#fandom is not a queer utopia

[partitioned-mayflower]

I only want your dying, love

primary fursona/truesona reference!! (character uses it/its)

original concept sketch

[croquettish]

Sexuality, Acceptability, Risk, and Medieval Bohemia

Someone commented on my Hansry fic recently about how a good number of fics in this fandom apparently feature the sort of modern protestant homophobia emblematic of the United States. This was baffling to me.

More recently I've seen a bit of backlash against this rather normative, America-centric approach to the historical homophobia (deeply entrenched in Catholicism, mind you) that they would have been subject to back then. And, as is quite normal with the internet, naturally the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction. Jokes were made and then taken seriously by others. I've now seen sentiments floating around like "oh they wouldn't have cared at all," (not on tumblr) which is wild to me.

My doctoral studies have to do with queerness in the High Middle Ages, so seeing as I've spent the last several years of my life living on archive.org, knee-deep in this research, I feel like it's my academic responsibility to correct the record some. As usual, the answer lies somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.

All my sources are listed in the text (in the case of art) or at the very end of the post. For those of you just interested in what all of this means for Hansry, feel free to jump down to the purple heading.

I will start by saying that the "queer medieval utopia" you're looking for didn't exist. The closest you're going to get to that is the late 11th century / early 12th century, and even then there were limits to this general social acceptability. Paris and Florence were commonly considered to be gay dens of iniquity by people outside of those places, but even that was a bit of an exaggeration.

So where does this misconception come from?

Within the Catholic landscape, the body was considered separate from the spirit. Only one's "mystic sensorium" was supposed to be involved in spiritual intercourse with Christ and each other, and the overlap of the real and the ideal was… problematic at times, a genuine threat to chastity. Physical affection was meant to not broach certain limits. Kissing was acceptable. Metaphors were acceptable. In ancient Christianity, it was normal for women to kiss other women and for men to kiss other men as part of mass in the name of exchanging the kiss of peace, the pax. The idea here was to meet with the Spirit of Christ. Ambrose likened it to "lovers who, unsatisfied with the mere enjoyment of the lips, kiss so deeply as to interchange their spirits with one another." Which is all well and good, but this leaves a lot of leeway. How much physical affection was considered acceptable?

Anselm, the closest thing we have to a gay man of this time, would write things like this, in this case a letter addressed to two biological brothers that he hoped to join him in the monastic life:

"My eyes long to see your faces most beloved; my arms stretch out to your embraces; my lips long for your kisses; whatever remains to me of life desires your company . . . . Oh, how my love burns in my marrow . . . . [In coming to Bec] you have fused my soul with yours. If you now leave me, our joint soul will be torn apart, it can never again become two."

He had never met them before, nor should this suggest that they were about to enter a sexual relationship. In fact, around this time we see quite a few such expressions of affection coming out of the monastic space. Alcuin, writing to Arno of Salzburg, felt entirely comfortable writing that his love could not be prevented, even in the face of death, from licking Arno's innermost parts, a reference here (most likely) to Christ's side wound. In another letter, Alcuin is even more overt:

"It is exquisitely sweet to remember your love and intimacy, holy father; I wish the dear moment would come when I might embrace the shoulders of your love with the arms of my longing for you. . . . with what speedy hands I would rush into your fatherly embrace, with what pressing lips I would kiss not only your eyes and ears and mouth, but each knuckle of each finger, of each toe, not once, but many, many times!"

It would be extremely easy to assume that these letters suggested more than meets the eye, but historically speaking, as far as we know, this was not the case. Because this level of affection was considered to be in line with the "Christian" thing to do between brothers (no, I'm not joking). And there were harsh punishments if you breached these limits. Bear in mind, these letters could easily be seen by others!

Moreover, it should be noted that we don't see this level of affection outside of the monastic space (though it does still come up, albeit to a much lesser extent). You can think of it as code switching, essentially. Verbiage that would be considered insanely sexual in one space would not be considered as such within a monastic context prior to the shift in the 12th century.

Some scholars suggested that the use of such language implies ignorance or naivety about how this physical affection could look to the outside world, but we do know that Anselm at one point became worried enough that he might be misunderstood that he censored himself after leaving Bec for Canterbury. Even if his inclinations were chaste, he knew they could be viewed through the lens of homosexuality.

The ideal sexual state for a person to be in at this time was rooted in asceticism: chastity in the face of desire. You'd think asexuality would be a quick workaround for that, but unfortunately the lack of desire would just mean a lack of necessary effort on that person's part. Bear in mind, suffering is what's rewarded here. A gay man plagued with homosexual desires is just being tested by God. By denying himself those desires, he's rising in the ranks of holiness. A great example of this is Brother Lucas from KCD1:

According to the Rule of Pachomius, kissing boys on the lips was forbidden and punished by whipping, imprisonment, fasting, shaving, and six months of humiliation. In Fructuosus of Braga's Rule, a monk kissing or even being "too attentive to young men or boys would result in a very similar six month sentence as well as six additional months of manual labor, separated from his brethren, always under watch of at least two spiritual brothers. Never again was he allowed to enjoy private conversation or companionship with those younger than him.

"But Tam!" you might say. "This is just about monks! What about real people?"

I'm so glad you asked! Because we know that as well!

Penitentials, which were quite in vogue until around the 11th century and then again after the passing of Lateran IV in the early 13th century, were very punishing of all manner of sexuality, but especially homosexual acts, and, among them, especially oral sex. (The mouth is considered, to a certain extent, sacred. Don't ask me why, that alone is like twenty pages in my dissertation, though I could be lowballing tbh.) The Penitential of Theodore punishes it with 7 years of harsh penance and 15 years if the practice is habitual. Sometimes, however, it was "until the end of life" and considered to be the "worst evil," worse than fornication with one's mother. Harsh!

Ye olde penitentials were used as guidelines for later confession as well as those from before the 12th century. Conveniently for us, the late, great James A. Brundage came up with a fantastic chart/guide on when and how it was acceptable to have sex at all:

Did people follow this? My god, absolutely not. We wouldn't have the confessional records if this wasn't a problem in the realm of ~sin. But the guidelines were there and expected to be adhered to.

Don't get me wrong, the late 11th / early 12th century was a watershed moment in history in terms of overall acceptability of queerness, a time when Ovid and other Ovidian literature flourished. Punishments were rarely enforced. But the come-down from that era led us to a very rough landing. Lateran III kicked off the official canon ratification of outlawing homosexuality explicitly, and this, together with the outlawing of clerical marriage and the sudden flourishing of courtly love as a genre, led to a very dramatic shift in society from homosocial to heterosexual (which is, incidentally, what my dissertation is about).

The long 12th century was a red letter event in terms of history, not least because some of history's most notorious homophobes spread their ideas like wildfire. I am, of course, talking about Alain de Lille, renowned author of De planctu Naturae ("The Complaint of Nature"), which reminded everyone that homosexuality was against nature, and Peter Damian, who doesn't even deserve being commented on. The idea of homosexuality being "against nature" was far from new. The early church fathers like Augustine and Jerome condemned it pretty outrightly, and in the 13th century St. Thomas Aquinas was more than happy to further entrench the idea. Here, sodomy disrupts nature so much as to dissolve the soul.

