#gay aren't enough word for describe their friendship/relationship

[cannedf0wer]

まほやくは 良いぞ！💪👍👌✌️🫶

(素敵なストーリーに心癒される音) (複雑すぎるキャラクター達の関係性に頭が煮える音) (月と猫が騒ぐ音)(ストーリーが辛すぎて心が���ける音) (キャラクターの成長にニッコリする音) (キャラクターの葛藤に咽び泣く音) (かっこいいバトルシーンの音) (エアニュー・ランブル花火の音) (SSRカード確定演出の音) (まほやく最高！)

i made a huge mahoyaku guide/infodump for anyone who wants to get into it but doesn't know where to start!! :3 i explained most of the character's backstories and stuff as well.. feel free to share if you want.. (this was written around the beginning of ms2 ch10 coming out) (also check out healingbonds for story translations!)

more under the cut ⬇ :)

northern country 💜

central country 💛

eastern country 💙

western country 💗

southern country 💚

and some extra stuff !!

[silverslipstream]

the big ventbowski

CW: POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING TOPICS

The war in my head between 'are you straight and you've just co-opted a queer label because you get along better with the people more commonly found in queer communities and you identify with the culture' or 'are you still deep in internalised self-doubt due to low self-esteem, lack of experience and a significant absence of a stable queer community in every place you've ever lived?' is still raging on in my head.

God, sometimes (right now?) I feel terrible writing the word 'queer'. For me, it's the most comfortable label and way of expressing myself, but what if it's not my word to feel comfortable about? What if it's not describing me at all? What if this is all a placebo effect caused by a few misinterpreted chemical signs and my hopeless romanticism? Why can't I just fucking know?

I feel eighteen and conflicted all over again. I often say I was in denial for a very long time before I came out, and honestly I think I've never not been in denial about it. That hurts to say. Especially after I did the whole rigmarole of coming out as bisexual, crying to friends, putting up with homophobic attitudes and parental disapproval - it can't all be for nothing, right? It just can't.

It probably helps that I've had very little experience in the romantic sense. I was never going to be seen as a desirable person in school - too geeky, too disabled, too quiet. The most I elicited was a strange kind of mascot-like, objectifying sympathy from the popular girls, which was pretty gross. Especially when their boyfriends were the ones calling me things like cripple and retard, mocking the way I walked, shoving me in the stairwells, tripping me to every kind of ground they could find.

Even now, I don't get a lot of attention. I hate myself for phrasing it that way - it makes me feel pathetic, needy, desperate - but that's the easiest term to use. When out with my straight guy friends, I'm invisible, the smallest, skinniest, quietest. I feel like a wafer-thin slice of cake prised gingerly from the platter - different enough to be seen as other but not different enough that the difference itself is seen to matter. When they make a crack about me being 'gay' or 'liking men', I laugh, but I bite back the retort on my tongue.

I'm bisexual, you know this.

So what, mate? Isn't that just gay with extra steps? Or are you saying that 'cos you can't pull women anyway? Are you that desperate?

Am I?

On the other hand, I don't often 'go out' socialising with my queer friends, but sometimes even just being around them I feel so... fake. They're much more safe in their identities, secured within their respective labels' communities. The loneliness of being the only queer cis guy in my friend group hits me again and again, and then the subsequent guilt whips right back. Your friends are wonderful! They like you! You like them! Stop being ungrateful for the people you already have! But I can't shake the sense that I'm this generic indecisive cis guy spattered across their star-trails, like biting into an M&M and feeling your teeth crunch on a hidden piece of tinfoil.

Our area is pretty conservative in a country gradually sliding to the right side of the political compass. There's very little LGBTQ+ representation or community spots. Our university has a LGBTQ+ society, but it's very small, underexposed and chronically ignored by the student union and the university themselves. I look at all the other universities online, see their bustling queer communities, and feel oddly cheated. That should be me, I think in my head. University was supposed to be this place of uncoupling from my old self. I love my current friends, of course I do. It's just... I wish it was easier to meet more queer people in my area, to have more LGBTQ+ friendships that aren't determined by the landmine-dotted social islands of dating apps or tempered by the expectations of romantic and sexual relationships. To have someone else who understands what it's like to be the quiet geeky cis guy who sits on the fence of the straight/queer divide, yet you can't tell which way he's gonna fall.

It's not like I don't cultivate my own distinctive image: far from it. I wear glasses and turtlenecks, collared shirts, blue jeans and brown boots where the sole flaps precariously off the front. I've built that image piece by piece over the last couple of years, and independent of my sexuality and identity, I love that for myself. I think I have style, I'm recognizable, I like the way I look. This would've been an alien concept three years or so ago, where I hated my acne, my awkward limbs, the hard angles of my damaged muscles and crooked bones (but let's save the internalised ableism for another day, shall we?)

