#for the record I feel the same way about writing queer characters

[scribble-dee-vee]

Writing women like real people is a great way to incite the flames of Internet Discourse, but it's ALSO a great way to attract cool people. Write relatable characters for the unhinged media analysis girlies FOREVER

Sorry if this female OC is not likeable! I totally should have considered what you the reader would like. It's just that as a writer I fraction my personality into a million shards and jam them into characters to make new people. That bit of personality you hate? Yeah, that's just me. Sorry I'm so annoying. I should've become the ideal strong female character in advance. Totally my bad.

[agoldenblackbird]

The OG: Ranty Bitch Vol. 1!

i'm gonna be a ranty bitch for a minute.

tbh i'm turned off even reading new buddie fic despite being a multishipper and have unfollowed a bunch of buddie accounts because i'm sick of the smug attitudes. one ask that i am otherwise not going to publish or respond to ended with 'sorry you don't understand media literacy bestie :)' fuck off. listen INFANT, i have been writing fanfic and original fic AND watching, reading and analyzing queer media since before you were born, i understand how character and story development works, and i know the difference between 'storyline i personally disliked' and 'bad writing.' this was BOTH, and it also was marketed to us as 'carefully crafted bi rep' and 'queer love story that is not about a bunch of pain and conflict FOR ONCE' so we have every right to be upset at the bait-and-switch.

the fact that i'm seeing the same exact posts - 'bt bones buddie CANON' that i saw three seasons ago after the bucktaylor breakup, or every time they thought buck and taylor MIGHT break up - says something. the fact that so many fans seem genuinely convinced (STILL!) that buddie is inevitable because there have been so many 'signs,' and then they rattle off a convoluted theory that would make the most hardcore taylor swift stan say 'wow, that's a bit of a reach,' honestly weirded me out a little when i first joined the 911 fandom. i have never been in a fandom where so many fans are insistent that their ship will be - not might be or could be, but WILL be - canon. i am skeptical both from past experience with other shows mishandling queer storylines or ship-baiting, and tim minnear's proven track record with this one of not really knowing what to do with buck's LI's. but i didn't want to yuck anybody's yum, so i let them have their theories and squee in peace, and unfollowed or blocked certain tags if i was seeing too much of it and getting annoyed. it's too out there for me, but i'm glad they're having fun!

yet they can't give us the same courtesy. they deride us as delusional for thinking that a canon pairing that was presented to us both in promo and the show itself as different and important (eg the bobby approval convo and 'buck getting off the hamster wheel') might last, and we're stupid to have ever liked tommy or lou or be disappointed at how the breakup was written, and if we point out the biphobia it's just sour grapes.

the bucktommy breakup is not the first time 911 has started out strong with an interesting storyline and fumbled it in the 4th quarter either because the writers got bored or in the name of needless drama/a 'gotcha' sudden twist. amir & bobby, eddie's fight club arc, the sperm donor SL, hen vs councilwoman ortiz, whatever the hell is going on with harry, the whole mess with shannon/kim, just to name a few. and especially the past couple of seasons, for me since 6b, the pacing has been off. they seem to have too much happening at once and many of the storylines don't have enough room to breathe to be narratively satisfying, or they get resolved in ways that feel lackluster.

if the toxic buddie stans who have been attacking lou on sm and sending death threats (wtf!) actually get what they want, which i admit is possible, but it's certainly not guaranteed….i don't know why they think the writers won't fumble that just as badly. it's not going to happen precisely the way they want it to because it is impossible to please everybody, that's what fanfic is for. but at this point i have zero faith that it would even be well done at all, and zero trust in the writers not to just sabotage or regress a character for funsies, and that's an excellent reason to stop watching the show. in most of my other fandoms i regard canon as a jumping-off point or a blurry outline at best, and i can have just as much fun in the 911 sandbox without any further input from canon at all, once i'm less angry.

[dewwshi]

TRANSFEM DRIZZT MASTERPOST

breaking my usual “only art posts” rule on this blog to write a dissertation on a thought that has been on my mind since literally homeland. LISTEN. i'm gonna proselytize i’m honestly shocked i haven't seen anyone else say this before. i think drizzt do'urden is transfeminine coded, specifically trans lesbian coded. and i have EVIDENCE. (WALL OF TEXT UNDER CUT)

for the record i'm gonna use he/him pronouns for drizzt in this largely because that's what he uses in canon but i feel like he would for sure switch to she/her or something if he did transition. but i feel weird talking abt characters with pronouns other than canon ones

i'm transmasc so for transparency when i speak abt transfem experiences it's from what i have heard and learned from transfems and take all generalizations with a grain of salt blah blah blah nuance vanilla extract be normal please

also i'm currently only on spine of the world. i have no idea what happens in later parts of the series so my evidence is only from books i’ve read + be forgiving if you know smth i don't + try not to spoil too much thank you BUT ALSO I WANNA KNOW what people think on this sooo yea tell me :heart:

OKAY NOW after all those qualifiers. i'm sorting my evidence into a couple categories:

character evidence (about how being a girl would fit into drizzt’s narrative)

relationship evidence (about how drizzt’s relationships are enhanced by/contribute to his girlitude)

and miscellaneous meta stuff & wording evidence (aka wishful thinking)

CHARACTER/NARRATIVE EVIDENCE

firstly. we MUST discuss the backstory. the childhood trauma.

drizzt's primary backstory, i.e. his childhood in and abandonment of menzoberranzan society, places him in the position of someone who is “too soft” and “too weak” for their society and thus becomes ostracized and outcast. this is a REALLY transfem coded position to be in.

in our world transfem kids get ostracized for not being masculine enough and for being a “sissy.” the situation is obviously pretty different in matriarchal menzoberranzan (“girliness”/femininity is not considered a flaw there the way it is in prevailing attitudes in our world) but the parallel still holds

i'm sure everyone remembers the “you’re a dancer” scene. despite excelling in combat, drizzt (at least pre-melee-magthere) is considered too weak and soft for menzoberranzan even by zaknafein, again framing him as being (by surface standards) more traditionally "feminine" than the rest of menzo men

and YES "you're a dancer" is a complicated scene with a lot of emotional shit going on for both characters but my point is specifically that drizzt's alienation from his society REALLY resembles the alienation that a lot of transfem children experience

for the record he is also very autistic. 100% autistic i’m on that wagon all the way. just to put it on the table

but anyway the queer coding is extremely strong here. the other way you could read the “dancer” gncness drizzt exhibits is as gay coding (many of the same tropes and narratives apply to young gay boys as do to young transfems). i have a couple reasons i prefer the transfem reading though

gayness is not treated the same in menzo. bg3 confirms romantic relationships between women are standard fare in menzoberranzan; my hc is that the same is true among men

that's an explanation from the world's perspective though, not from a meta/writing perspective. to me drizzt's infatuation with women (We'll Get To That) makes him read more like a transbian than a gay man though

anyway back on topic. something the books (the ones i’ve read so far at least) don't really talk about but SHOULD is the relationship with gender (and women specifically) that drizzt would have been left with from his upbringing.

menzoberranzan culture holds that women are above men and that men are inherently worse. you can't just forget something like that after living in a place where that's simply a fact of life for 30 years. lots could be said on that and i think it must have had an effect on how drizzt views women

however to focus on the trans thing let's state the obvious: menzoberranzan gender roles are RIPE for transmisogyny. it’s a society of terfs. the gender roles are SO defined and SO exclusive that an assumed boy even trying on feminine clothing would probably get physically abused. not so different from parts of our world shrugs forever but for a different reason like i mentioned; it's not “girl shit is gross what are you, gay?” it's “how dare you, a filthy man, attempt to partake of womanhood, which you would sully with your very touch” AND AGAIN. THAT SOUNDS LIKE TERF RHETORIC DOESN'T IT?

i think drizzt would have been left with a deep-rooted sense of shame and self-consciousness about gender (as he was about basically all parts of his identity for the record) and i specifically think that a clear parallel can be drawn between those feelings and the transmisogynistic ideas common in our world, in particular the idea that trans women “steal/appropriate womanhood.” in menzoberranzan’s case the idea is more like that “womanhood is a privilege to which men (who are lesser) have no claim.” 

drizzt seems to generally feel like he doesn't deserve to have things he wants, he doesn't deserve to be happy etc etc. and i think it would make peeeerfect sense for that to extend to gender. that he has to learn that he can and is allowed to express his gender freely

then there's the graduation ceremony.