We saw this in literature as well. Dante's Divine Comedy (early 14th c) slapped sodomites into the 7th layer of hell, but a real standout here is the Debate Between Ganymede and Helen, where the two have a very lengthy argument wherein she convinces Ganymede (often associated with homosexuality) that heterosexuality is infinitely superior to the alternative. She throws in such lovely arguments as insisting that he at least respect Nature, that he's been deceived by well-disguised filth, that he's been squandering his love between the thighs of men, and that he's been treating himself like human garbage as a result. In the end, he suddenly sees his crime for what it is, and the gods agree with him, stating that they've now also come to their senses. Sodomy is thus left behind by the gods and the choir swells in cheer at this tremendous success.

Canon law more or less exclusively had its grubby little fingers in the pies of what was and wasn't deemed acceptable in terms of sex until about the early-14th c, while afterward the government was delighted to also get involved in your bedroom activities. Particularly in the late 14th century homosexuality was increasingly legislated against, and in increasingly brutal ways at that. This wonderful and not at all problematic marriage of church and state is how we ended up with the Trials of the Knights Templar.

Let's say you're King Philip IV. The people have been revolting, you're running low on funds, you owe the Templars as it is, and you have a penchant for pogroms. You want money and land. What do you do? Well, naturally you write a letter to the pope about how you have all these horrible suspicions about these people you employ and who have come to your aid quite often!

Boy, oh boy! Wasn't that a fun time for them. Before, they'd been well-respected and well-off, supported by the king, with zero doubt in their respectability. Naturally, it all came tumbling down with that letter. Because the investigation was ready to find them at fault for something no matter what, under pain of torture of course. There's a particularly striking letter from a father to his daughter, written during the Bamberg witch trials (much later), wherein he explained that, after a particularly rough torture session, the executioner pulled him aside and told him this: "Sir, I beg you, for God's sake confess something, whether it be true or not. Invent something, for you cannot endure the torture which you will be put to; and, even if you bear it all, yet you will not escape, not even if you were an earl, but one torture will follow after another until you say you are a witch. Not before that will they let you go, as you may see by all their trials, for one is just like another."

Were the Templars recreationally homosexual? Maybe. For their sake, I sure hope so, because then they might have at least had some fun before going out. But either way, they were arrested, their territory, funds, and belongings seized, were convicted of heresy, sodomy, and black magic, and eventually burned at the stake. Two men were later burned at the stake as relapsed heretics after saying that they'd only confessed under duress and were actually innocent.

It even led to fun art like this one in 1350:

De Longuyon, Jacques. Voeux du Paon Manuscript. 1350. Morgan Library and Museum, New York. G.24 fol. 70r.

It was also around this time also that homosexuality was increasingly associated not only with heresy, but also with bestiality, suggesting that this crime against nature was effectively also a crossing of special boundaries (species-based, not extraordinary). In line with this, while homage to one's liege used to be sworn with a kiss on the lips (!!), over the course of the 14th century that was summarily done away with as well in a change that quite frankly swept across Europe (and we all wept).

In 1327, Edward II, who had a few boyfriends, was supposedly murdered by having a red hot poker shoved up his rectum. Even if this didn't happen, the chroniclers wanted us to believe it, and knowing what we do about Edward's sexual proclivities, it seems like this was a Statement if nothing else.

Where Bologna used to punish homosexuality with a fine, after the late 13th century the punishment was death by burning. The Portuguese, meanwhile, castrated convicted homosexuals and then, three days later, had them hanged by the feet until dead. In Siena, death by hanging was also the answer, but in this case, it was hanging by the dick until dead (not kidding). A particularly horrifying case was this one, happening just six years after when KCD canon takes place:

Which reminds us that this was most likely an issue that very much associated the clergy (known to be corrupt, especially around this time!). You'll recall the little comments made about this in the game, like Godwin casually committing heresy in front of the whole crew. "Do you think you need a priest for God to hear you?" Well geez, Godwin, according to the Catholic Church, you sure as shit fucking do! What a fantastic and not at all risky thing to say!

(Sidenote, this one is particularly upsetting to me personally in a fandom context because, not only is Augsburg not far from Bohemia, it really reminds me of the many associations between Hans and a caged bird.)

All of which isn't to say that sodomy didn't take place. Boy did it fucking ever. A great example of this comes from out of Switzerland, where, in 1475, a priest reportedly told his lover that "if everybody who committed [the act of sodomy] was burnt at the stake, not even fifty men would survive in Basel." ("Vnd solt man alle die so das tuend verbrennen, es bliben nit funffzig mannen jn Basel.") So, 1% of Basel. This is almost certainly a massive fucking exaggeration that this man pulled out of his ass in order to convince his partner that sodomy is fine, actually, but it does tell us something about the perception, if not the actual prevalence of sodomy in urban centers. (So, you know, if anyone needs to justify that Jadder have fucked at least once, if not more… when in Kuttenberg...)

It should be noted that Basel was very lax in terms of punishing homosexuality, but that was by and large not the most common outcome, as homosexuality was generally associated with divine punishment (I'm sure you've heard that drivel yourself before even in the modern day). Hilariously, it was the generally held belief that if someone learned of "the vice against nature" they'd naturally want to do it, and so priests were advised never to talk about it, even to preach.

So then, what does this mean for Hansry and co?

It means that this was at worst very much a fucking crime that you could very much be convicted for, in brutal fucking fashion at times, and at best the quiet part that you don't say out loud. But even then, it was fucking risky. Riskier if you're a member of the clergy (do recall how worried Brother Lucas was about his secret getting out, despite having never committed the sin himself), but risky even if you're not. All you have to do to see this reflected in canon is to look at Barnaby, the herbalist/hermit. As he explained it, he turned down a girl, she complained to her brother, and "he put two and two together":

Remember how I said that homosexuality was increasingly associated with bestiality? I find Barnaby's word choice fascinating here. Animals like him.

Of course, he beat them up and thus... uh, was able to survive:

Not that it didn't massively affect his quality of life. There's a reason he's a hermit! After all, he was unwelcome no matter where he went, no doubt because the brother and his friends ensured that this knowledge spread:

You might say, oh, it's different among the nobility! And to a certain extent, you're correct. Talking to the scribe in Troskowitz, he at one point gets to a part in the story about George the Lion of Wartenberg where he says this:

And then later, at the banquet where Hans loses his mind from jealousy, it comes up quite a lot in the conversation with Black Bartosch. First, he brings up Florian of Lomnitz:

And then, of course, we get the legendary conversation that follows, where the comment about Florian's sexuality makes Henry question Bartosch about his own:

It's soooo subtle. So, so easy to turn to plausible deniability. If anyone questions it, you can easily argue that your intentions were entirely chaste. And Henry can ignore it or even outright respond with a claim of heterosexuality:

But he can't question it like he can with the scribe:

Where the scribe then brushes it off as nothing and refuses to elaborate:

Even here this is a case of IYKTYK, like homosexuality is a club and in order to enter you have to know what's up. Because if you don't know and have to be informed, that presents a risk, namely that of suspicion being cast on you. Why do you know this information? What were you doing at this sodomitical devil's sacrament?

