#gender and sexuality mean nothing in terms of morality. also there are a lot of people being weirdly ableist on this post

[mantisgodsdomain]

Having the unfortunate experience where we read the words of someone who has clearly sorted an entire category of people into the same cardboard cutout construct and having to bite our tongue so that we do not say something deeply inadvisable on the internet.

[trekwiz]

14: Worst game you’ve ever played? 25: Favourite environment in a game? 38: An unpopular gaming opinion you have.

Worst game I've ever played: honestly, that's tough to say. I've played a lot of bad games!

I think I'm going to narrow down to 2 instead of 1, because I would define two distinct categories that bad games can fall into.

Poorly executed, good concept: Lords and Villeins. I mainly chose this one since I played it recently and it's top of mind. Multiple tutorial levels are broken, and allow you to develop in a way that prevents completion of the tutorial even if you follow along correctly.

The tutorial missions also leave out critical information about how to accomplish certain tasks, with a particular key task that just doesn't function in it at all. According to Steam, only 2.5% of players have the achievement for completing the tutorial. It's that bad.

Well executed, terrible concept: Resonance of Fate. You don't get to play the plot. At all. Effectively, you grind for nothing: the story that unfolds around you doesn't really intersect your actions more than twice, and your role is passive. You're basically playing a completely different game than the plot. I hated that so much.

Favorite environment: oh that's an interesting one. I'm not sure the dev is ever going to complete it, but I find the environment of Circadian City to be really compelling. The contrast between the waking world and sleeping world, and the way they complement each other is really interesting for a Stardew-like game.

Unpopular gaming opinion: There's no way I'm narrowing this to 1! There are too many, and I'm right about every single one of them.

1. MMOs are a waste of money. You're renting an RPG to only partake in the most grindy, unfun portions of it. And there's just something that bothers me about having to spend significant sums of money renting a game that you will never be able to play again in a few years when support ends.

2. "Games should be really hard so achievements mean something" assholes aren't real gamers. They're not fun to play with because they ruin the games. It's a competition to them, not leisure. That's not what games are for.

By the same token, "learn to play (this multiplayer-only game) before you try playing online!" is just a completely trashy concept. When you hear someone say that, you know they're clueless and awful to play with.

3. LGBT players deserve to have a 100% equal experience to our hetero peers. If the game includes a marriage or relationship functions (this includes colony management games), then we should be able to play with 100% gay characters/colonists/et al. Why should other players be able to erase our existence, but we can't enjoy the same fantasy on the same terms?

Yes, that also means I think RPGs should always have to use the player-sexual model for romances. If my hetero peers can romance their preferred character because it's already tailored to them, then I deserve the same experience.

Romanceable NPCs reflect the totality of characters who are attracted to the player's character: if looks, personality, and morality don't destroy their attraction, then it's not believable that PC gender is the one and only thing that matters. It feels exclusionary in a way that damages my immersion.

4. There should be regulations that require a minimum level of diversity in games. There is no reason that developers should be allowed to make games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, where they openly stated they wanted to build a story in a place they could "prove" (they couldn't. Their history research was wrong) only had white people. A place where gay players would be punished for being gay because it's historically accurate, and gay NPCs were villains and ridiculed as such.

If they tried to do this at a Renaissance Fair, they'd be shutdown for discrimination. Just because it's (debatably) historically accurate, doesn't mean modern audiences should be subjected to the same discrimination as our predecessors. I have the same right to partake in the same fantasy as anyone else. Consumer protection laws should really prevent this from happening.

5. Final Fantasy 8 is significantly better than Final Fantasy 7. The blocky graphics were even awful in their day; and the camera angles were very awkward, with some maps where you couldn't actually see what you're doing.

But both of them are too hetero anyway.

Thanks for asking!

[missbaphomet]

Overall, I think there's a lot of really good information here. I especially particularly like the "horse fantasy" and "unicorn fantasy" with the addendum that even your tamest horse fantasies do have an element of fantasy. Even your most picturesque domesticism made true is bound to have some issues, just as a horse may get colic or parasites or have some other issue. Humans are imperfect creatures, as are horses, but the analogy is amazingly apt and I will be incorporating into my own advocacy in the future.