But the self-doubt creeps in, those thoughts that weed their way through saying things like people like you can't be pretty and who are you trying to fool? Maybe I'm trying to fool myself.

It doesn't help that the pittance of romantic experiences I do have are mostly negative. My first kiss was non-consensual: I was drunk, they were not, and they slowly but surely steered the entire night into a kiss I'd never asked for, manipulating me into something I'd never wanted. I can still remember their hand in my hair, holding the back of my head as I tried to pull away. Afterwards, they smiled, kissed me again on the cheek, like it was something we shared, something I'd wanted. I just felt sick and lost and so, so confused.

The first time I took a girl home, it was November of my first year in uni. She was a friend of a friend, who'd come up to drink and go clubbing with us. This time, the attraction was mutual - I still remember her shy eyes, her darting glances at me over the rim of a glass, the whisper of her voice in my ear asking if I wanted to go to the smoking area. After the club, we went back to my flat. I kissed her while Billy Joel sang 'Vienna' with my room bathed in half-light from the bathroom's fluorescent strips, and for a mesmerising, teetering second, it was everything. I remember thinking, it can't be this easy, not to want, not to be wanted.

Short answer: it wasn't. That's another story for another day, but suffice it to say after two months, I lost my main group of friends and was left almost totally alone, clinging to counselling like a punctured liferaft in the middle of the endless Pacific.

After that came a long drought of anything romantic, occasionally sprinkled with a flirty stranger or overly aggressive guy who thought 'being queer too' was all the consent he needed.

Then I met a boy.

It was through Hinge, because of course it was. He was shy, quiet, had dyed red hair, perpetually nervous. On our first date, it took him an hour just to compliment me, and when I gave a compliment back he looked at me like I'd just thrown a stick of dynamite at his head. He took me to buy my bisexual flag water bottle (one of the two pieces of outwardly LGBTQ+ paraphernalia I own) and that was it. We dated again, and again. He bought me birthday presents and wrapped my scarf around both of our necks. Around the lake where my late grandfather used to fish, he told me (face redder than his hair) that he wanted to kiss me. I was bowled over. We didn't kiss until our next date: drinking schnapps in the harsh fluorescent lighting of my university kitchen, I noticed his gaze lingering on my lips every time I lowered my cup.

I know what you want, I thought, I've watched so many films, read so many novels that frame this exact moment in time. So I asked him if he'd kiss me, and he did. I felt nothing.

How? How? Granted, it wasn't the world's best kiss (he approached my lips with all the finesse of a train crash) but I liked this guy, didn't I? Sure he had his flaws and things that made me hesitate, but that surely didn't outweigh the butterflies I'd had while texting him, the way I loved to fluster him and make him smile, his red hair and freckles and shyness? It should've been the Heartstopper gateway of my life, or at least the first major step of my burgeoning bisexual arc. Instead, this particular rollercoaster flew off the rails and straight into freefall.

That was five months ago. We kissed a few more times and he improved, but I could never shake that hollowness. We broke up three days before Valentine's, because I freaked out at the idea of doing romantic shit with a guy who I was so indecisive about. I kept telling myself it was for the best, that his red flags had been valid, and I couldn't afford to let the rose-tinted glasses of 'first same-sex relationship' blur them out. But was that really why, or was it just the realisation that kissing a man had done nothing for me, that I was straight and had been lying to myself the whole time?

Since I broke up with him, I've been so lost. Am I bisexual? Straight? Does the -sexual part of the label even apply to me? Am I asexual? I removed the part where I stated I was bisexual from my Tumblr pinned post months ago, so am I kicking myself back into the closet, or is the closet just a shape I scrawled on the wall behind me in crayon, a jagged attempt to belong to something, to share an experience with someone?

I can't answer these questions. That's the worst part. I want to be loved and to be in love, to find that person I'm waiting for.

But how will I know what they look like, how they might identify? How do I know I won't completely overlook them because of the labels I set for myself and the turmoil in my mind?

How will I know that I deserve them?

[toraonice]

I don't think you're homophobic, a bad person, or any of that and am sorry you're getting outright hate BUT I think you're missing a lot of the point. I am not going to presume that you aren't LGBT, but I am unsure if you understand how LGBT people are irritated at how het pairings as "overt" as v*****ri are typically accepted as they are (/cont)

(cont) yet so many gay pairings portrayed in the same vein are “ambiguous” or argue that it isn’t canon. The “they’re DEEPER than romantic love” is also hurtful as people aren’t discriminated against for friendships and erases what makes them so special to LGBT fans.