in a journal entry in spine of the world drizzt says the reason he was so uncomfortable with the melee-magthere graduation ceremony was because 1. he didn't wanna do drugs and 2. because Casual Sex Is Bad And You Should Be In Love Before You Do Sex (he's so. repressed. beautiful stupid baby) and while i for sure think those ARE both PARTS of his discomfort, i think i have a bit of extra sauce to add.

consider: the graduation ceremony's purpose (in addition to being a fun light-hearted celebration by drow standards) is to enforce a specific social/sexual gender role onto the young graduates of melee-magthere (clearly the most desirable sexual partners for noble drow women).

that gender role is specifically placed in opposition to womanhood. there's matrons, and then there's patrons, just like the surface world has husbands and wives

i’m thinking that while drizzt is and is written as being HEAVILY attracted to women (again We Will Discuss This), “pretty lady's boytoy” isn't a gender role he's comfortable inhabiting, and so he felt reflexively bad being forced into it.

of course the social role of men in menzoberranzan isn't a nice position to be in even at the best of times but i don't think that was what was on his mind at the time!! what if part of the reason he was so instinctively against partaking was because he rejected the gendered social role placed on him in that moment, a reminder that melee-magthere, and the kind of warrior role he'd been trained for, is for boys alone?

leading from that. in siege of darkness drizzt imagines what catti-brie’s life would have been like in menzoberranzan if she was drow. consider how easily he chooses to imagine her going to melee-magthere instead of arach-tinilith even though the former is boys only. this is SOME kind of gender fuckery for sure. i'm thinking some part of him feels that melee-magthere (and the kind of combat training taught there, which drizzt excels at) isn’t or shouldn’t be for men exclusively. he enjoys being a warrior and he's good at it, but, for him, that warrior role is DISTINCT from a masculine gender, even though in menzoberranzan it wasn't distinct at all.

i find that drizzt being transfeminine boosts the hell out of all of his other “fuck you"s to menzoberranzan society

not only is he an insult to the way of lolth by rejecting it in favour of empathy, but he's going in the face of the entire gender system of menzoberranzan. just totally blasts it. i feel like it adds a whole new layer to his rejection of the lolthite way of life

of course that's an argument you could make of any queer reading of drizzt as a character but i feel like it hits hardest with SPECIFICALLY transfem drizzt. one brave tgirl's Exodus From Terflandia.

but even then when he does come to the surface, he finds himself alone and apart from society. 

in the early books’ world there is no place in surface faerûn society for a drow, it is designed to exclude him the exact same way existing binary cisnormative gender structures are designed to exclude queer people.

drizzt has to start off on the complete fringes of society and then carve a place and home for himself with like-minded people who love him and who he loves. that's exactly what queer people have to do too. is leaving the underdark a metaphor for coming out??? i guess so.

CAN WE TALK about the shit with the mask of disguise in the halfling's gem? THAT SHIT IS TRANS AS HELL!!! again autism coding runs parallel hand in hand here but like.

“you have the choice to suppress who you are in order to fit into wider society. now will you do that, or will you live as someone visibly outside the norms? is it enough to know no matter what, you will still have your loved ones who accept you no matter who you turn out to be, to know that you will be happier if you let yourself express your true self?”

THAT'S THE QUEEREST SHIT EVER.

also drizzt's fixation on personal freedom makes a lot of sense (a lot more sense than it does as in-canon imho) if you read him as trans. in menzoberranzan he would never have had the freedom to do with his body and presentation what he wants.

being able to be the person he wants to be seems to be a central concern in his mind, for himself. he doesn't just have an “i don't want to kill and torture people” objection to menzo culture, but an “i want to be able to choose the life and identity that i want for myself” objection

as it stands in canon the reason why he's so fixated on this isn't clear (so far at least). it makes more sense if he is transfem, and growing up in a system where he was actively prevented from pursuing his own tgirl happiness left him very invested in standing against that

on a meta level the “freedom is the most important thing ever” thing kinda is weird to me (it's very “can you tell the author is american”) BUT it becomes a lot BETTER if reinterpreted as “my old government wanted me dead for being transgender, so i think everyone can do whatever they want forever”

some of the general stuff about drizzt's queercoding in this section is pretty general but i veeery much think specifically transfem drizzt makes the most sense and adds the most to his character and story. and that's what the post is about. so yeah

RELATIONSHIP EVIDENCE

this section is abt drizzt's relationships! wahoo

1. CATTI-BRIE

ok so there’s a lot to say about catti-brie and why i consider their relationship a lesbian one and how i think drizzt's attraction to and love for women reads as extremely trans lesbian in nature.

bringing back that thing about shame from earlier. drizzt has, as he has in all things, a tendency to be ashamed of and suppress his own emotions in terms of romance.

the way he thinks about his attraction to catti-brie reads a lot like the way a transfem with a lot of internalized transmisogyny and lesbophobia might feel abt her attraction to women:

he acts guilty and embarrassed and tries to keep it a secret, to avoid talking about it, to avoid expressing his wants in any way at all

he's also afraid of being punished for it. think back to his stuff about women in menzo. he feels like he's not allowed to feel this way about women OR - HEAR ME OUT - HIMSELF. to me, a fear that he is encroaching on womanhood (both as a participant and as an enjoyer) is a very natural source for that shame

note that it’s specifically when she isn’t looking. ashamed!

drizzt in that excerpt assumes that bruenor would berate him even though he SHOULD KNOW bruenor trusts and likes him enough to fully give them his blessing. also drizzt blushes immediately after this and acts all flustered about it. ashamed!

in siege of darkness (during the "but for now, friends" scene) drizzt does tell catti that he’s in love with her- and follows it up immediately with “it’s no big deal, don’t even worry about it, i can totally just repress it forever if you’re not comfortable with it” (GUT WRENCHING SCENE THAT THREW ME OUT TO THE CURB BTW. AUGH). it's a COPE. he's terrified of being punished or rejected or ridiculed. i think all of those fears tie deeply and specifically into gender- his own, and hers too.

lesbian culture is known for a level of near-rhapsodic adoration for women and i see that in drizzt. the way he talks and thinks about catti-brie is insanely sapphic. basically every time he thinks about her he’s thinking shit like “god she’s the most beautiful and the best and i would die for her and there’s nobody in the world like her” this is truly a kind of infatuation lesbians are famous for. 

are there men who think about women like this? yes of course. is it a cornerstone of wlw culture to a degree that casts even the most cisgender of those men as almost gender non-conforming? i would say yes.

he spends so much of this scene fawning over her that i don’t even know which parts of it to include

i could keep going but listen the point i’m trying to illustrate is that he’s fucking SMITTEN with her okay? and it's EVIDENCE he is a woman i swear to god this is facts and logic and makes sense THIS IS LESBIAN BEHAVIOUR!!!!

AND THE SLOW BURN. the slow burn is lesbian coded as well. wlw stories are LEGENDARY for the extended periods of mutual pining that they often feature. pining is basically a classic feature of lesbian romance.

catti-brie and drizzt spent SIX FUCKING YEARS on the sea sprite together in the time skip between siege of darkness and passage to dawn, the ENTIRETY of which drizzt spent HOPELESSLY IN LOVE with her, and they did NOTHING together. if pining was a song these motherfuckers would have gone triple platinum. and that? oh BABY, is it yuri to me

i could make a whole other post exclusively about a lesbian reading of catti-brie and her relationship with wulfgar being comphet. honestly i could make a lot of posts about catti-brie she's insanely interesting and i have SOOO many thoughts about her. but suffice it to say: i think she’s gay as hell

for the record you may be thinking “okay he’s just in love with catti that’s why he’s like that” true but he is also fascinated with and identifies himself with a lot of the women he meets on the surface. and of course there is The Guenhwyvar Thing

2. THE GUENHWYVAR THING

let's discuss The Guenhwyvar Thing

you guys remember the fucking poem from homeland? about how beautiful and incredible guen is? literally the first time i saw that i was like “this is the most tgirl shit i've ever seen.”

are you guys seeing this??? “you, girl panther, are how i feel inside, i wish i could be you for realsies." reflection from mulan core. on all levels except physical i am a giant female panther

the fact that drizzt is so utterly enamoured with, again, a Female magical panther reads as extremely transfem coded to me. i truly feel like guenhwyvar's gender is a core facet of why drizzt adores her so much.

drizzt's relationship with guenhwyvar is – and was from the beginning – a place where he could freely admire and relate to femininity without shame.

guen’s femininity (by virtue of its animalness and magicalness) is very different from the femininity of menzoberranzan’s matron mothers. drizzt grew up in with an exclusive and abusive femininity that left him as an outsider, always unable to partake of or even genuinely admire womanhood. but he always wanted to and, when he gets the chance, he does. HARD.

i maintain a headcanon that if drizzt were to play dnd with the companions of the hall, he would play a conspicuously female druid every single time and never explain why it had to be a woman. but i know. I Know Why it has to be a woman.