Honestly, at least among the nobility I'd liken it a bit to prohibition, but on a much less... widespread level. Oh, and literally everyone and anyone could be a cop. You could get away with it until you were caught. The risk was just a lot more pronounced. Even with Edward II the consequence of the very accurate rumors surrounding his sex life was public denunciation and possibly a poker up his ass. And if you're a noble involved with a commoner, multiply the risk exponentially, which is unfortunately relevant for both Hansry and Jamuel. If it really was as casually acceptable as some people claim it to have been (again, not on tumblr, I'm not here to stir up drama), I think Henry wouldn't have necessarily pushed Hans away, nor do I think they would have been as careful in their end-game conversation about what they do and don't say.

If anyone has any questions on this, tangentially-related topics, my sources, or literally anything else, by all means feel free to ask. I have the resources at my fingertips and the research very much at the forefront of my mind and will for the foreseeable future. On request, I've also added a list of further reading after my list of sources if anyone is curious to learn more of this for themselves.

Sources used:

Abraham, Erin V. Anticipating Sin in Medieval Society: Childhood, Sexuality, and Violence in the Early Penitentials, Amsterdam University Press, 2021

Anselm. The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury. Translated by Walter Fröhlich, Cistercian Publications, 1990.

Brundage, James A. Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Dronke, Peter. Medieval Latin and the Rise of the European Love-Lyric, Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, 1965.

Major, J. Russell. “‘Bastard Feudalism’ and the Kiss: Changing Social Mores in Late Medieval and Early Modern France.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 17, no. 3, 1987, pp. 509–35. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/204609. 

Mills, Robert. Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages. University of Chicago Press, 2015

Moore, R. I. The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe. Profile Books, 2014.

Murray, Jacqueline, and Konrad Eisenbichler, editors. Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West. University of Toronto Press, 1996.

Perella, Nicolas J. The Kiss Sacred and Profane: An Interpretative History of Kiss Symbolism and Related Religio-Erotic Themes. University of California Press, 1969.

Puff, Helmut. “Localizing Sodomy: The ‘Priest and Sodomite’ in Pre-Reformation Germany and Switzerland.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 8, no. 2, 1997, pp. 165–95. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3704215.

Puff, Helmut. Lust, Angst Und Provokation: Homosexualität in Der Gesellschaft. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993.

Southern, R.W., Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Stehling, Thomas. Medieval Latin Poems of Male Love and Friendship. Garland Pub, 1984.

Recommended further reading:

Bailey, Derrick Sherwin. Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition. Archon Books, 1975. Originally published by Longmans, Green & Co., 1955.

Barbezat, Michael D. “Bodies of Spirit and Bodies of Flesh: The Significance of the Sexual Practices Attributed to Heretics from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 25, no. 3, 2016, pp. 387–419. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44862359. 

Brundage, James A. "Playing by the Rules: Sexual Behaviour and Legal Norms in Medieval Europe". Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West, edited by Konrad Eisenbichler and Jacqueline Murray, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442673854-004

Bullough, Vern L. “Heresy, Witchcraft, and Sexuality.” Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 1, no. 2, 3 Mar. 1976, pp. 183–199, https://doi.org/10.1300/j082v01n02_03.

---. “The Sin against Nature and Homosexuality.” Sexual Practices & the Medieval Church, edited by Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1994, pp. 55–71.

Bullough, Vern L., and James A. Brundage, editors. Handbook of Medieval Sexuality. Garland Publishing, 1996.

---, editors. Sexual Practices & the Medieval Church. Prometheus Books, 1994.

Burger, Glenn, and Steven F. Kruger, editors. Queering the Middle Ages. NED-New edition, vol. 27, University of Minnesota Press, 2001. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttszw5.

Clark, David. Between Medieval Men: Male Friendship and Desire in Early Medieval English Literature . Oxford University Press, 2009.

Dinshaw, Carolyn. Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern. Duke University Press, 1999.

Fradenburg Louise, et al., editors. Premodern Sexualities. Routledge, 1995.

Frassetto, Michael. Heresy and the Persecuting Society in the Middle Ages: Essays on the Work of R.I. Moore. Brill, 2006.

Gilbert, Arthur N. “Conceptions of Homosexuality and Sodomy in Western History.” The Gay Past: A Collection of Historical Essays, edited by Salvatore J. Licata and Robert P. Petersen, Harrington Press, New York, NY, 1985, pp. 57–68.

Goodich, Michael. “Sodomy in Ecclesiastical Law and Theory.” Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 1, no. 4, 20 June 1976, pp. 427–434, https://doi.org/10.1300/j082v01n04_06.

---. “Sodomy in Medieval Secular Law.” Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 1, no. 3, 20 June 1976, pp. 295–302, https://doi.org/10.1300/j082v01n03_04.

---. The Unmentionable Vice Homosexuality in the Later Medieval Period. Ross-Erikson, 1979.

Jordan, Mark D. The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology. University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. “Attitudes to Same-Sex Sexual Relations in the Latin World.” A Companion to Crime and Deviance in the Middle Ages, edited by Hannah Skoda, Arc Humanities Press, 2023, pp. 84–101. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.3716022.9. 

---. From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.

---. “The Regulation of ‘Sodomy’ in the Latin East and West.” Speculum, vol. 95, no. 4, 1 Oct. 2020, pp. 969–986, https://doi.org/10.1086/710639.

---. Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing unto Others. Routledge, 2012.

Kruger, Steven F. “Queer Middle Ages.” The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory, 1st ed., Routledge, New York, NY, 2009, pp. 413–434.

Kuefler, Mathew, editor. The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Lees, Clare A., et al. Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages. University of Minnesota Press, 1994.

Pierce, Rosamond. “The ‘Frankish’ Penitentials.” Studies in Church History, vol. 11, 1975, pp. 31–39, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0424208400006276. 

***Please note: my omission of Boswell's CSTH here is entirely intentional. I know that if people here got a hold of him he'd be considered a tumblr darling, easy. If I could, I would wear merch with his name on it. And normally I would list him loudly and proudly. But I'm not, because the man loved reading into things that at times aren't there, and there are countless critiques that have been leveled against CSTH, many of which Boswell himself agreed with. So. If the general tumblr population wasn't constantly pissing on the poor I might trust it in their hands, but as it is, I know that nuance is lost on people!

(would you believe me if I said I tried to restrain myself in curating this list? no?? well I DID)

[aoelustious]

(A lil rambling on queer discourse outside and inside the fandom from a genderfluid bisexual)

One of the most enduring tensions within queer communities — especially as queerness becomes more visible in media, fandom, and state-sanctioned institutions — is the question of assimilation vs radicalism. And no, this isn’t new. We’ve been circling this debate since at least the post-Stonewall era, and arguably since before the term “homosexual” was even coined.

I. “Normalization” as Strategy

The move to normalize queerness — to make queer relationships legible to heteronormative society through things like marriage, monogamy, parenthood, or even just public respectability — has roots in practical survival.

Think: the Human Rights Campaign’s messaging, “Love is love,” marriage equality, queer representation in sitcoms and yogurt commercials.

This direction can be read as a bourgeois political strategy (Duggan, 2002), often referred to as “homonormativity.” It prioritizes “acceptable” queer subjects (cis, middle-class, often white, often masc) who resemble their straight counterparts as closely as possible — except for the gender of their partner.