(cont 3/3) Essentially, I think although you have good intentions in trying to be objective, with what I said in mind when you add separate commentary such as pointing out that soulmates can be platonic or the late night drama thing it does deeply hurt people, because it sounds like you’re trying to downplay them—intentionally or otherwise

Hello! First of all, thank you for making a concrete example and articulating your point logically!

I’m taking this occasion to write a long reply that encompasses my view of Victor and Yuuri’s relationship also with regard to heterocentricity. It’s long, but hopefully it’s exhaustive… 

I think some people may be a bit wary about this topic and interpret my words in a negative way. For example, by saying that their bond is “deeper than romantic love” I am not trying to say that romantic love is a bad thing or that they cannot be or become lovers. I actually see it as something positive, not negative. There are people who know each other, start dating, have a passionate love story and then break up within a year. I believe that, since the bond between Victor and Yuuri is not limited to romantic love (which can be included) but also includes respect, friendship and other feelings, this makes their relationship deeper than two people only bound by romantic feelings.

Also, when I said that soulmates can be platonic and that the Japanese Monday dramas are not necessarily centered on love stories, I was trying to be fair to all interpretations. I don’t mean “so this proves that Victor and Yuuri cannot be in a romantic relationship”; it just isn’t something that proves either theory.

Regarding Japanese dramas.. Not sure how many people are familiar with it, but in the 2nd Tiger & Bunny movie there is a scene with the 2 protagonists on the roof of a building that is commonly referred to by fans as “gekku” (the same kind of drama as the scene of Victor and Yuuri at the airport). Usually this kind of scenes, in the TV dramas, feature a man and a woman, but when “gekku” is used to describe something unrelated to dramas, like scenes from an anime, it often includes a slightly humorous nuance, very similar to when two people are fighting and someone tells them “you look like a married couple”. (The scene itself is usually serious and when fans use “gekku” they don’t mean to make fun of it, but at the same time they don’t seriously mean to imply that the characters are romantically involved)

I agree on the fact that if Victor and Yuuri had been a man and a woman everyone and their dog would think that they’re in love with each other, while part of the reason some people are skeptical about it is that they are both men. I myself don’t really it like when, especially in series where the sexuality of characters is not clear, two characters of opposite sexes are seen as more likely to fall in love with each other than characters of the same sex. This happens because some people think that unless a character is declared as homosexual they must be heterosexual because “that is the standard” (these people in many cases are not even trying to be homophobic, they just do not realize that what they are implying is heterocentric). I don’t think that there is a standard, and of course there are many more possibilities than just “heterosexual” and “homosexual”, therefore if a character’s sexuality is unconfirmed I am usually open to any possibility.

I will stray a little from YOI. I was an enthusiastic X-Files fan at the time the series was still airing and the protagonists weren’t officially lovers yet (yeah it’s a long time ago but I might not be as old as this makes you think lol). I was also a member of the official forum and identified myself as “intellishipper”, fans who shipped the protagonists but didn’t necessarily want them to become romantically involved in the series unless it was relevant to the story (normal “shippers” just wanted them to get together). This is because I liked X-Files for what it was — a sci-fi thriller drama — and I didn’t want it to suddenly become a love story or focus too much on the romantic relationship of the characters. In fact, to this day I still don’t really like how their romantic relationship was handled in the series… (even though I’m a shipper!) X-Files taught me that sometimes, even if the characters you ship officially get together, depending on how it’s portrayed it might be disappointing, and in that case maybe it’s better that everything is left vague and that you keep on fantasizing on your own… (Sorry if someone disagrees about the protagonists’ relationship in X-Files, this is just my opinion)

The reason of this digression is to explain that the way I view Victor and Yuuri’s relationship and its portrayal within the series is very similar to my experience with X-Files. I personally like them together, but since the series is fundamentally a sport anime about figure skating, to me it’s fine if they don’t confirm whether they are romantically involved or not, because either way there are enough hints to be perfectly able to perceive them as in love with each other even if it’s not stated out loud. At the same time, I respect people who want them to officially get together and people who prefer to see their relationship as platonic too, because in the end everything is open to interpretations and therefore I don’t think it’s correct to force one interpretation on others.