3. ARTEMIS

god the queer reading here is sooo potent. here's my thoughts

artemis and drizzt’s struggle (at least as far as i've read) is one of a person who pursues happiness even under the risk of being outcast or hurt by society, and a person who has suppressed the need for happiness to secure survival. this can be easily expanded to a queer context:

artemis is closeted or stealth, dismissive of his own queerness. he sees an out and proud drizzt, publically living as a queer person, pursuing queer happiness. (not that drizzt is actually out and proud as a tgirl BUT HE HAS THAT ENERGY! LIFE COULD BE DREAM)

in other words artemis sees drizzt living a life that he (artemis) subconsciously decided long ago was impossible, unattainable, something he had to give up to survive. a kind of life that he hates his own desire to have. he hates drizzt for being happy in a way he wants but has decided he cannot have and thus nobody should even try for. he envies him.

you may be thinking “that sounds a lot like the dynamic drizzt and artemis already have in canon” EXACTLY MOTHERFUCKER!!!!

i really enjoy transmasc artemis who's been stealth since age 10 but i'll admit i'm not as dedicated to that headcanon as i am to transfem drizzt. idk where he's getting that beard from. maybe the crime guilds of calimport have access to magic hrt

bet when you started reading this post you weren't expecting kalvin garrah artemis entreri

anyway the point is that artemis’ redemption arc is the journey from he/him transmasc to he/they transmasc. DOESN'T HE JUST HAVE HE/THEY ENERGY?

MISCELLANEOUS EVIDENCE

this section deals a few other little random things that don't mean much but boy do they add spice to my life

UNICORN SYMBOLISM. drizzt's ranger symbol is a unicorn. a symbol of mielikki of course but also perhaps the most feminine of all mythological creatures and he chose it specifically to represent himself as well. and as a ranger/ nature guardian drizzt occupies a very typically feminine role. like who speaks to animals often? disney princesses do. my girl drizzt is a disney princess deep in his heart and i know this to be true.

now last but not least these ones… these are clearly unintended from salvatore’s pov but i find them FASCINATING

supposed to be a reference to his age i think BUT STILL HOLY SHIT? HE SAYS THAT. DRIZZT HIMSELF OBJECTS TO BEING CALLED A MAN. I'M DOING A LITTLE HAPPY DANCE THIS IS THE GOLD STANDARD FOR TGIRL HEADCANON EVIDENCE

let’s parse this okay because it’s pretty weird and confusing wording. the hag says it is “not for any man; it’s for two and only two” and those two are catti-brie and drizzt, implying NEITHER of them is a man.

the second half conspicuously shifts from “man” to “male,” again avoiding calling drizzt a man and implying he may be male (biologically), but he ISN’T a man. it’s also kind of tacked on to the end, to single drizzt out. almost like the hag was like “shit they’re not going to figure out who the other not-man is so let me add this second thing to it”

and yes of course the author-intent reason it’s phrased like that probably has to do with the word “man” which is sometimes used in these books to mean “human” HOWEVER given that everyone there immediately assumed “no man” referred to catti-brie (who IS human but NOT a man in the gender sense) supports the reading that it does mean gender

IN CONCLUSION

i think drizzt do'urden is a tgirl. i’m just about 100% certain this was not RAS' intent but nonetheless i think a reading of drizzt as transfem based on the evidence present in the books both makes sense and adds a lot to his character AND the other characters AND the story and themes. basically he’s a girl. thanks for readingg

[seriousbrat]

I know abt the shit that Snape stans say abt Lily, but what do Marauders stans say?

You mean negative stuff? Well a lot of it isn't really directly negative, it's more just that people need her out of the way so they can ship James with Sirius's rando little brother. Even though this is ridiculous because nothing is stopping anyone, but I think newer Marauders fans can often overcompensate because many view shipping/stanning as a moral act, so the fact that they obviously don't care about Lily makes them feel guilty lmao. In fact I think there's arguably a tendency among mainstream marauders fandom to be overly positive about Lily just in a way that lacks the consideration and complexity people give to their favourite male characters. Like yes she's a girlboss but what else? Well-written characters are supposed to have flaws and foibles balanced with strengths, that goes for women too.

So while making her out to be a traitorous she-devil is obviously something I dislike, I think it can go too far the other way too, where she's just a 'sweet lesbian girlie' happily dwelling in the background with no real problems or depth or protagonism of her own.

Lily's often made a background character in The Story of Regulus, at the service of the narrative needs of the male protagonists, and typically paired with a random female background character in a way that can feel like an afterthought and really just a convenient shunting aside of Lily's character masked by faux-progressiveness. Making a character queer isn't a replacement for giving them depth and nuance. It's especially grating when the same people accuse anyone who points this out of 'reducing Lily to being a mother' even though it's that section of fandom who often uses Lily as a surrogate/baby-making machine for the male characters, which is quite literally, in the most literal, biological sense possible, reducing her to being a mother lmao.

For the record, I don't think there's anything wrong with having Lily be a background character, or not using her at all, on an individual basis. (although I admit I find using her as a surrogate fairly appalling as a concept. but that's just me.) I myself have used her as a background character and paired her with Mary in Lippy Kids. Also, it's fandom and people are going to do whatever they want, it's not up to me to stop them and I wouldn't want to lol. I'm not going after individual people for doing this in their own writing.

As I've said before though, I believe it's worth pointing out in a general sense because it's such an overwhelming tendency. I think simply being aware of the fact that you and people around you centre men in life and art is a positive thing-- even if you don't actively do anything to change it, because sometimes talking and thinking about the issue can lead to it changing on its own. We all do this to some extent-- I recently went through my own fics and realised I have more male-pov fics than female. I'm not going to write anything purposefully to correct this because that wouldn't feel natural and it's not a huge issue on its own, but I'm just aware of it moving forward.

Looking through any marauders' era tag (even the jily tag rip) or ao3 categories/statistics, etc, gives you a pretty clear idea of who is prioritised by fandom and who is not. And the argument that Lily is too minor of a character to care about falls a bit flat when characters like Regulus, Barty, and Rosier are so much more popular in mainstream marauders fandom than she is.

Curiously I have seen Marauders fans use the same exaggerated criticisms of Lily that Snape fans do (viz. 'she was a terrible friend!!11' which is so ridiculous given none of these beloved male characters are winning friend of the year awards.*) AND I have seen plenty of Snape fans who are normal about Lily, either because they like her themselves or are just able to be objective about characters lol. So either way it's not a universal thing.

* arguably except regulus but his friend of the year award is because of what he did for kreacher, not james or sirius or barty or anyone else. and regulus stans never care about that. stop lily erasure but also on a minor, less relevant note, stop kreacher erasure

[pinewoodpipit]

id love 2 know what made u headcannon fade as transfem, i rlly feel like people are scared 2 put these sort of headcanons onto characters and especially 2 depict them in sexual settings but i think that sense of fear ultimately comes down to infantalising minorities again. sorry for woke.

my point it it's nice 2 see people similar 2 me represented or relationships similar 2 mine represented. so id love 2 know ur thought process behind it. idk if uve already answered a question like this stalking everything on someone's blog is hard with no time.

Thank you, I'm really glad you enjoy the way I depict her! I agree that people are often too scared to write about minorities (such as trans or disabled people for example) out of fear they're doing it wrong, but for the record I don't think that's a bad thing - it's good to be aware you might mess up writing about experiences that you don't share! Those people just need to make sure they have a sensitivity reader who can help make sure they're being respectful and not writing into any stereotypes by accident :) the same goes for writing languages you don't speak. I strongly advocate to never try to make it work on your own, and if you want to include a different language in your work then you 100% need to find someone who speaks that language to help you, otherwise it's likely you'll do it noticeably wrong.