And it’s true: this has tangible benefits. Legal protections. Cultural legitimacy. Safety.

But this approach also comes with costs. It sidelines queer people who don’t fit the norm — trans people, poly folks, kinky folks, poor people, disabled people, racialized people. It risks transforming queerness from a challenge to dominant systems… into a rebranding of them.

II. “Preserve Queerness” as Resistance

On the flip side, there are those who argue that queerness should remain fundamentally oppositional. That queerness is not just about who we love — it’s about how we live, what we disrupt, how we imagine new futures.

Think: José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia, in which queerness is positioned as something not yet here, something utopian, always pointing beyond what is.

Here, the critique is not just of heteronormativity, but of the institutions that structure all our lives — the nuclear family, capitalism, the state, colonial timelines of success. “Queer” is a method, not just an identity. A verb, not just a noun.

But this view can also become rigid. When queerness is defined only by its capacity to reject, it risks becoming inaccessible to those who do want things like marriage or kids — especially if those things weren’t always accessible to them before. We shouldn’t turn queerness into a test people must pass to be “valid.”

III. And Yes, This Applies to Your Fanfic Discourse

This debate resurfaces constantly in fan spaces:

– Is shipping fixed top/bottom roles inherently heteronormative?

– Is using seme/uke language a form of internalized oppression?

– Is “switch hate” in fandom actually just queerphobia in disguise?

And the answer is… it depends. But more importantly, intention and context matter.

Queer codes like top/bottom, bear/twink, fem/butch emerged from the queer community as tools of navigation, identity, intimacy, and play. That they’re sometimes messy, stereotyped, or commodified doesn’t erase their history or usefulness. And yes — these codes have always intersected with fandom culture. Sometimes clumsily. Sometimes joyfully.

Fandom is not a political campaign. It’s a liminal space where fiction, fantasy, and projection collide — and trying to impose rigid moral frameworks onto it flattens the complex emotional and cultural labor happening there.

If you critique top/bottom dynamics in fic because you believe they replicate heteropatriarchal logic — fine. That’s a discussion worth having. But if your critique shames people for their preferences, you’re reproducing the same moral purity logic you claim to oppose.

IV. The Problem of the Queer Police

The worst-case scenario here is that we start using queerness not as liberation, but as a tool of internal policing. When queerness becomes something that must be performed correctly to be respected, it loses its radical potential.

If your queerness is only valid when it aligns with a particular brand of politics or aesthetics, we’re not breaking binaries — we’re just building new ones.

Queerness contains multitudes. It can be domestic or deviant. Normie or revolutionary. Tender or obscene. Apolitical or hyper-political. And it is still queerness.

To quote Eve Sedgwick:

“People are different from each other.”

And that includes how they ship, write, love, protest, fuck, and self-identify.

We don’t have to collapse queerness into one monolithic definition to protect it. We just have to trust that its range is part of what gives it power.

[g1deonthefirst]

like sure, john is a war criminal, but tlt isn't political. john is a war criminal, but those blood of eden characters are all terrorists, which is exactly the same. actually it's even worse. john is a war criminal, and sure he killed people, but he couldn't have sexually abused anyone. because that would make him irredeemable, and he can't be irredeemable. he's just a funny war criminal guys!

i also think that it's pretty telling that the same people who are insistent that there aren't sexual violence metaphors in tlt will happily call john a war criminal. in that it shows what sort of violence they believe should be treated with gravity and what sort of violence is easily meme-able and dismissed.

[rivetgoth]

The fact that I’ve seen a few people try to analyze I Saw the TV Glow through a lens of it being about like, fandom and obsession with media and nostalgia being bad ?? is genuinely blowing my mind. Obviously there’s the fact that this movie is as unambiguously about being trans as it can possibly be without just saying outright “this is a movie about being trans” but I also think this is crazy because I would say it actually has one of the most unambiguously positive relationships with concepts like “media consumption” and “nostalgia” that I’ve seen in a movie.

Like, to say it’s a shallow interpretation of the film to call it “about media/fandom” (and especially a negative depiction of such things!) is putting it quite kindly because I kind of feel that anyone who utters such sentiments didn’t actually understand the core element of the entire movie: “The Pink Opaque” is not a show. Commentary the film makes about watching “The Pink Opaque” cannot translate to commentary on watching shows broadly because the movie spends half its runtime making it explicitly clear that “The Pink Opaque” may be a show that exists in a literal sense but is not one in a figurative sense. “The Pink Opaque” represents the possibilities of childhood and innocence. Innocence that still is not free from judgment—Owen gets told the show is for girls, Maddy’s friend accuses her of sexual harassment on account of her sexuality while they were watching it together—but it’s the moment in your youth (or any time! it doesn’t have to go away!) when the possibility of queerness and more explicitly queer utopia feels real to you. The external pressures to conform are still there but you can tune them out if just for a moment to envision a future and a life for yourself free of it and living authentically. I think this is an experience all LGBT people can relate to, but in the case of ISTTVG it’s very explicitly primarily focusing on queer femininity, predominantly transfemininity, but in Maddy’s case as well she is a queer woman (I’ve seen some interpretations of her as transmasculine but I disagree personally). Hence the on-the-nose nature of it being PINK.

What feels very genius about Schoenbrun making it about a show though is that it’s so generational, right? For all of us LGBT people who grew up in the age of screens that WAS where a lot of that early imagination going wild resided. The first time you explore a new name is on anonymous forums. The first time you explore your masculinity or femininity is with which character you relate to in a show, or which gender you select in Pokémon. Movies and shows with “queer subtext” or even without give young LGBT people the chance to envision relationships and futures for themselves, what many grow up and call “shipping.” You have your first gay crush while watching your favorite movies. You envy those of your true gender while watching your favorite movies. Amongst many other things when Maddy watches “The Pink Opaque” she’s given access to a world where two women share this intimate connection and overcome obstacles together. When Owen watches “The Pink Opaque” they’re given access to a world where femininity is a real option for their future.

The relationship these characters have to “The Pink Opaque” is a net positive and the movie makes that so incredibly obvious when Owen goes back to rewatch it later and finds that it’s nothing like how they remembered, it feels childish and immature and dumb. That is a bad thing. This is a bad thing. The movie wants you to see this as a bad thing. This is the result of repression, of conversion therapy, of violent coercion into normative lifestyle—That sense of limitless possibility is destroyed and the idea of accessing one’s transness, of imagining this utopia where you CAN be yourself and live as a woman, strong and beautiful on the other side of the screen as said in the film, is lost. Now you tell yourself it feels silly, it feels childish to imagine such things, it’s not nearly as deep and meaningful as you believed it was when you were younger and less inhibited, or it’s at the very least easier to tell yourself that. Owen’s feeling embarrassed is of note here. If it weren’t for these external pressures that have been internalized they very well may have been able to still enjoy the show, even as they’ve aged and grown and matured, even if their perspective has changed a little. But they can’t. Not yet, at least.