And before I go any further, I want to clarify that I am aware saying this is somewhat pedantic, but I still feel it necessary to outline because unfortunately there are a lot of people who don't understand the wish fulfillment aspect inherent to fantasy, and since we are discussing sexual fantasy that in many cases CAN and ARE explored, it would be irresponsible for me not to add this. Even your most perfect scene made "real" (in as real as one can realistically get) has the chance of going wrong in any number of ways, and because there is such a moral value placed on sex it can be very easy to fall into a valley where you attach moral judgements to yourself and the failure to the perceived perversion of your fantasy. This trap is particularly dangerous for people with specific traumas. I don't yet have a term for this, but I shall work on naming it and describing it in depth.

My only real gripe with this post is the weird interpretation that this is inherently a "straight girl" thing, as stated by the take that straight women apparently live in a state of "constant preyhood", then immediately followed by the assertion that LGBT people then must only fantasize about healthy and wholesome things unless it's some tumblr sexyman, not to mention the Hannibal tumblr simps after is likely sanitized to hell because that's how visual media like movies and television work. But this also isn't the place for character analysis, especially as I haven't watched Hannibal (though I may do so in my free time as a means of comparing Mads Mickelsen's portrayal to Anthony Hopkins portrayal to the actual source material).

Violent fantasies are not inherent to anyone regardless of sex, gender identity, orientation, religion, or any other factor. Case in point, I'm a bisexual woman raised in the catholic church who later renounced my faith and had a noted interest in rape scenarios before I was old enough to understand what sex was or why rape itself was bad. I'm a 23 year old woman now, and many things have changed, but one constant has been my desire to be the victim of a fantasy sex crime, which I am now old enough and educated enough to name what it is: consensual non-consent or CNC. I do not want to be raped. I want a partner that I can negotiate my desires to and have them acted out in a safe environment where I can stop it all with a single word. Enter BDSM and kink.

But for every bisexual with an intense CNC kink baked into their sexual desires, there's another bisexual who is perfectly happy and fulfilled by loving missionary sex with the lights off, and there is nothing wrong with that. Just as for every straight girl who likes to be spanked there's one who thinks doggy style is extremely lewd and one that has a fantasy about being murdered and violated postmortem. Kinks are not gender/sex/orientation specific, and to even imply they are is offensively reductive. Fetish and kink are a near infinite spectrum, so to zoom into a microcosm like "straight women with a thing for mafia bosses" is to eliminate the nuances of any separate kink that could be buried underneath.

I actually very recently had a conversation with my mutual @shrimpmandan about how a nazi kink (yes, it's a thing) isn't truly a kink for the ideology, but usually a kink for TPE, a degradation kink, and a hyperspecific uniform kink (in this case, WW2 era German military) in a trenchcoat. Individually, I can get behind all three aspects (TPE, Degredation, and Uniform), but in the context of Naziism in particular, it makes me EXTREMELY uncomfortable. Another kink that could utilize the same elements? Off the top of my head, psychiatry doctor/patient, which is actually a fantasy I have had and explored (grippy sock gang rise up). The only thing that has really changed is the cosmetic applied.

People with a mafia boss kink may very well follow similar patterns. I think a strangely apt and endearing example is Way of the House Husband. A legendary yakuza boss turned devoted househusband is admittedly an enticing fantasy. A dangerous person (yakuza boss) who has left his old life specifically to be a devoted and loving spouse so that you can pursue whatever your dreams are? Half the people reading just got hot under the collar. Under any other coat of paint, it is still a kink about someone changing for you specifically, which obviously has widespread appeal. The "I can fix him" trope is a trope for a reason.

Furthermore, I don't really like the implication that people have such fantasies purely for transgressive reasons. Nah, sometimes I just want to be overpowered because it's enticing to me personally, not because it's some anti-feminist statement to be a woman who is a bottom or something. It's genuinely just not that deep. Being pinned down and bred just gets me hot and bothered, sorry about it, sue me. By the same logic, tops can just like being in a position of power because it gives them serotonin. It doesn't have to be some personal act of rebellion, sometimes the curtains are just blue.

Yes, society is weird about sex. Yes, that does give the appearance that anything that isn't procreative vanilla sex is deviant. No, this does not inherently make it radical to fuck nasty. If it feels radical for you, cool, but that's not universal. Sex can be political, but it doesn't have to be. Don't politicize people against their will just because they have sex differently than this one extremely narrow methodology.