As for my own hcs, I don't really know if I can specify one thing that made me hc her as trans! I heard about the hc from other people shortly after I joined the fandom and fell in love with it pretty fast. It just feels right, she just is trans for me.

For the record, I'm trans myself, dating a trans person, with most of my friends being trans or otherwise queer in some way - healthy queer representation where gay and trans people are allowed to just live without their sexuality or gender being a spectacle or a drawn-out topic of discussion is really important for me.

I don't want to write about homophobia or transphobia because I've experienced enough of that myself irl and I'm tired of it. I'd much rather write about a world where we can live, make friends, have sex, fall in love, and fight without it being a problem how we identify or who we're interested in (unless I'm specifically trying to write about something like dysphoria or past comphet, which I do on occasion because it's a natural part of having grown up queer). Things like Fade's broad shoulders that she keeps hidden behind a massive collar make meaningful indicators of dysphoria and I want to represent it gently, in a way that can be relatable to other people who've gone through it and maybe help those who haven't understand what it's like a little bit.

This ended up longer than I meant! The TLDR is I don't have specific reasons but it means a lot to me. I'm not completely married to the hc and have written her cis a few times (she's cis in my cowboy au and a couple of oneshots I've written) but it's absolutely my favourite way to depict her.

[meraki-yao]

Is this a safe place? I sort of want to get something off my chest, but I have to do it anon because I’m scared. I’m a straight girl and a huge rwrb fan, and thus also a big fan of TZP and Nick. Lately I’m feeling more and more alienated in most of the fandom and I’m afraid I’m the problem? It’s just all this talk about topping and bottoming and what that means for how the characters are perceived that I absolutely do not get? Is it empowering in some way I’m not getting, because if not the feminist in me is sort of appalled.

It’s more or less the idea that bottoming is a little humiliating in a way that needs to be made jokes about that is bothering me. Like the bottom is always a little pathetic or desperate (like how women have historically been portrayed), and we should snicker when the top (or anyone) publicly «calls them out» for bottoming? Obviously not everyone does this but I see it more and more? And when it was just in fics and art I kept my mouth shut because I think that should be a free space, but now I see it in how the actors are talked about too. Like Alex is the top so TZP is made out to be hypermasculine and Henry was the bottom so Nick is either babied or made fun of? It’s bad for both imo. Why can’t tzp be babygirl sometimes and the focus be on his soft sides? All I see is talk about his body and how everyone wants him to top them. And then there’s Nick and how people are saying they are uncomfortable watching him act as a top in M&G, saying he will always be a bottom and that he is a slut etc. If it was an actress or female characters getting that treatment I would riot. And I guess I am a bit now in my cowardly anon way. Am I alone in feeling frustrated about this? Is it bad that I am? Please help me understand if I’m in the wrong.

Thank you for reaching out to me. As long as you’re respectful and not hurtful, you’re welcome here.

Actually, I’ve kind of wanted to write an essay on gay sex and the perception of gender in same-sex couples for a while now! So this might sound kind of academic, bear with me.

Preface: I identify as a straight cis girl, but I’ve been consuming both western and Asian queer media, both fiction and real person for years. This is my understanding of the matter, and I’m trying to be as sensitive and empathetic as I can be, but please note at the end of the day, I am not directly part of the queer community, therefore there may be certain things I miss, or a queer person will tell you otherwise. Also literally all my knowledge of sex comes from the internet, because Chinese culture literally does not talk about this at all. I gave my sister the talk instead of our parents. So please take what I say with a pinch of salt.

Also gonna talk about sex in an academic manner, but it’s still sex, so here’s your nsfw warning!

Ok here we go:

The power dynamic in sex position is fundamentally biological: the penetrator controls the pace and intensity of the act, thus is the active participant; the penetrated is in turn the passive. This is just the mechanics of the act: The penetrated, be it the woman in a straight couple or the bottom in a gay couple is put in the more vulnerable position, therefore the top, as the active participant is perceive as having more power, while the bottom as the passive participant is perceived as having less power.

And there are historical records of this perception: in ancient Greece, there was a common romantic dynamic called pederasty, a romantic and sexual relationship between an older man (the erastes/ to love) who acts as the active, dominant participant, aka the top, and a younger boy/ a teenager (the eromenos/ beloved) who acts as the passive, submissive participant, aka the bottom. It is speculated that this is the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. This practice was understood as educative, as a means for the older man to teach the younger “how to be more manly as to grow up into a man”. THAT BEING SAID BY TODAY’S STANDARDS THIS IS PEDOPHILA AND DEFINITELY NOT OKAY. On top of that, the perception of being gay in ancient Rome is “it’s okay if you’re gay, as long as you’re the top”. My point is this power imbalance when it comes to same-sex relationships has existed for a very, very long time.

But the thing is a lot of things have advanced in the past centuries, and the perception of sex and gender is one of them.

So firstly in terms of sex, people are much more flexible in terms of the power dynamics, which is where terms like “switch” (can be either top or bottom), “power bottom” (the penetrated controls the pace and intensity of the act) , “service top” (the penetrator focused on their partner’s needs and wishes instead of their own) and the whole BDSM category (which I’m personally not informed about or interested in). So I would say we’re mostly past the point of humiliating bottoms or perceiving bottoms as inherently weak, and use bottom more in terms of the mechanics.

That being said, the power being more balanced does not immediately take away the gender perception of the dynamic.

Since when comparing a gay couple’s sex act with a straight couple’s sex act, the woman has to be in a penetrated position as per biology and anatomy (at least traditionally speaking), the association drawn between the bottom and the woman becomes easy to make. In fact in China, all bottoms, regardless of gender/sexuality, are referred to with female terms, like “wife”, “princess”, “queen” etc. So bottoms tend to be feminized, or at least viewed as more effeminate. Again, this has changed and made more flexible/free in modern times, but this trend is still present.

But when it comes to applying the terms on the boys, something involved is also the audience’s own perception and understanding of gender representation. “Babygirl” is more referring to the “cute” kind of attractiveness than actually babying him, which with given material, tends to apply more to the perception and presentation of Nick than Taylor. That being said I have seen Taylor/Alex being referred to babygirl as well. It’s a little rare but it’s present. I wouldn’t really say Taylor’s hypermasculine either, but in relatively, his style and manners lean more towards the masculine side of the spectrum. But again it’s a matter of perception. Are the gendered terms used on the boys affected by the dynamic of their characters? To some degree, yes. But it’s also sometimes a genuine commentary on their own style as themselves.

As for Geroge, I personally haven’t seen those comments, but the problem with the comments lies in associating George with Nick as an individual and Henry as an individual: as in, they’re not treating George as George, they’re treating George as Nick, which might be why they have such comments. That being said, this is a piece of media, so each to their own.

I think the last thing I’m gonna say to end this is that please remember that this is all subjective perception. If you see something different, then that’s just what you see. Try seeing someone else’s perspective, and if you tried and it didn’t work, then let it be. You’re not in the wrong, it’s ok that you’re frustrated, but at least I don’t think the situation is as harmful as you might see it to be. These types of comments often are throwaway thoughts, so there’s also the question on how serious a comment is.

Hope this helped! Feel free to shoot me another ask if you still have questions.

[thistle-and-thorn]

Dying to know what you thought of the goldfinch. I never read it and am very 👀

thank god you sent this because i was about to make an incredibly long, rambling post about this but now you have prompted this, it feels less unhinged to put it into the form of a solicited answer. @.@

I....have mixed feelings about GF. Like, really mixed feelings. When I was in college, I took a seminar on opera history and we studied the opera, Wozzeck, and my professor described watching it as "an act of endurance." I felt sort of similarly about The Goldfinch. Like I'm glad I read it, and I can't wait to never read it again lmao.

It's a really well-written book--God, I want to write like her--and it is a compelling story with a lot of really great moments, but I found it to be overall less thematically incisive than TSH and, though TSH had some pacing issues, especially towards the end, The Goldfinch felt much, much more uneven. There's a lot of crossover between the two novels--unreliable narrators that are closeted queer men, so much drinking, so much drugs, etc--to the point where I thought a twist would be that they were set in the same universe and that Theo's father was somehow Richard Papen. But TSH felt bolder in a way, more satirically cutting, funnier, wilder, and younger. The Goldfinch is a sadder book, unrelentingly anxious and grief-stricken. And I do think this is sort of the point and I don't criticize it for that. It did make the melodrama of the novel's conclusion feel a little...i don't know...less justified and a little more gimmicky? And anxiety is a monotonous state so I think the GF lacked the emotional texture that made TSH much less....exhausting?