I feel kind of out of my mind seeing people try to approach it through a lens of commentating on media consumption because it’s so deeply missing the layers of what’s actually being said… and not even in a wildly obfuscated way. The movie is ABOUT the relationship these characters have to “The Pink Opaque” and how the loss of that is a bad thing. How you can possibly watch it and see it being about some kind of growth from obsessive media consumption is mind boggling to me. Seeing multiple reviews and posts in tags about it is crazy. One thing I really like about this movie is that it so confidently argues for a more positive interpretation of being obsessed with “fantasy” and the childlike wonder of the limitless possibilities of fiction. I think that’s a very very trans narrative, as I mentioned it feels tied deeply into Queer Utopia, and I find it much more bold of a stance to take. In a world where people tell trans individuals (and especially trans women) that their identities are works of fiction or products of the imagination or even caused by excessive media consumption, to embrace these things and turn them over and use them as a symbol of the whimsy and innocence and excitement that first ignites that spark as a positive, thrilling, beautiful thing is very cool.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

I’m so tired of wlw background ships in mlm fandoms.

mlm shippers almost never develop wlw ships to the degree that the audience feels invested in them. The conflict and character development and love story rely on tropes rather than actual narratives, yet fandoms act like they’re doing wlws a favour by shoehorning in this shitty “representation” when it’s just golden retriever x black cat over and over and over again in different fonts.

To be clear I don’t blame anyone for not having big wlw ships, because most major media out there do not have two fully fledged female characters you can ship together. If you want to write mlm ships, good for you! If you want a lazy wlw ship in the background, that’s fine! But don’t act as if the fandom actually cares about them, or that anyone did the legwork to make them characters that you can care about. Most of these female characters are never properly developed in the canon source material, and they’re almost never properly developed in the fanon material either. You can always tell by how these women are like, one archetype + gay (sporty gay, feisty gay, slutty gay etc, like some kind of gay Spice Girls). Yet fandoms just love to act like these background wlws mean so much & have the best love stories & everyone just should ship them. It’s all so performative.

wlws are not an aesthetic. wlws are not 2D happy couples to round out your queer utopia, a queer utopia that somehow still manages to foreground men. Women are always treated as 2D characters in narratives, except now there’s a subgenre where these 2D women are gay. Groundbreaking.

[conclaveconfessions]

forgive me father, it's been over a decade since my last confession.

I do not come to confess my sins nor flaws, though they are plenty because I'm only human. I come because I feel an annoying buzz, doubt over my brothers and sisters assuming I'm something that I'm really not, a hater searching for schism within our wonderful fandom. I come because I rarely interact with one of the most popular and beloved characters (Benítez) and I do so not because I'm a Lawrellini shipper but for reasons that are not selfish. I do so, on top of my first reason which I'll mention soon, because him and I come from the same place and I've grown extremely tired of how Latinos are treated by Americans, though most times I can see it's not malice, just carelessness accompanied by what I choose to see as good intentions.

My first reason, however, comes from feeling hurt over the way my brothers and sisters treat his intersexuality, a complaint that has been mentioned here before and I couldn't agree more. Knowing intersex people, what I find the most bizarre is all the assumptions being made about his personality, tastes and views in life because of such. Knowing intersex people, I can't understand how he becomes a pinnacle of stereotypes as a consequence of being intersex. If this was done to me, and it is done to me by others because I'm queer too, I would feel awful. The idea of "best of both worlds", rightfully called out in that other ask, makes me frown. And so, my gut reaction is to be so overly cautious about his characterization that I end up not including him in jokes, disgusted at the idea that I'll be contributing to these stereotypes and exoticization of intersex people, who deserve at the very least more than carelessness, even if with good intentions originally.

Speaking of exotic...I am aware by now that escaping the reggaeton latino king ay papi dale mamacita aesthetic is nearly impossible online and of course I say "dale" and "papito" jokingly in other contexts, I ask, father, for your grace to see what I'm trying to say. What I don't like is the Latino conceptualization, much like the intersex stereotype, being used based on stereotype. I know all the assumptions made, by North-Americans mostly, about me when I say I'm Latino. Sometimes they'll be good assumptions and that are true but having the lived experience and being the leftist that I am, I can't help but question why we are jumping to so many set-in-stone conclusions regarding his orientation and views which okay for fanfiction sin problema, it's fiction and headcanons, but that worry me in the sense of these views also being taken to real life and the treatment of fellow Latinos. I haven't bought the book yet so I would like to know more about him but based on the movie, I can't understand why the intersexuality + being Latino are used as being synonymous to the most radical marxist values and deconstruction ideals. To me, at least, he seems moderate, making him a centrist choice between Tedesco and Bellini. I feel like asking, very kindly, to my brothers and sisters: Do you know what Catholicism is like in América? Not the US, I'm talking about América. Do you think that because you remember only the red wave topic from school (did you study us in school?) we live in a socialist utopia with our coconut trees and beautiful, exotic Latino kings whom are all queer, leftist radicals fighting to disrupt your North-American system? We barely have legalized abortion. Women die every day in my country from domestic violence. And in this context, you'll find Latinos with a varied combo of values and views because we are people, not tokens. You'll find Catholics who are extremely conservative and kick their queer children out of houses and you'll find Catholics who are far more tolerant than some Protestants who do that too. Again, people, not tokens. I'm sorry if reading my discomfort makes you uncomfortable when I know this is just a fandom I love very much and we're all here for fun but I wanted to vent, father, for I know my perspective can be useful regarding the stereotype carelessness, both regarding the intersexuality and being Latino. I do not wish to call out anyone in particular, in fact I wish to be cautionary on behalf of intersex people and Latinos, as a caring ally to the former and the latter being one myself.

In the end, all I wanted to say was that I really like Benítez, Carlos Diehz is incredible and I can't wait to see more of him soon. And that if I don't talk about Benítez often is not because I don't like him but because I end up focusing on others, maybe because of what I just said or maybe just because I'm drawn to other dynamics. I do like the idea of Benítez/Tedesco as well as Benítez/Sister Agnes, if he is straight. To the good hearts reading this, please do not freak out and worry about being "called out" (that's not my intention). I'm sorry if my words are delivered as anything other than me just pointing out that moving a little bit more carefully is important. I don't wish to ruin anyone's fun. This is all part of interacting with different cultures and experiences and everyday we learn something. Isn't that what makes us grow?

Thank you father for listening to my confession.

~

[parsleysagerosemarytimemachine]

Go watch The Wheel of Time

So yeah, there's this TV show... season 3 of the Wheel of Time is going to start airing soon (March 13th, looks like), which means there's just enough time to get caught up on the first two seasons and come in for this one. If you're following me here, I think you'd really enjoy it - epic fantasy, queer normative characters, cool magic women, loyal swordsmen, complex politics, thoughtful worldbuilding, etc etc...

My other pitch for you is that if you like what Andor is doing for Star Wars, you'll probably really appreciate what this adaptation is doing for the story too. In the same way that Andor takes all the building blocks and puts together something new, the Wheel of Time is taking the material that the books gave, and building something for our fantasy present. I won't say that you should read 15 fantasy doorstoppers plus ancillary material (because that would be unkind) before watching the show, but I'll try to give a bit of context here to also explain why I think the show is worth it.