I understand that people who see this anime as important for the LGBT+ community would prefer that they are confirmed as lovers because we would have a “regular” (non-BL) anime featuring an official homosexual couple with a strong, healthy relationship, which would be a step forward in the portrayal of LGBT characters in Japanese anime too. However, exactly because it’s a Japanese anime, as I tried to explain in a previous post a few months ago, the local cultural background is an obstacle to that, therefore I wouldn’t be surprised if even in future works they never confirm anything. Also, what Yamamoto said about “relationships without a name” too makes me think that maybe she doesn’t find it important to give a name to their relationship but she just wants to portray a very strong bond between two characters which viewers can interpret how they prefer. Kubo too made a few tweets last August that suggest how one of the reasons they didn’t use a man and a woman is that they did not want people to automatically interpret their relationship as romantic “just because they’re a man and a woman”. If you read that negatively you might think “does she mean that if they are both guys they cannot be seen as romantically involved?”. I don’t know what she meant in detail of course, because I’m not inside her mind, but I also think it can be interpreted in a positive way: if the characters are a man and a woman people will see them as automatically in love only because of their genders, regardless of the deepness of their relationship; however, if they are guys the average viewer cannot apply their heterocentric point of view to them and they will only see them as in love because their relationship really suggests that.

By the way, I still think that YOI, even without confirming anything, is an important step forward for the portrayal of LGBT+ characters in Japanese anime because it shows two male characters having an intimate relationship (however you want to interpret it) without their surroundings going “eww gross” or making jokes about them. In the series, no one says anything or questions Yuuri’s sexuality when he decides to interpret the role of a woman in his early version of Eros, no one ever makes fun of Yuuri and Victor’s relationship, no one looks grossed out when they see them with wedding rings (Phichit even congratulates them for their “wedding”). As Kubo said, within the world of YOI no one is discriminated for what (or who) they like. Everything is just portrayed as normal. In a way, the fact that any possibility is viewed as normal might also be the reason why they don’t feel the need to declare anyone’s sexuality or whether they are romantically involved or not, also because in the end whether Yuuri and Victor are engaged or not, or are having sex or not, is not really relevant to their performance as figure skaters. The aspects of their relationship that are relevant to the story are what has already been shown to us.

To sum it up… I understand the various points of views, including the fact that a part of the fans would prefer to see Victor and Yuuri in a confirmed romantic relationship (be it because of their personal liking or because they would like more outspoken LGBT+ representation), but as long as the creators don’t confirm anything I will stay open to any possibility. I’m sorry if some of the things I said were taken the wrong way and I hope that what I wrote above was enough to explain that they weren’t meant as something offensive or negative but were just my attempt to be unbiased toward any possible interpretation. I myself am generally annoyed by the heterocentric view of the world (which in Japan is oh so popular..) and to me whether a pairing is het or homo makes no difference, therefore in my mind Victor and Yuuri in their current stage are very much like Mulder and Scully when their romantic relationship wasn’t confirmed in the series: no matter how you look at them they must be in love with each other, but it’s not confirmed, therefore fans who think their relationship is platonic have the right to think so (in the X-Files fandom too there were fans who didn’t ship them or were indifferent, but this didn’t stop the creators from making them a couple later on).

As a translator, I’m striving to be unbiased toward any interpretation and therefore to translate official material so that the original meaning/nuance is preserved and in English it doesn’t end up sounding more/less suggestive than it was in Japanese. Since they are very different languages, sometimes it’s hard to keep the exact same nuances as the original text, and of course if you ask 10 people to translate a line they will translate it in 10 different ways, but I’m trying to be careful especially with parts that might be easily misread (I mean, it’s useless that I translate something as sounding shippy when the original doesn’t… If the original does, of course I would keep that nuance).

In any case, if anyone ever thinks that one of my translations doesn’t sound right or that something I said sounds homophobic or hurtful, please let me know and I will explain more in detail what I meant. I always try to write my opinion without being offensive to anyone, but sometimes it’s impossible to write something so that all the people who read it will interpret it the exact same way, especially when talking about topics where readers have contrastive views. I respect all opinions (people who like Victuuri, people who dislike Victuuri, people who are indifferent, etc) and I just wish for everyone to live in peace without attacking each other.

Final notes:

1) Sorry for mentioning series unrelated to YOI, but since X-Files contains a het pairing I thought it would make a good comparison to show that my view of YOI isn’t influenced by the fact that Victor and Yuuri are both guys.

2) I was trying to be very neutral when I wrote my short review of the original drama at the YOI event, but to be honest some parts sounded just like a BL drama and it would take a genius to manage to “no homo” all of that… Of course the scriptwriter made it so that if you want to see their relationship as platonic you can still justify everything with “they were drunk”, but yeah…

3) Adding sources: 1) “What Yamamoto said” comes from the May Febri interview which I’m currently translating; 2) Kubo’s tweets from last August are something that wasn’t explicitly related to YOI but were definitely referring to YOI; 3) What Kubo said about no one being discriminated in YOI’s world is also a tweet from the end of last year, I made a post about it too.