The Goldfinch is DT's ode to Dickens and there a lot of nods to Dickens in both direct references and style (the book is basically like what if uriah heep from david copperfield was psychosexually obsessed with pip from great expectations). There are certainly class dynamics here, episodic adventures, varied characters, and a lot of ruminations on providence but I did keep wondering what about Dickens drew her to tell this particular story which on a surface-level seems to ruminate on the impact of beauty, as opposed to the impact of wealth. In a lot of ways, TSH, with its commentary on class and wealth, even more over-the-top characters, feels like a better fit for Victorian literary structures.

In my wild and quite honestly unfounded speculation, I think the conclusion that I have come to is that it is a really, really personal book. Dickens was an intensely personal writer who used his own experiences, including those with his difficult father and poor upbringing and young infatuations as material, even in sort of unrealistic scenarios. I made a half-joking post about Brett Easton Ellis serving as DT's muse but I think....like...that may be true? I spent a lot of time, while reading this book, googling and reading about BEE and his erratic personality, contradictory and sometimes controversial and nihilistic media statements, and drug addiction. (Something that stood out to me was that BEE said that Patrick Bateman was based on his father, which he later retracted, to say that he felt like he was more like Patrick Bateman and wrote that book from a place of intense depression and isolation and consumption. This third-eying of oneself through the lens of the father is so Theo to me.) It's an examination of a self-destructive person but feels so clearly written from the point of view of someone who loves them--there is a real tenderness in how Theo is rendered that makes me think that it is not directly autobiographical about DT's own life but is the record of someone else who is loved and who is grieved. I have no evidence of this, truly, but this is what I keep thinking.

Some random other thoughts: one thing that @attonitos-gloria and I have talked a lot about is how DT always writes from the point of view of men who desire other men but whose desire is so hidden and buried that it becomes warped and we think that this is fascinating. @.@ The women in both TSH cannot be held as whole people in the eye of the narrator, their wholeness exists but beyond the borders of the male narrators' understanding of them. I also love how DT loves places and loves things. She creates fantasias of real places that feel like they influence the narrative and I think that's really cool.

TL;DR: I thought TSH was better, but GF was more personal and thus more messy. But it won a Pulitzer so literally what do i know.

[cryoriku]

(sorry to put this in main tags i had to tag it for my affection whos avoiding spoilers, i dont wanna be that guy so just skip this post)

ok gotta be honest i am straight up not enjoying tsc. idk sometimes i do. because i like the vibes of the series as a whole. but tsc ... what is the plot. is there a plot. i would be fine with things just happening because tbh the whole series has a weird structure and i can roll with unconventional writing if i just had even a sliver of an idea of what either jeremy or jeans goals were. i would even forfeit that just to know more about jeremy i figured i would know more about him by now almost 60% of the way thru the book. we were given very very good glimpses at the start and i sense trouble brewing beneath but at the same time i do genuinely believe he is a puppy dog guy i think both are true but i just wanna understand his whole deal more but we just keep idk way too quickly and repetitively going over jeans things. and like i dont fault jean at all for having Severe Problems it would be unrealistic if he didnt i just kinda wish the approach other characters have to him abt it was different and everything... rn its just.... euurg... ik theyre not foxes and not gonna handle it like foxes but damn do something different please i feel weird.

I ALSO HATE THAT THE AUTHOR FORGOT THIS IS MEANT TO BE 2007 THIS BOOK REEKS OF 2017-2019 SO BAD IT HURTS i know it seems little but it really is incredibly jarring for continuity when the entire world feels not right. not only is it a diff team with WILDLY different people but now theyve gone from nonqwerty flip phones and crt monitors and casual unsavory jokes about r*pe and gayness, to emojis and boba tea and an astounding majority of this sports team consisting of gay polyamorous and nonbinary persons that go unacknowledged bc its just that normal to them. its a DIFFERENT WORLD! (for the record idm the inclusion of lgbtq characters at all obv aftg was queer kandreil almost happened and im queer and nonbinary, nor that its included and accepted by the characters, but come on if you wanted to sell this as occuring in the pre-2010s year you said it did you REALLY need to preface things like someone being nonbinary and a nearly engaged couple on your team wanting to fuck another teammate's brains out for years with something, ANYTHING, to this cult survivor guy you just adopted. good GRAVY.)

[thegingerwrites]

✨✨Fic/Stats Game ✨✨

Rules: Give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fewest words.

1st most Hits: never too late to start again

My obikin magnum opus! This fic possessed me in February/March 2023 when I wrote most of it. It is the longest fic I have ever written, with the most chapters. I still really, really love it.

2nd most Kudos: worry me

I think of this as my empowering heterosexual blow job fic 😂 I read, amongst other things, a decent amount of romance, including regency romance (though most of it is queer) and after watching and obsessing over Bridgerton series 2, I really wanted to have Kate to suck Anthony's dick while he sits at his desk trying to work on the estate finances and what not. I love reading queer romance where that particular sexual position isn't seen as degrading, where the character A giving gets to feel almost powerful as character B comes apart beneath them. And I think Anthony would look really pretty undone like that. I guess other people agreed?

3rd most comments: Solitary as an Oyster

This stat owes everything to one person who went and commented on every! single!! chapter!!! last month and made my whole entire year 💕 There are a couple of really great advent challenge type fics in the drarry ship that I adore and I wanted to push myself to write something prompt based in a short amount of time. It felt a little bit like I was working in a vacuum over the course of the two weeks of daily posts but it definitely made me appreciate every bit of feedback I got on that fic. I think the title might throw people off a bit because it doesn't sound Christmas-y even though it's a quote from A Christmas Carol but I was too in love with the idea to change it at the time. That description of Scrooge seemed perfect for desert hermit Obi-Wan and I decided it had to stay.

4th most bookmarks: i guess you're all mine

This was my first ever obikin fic and at the time was like my thesis for the pairing. I was rotating the two of them in my head like 'why are they like this' and this fic was the result of that meditation. If there is a thesis statement for this fic, it is the two of them realizing that they already belong together, that a romantic relationship between the two of them coming to fruition is just a matter of looking at what is already there from a different angle. A few inches of space, a tilt of the head, everything changes while staying exactly the same.

5th most words: Solitary as an Oyster

I couldn't believe this stat. I feel like I have three wips that are about to blow this word count out of the water, including the Suddenly A Sith fic I'm almost done editing that grew legs and is probably going to be three chapters long. No wonder I burned out a bit after writing this one 😂 24k in two weeks, posting daily was too much for me 😅

Fewest words: Fireside Chats

I have a tendency to fall into the trap of thinking a piece of writing isn't worth posting to ao3 if it's not like 1k long. I think it's like the extra step of formatting or something. I'm not going to link this particular fic but it is posted on my ao3. It's a kylux prompt fill from 2016 (almost 10 years ago jfc). My writing has grown and changed a lot since then but I find it interesting to keep a record of that growth alive there. Maybe I need to make more of an effort to post shorter works to ao3?

This was such an interesting way to look at these fics. Thanks for the tag @teaandjumpers and @ragnarlothcat!

I've been offline a bit over the last few days so I'm not sure who has done this already. But if you want to do this and haven't been tagged, consider yourself tagged! And give me a tag so I can see you talk about your fics 📝

[ocheeva]

5 Favourite Characters Poll (Tag Game)

i was tagged by @pangzi @melodious-tear and @psychic-waffles ♥♥♥

picking characters was pretty easy actually, i know exactly who i love most. the only hard thing was picking between xiao hua, shen qingqiu, and himemiya anthy but i ended up going with my bestie ♥

Rules: make a poll with five of your all time favourite characters and then tag five people to do the same. See which character is everyone's favourite.