The thing to understand is that the Wheel of Time was part of the 90s high fantasy boom (book 1 literally published January of 1990), and followed/set the tone for a lot of imitators and descendants - a prophesied chosen one has to save the fantasy world from an all-consuming evil that only he can defeat. But the author (Robert Jordan) also does a lot of interesting things over the course of the series that weren't as replicated - a broad cast of characters who also get to take the spotlight, a lot of women with important roles in both the narrative and the world, complicated romantic situations (which _mostly_ took a backseat to heterosexual pairings, but were acknowledged to exist and be just fine, which was quite a thing for the 90s) and the length of the series allowed him to indulge in details of general worldbuilding such as fashion and clothing design (which exploded in cosplay), politics (both political maneuverings, and letting cultures and people expand beyond one-note country-of-hats), a complicated cast of villains and antagonists (not always the same thing) and history (where it's gradually revealed that the fantasy land is a fallen utopia, but also one with hundreds of years of intervening history as people keep living).

Now, would I recommend you rush out and read the books? As a very biased commentator, I still have to say it's very much of a time - there's some unexamined prejudices, there's some things that other authors have done better since, there's some books in the middle where the expanse of the plot started to get away from him (700 pages of not much happening; the book where one of the main trio of characters doesn't show up at all; the fact that he died before finishing it when mortality caught up with him) - but there's definitely enough interesting material that I still think fondly of the bones of it, and was excited to see what a TV show could make of it.

And one of the best decisions they made was to update it as they went - a key part of the story is that the world repeats, that time is a wheel and everything that has happened will happen again, and so this series is cast as another turning of the Wheel. They are making a show faithful to the spirit of the books, without feeling bound to imitate them. (This is, as you might expect, controversial in the fandom, but I'm very much of the camp that it's for the best.)

One of the first and most obvious changes happens right away. Where the books present the story from the viewpoint of the chosen hero discovering the mysteries of the wider world and the destiny thrust upon them; the show opens up from Moiraine's viewpoint instead - an elegant lady wizard and her faithful swordsman have come seeking a child of prophecy, and finds an embarrassment of riches; this remote village actually has _five_ young adults who might fit the bill (another good decision - adding three or four years to everyone for television, to put them firmly in the early-20s category so they can have more complicated and messy relationship drama rather than 'first love' awkwardness). When evil monsters attack, she defends the town with her magic (it looks so cool on screen!) and then spirits them all away for a tour of the world as she tries to figure out how to get them to save it.

So yeah, one of the first things it does is say 'sure this a story about saving the world - why don't we look at this through the knowledgeable and connected woman trying to balance the fate of the world with respecting the personhood of a young idiot (or 5, in this case), rather than the naive hero figuring themself out?' We get an early and important introduction to ideas that will come up throughout the books - that saving the world is a good goal, but there's going to be a lot of tough choices along the way. (Also fun to see from the inside as Moiraine plays the game of telling them 'don't worry, I magically can't lie to you' and then proceeds to mislead all of everyone anyway.) We also get so much more information about the White Tower (the woman-only wizard school, to be reductive), which is great because the White Tower and what happens there is so central to the eventual overall plot, but is only first seen or explained in the middle of book two.

Also, putting us in Moiraine's view lets all five get more equal footing, a thing that becomes more important as the book continues and it's apparent that they're all basically co-protagonists. Three boys, two girls, all with their own things going on, and all eventually critical to the fate of the world - so it's good to not bias us towards one hero to begin with, when one of the points Jordan works around to is that there _can't_ be just one prophesied hero; you need the power of friendship and political networking to stop ultimate evil.

Another good choice for TV is emphasizing a thing that Jordan tried to write (with varying degrees of success), that a world is going to have all sorts of people in it. The casting is pretty good about getting a bunch of non-white people on screen, both in major roles and as background actors. My queer heart is also warmed by the fact that, by aging up the characters a bit, they also get to show us a lot of non-normative sexuality as normal for their world. The world is just casually bi and also casually poly - a woman with two male lovers is unexceptional, two of our heroic boys think nothing of the implication that they might be dating, and Moiraine, our primary viewpoint, has an intense on-screen sapphic relationship with her boss. The advance screening of the first episode of season 3 confirms two of the chosen hero's eventual three wives are enthusiastically boning - before he's in the romantic picture, even; this was all alluded to in Jordan's original writing, but needed much more teasing out - here they've made sure to show it to you unmistakably on screen.

And then there's the villains. The Dark One has a variety of evil minions, the most powerful of which have been trapped outside of time since the Age of Legends. Back then, they had a variety of complicated relationships with the chosen hero who eventually defeated them, and they're not going to give that up just because it's been an age of the wheel and he's been reincarnated as someone who doesn't know them at all. The first seasons introduce us to the philosophical nihilist and the yandere stalker ex-girlfriend, and they're both fascinating as powerful manipulators and antagonists, but the end of S02 has freed the rest of them and I can't wait to see how it all plays out - I think if you're the only person in the world who remembers the existence of social media, maybe you're a bit justified in burning it all down rather than let that come back again? But also we're already seeing that it's not just that evil defeats itself - evil will actively fight and scheme against each other for tiny advantages and petty slights, and that's going to get more pronounced with more of them on screen. Plus they get cool evil outfits as fashionable people from another time.

So yeah, this is my pitch - go watch the Wheel of Time. It's on Amazon, so you know, find it where-ever. There's 16 episodes so far, with 8 coming up, and it's extremely welcoming to newcomers - I hope I've given you a bit of hope that it stands up with the best genre TV airing right now. And I'd love to talk to you about it!

[mothy-the-forest-witch]

No judgement at all, I'm genuinely curious to get to know this fandom better.

Personally, I enjoy the fandom both as a study of faith/the church and as a utopia where I could safely be a queer Christian because HOLY FUCK THE POPE JUST IMPREGNATED HIS FAVORITE CARDINAL (come on, you've read the fanfics)

[kirkwallguy]

honestly I do think people forget that like, fandom (at least people actively involved online) and gay pairings are actually pretty niche. fan cultures are misogynistic and the misogyny against bi women is prevalent (often first thrown under bus when discussing m/f) but at the same time people on tumblr preferring a m/m relationship is not like, indicative of wider societal norms and again is a relatively small demographic. I’m always so torn on these discussions bc women in fan spaces and in the fiction being discussed are treated poorly yet I do think the language around gay characters/relationships gets borderline if not straight up homophobic. also, even if queerness WAS normalized in Thedas. we don’t live there. the writers don’t live there. it can still allude to real-world politics and resonate with an audience, intentional or not

no exactly, i wrote a much meaner post about this earlier then deleted it because i decided i want to live in peace but i fully agree - people DO forget that wanting to focus on queer relationships on the internet tends to come from the fact that this is very hard to do irl and seen as fairly radical if you don't exclusively hang out with queer people. maybe the tides are turning a little now but mainstream media has historically been extremely hesitant to even touch queerness let alone depict queer romance and this can feel deeply isolating when you just fully cannot relate to the concept of a man and a woman falling in love.

i do agree it's notable that bi women are the ones singled out when it comes to f/m relationships while men tend to be excused and there's definitely a history of people using wanting to see an m/m relationship as an excuse to be misogynistic. but seriously, recently i've been seeing a weird pushback against m/m shipping by saying centering men is misogynistic which is something i remember from early 2000s homophobia lol. f/m shipping is often just as misogynistic if we're being fully honest.