For the sake of brevity and not derailing this post, I am electing not to go into societal perceptions and expectations of sex. Maybe I'll dedicate a post to it separately, but for now I will leave my stance as simply being "stay in your lane"

my instagram explore page loves showing me those like erotic dark romance novel tiktoks and i really have to wonder: why do all these straight women desperately want to fuck a mafia boss

[nodogsairswimming]

Madness and Witchcraft

This is some ramblings I wrote about what I see as the connection between Madness (writ large, as a social idea not necessarily as psychological conditions) and Witches.

Madness, like witchcraft, is an ascribed association. Identifying yourself as mad proves your sanity, like Catch-22. Only someone else can deem you mad, but once they have, there is nothing you can say that can remove that appellation. There IS no survivable test for witchcraft. There IS no freedom in madness. The moment that the term is given to you you have already been judged and executed, it just may take longer or different forms. The eye turns inward to constantly be looking for illness, madness, taint and to excise it to the best of your ability to survive the judgment of others. It’s a lot like the closet in practice. But it’s a closet you have been placed into against your will.

It is a personal characteristic that is a Societal Problem. Witchcraft and Madness are evils that have to be rooted out of the Community. An individual might be able to be saved, and wouldn't it be lovely if they were, but that is a secondary concern to the removal of the cancer in the larger community. Even if you do legitimately need help the asylum is not there to assist You, it is there to return a usable member of society with the strangeness or danger extracted from it by any means necessary. This is why the amnesia from electroshock or lobotomy is acceptable.

Everything becomes evidence of the term once it's given to you. Your hair, whether or not you float in water, how quiet or loud you are, your legitimate reactions to the way people treat you once you are assigned the role of Witch or Madwoman is just further evidence that the role is correct. How do you prove yourself sane? How do you prove yourself not a Witch?

Witchcraft is also a heavily gendered word with associations of women getting power from outside the natural or correct order of the world. They are usually independent, single, or if they do take sexual partners, they do it through magic and seduction. I think this is part of why Dora/ph clings to this idea so much. She's going back through her own life and trying to find the thing that convinced everyone that she had be thrown away. Was it the cigars? Was it the military fascination? Was it a sixth toe? Was it a Devil's Mark on her hair?

I think she is struggling with being called insane but not feeling insane. Or imbecilic, morally or otherwise, depending on her diagnosis. Her own perception of herself are at odds with the diagnosis of people who are supposed to know what they're talking about and at her lowest, maybe she thinks she is insane and just can't accept that. I think she looks for devil's marks and extra toes to try to find proof that she IS a witch, and therefore deserves the treatment she's got. If she can't find it, then she's stuck in this limbo of essentially being gaslit.

[audreydoeskaren]

do you know Chinese symbolism for homosexuality?

tw homophobia, pedophilia

Hi again, for gay men there are a couple really well known ones but I’m not sure if they were real or fabricated, because all the articles describing them always cite the same couple sources from Antiquity... I tried to verify them but the only articles that didn’t copy and paste from the same source came across as extremely homophobic, so I decided to give up. The most common and reliable one is probably 断袖 or “cut sleeve”, which I mentioned in a previous ask. I would like to use this opportunity to talk about some tangential but more important topics regarding homosexuality in China though.

As a followup to my previous ask where I said I'd look through some Ming and Qing novels to see how homosexuality was perceived at the time, the conclusion I (unfortunately) came to was that homophobia was very much alive and well in Chinese literature and society. A lot of people like to argue that gay people fared pretty well in China historically by either pointing to emperors who were or were rumored to be gay or time periods where gay sex was prevalent as a form of consumption. This is extremely shallow and also kind of Orientalist in my opinion, these arguments always go for the emperors and do not take nuance into consideration or dive into wider societal discourses on homosexuality in imperial China. If you research homosexuality in Europe by only looking at royalty, you’ll find plenty of homosexual behavior too, does that mean gay people had it very easy in Europe historically?? Not to mention that they usually don’t differentiate between dynasties, let alone centuries or decades, even though public opinion on homosexuality in China (or anywhere in the world tbh) could change very quickly. This is also sort of Orientalist, assuming “imperial China” to be a never changing entity with a never changing stance on homosexuality. Since I know nothing prior to the Ming Dynasty I’ll share some of my random findings on homosexuality and homophobia in the Ming, Qing and 20th century.