Tagging: @astrangedoor @lealdog @mishikaiya @jauffre & @margomadisons uwu

propaganda under the cut, not a formal part of the game but i love talking about these bitches!

commander shepard made me who i am and i'm not joking. i'm always a hoe for duty-bound characters and she is such a perfect example of what makes me love a character like that. she's also someone i roleplayed for years, i met some of my oldest friends & my soul sister because of her (thirteen years in august!) and when i need to stand up for myself or others with people i don't know i still model my approach on her, as well as a myriad other interactions (due to the autism it's easier to ask 'what would shepard do?' than to make something up). she means the WORLD to me!!

nie huaisang charmed me when a friend played a character based off him in a d&d oneshot and went on to become my favourite character in one of my favourite books. i'm deep into chinese literature and drama because of this little man. he was a gateway drug to SO many experiences, I've read ancient erotica and poetry because of him + gained a deeper understanding of chinese history and culture. and a bitch loves learning! but he's also just a character who gets to me in a really special way. he means things to me i can't even express. what a guy. god.

captain janeway came into my life when i was thirteen and star trek: voyager was on tv on some weeknight, and i was bewitched. my mother enjoyed it and i would sometimes join her, but after a while i barely could because janeway made me realise i was queer and i couldn't have those feelings when i felt unsafe and exposed. but, man, i never forgot her and i've rewatched voyager in its entirety twice as an adult. i'm overwhelmed every time. if she smiled at me and told me i'd be okay i actually believe i would. i love her. i've loved her for twenty-three years. loving her is such a core part of my personality it's ridiculous.

xie yuchen/xiao hua was mentioned to me when my didi and i talked about who i might get along with in the mess that is the dmbj franchise. among ridiculous claims, magnets that can affect time and your feelings, and snakes that can be used as video recorders thanks to their pheromones, he is a shining beacon of sensibility. he's been called 'competency porn made flesh' by more than one person for good reason. he's a big reason why i started watching terrible dramas and read terrible books but he makes every second SO worth it.

finally, estraven became a dear friend last july when i read tlhod. it was a slow read at first but around the halfway point i was suddenly rendered breathless; estraven as a character proved to be so much more than i expected. reading a single description of him by the main character brings tears to my eyes because he is so much. i'm crying a little just writing this! he's that same kind of duty-bound and loyal that makes me insane as shepard and janeway, and i'm so grateful he brought me across the gobrin ice. i left a piece of my heart there. i need to crochet a shawl dedicated to this book (and him) so i can wrap myself in my own feelings about it. the power of his nonbinary alien pussy is out of this world.

[lothli]

About Tumblr, My Writing, and Finding Home

This is a personal post unrelated to news about my writings, and as such, is quite possibly dreary and uninteresting. I do apologize. As a courtesy, I've included a Keep Reading.

I spent around a month on Tumblr, from the end of September to the start of October, and I've observed many interesting posts from many people. I've also learned new things, such as what a whump is and other such writblr-exclusive terms.

But in a way, the more I learn, the more I understand the differences between myself and the wider community.

Most of the time, I do not write romance, especially regarding shipping of existing characters. I understand that this is quite an important part of the Tumblr community, what with the "antis" and the "pro-shippers" all running amok. For the record, I still consider myself a pro-shipper; what other writers wish to write is none of my business. It's just something I find little interest in doing.

I am a queer writer, but I feel like my work is not "queer" in the same way as many other very talented queer writers have. This kind of leans into the lack of romance; for my original characters, you'll never know if they're gay or ace or bi or het, simply because it's just not something I ever have them think about.

I find myself lost, unable to find a real home for my original works. Tumblr and Ao3 are suitable places for An Unmaking to live, and I am glad that the folks here seem to enjoy them somewhat. However, long posts don't seem to be in vogue on Tumblr, which makes some sense. This is a blogging site, not a writing site.

My one-shots fit in alright, but I also have short stories that simply don't fit here. Serialization is something I find great difficulty with on Tumblr; it's why I've given up posting An Unmaking here.

Ao3 and FF.net are both fan-fiction-dominated pages. Sure, I could probably post original works on both, but it doesn't feel quite right. It's not a home.

I've looked into other websites, but Wattpad seems unappealing in general, and I've never heard anyone say good things about the site outside of nostalgia.

RoyalRoad makes sense, but the demographics feel strange as well. I am not a LitRPG or Portal Fantasy writer, and the works feel pretty skewed toward a straight male-leaning audience. This isn't criticism; it's simply that I am not straight or male. In the same way that I do not fit in Tumblr's shipping and romance, I do not fit in RoyalRoad's power fantasies.

I'm not someone who chases stats or engagement. I simply want a place where my original works feel at home, where it feels like my work is something that belongs, instead of a strange hanger-off that does not quite fit in with the rest.

For my Secret History readers, an analogy: A creature of Winter and Sky is looking to settle. But the first is a place that is too full of yearning, too dappled for it to truly rest. The next is warm and comforting but also sharp in a way it is not. From place to place, it flits, looking for somewhere to make its home but never truly finding it.

If you've read this far, thank you for indulging in a painfully conspicuous and inexperienced outsider in her ramblings. If you have any suggestions for where my works may roost, please let me know in all the myriad of ways that Tumblr lets you interact with me. Frankly, I've probably missed some. Maybe there's some tag that fits me that I'm unaware of, too.

None of this will affect An Unmaking, not that I've been consistent with its upload schedule. Thank you for reading.

-- Lothli

[prototypesteve]

2024 summarized.

Stayed calm through and ongoing cancer scare. The antigen numbers are still high, even though ultrasound and other checks didn’t find anything obvious. So on April 27th (2025) I’m going for an MRI. If this is something, then it’s very likely a highly treatable thing. So much so that the specialist prefers to use the term carcinoma rather than cancer.

Went on two trips to the UK, to break my compulsive habit of going on the same BC road trip. I fell in love with international travel. I live on the touristy west side of Canada, where tourism and a short travel season have made domestic travel so expensive and carbon intensive (a burger in Tofino gets there by two or three ships, and many different trucks across mountain ranges) than international travel (one plane ride, lots of electric transit, and lots of walking).

Managed my disorders. Went back on Concerta to take my ADHD. Then with the breathing room that gave me, I addressed my anxiety and depression with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. I now have ways to respond to and get past thoughts that used to create anxious or depressive feelings which lead to behaviours like shutting down, avoiding, falling apart, stalling etc.

Came out to my oldest evangelical friends. Many didn’t reply. Whatever. Four of them were super accepting and I’m honestly getting tired of all the crying from unexpected relief/joy, okay? Enough of that.

Joined the volunteer leadership team for the Pride Team Member Network at work (if you’re read Loveless, think “Pride Soc.”). I went from coming out in mid-2023 to writing regular columns on sexual orientations, co-hosting queer pride events, and recording courseware on pronouns and gender-neutral language, for a company with like 5,000+ people.

Just really focused on Alice Oseman’s advice shared through her character, Sunil, in Loveless:

“There’s nothing you have to do except be.

Which is why, on the UK trip, I had some really good hangout time with God. Or more accurately, God kept crashing my vacation with little things that would mean absolutely nothing to eight billion people, but that always stopped me in my tracks. We have the kind of blunt rapport that is the hallmark of a deity and their absolutely broken and rebuilt student. God gives the answer, and then I eventually ask the question I was scared to ask. So in this case I got bombarded with unmistakable versions of the answer, “Yes” to which I finally confessed the question, “Is this real?” about my asexuality.

I know that last paragraph was weird. What would be weirder is if I had hidden that. If I’m going to be brutally real about my sexuality and my mental health, and my actual health, it’d be kind of tacky to think you’re not ready to hear about the user interface I run, when I connect with The Bigger Thing.

[todayisafridaynight]

A Little Late and the way you already picked up on it despite not really hardcore seeking out ninkyo (yakuza-genre) media says enough, but I wanted to second that it is absolutely true queer appeal is inextricable from ninkyo as a whole. That's why RGG is the way it is!

If Nakano and Motomiya--both incredibly prolific ninkyo actors, with Motomiya producing+writing for+leading the biggest series out there right now, Nihon Touitsu/Unification of Japan--can sit down to talk, describe ninkyo as a genre about men falling in love with men, the "ultimate BL," and carry on without missing a beat, I think that speaks for itself. And like, they're not wrong at all--even if it was a little tongue-in-cheek and even if the subtext is rarely intentional, many if not most ninkyo stories are fundamentally about love.

Why that matters is because ninkyo specifically portrays the idealized version of the yakuza--"ninkyo" translates to "chivalry." There's very little that could be considered ideal about being a yakuza nowadays; that much is explored in non-ninkyo yakuza media. Of course there are the universal ninkyo themes of being able to make something of yourself from nothing, of defending the defenseless, of fighting back against injustice from the wrong side of the law when the "right side" isn't serving you, but at the core of many of these stories, there's one thing in particular that makes it worth it to be a yakuza.