and yeah, the first three games all came out at a time when very few video games had queer characters and people were extremely homophobic about anders on release. thedas could be a queer utopia and that wouldn't make it any less impactful when the character starts talking about the oppression he's experienced in a way the real queer person who is playing the game might relate to.

even WITHIN fandom culture i think there's more heteronormativity than people will admit. look at the statistics on ao3. out of the ten most popular relationships, only two of them are explicitly queer and they both feature the series' only gay man. two more don't specify gender but have majority f/m ships (solas/lavellan and lucanis/rook) while the rest of them are explicitly f/m. there are literally more f/m ships than m/m and f/f put together.

out of all the bi men in the series, anders is the only one where the majority of his protag/companion fics are m/m. fenris and bull also have more m/m than f/m (once you filter out all the solavellan fic bull gets tagged in as a background character lol) but that's only because they're commonly shipped with anders / dorian.

looking at sera's ao3 demographics, the most popular ship she's tagged in is solavellan. so, like. lol.

so yeah there's misogyny there but i think acting as though focusing on queer experiences is inherently misogynistic is borderline homophobic, especially when it's queer people that are also writing f/f fics.

[mostbelovedqueer]

Propaganda for James: James Flint is a force of queer rage that bends narrative and nature to his will. When the homophobic British empire exiled him and killed his lover, Flint quickly became the most feared pirate captain in the world. Initially, his goal is to establish a pirate utopia where he can retire in peace, but as the empire continues to wrong him and those he's close to, his anger grows and he inspires a rebellion against civilization itself. His love and loss are his central motivation and the core of the entire show.

Propaganda for Marceline: "~I'm gonna drink the red of your pretty pink face~"

Disclaimer

The tournament is based on submission!

If you don't think xyz character is queer, you can just vote against them! But at this point it is too late to take them out of the tournament without messing the whole thing up!

Rules

don't insult characters or fandoms, you will get blocked

reblogs are fine, but please don't reblog the same polls over and over (especially if you are a poll/tournament blog), you will get blocked

please stop yelling at me or calling me cruel for pitting "your faves" against each other, the tournament polls are randomized

[velvetvexations]

god help me I'll throw my hat into the omegaverse discourse ring as a transmasc; I can understand a lot of other trans men/masc's complaints about it (and honestly, there's been certain fandoms/common character interpretations of "omega" characters that really did just feel like transmasc futa. no shade to anyone who did this with love but for an example, I saw a lot of art/headcanons/fic of modern tristamp Vash that made me....raise my eyebrows, let's say), but I will say that as a transmasc person who has written a lot of omegaverse, I actually specifically enjoy it because I feel like it's a rare opportunity to normalize non-cis bodies in an in-universe, literal sense- creating a world where your biology is not tied to your gender presentation and your gender presentation has multiple unique layers is really fun for me.

Mind, I prefer writing "queer utopia" style worlds, so I could see how this could get real weird real fast if you're trying to do An Oppression Metaphor. I think the real problem, if there is one, kind of goes back to the fact that this has basically become transmasc futa, but without a lot of recognizing that this is the case in the wider fanbase/cis readership. So you'll have people blithely consuming this stuff and not really thinking about it as Trans Fiction, so there's less pressure to like. Think about what's being depicted and why and how. And saying things like "omegaverse has the potential to perpetuate transandrophobic stereotypes about trans male/masc bodies because there's a huge chunk of the readerbase who knows very little about the reality of actual trans bodies and so they're going to absorb some of this and not recognize how that might fuck with their perception of real trans people" is both unwieldy as hell and feels like it'd be subject to like...the sort of "oh that's just transemasculation lol" kind of shit where no one except other trans mascs are taking it seriously. But at the same time, I can't give up on omegaverse as a genre with a lot of potential for trans experiences being depicted in new ways!

yeah like the education that this can affect transmascs is the main thing not that Omegaverse is in and of itself bad

[kinsey3furry300]

It's actually really sweet to see all the shippers appear after the Wicked film came out, and good to see all their delight at seeing just how Saphic the film is. If you enjoyed it I must however warn you that no-one is mearly gay in the books: every single inhabitant of Oz is a walking pansexual disaster area, and if they ever notice the gender or even species of thier partner its purely bi accident by accident.

Spoilers below:

The Tin woodsman has a fiancee, but she marries a Frankenstien's monster made from all of his discarded human parts, and so he enters a lifelong situationship with the Scarecrow (who Wicked implies was formally Prince Fiyero, and formally in a love triangle with both elphaba and Glinda). The second Oz book from over 100 years ago made Ozma cannonicly trans and the offspring of her dad fucking a fairy goddess, and she is now dating Dorothy despite the fact they are technically different species. Wicked (the book) implied Elphaba is cannonicly intersex, and the sequel books have what might be an AIDs epidemic allegory attacking the talking animals. The Cowardly lion keeps bouncing around with various crushes none of whom are lions and is alwaysone step away from a full nervous breakdown. The Wizard shagged Elphaba's mum and thats why her dad is so grumpy. Moving back to the 1900's books, Glinda builds a harem of hot warrior women to guard her castle. The levels of monster-fucking and disastrous love triangles are off the charts, and then there is suprise turn-of-the-century racism when you least expect it, and by the way Oz is a socialist Utopia when it's not being run by a snake oil salesman carney. Body horror is everywhere and people just roll with it and stay horny. Procreation is via magic so hetero sex serves no purpose beyond pleasure, and the traditional family structure is like 9 weird little beings of different forms and the one human teen they found in the woods and adopted.

The Oz books and the Gregory Maguire spin-offs are a fucking fever dream, and are somehow even more queer than the Wicked film.

I am so here for the spike of interest in this fandom.

[inthemaelstrom]

So we're about six weeks out from another "most important election of my lifetime" and it's predictably making me literally sick to my stomach. When Trumpacabra got elected in 2016, I threw myself into politics in a way I never had in my lifetime and it almost wrecked me. I was one of those people who never voted for religious reasons (long, separate story) and I felt I had to make up for lost time. By the time 2020 rolled around, I was an unhealthy mess. I had stopped reading. Everything. When I wasn't watching MSNBC and political commentators obsessively, I started consuming absolute junk TV: home improvement shows, crack paranormal ghost hunter crap, etc. Things with no plot, no emotional investment, no danger. No fear.

Right before the 2020 election, old fanfic friends from my days in the Master and Apprentice Star Wars listserv found me and saved me.

They dragged me back into fandom, introduced me to Discord, and got me writing again. I updated a story I hadn't touched in 5 years. I made new friends online and in RL. I got some great fiction and fic recs from those friends and discovered a subgenre called Hopepunk—low stakes fiction with very little if any violence and fear and with happy endings. (Becky Chambers writes a lot of what I read, and Amy Crook has also become a favorite.)

One morning, I had one of those really vivid, realistic, linear plot dreams that literally dragged me out of bed to the keyboard. It was a meet-cute modern au of The Phantom Menace's characters, set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I cranked out about 2000 words the first day. Then another 2000. Then another 2000. Then another 2000. And so on every damn day for the next four years until I had four novels, about 668k words, several timestamps written by three other collaborators who've come on board, some beautiful art I've been allowed to use, and now a fifth book in the works.