[felony-dykery]

I didn't find this too antagonistic- I appreciate pushback. Its not rude or mean to disagree and too damn often women are told that it is. You didn't call me a slur or anything, I'm all good! I hate that the wording in my post made you feel otherwise.

I'll try to address your response point-by-point, so sorry if this gets hella long.

I want to be clear throughout this whole thing that when I refer to transwomen I am referring to medically transitioning males who suffer from clinical sex dysphoria. Not predatory men appropriating the transsexual experience.

-I say 'subset of male' as different from 'man' because it's a different experience to be a cis man (I don't like the word but here I'm just using it as non-trans) than a transwoman. They move through the world very differently. They are treated disparately enough that to me it requires a more nuanced categorization.

-I believe they are perceived as male, but not as men. Of course this isn't universal, but through friendships with transwomen I've noticed that on average they aren't treated as being fully men, especially by bigots. It's the same thing I experienced when I was transitioning. I was seen as female for sure, but not as a full woman. A lot of the times when it came to violence against me it was because I was seen as trans, not as a woman. The other half of the time it WAS because of my womanhood, especially my lesbianism. But there was enough transphobia enacted against me that I felt it wasn't just the typical female experience.

-Perception matters when we are making definitions because perception dictates how we move through the world. One of the main things I disagree with wrt gender theory is that internal identity matters more than external reality. I want that to apply to my radical feminism as well.

-Yes, and I do appreciate this point especially. I don't at all mean this to describe cis (yick, sorry I keep using this it just helps define what I men) gay men. Or lesbians for that matter. Homosexuals suffer immensely from the "failed man/woman" trope, I know I have. I never intend to contribute to that. But there is a difference between a homosexual male who transitions and one who doesn't, therefore I really don't intend this to apply to the average gay man.

-That's the thing that sucks- we don't get to know. And I think not knowing is a valid reason to not interact with transwomen who say that. I am speaking from my (very lucky) experience of having transwomen friends who actually respect me and female people as a whole. I give them a lot more wiggle room than I would for the average transsexual male and that's only because I do get to know what they mean by "woman" due to our close relationship. I guess I do agree with this point partially, I just see the other side too.

-Wrt policy around that, I don't think they should be considered legally female even if I do think its ok for them to label themselves as such. I support the idea of separate sex categories for trans people, i.e. there being four categories on licenses and such: F, M, MTF, and FTM. I think that would solve soooo many issues around legal rights for trans people. It would both give more accurate information for trans people on their IDs and not skew crime statistics in a way that harms women.

-I agree that's the most beneficial solution, but not everyone is immediately going to get on board with not being violent to trans people. There's too many people committed to their bigotry. We can accept both that many trans people need to be publicly stealth for safety AND that we need to work towards a safer society for the gnc and transsexual communities.

-In many senses passing trans people are safer, it's just reality at the moment. They are at a lower risk for street violence if they aren't clocked, because if someone doesn't know you are trans they don't know to be hateful towards you because of it. This obviously doesn't apply to many other situations, but it does objectively reduce risk of transphobic violence. I don't think acknowledging this in a realistic way has much to do with the "gay/trans panic" defense at all, but I'm interested in hearing more about why you think it does.

Again thanks for the response! Hope this clarifies my position, and that you have a good day:)

hot take but...

I don’t think transwomen (actual ones, not bearded non-op uwu menbie weirdos) are men. I don’t and I won’t, it’s just not accurate. A subset of males, for sure, but it’s very different to be a transwoman than a whole ass man. A medically feminized male does not walk through the world being perceived as a man, and I think lived experience is far more important than ideological purity. I don’t even care if they call themselves women (though I prefer sticking to transwoman) as long as they don’t spiral so deep into gender theory that they think they are literally female. It’s just not a big deal to me, idk. I’m dysphoric. I get that it’s genuinely so hard to accept your birth sex. I also understand that if a transwoman passes to strangers its a huge danger for her to out herself to anyone who asks. They still are facing extreme male violence, people. I hate the way transwomen are considered more oppressed than females too, believe me. But we can’t just erase the significant danger they are in cause we don’t like the rhetoric of their community.

I don’t expect anyone to agree with me, or want anyone to start parroting things that they don’t honestly believe. Live your truth. But can we please try to be a little less antagonistic? It’s not ok from them, but it’s not ok for us either.