Ninkyo depicts a world of extremes--often unthinkable to an ordinary person--which the characters are willing to bear so long as they can keep the only people who truly recognize them in their lives, and so long as they can have it reciprocated. To trust others and to be trusted in return, as Mine says. For them to go to those lengths for a fundamental human desire resonates with queer people in a world that asks for so much resilience from them just for existing. I think this is also why the stated reason Mine fell in love with Daigo was simply because he saw him as a man.

It's not always as clear-cut what kind of love it is as with Mine, but I don't think it's done cynically like you see in actual queerbait. I'd say it comes from an earnest place, raw and without self-consciousness. I think the blurred lines and openness to interpretation are also a big part of the appeal. Not just in the obvious sense of being presented with these intense bonds that are open to interpretation, but I can imagine there's also comfort to be found in the depiction of love that's hard to define in exact terms and in recognizing it doesn't always need to be defined in and of itself.

To some degree, within the history of ninkyo, I think RGG and Nihon Touitsu genuinely revolutionized how openly these topics are discussed. Ninkyo has always primarily been a genre of film, and even with Nihon Touitsu being a direct-to-video series, if you're queer or a woman or both, it's common to feel like you don't belong in the ninkyo space. Going to theaters or renting tapes or DVDs without feeling judged--or apprehensive about the content's depiction of queerness and/or women--has often been trickier than it had to be.

It's specifically the accessibility and culture around video games and online streaming, as well as the relative privacy and ability to curate your circles, that has allowed for these series to reach fans like that--so much so there's even a term for women who got into ninkyo via interpreting it through a queer lens, ninkyo joshi. Nihon Touitsu is actually what popularized that phenomenon in recent years.

There's also something to be said about RGG and Nihon Touitsu as media and the people behind them being more welcoming towards queer and/or female fans than a lot of ninkyo is in general. You won't ever catch me saying RGG doesn't have a history of queerphobia and misogyny, but at the same time, I think demonstrating they could handle characters like that respectfully went a long way, in addition to RGGS having a pretty good track record as a workplace. Similar deal with Nihon Touitsu and Motomiya doing his best to gear the series more towards a general audience and his commentary on multiple occasions agreeing his and Yamaguchi's characters' relationship reads as a BL. Even if that's as far as it goes, it does mean something to be acknowledged.

Anyways uhhh do you think Mine was an OG ninkyo danshi... like A Ninkyo Joshi But A Guy... I feel like if you're living in Japan, especially in an area with a lot of actual yakuza activity like Minato as Mine does, you'd only really come away with the romanticized ideals about the bonds between men Mine has from ninkyo... personally I just think it'd be super funny if he was an OG ninkyo joshi who transitioned into a ninkyo danshi, like when gay trans guys have a "fujoshi phase"... the call was coming from inside the house etc etc...

thank you for the history lesson on the yakuza genre, its relationship with queerness and people being able to acknowledge those undertones, and jp society's relationship with the genre. its great that big names in the genre are making it more socially accessible to everyone and not making it feel limited to a certain group of people :)

bout mine being a fan of the genre before. Being A Part Of The Genre so to speak tho, i think its a fair assumption to say he was a fan. if he wasn't beforehand, then seein them blokes sacrifice themselves for daigo def made him one lmao

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🦇 Truly, Madly, Deeply Book Review 🦇

❓ #QOTD Do you believe in love at first sight? ❓ 🦇 Sparks fly when a lovelorn romance novelist and a divorce lawyer who has sworn off relationships agree to cohost a podcast series offering dating advice to viewers. As a bestselling romance novelist, everyone thinks Truly Livingston is an expert on happily-ever-afters. Unfortunately, she feels like an imposter after catching her fiancé cheating learning that her parents are separating. When she meets Colin McCory, she's anything but ready for a relationship, even if Colin drives her a little crazy. Okay, a LOT crazy. Can he change her shattered view on love, or are there no more happily ever afters?

💜 Excuse me while I shove my entire fist into my mouth to squeal in delight from the absolute cuteness of this. For the record, I read most of this between 10pm and 1am with my girlfriend fast asleep beside me. I lost track of how many times I had to stop reading to silence myself before some giddy, disgustingly adorable, definitely disruptive sound of glee escaped my body to keep from waking her up.

💜 Now that we got that out of the way, why are we not talking about this book? You bookish bats LOVE asking about book boyfriends/girlfriends. Have you MET Colin? You need to meet Colin. Just, trust me. Listen to me. Meet this man.

💜 It's 2am as I write this all heart-eyed, with a fire alarm chirping across the house and a storm raging outside, and I don't care about any of it because this. WAS SO. CUTTTE. From the MOMENT Truly sets eyes on Colin, all bets are off. She describes him as gorgeous, her breath hitches, she (a writer) stumbles over her words. We expect that from plenty of rom-coms, right? But the moment they get at it, their witty banter CAPTIVATES, chemistry off the charts, screaming off the page. I told you I had to pause reading multiple times? Every, EVERY time, it was because of a quick-wit exchange between these two. Truly looks at him appreciatively at first, sure, but otherwise tries shutting her heart off. Colin, though? Colin is full-on SMITTEN over her. He's lost from the beginning and KNOWS IT from the very start. And then we get to the smut and woooooh I had to get out of bed to find water and the nearest AC vent.

💜 And then. AND THEN they both realize they're bi but have never been with someone of the same sex, and maybe don't quite feel "queer enough" because of it (please, check the quotes I shared!). Bierasure is a real thing, but it's not often that we talk about internalized biphobia (a topic I haven't seen in a book since Perfect on Paper by Sophie Gonzales). Bisexuality is part of the queer spectrum. We're not confused, and who we're with does not change or negate our sexuality. This was such a perfect scene to read at the start of Pride Month.

💙 The pacing for this one was a bit off for me. While I loved every scene, the momentum doesn't pick up until the very end, and by then, we're nearing the epilogue. The Parent Trap-esque sub-plot, while important to Truly's character development, felt awkward and a bit immature (though perhaps fitting for a romantic who defined love based on her parents' relationship). My biggest hang-up is the lack of real conflict, which is more internal (Truly's doubts about love) than external (which only manifest as Truly keeps Collin at arm's length...briefly).

🦇 Recommended to fans of Practice Makes Perfect in search of a steamy, queer rom-com that's full of tension, heat, and witty banter.

✨ The Vibes ✨ 📚 Bi4Bi / Queer Romance 📚 Contemporary Rom-Com 📚 Parent Trap Sub-Plot 📚 Opposites Attract 📚 Forced Proximity 📚 Witty Banter 📚 Musical Theatre References 📚 He Falls First

💬 Quotes ❝ No one, and I mean no one, deserves to be living rent free inside your head if they aren’t making you come so hard your brain leaks out your ears.” ❞ ❝ “Maybe I don’t want to play nicely with you.” ❞ ❝ Words were her thing, and Colin gave as good as he got. ❞ ❝ Colin’s praise was like swallowing the sun. It left her hot all over, flushed not just in the face but from her hairline down to her feet, damp in the creases of her elbows and her knees, uncomfortably sweaty all over. ❞ ❝ There’s no such thing as being queer enough. Action and attraction are two different things. You could go the rest of your life never dating a woman and it wouldn’t change a thing. If anything, I think you’re the perfect person to talk about bi- erasure in media because you spent the last six years in a straight- presenting relationship that was queer because you’re queer. And the gender of your partner? Doesn’t change that.” ❞ ❝ Truly (11: 16 p.m.): Screw you, McCrory. Colin (11: 16 p.m.): Promises, promises. ❞ ❝ As much as she got a thrill from playing verbal tug-of-war, there was an argument to be made for this tenderness, in laying down her sword and letting Colin hold her. ❞ ❝ With anyone else she might’ve considered the moment broken, but with him it just felt like turning to the next page in a book she’d never read. A book she’d left lingering on her nightstand for weeks, picking it up and putting it back down, her hopes for it so high she feared there was no earthly way the reality of it could live up to her expectations, too afraid she wouldn’t like the ending. She didn’t know what would happen next, but for the first time, the thought didn’t make her want to close the book and it didn’t make her want to flip ahead. ❞ ❝ I do like you. I like your obscure facts and how your eyes light up when you talk about them, when you share them with me. I like it that you aren’t afraid to call me out on my bullshit and that for some reason that’s completely beyond me, you haven’t given up on me even though I’ve given you a hundred opportunities and a thousand reasons why. For some reason you like me and most of the time I’m not even sure why, but you do and I like that, too. I pretty much melt when you say my name, it sounds better when you say it, and when I’m with you, it’s easy to forget what I’m afraid of, but when I’m not, I guess I have a tendency to get in my head.” ❞ ❝ “You said it yourself; we’ve all got flaws. But the day I don’t want you is the day the earth starts rotating backward, okay?” “That’s a hell of a bold statement from a guy who’s known me two months.” “Remember this moment in twenty years. Can’t wait to tell you I told you so.” ❞ ❝ “I see, caffeine and kisses are the way to your heart in the morning. Good to know.” ❞ ❝ Love launched ships and started wars and inspired sonnets and drove people to madness. Love was heaven and hell, sin and redemption. It was as real to her as any other force of nature, hurricanes and earthquakes and lightning storms and meteor strikes. It fascinated her as much as it terrified her as much as it humbled her and— She’d spent her whole life trying to put it into words, eighty thousand of them at a time. Love had to be enough. There was no point if it wasn’t. ❞

