watch two reunited friends figure out what they meant to each other. 

Then, once I was entirely invested, I was crushed to realize that there was no possible happy ending. Really, the “happiest” ending possible involves a confession of true love and a kiss...immediately followed by a lesbian dying via (you guessed it!) a bullet.

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Taken on its own, I do love Life is Strange. I’ve read several theories on the meaning behind it, and, taken in a vacuum, I can appreciate the story for what it is.

But I don’t exist in a vacuum. I exist in a world where I lost my entire support system when I came out. I live in a world where my parents disowned me and kicked me out of the house, even though I didn’t have the ability to work due to disability. And in that world? I don’t need a reminder of the fragility of life. I need a reminder that love matters, and can save the day.

tl;dr All I’m asking for is wlw who get happy endings in mainstream media. It doesn’t feel like too big of an ask, but apparently, it is.

*

As an important end note: every piece of media listed above is also severely lacking in other areas of representation, most notably when it comes to PoC. Joss Whedon’s work is well known for its racism and misogyny; The 100 has almost exclusively white MCs, and treats its characters of color atrociously, and Life is Strange barely contains any characters of color at all. All of which are unacceptable.

Additionally, none of these pieces of media contain a single trans or disabled character. White, ablebodies cis gays are the only LGBTQ characters that seem to be represented in popular media at all. Which again, is unacceptable.

So I want to acknowledge that there’s a lot more work to be done, and that the LGBTQ community should be as diverse on screen as it is in real life. LGBTQ representation absolutely has to include PoC and disabled characters to be complete. 

[queenofallthewrongchoices]

There’s so much wrong with this ask that I don’t even know where to begin. I don’t think killing a character of color is inherently racist but it is insanely problematic to kill off characters of color for the sake of story while still devoting majority of screen time to a white character. Using the excuse that OH is diverse, so there are no issues involving race makes no sense when you’re going to turn around and defend a white character taking up most of the space in the story because he’s profitable. Who cares that Ethan is the only white character MC cares about? It would actually be more impactful if he died seeing as though his connection with MC is the one that has been explored the most. How is he more deserving of living than them? I have no doubt that Ethan is profitable. He’s a white man in a game that seems to have a large following of cishet white women. However, many POC play this game as well, myself included, a black woman. Don’t we have the right to enjoy the game in its entirety the same way as our white counterparts? PB isn’t going to lose any money by allowing ALL players equal time with their LIs of choice. If it’s “just a fucking game” then why are you so pressed about others rightfully expressing our gripes with it. And also the characters of color being sidelined with barely explored backstories is an example of them being treated badly. Lastly to say WOC and POC is hella redundant. You could’ve just said POC if you’re referring to individuals of color who are women and men. Your understanding of racism and how it’s shown in media seems very juvenile. You don’t have the range. Sorry to highjack your ask like this ramseyswifey but this anon needed to be checked.

Ok I need to rant, otherwise I think I’m gonna go crazy. Killing off a POC character in OH is not racist. OH is so diverse that it is statistically likely that a POC is the one that is gonna die because Ethan is the only white character that MC cares about and they won’t kill him off. Pushing Ethan isn’t racist, it’s just profitable. ITS A FUCKING GAME, and POCs aren’t even being treated badly in OH. The WOCs are strong and independent, and so are the POCs. I’m just angry and tumblr is toxic

Like I’ve said in one of my previous ask I mentioned that OH could be even more profitable if they would give screentime to the other characters too, because you know if they would give the same amount of diamond scenes to Bryce/Jackie/Rafael they could make more money? Because even if their fandom is smaller than Ethan’s that doesn’t make it worthless. 

I mean POC’s mostly don’t even show up other than for a couple of lines so they’re not really being treated in any way at all which is just as bad? 

And again I can refer to what I said in one of the previously answered asks that: “And you know you would think if they wanna kill someone of they would make sure that we get to spend time with them so their death is more meaningful? Or hits you harder because those moments you got to spend with them.“