Gayness as disease

Nowadays the symbol of the cut sleeve is just a benign historical allusion but historically it seems that it was used in a negative and condemning sense, implying that people thought of homosexuality as a disease or deviation from the norm. The common phrase used for the cut sleeve is "断袖之癖", usually translated as "the passion of the cut sleeve" nowadays, but the meaning of the word 癖 here leans more toward "fetish", "obsession" or "hobby" with pathological connotations. I thought maybe this word had a different, nuanced meaning historically but it seems that it was used to describe what it means :(( The only silver lining is probably that with the progression of language it isn’t offensive anymore.

In a lot of popular novels from the Ming and Qing, homosexuality was depicted as a "perversion" and a decadent lifestyle that plagues morality, and gay characters were often either killed or straightened out by the end of the story. An example of this is the story 黄九郎 Huang Jiulang from the series 聊斋志异 Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by 蒲松龄 Pu Songling written in the 17th century. In this story, one of the protagonists was gay; he died after confessing his love to the other guy in a very fast paced bury your gays arc which somehow reminded me of the Supernatural finale, and reincarnated as a straight man because of his piety. Thanks I hate it. Pu uses the symbol of the cut sleeve to refer to the protagonist, presumably in a negative manner.

Gayness as power/status symbol

Another thing was that historically in China a lot of people confused homosexuality with pedophilia. This is a global thing, but its presence in China is often overlooked. This could be seen in the popularity of another term for homosexuality, "娈童", meaning something similar to "pederasty". I read somewhere that since the late Ming, pederasty was considered a type of tasteful consumption for high society, along with things like fashion, food, music and art. This was not equivalent to the "cut sleeve" or homosexuality as we know it nowadays, which refers to a personal sexual orientation, pederasty historically often refers to an imbalanced power dynamic where a wealthy, privileged man takes advantage of a young boy as a leisurely activity. It’s more to show off that someone in a position of privilege and wealth has the power to procure sexual objects, gender and age don’t matter much in this regard. I cannot help but cringe violently whenever someone brings up pederasty as proof of China’s historical “openness” toward gay people. Talk to me again when in this time and place you could marry someone of your sex (not a minor) and be considered a respectable couple instead of two jerks with a degenerate fetish (not saying that gay people have to marry, it’s just that the ability to do so is an important indicator of equality imo). Pedophilia and homosexuality are not one and the same good heavens.

I hypothesize that the reason why Chinese society was historically homophobic despite having no religious condemnation of homosexual individuals was the idea that having many concubines and male children was a status symbol for men. Women of marriageable age were seen more or less as commodities and male children could supposedly "continue the bloodline" 传香火 and were vessels for passing down prestige, so having them were of utmost importance to a privileged man. Being just gay or lesbian, however, meant that you didn't perform the "man strong working woman weak making babies" heteronormative family prototype, and was thus prone to criticism. When gay men didn’t have children they “couldn’t continue their bloodline” and were emasculated, when gay women didn’t have children they failed to “fulfill their duties as a woman” and were shamed.

It kind of makes sense considering how being bisexual was never a problem in comparison, especially for men. If you were a rich guy who had both male and female partners, you would still have children and concubines both male and female so nobody gives a shit. Emperor Zhengde of the Ming (reign 1505-21) was presumably bisexual and had both male and female lovers, nobody had a bone to pick with that; he famously liked to fuck around but those who criticized him did so for his debauchery instead of focusing on the gender of his partners.  This is different to homophobia in Europe where same sex attraction was considered evil and immoral in and of itself because of religious reasons, in China it was rather the other practical implications of homosexuality (not having children or a family) that attracted hate.

By the way can we just take a moment to talk about bi erasure in Chinese history. From all accounts of Emperor Zhengde I’ve read he comes across as extremely bisexual, but a lot of people try to make him a gay icon? I mean, he liked women too.

One interesting homophobic angle in ye olde China which I find kind of funny was straight women who wanted to climb the social ladder by marrying rich men talking shit about them after figuring out they were gay lmao. Historically, there were not so many work opportunities for women, so the easiest way to improve social standing was to marry a rich and powerful guy. Not saying that women didn't work, they did but their upward social mobility was restricted because they couldn't enter the imperial examination system which was how men became rich and powerful. This angle is relatively benign and kind of helps illustrate that historical Chinese homophobia was indeed fueled by classism and patriarchy.