This is the Yooperverse.

It's not just The Fic That Saved Me, it's the place where I'm writing a vision of what the world could be like into being. A place where people with fucking obscene amounts of money don't spend it on themselves, or hoard it, or exploit other people to get more, but use it to help other people. It's a place where people who are bigoted dicks either get their comeuppance and crawl back under their rocks, or learn better and do better. It's a place where abused kids get rescued, everybody gets therapy and healthcare and is paid a living wage, people learn to value themselves and each other, and protect each other and defend each other. It's kinky and queer (although I'm neither) and above all, if not entirely safe to be both, I'm trying to write both things as just being another setting on the dryer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's not a utopia, by any means, because there are still assholes and the government is still ... the government, and capitalism is still a thing. There's some danger, especially in the first book, and there are accidents and illnesses and the vagaries of life. In the middle of the series, I had spinal surgery and was out of commission for a few months and that made me start thinking more about my main character dealing with aging and the limitations thereof. There's a LOT of mental health issues and the working through thereof, and a lot of ongoing process. Nobody's perfect. The world outside is still pretty much what it is. But in the little corners where my characters dwell, life is pretty dang good, sometimes great.

It's a vision of a life we all deserve. It's the thing I loved about Star Trek's universe, where people's basic needs are cared for and the obstacles to them developing their best selves removed. It's what I've loved about science fiction in general, especially Ursula LeGuin's: that opportunity to explore possibilities that are better than the present. It's modeled on the MacArthur Genius grants, but you don't have to prove your worthiness first. My main character invests in people's potential, young or old, with scholarships and grants and a steadying hand. His partner builds low or no-cost housing for people in need. There's an informal network of queer and straight kid rescuing going on under the noses of unfriendly governments and failed social service safety nets. The main characters build refuges, literal and emotional. They love each other fiercely and respectfully.

Right now, we're living in a country that is almost the antithesis of these ideas, for far too many of us. People are being manipulated by their fears, which are stoked by unscrupulous, lying shitbag politicians whose all too real evil would never make it past the pitch if you were going to try to sell it as a TV show or movie. They're consciously turning us on each other with lies about our common humanity, about the state of our country, about who and what's responsible for many of its faults, sewing suspicion and hate. And though the Yooperverse started as my personal comfort fic, I'm trying in my very small way to counteract what's happening in the world right now.

I've always believed in the power of story to change people's minds and lives, and I've experienced it myself. When I talk about story, I don't just mean fiction, though. I mean the narratives we tell ourselves and others about our own lives as a whole and day by day or moment by moment. I mean the stories we tell about each other when we're together, at the bar, at wakes, at a party. I mean the stories we invest in as fans in whatever kind of media we consume. I mean the stories we spin for ourselves and others to explain what the everloving fuck is wrong with the world.

Stories aren't separate from the world, they are the world. They tell it into being. They give it shape and purpose and meaning and a sense of possibility. Whatever stories we tell ourselves or each other about how things should be or how we should act as human beings (also called our "beliefs" or "morals" or "ethics"), they shape us, and we shape society. We are society, both together and as individuals. One person with a big voice and a story can tip a mass of people into either violence or solidarity.

I have no illusions that the Yooperverse will ever have that kind of power. It has a tiny audience on AO3 and Discord and it's mostly written for me to explore the things I feel deeply about, and wish I could do, and to teach myself to be a better person and live up to my own ideals. It's a world I'd like to manifest, to call into being, even in a small way. Even if it's just a story.

[dancingontheblades]

Cherry Magic has graced anime fans with the first gay marriage in anime history. That coming from a country where same-sex marriage is still quite some lightyears away from becoming legal, is huge. The first spirtually recognised same-sex marriage in Japan dates back to 2016. Although society has becoming more accepting over the past few years and queer activists keep fighting for equal rights, queer people in Japan are still being discriminated (this Wikipedia article on LGBT rights in Japan is quite comprehensive about the legal situation). If you want to know what that's like, read Ryousuke Nanasaki's honest and down-to-earth biography Until I Meed My Husband--he's an LGBTQ+ activist and the lucky guy who, together with his partner, made history as the first gay couple getting married at a shrine.

At present, Japan is the only G7 nation that neither recognises same-sex marriage nor has a law to protect queer minorities. As of 2023, the current ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), regards homosexuality as a disorder and claims it can be healed with spiritual practices and therapy, and that same-sex unions should be discouraged because they destroy the traditional image of family and society.

Please let that sink in for a moment.

But then I see people (mostly on the bird site, I think) screaming "But my favourite gay anime should have been the first to have a gay marriage!!! LOOK WHAT THEY TOOK FROM US!!1!!111!!!1"™

Embarrassingly, most of these people are from my own fandom. And I'm seriously wondering whether these people are okay if this is all they care about.

YOI was very progressive for the time it was made in (it aired in the same year Ryousuke Nanasaki married his partner in a shrine). But when you start digging and read the interviews with the creators and put them into context with the reactions from Japanese anime fans, the reality of queers living there, and the obstacles the director had to overcome to make her vision reality, you can't unsee that YOI was too progressive for it's time.

Sometimes I wonder if growing up in a country that has estabilshed marriage equality years ago, makes people blind to overlook the systematic queerphobia queer people face in countries with a still mostly conservative collective mindset, even more so as seeing a country through the lens of fiction doesn't give a realistic picture of its society and the struggles its marginalised groups face (especially when these struggles aren't portrayed realistically in those works). And this is such a weird ironic since the queer stories we love with all our heart because they paint a the picture of a queer utopia are born from this society.

Progress isn't a linear process and it doesn't happen overnight. Two steps forward can mean one step back. If you push too far before society is ready for it, brace yourself for the backlash. No groundbreaking achievement has the power to tear down the walls of conservative stubbornness, it rather antagonises the people who have the means to thwart you.

If you struggle with accepting this, if you think that your selfish desire to get more of your favourite anime is more important than queer rights, if you are convinced that some animation studio owes you and make it the fulcrum of your very existence, I ask you politely and in all seriousness to please go touch some grass, educate yourself, and come back when you've found the plot again.

Disclaimer: I'm not a Japanese citizen and I don't live in Japan. I gathered these information from people living there (expats and natives), the Japan Times, Wikipedia, translations of interviews with the YOI staff, and my own research.

[darcylightninglewis]

Whelp, I’ve fucking had it with people. And that 3 discords (queer art, 2 nerd art) kicked out of and one volunteering to leave because I’m Jewish. But that’s right, I’m the problem, me, existing in a fandom or creative space. You want to have your views mirrored back to you, right or wrong? That’s not intelligence, open mindedness, or being an ally to a minority. You don’t have to pick and choose. You can be pro Israel and pro Palestine. Just be anti terrorist. I know it’s getting harder these days, what with them willing to murder you too, but hey, a girl can hope.

I’m so fucking done. All I want to do is be a nerd. Why is that so infuriating to people? I try to educate and I’m an elitist, I try to clarify things as a minority and I’m the problem. Fucking children thinking they know everything. Best of luck in your utopia, I’m sure you’ll get the help you need when they come for you too.

Really tempted to make my info say: “the big bad Zionist under your bed” just embrace the hatred.