[mshexley]

Question this is going back to the whole Giselle debate on bleach.

But how do you think how Kubo handles his lgbtq and trans coded character? Are they good or they could be be improved. I have been seeing mix reactions saying Kubo is anti lgbtq and transphobic because his characters. But to me I think he handle them pretty well. I can see how people can say why since how he handle Giselle and Charlotte but then you have characters like Soi fon, Chizuru, and Yumichika yes they don't get much spotlight authentic rest of the cast but in some ways they all have good personality

Personally, I feel like it usually depends on a person's experience. I also like to add the disclaimer that I'm not trans or Japanese, so take my stance with a grain of salt. I also want to make it clear that I'm not making excuses for him.

TLDR: He wants to clearly add more queer characters to his work but he doesn't seem to know anything about queer culture even in Japan which is where you would assume he gets most of his inspiration but he seems to take his knowledge from a very pop-culture view of queer people.

I don't think it's out of malice but he can definitely improve by putting in the research work especially if there's going to be another Bleach arc and especially for any added arcs of Burn The Witch and he wants to add more queer characters.

(The longer version is under the cut)

But in general, I feel Kubo has the same approach to writing queer characters in the way that early Togashi (HxH, Yu Yu Hakusho) did. In that way where he's trying but it's....just not good. It just reads that way to me.

And it very much paints the picture that Kubo wants to add queer characters to his stories because they tend to fit the themes of his works but he is not around a lot of queer folks and doesn't know much about the culture and what he does know is formed from a sort of pop-culture understanding of Japanese LGBT+ culture and when mixed with Japan's own queerphobia, it just doesn't mix well.

And its funny to bring up Soi Fon and Chizuru because I think they're a clear example of this as both fall into the "predatory lesbian" trope. Chizuru with Orihime and Soi Fon with Yoruichi. When Kubo writes well, he writes WELL but when he flops, HE FLOPS and he tends to drop the ball with a lot of characters. The only thing we know about Chizuru is that inappropriately touches Orihime a lot and the only thing we know about Soi Fon is that she's hardheaded and has been obsessed with Yoruichi since she was a child. And I can.....sort of give it a pass cause it was the early 2000s and...dear god those years were the worst.

In the cases of Yumichika and Charlotte, it feels like they can be read as deep but the whether it's intentional or not is up for debate just because of Kubo's track record. Like Yumichika and Charlotte are the best queer characters he's written because of how they both can be read. And again, there's no telling if that's intentional or not and that's what holds him back.

I already touched on Yumichika as a closeted gay man who lashes out on other queer people and I think the biggest issue is that there isn't a much clearer emphasis on Yumichika being the one in the wrong because Kubo has no issue with named characters getting told off for being wrong, especially when they're being backwards and narrow-minded. IMO, I think a small clapback of Giselle saying "you smell semen often" would've been way more relatable in terms of queer insulting and I feel like it would've put them on even ground somewhat but again, Kubo wouldn't know that because he doesn't know much about the cultures of queer people.

Charlotte gives strong drag queen vibes for me. Like compared to the drag queens I watch, Charlotte feels very much like them and everything about her personality is a campy bit right down to her super long attack names.

I also see some folks not want to claim Giselle which is their prerogative but it sets the precedent that queer people have to fit a certain mold in order to be queer and I feel like it's unfair to Giselle as a character because she's the not the only character that is morally bad. Mayuri exists and he shows no remorse for constantly abusing Nemu and takes pride in his experiments on other species like Uryu's grandfather and the Arrancar, Szayelaporro exists and he was so bad he went to Hell, there's also Nnoitora who actively attacks Nel because she was a woman ranked higher than him. Even among the Quincies, there's Quilge Opie who takes pleasure in ruthlessly murdering Arrancar prisoners and PePe who's power is to literally force people to "love" him, even using it on other Quincies.

I would understand if Giselle was isolated in that type of personality but the reason people "aren't talking about it" is because it comes with the food at this point. The Sternritters are literally modeled after Nazis (the guy that leads them literally built his power by killing the "mixed blooded Quincy), most of them are gonna have personalities that people may find deplorable.

In general, if Kubo wants to commit to it, he should put in the work and learn more about Queer culture because there are different implications when you write queer characters a certain way. Because I feel like with his style of writing, he can make it work.

[cailynwrites]

Harry Potter Rec Fest Day 11 - Dark Fics

I don't seek out a lot of dark fics. I'll read them if they cross my browser or kindle, but I gravitate more toward fluff and save the dark stuff for "published fiction" or just "the news". That's probably why these fics stuck out to me particularly, because I wasn't left with the warm fuzzy feeling. Some dark things for @hprecfest day 11 ...

The Unknown Door by @amywaterwings Pairing: Draco x Harry Word count: 60,970 Rating: E

This fic was part of @hderised last year. Boy does it pack a wallop of feelings. Get ready for addiction, death, child neglect, torture, people experiencing homelessness, discrimination against all kinds of people and creatures. It's a lot. It's also really real because of all that. @amywaterwings creates an apartment building filled with unique and uniformly loveable (but still dark) original characters and the lore goes deep. A beautifully despairing peek into a less magical part of Magical Britain and how hopeless it can feel even when you are in a position to help. It does have a happy ending though!

Death is Not Fit to House Love by @starlitsilvereyes Pairing: Draco x Harry Word count: 20,919 Rating: E

I'm hesitant to say too much about this fic for fear of spoiling it. This was written for @hd-fan-fair Career Fair this year and I screamed aloud at the end. Featuring Politician Draco and Hit-Wizard Harry Potter.

Serious content warnings: Character death, discussion of suicide, violence

A Nasty Piece of Work written and recorded by @picascribit Pairing: Fenrir Greyback/OFC Word count: 11,198 Length: 1:10:00 Rating: E

Hard to believe that this is written by the same @picascribit who brought us cute little Scorbus at Protego Club with all their queer friends. This fic is traditional DARK. Like make you sick to your stomach dark. But also such an interesting character study. Recorded excellently, as usual, by the author themself.

Serious content warnings: Violence, Rape, Non-con, Underage, Major Character Death - this checks all the boxes, literally all the boxes on AO3

************************************************************************

And a couple of little self-recs ...

White, the colour of flowers by @lumosatnight Podfic read by Cailynwrites Pairing: Draco x Harry Word count: 3,203 Length: 23:35 Rating: T

A beautiful, poetic multi-ending fic taking place during the second war. Draco has Hanahaki disease and it's angsty, but it has a happy ending. Mostly it's just like floating through sad space, but like, in a good way.

Devour the One You Love also by @starlitsilvereyes Podfic read by Cailynwrites for @hp-mcd-fest 2023 Pairing: Draco x Harry Word count: 28,102 Length: 2:33:56 Rating: E

@starlitsilvereyes writes an incredible story here. It's non-linear, which I personally think is incredibly difficult and impressive. It's suspenseful, has jump scares, and ends with horrible horrible things happening. Possibly the darkest fic I've ever read. Enjoy!

Content warning: Violence, death, psychological abuse, self-harm, dub-con, cannibalism