Gayness as crime

I used to think that there were no anti-sodomy statutes in China (laws prohibiting sex between gay men), but it turns out that there was one decree in the Jiajing era (1521-67) and one in 1740, and private gay sex was not actually decriminalized until 1957. Same sex marriage is still not legal in China at time of writing. I couldn’t find detailed information on what these laws entailed or how they were enforced, but they’re enough to prove that homosexuality in China was legally punishable from the 16th century onward. On top of that, even when there was no law prohibiting private sex acts between people of the same sex, displays of gay affection such as kissing or holding hands could still be legally punished under “public indecency” or “hooliganism”, which was frequently what happened in the 20th century. 

[boydykedoctor]

The Vanishing of Will Byers and 1980s Stranger Danger

Alrighty, this is part one of many Stranger Things analysis posts.

content warnings: kidnapping, true crime, homophobia, transphobia, 1980s AIDS crisis, discussions of pedophilia (nothing explicit), academic use of the "Q slur"

Quick preface

all of this analysis was originally done for a Queer Theory class, and use of the word "Queer" in this context differs somewhat from its casual use. what even constitutes "Queerness" is something that theorists in this field argue about. LGBT studies and Queer Theory are both legitimate approaches to subjects like heteronormativity and cisnormativity, but they differ because LGBT studies suggests that sexual and gender identities are stable. meanwhile, Queer Theory makes its home in fluidity between and outside of identity and emphasizes the importance of "performance" as something that creates identity—not the other way around.

i will be applying the term "Queer," meaning anything that is out of the accepted norm of white American cishet nuclear family formations, to this analysis. i'll also be using the term to talk about Will Byers as a gay child, a figure that was totally unacceptable in the 1980s (and to a lesser extent, today). i'm prefacing with this warning because i realize that some people don't want to see this term applied in a generalized way, and that's totally valid. but the field of Queer Theory just does that, so this is your warning and your chance to click away.

Lee Edelman

I'm gonna try my best to make this post accessible, and this very famous theorist Lee Edelman makes that very hard, so bear with me. (seriously, this guy's writing style is......so stupid difficult. i'm not even sure i understand him completely and i've taken classes on him twice.)

he's most famous for his argument that Queerness is inherently negative--not negative like bad, but negative in that it negates what is commonly accepted as "right" or "moral." i like to picture this in terms of space:

it's important to be in this negative space rather than absorbed into mainstream culture because if you're a part of mainstream culture you have a harder time criticizing it.

to Edelman, what counts as queer changes over time because different identities and performances become more or less acceptable over time. one example you're probably familiar with is ancient Greece: because homosexual relationships between men were common, legal, and non-stigmatized, they aren't something that counts as "queer" to that geographically and chronologically-specific society. obviously, this is not the case for homosexuality between men in other times and places.

my professor's favorite example of the way that the Queer vs. the normal changes over time is former US presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. he's a clean-cut rich white guy, a former member of the military, and incredibly neoliberal. he also "happens to" be gay, and has taken part in the governmental institution of same-sex marriage with another regular, clean-cut white guy. he became high-profile as the first serious gay contender for US president. however he chooses to casually identify is up to him, but in the eyes of most famous Queer theorists, Buttigieg is pretty far from being Queer despite the fact that he's gay—but why? because he's otherwise assimilated to everything that Queerness is supposed to stand against as a revolutionary movement. however, if Buttigieg had run for president at basically any other time in United States history, he would have been berated, abused, and suppressed on a mass level.

The Symbolic Order

psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan is famous for a lot, but we're gonna focus on The Real and The Symbolic.

The Real is the natural and chaotic state that we’re closest to when we're babies before we enter language. before you have language, everything is just kind of a blob, and you can't distinguish between concepts. communication narrows our experience of the world and our needs so that we can express our experiences to other people. however, this makes each person appear to be a single, uniform subject rather than an endlessly changing, amorphous assemblage of perception and need.

language and narrative, or The Symbolic Order, organizes this chaos into something we can understand. but The Symbolic will never be able to capture The Real, which is too multidimensional to ever describe.

Stranger Things is an example of The Symbolic because it's literally a narrative: it's not real life, but it condenses a lot of the human experience into smaller bites with relatable characters, emotional arcs, and a historical setting that looks backwards at the 1980s from the current moment and political reality.

i like to examine Stranger Things through the lens of the horror genre because horror usually attempts to get as close to describing the visceral fears of The Real as it possibly can. Sci-fi horror specifically is often about the unknown and the unknowable, and ST is no exception.

drawing on Lacan's ideas, Edelman writes,

“queer sexualities, inextricable from the emergence of the subject in the Symbolic, mark the place of the gap in which the Symbolic confronts what its discourse is incapable of knowing” (No Future, 2004).

now you may ask, "Lee, pray tell, the fuck?"

what he's saying is that Queerness is a threat to The Symbolic Order because it refuses to be defined. you can't put Queerness into clean, separate boxes and you can't sanitize it. institutions that affirm cishet-normativity can't define Queerness or acknowledge it because that would acknowledge that the whole system of forcing people into boxes, expecting them to self-identify, and monitoring how they express themselves is fucked up.

what can't be defined or acknowledged is the natural home of horror because, according to Lacan, facing The Real (the meaningless blob of reality) is traumatic if we don't rely on The Symbolic (again: language and narrative that provide meaning to our lives) to soften the blow. something that goes undefined is "strange" because we don't understand it. in this context, the "strange" and the "queer" are synonyms.

The disappearance of Etan Patz

now, let's look at "stranger” as a noun.

the figure of “the stranger” and, more specifically, “stranger danger” was a frenzied preoccupation for the USA during the 1980s. It's not a coincidence that the story of Stranger Things—a young boy going missing—is particularly resonant because of its historical setting.

in 1979, six-year-old Etan Patz disappeared in New York and was never found. Photos of Etan taken by his father—a professional photographer—inspired widespread panic. now, i have no idea if it's a coincidence that Jonathan Byers is into photography, but this hobby of his is VITAL to the plot—especially in season 1. he and Nancy only team up over Barb's disappearance because he took photos of Barb on the night of the pool party, and Nancy sees the photos. his photography is also the reason that the Byers have a recent photo of Will that gets put up on his missing posters.

it's theorized that the Etan Patz case only blew up because there were clear, professional portraits of the missing child which made him easily recognizable, and he's a regular-looking white boy. if Jonathan hadn't been a photographer, the first season of ST would be entirely different.

By 1983 (the year when Stranger Things begins), Ronald Reagan had dubbed Etan the official poster boy for the missing child campaign, bringing national attention to a problem that would soon be used to stoke moral panic throughout America. in Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State, Paul Renfro writes, “Etan’s photographs helped buttress such exaggerated claims [that approximately fifty thousand children are kidnapped by strangers each year] and the broader child safety cause by inaugurating a new cultural form: the image of endangered [white] childhood.”

Lee Edelman and the image of "The Child"

Edelman (that fucking guy again) argues in No Future that “the child” represents not just the literal child but also a figurative image of the future of society and the nation. the term "reproductive futurism" refers to the idea that we should always reproduce the current values of our society, maybe with minor changes. for example, sure! let same-sex couples get married (after decades of fighting for it)! BUT we're still going to expect them to live up to the nuclear family model. only two people can be married, they should never have relationships outside of that marriage (even consensually), they should refrain from showing their relationship out in public ("think of The Children!"). oh, and people with disabilities can't get married at all. ~LOVE WINS!!!~

reproductive futurism wants to preserve heteronormativity or patriarchy, recreating the same oppressive systems in every generation. the child represents the future generations, so whatever the child is learning or not learning will decide what the future looks like.

politicians and news outlets made Etan’s disappearance into much more than an isolated tragedy: it became a symbol for the destruction of innocence, ramping up national fear. kids everywhere drank milk cartons printed with the faces of missing children, watched PSAs by McGruff the crime dog, and attended cautionary school assemblies.

Stranger Things is heavily associated with the nostalgia of 80s era toys, video games, and film, but what is rarely mentioned is the show’s use of anti-nostalgia. “Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers” dredges up chilling memories of a time when kids and their parents were convinced that lurking in the shadows everywhere were strange adults looking to snatch them away. but these weren’t just any adults; they were adults who matched racist and homophobic profiling.

1980s homophobia and the stereotype of the gay pedophile

there was no evidence that Etan’s case, or many other cases of child kidnapping around this time, were sexual in nature. but during a police raid of the North American Man/Boy Love Association’s headquarters (big warning for discussion of pedophilia in that link. i don't endorse NAMBLA, and you shouldn't either.), photos of a young boy who looked like—but importantly, was not—Etan were found, and all kidnapping cases then onward were presumed not only sexual, but specifically homosexual.

gay pedophiles presented the right wing’s greatest feared threat to white, straight childhood, so they became the dominant narrative (Renfro). this stereotype was so common that it permeated at least into the early 2000s. hell, i remember being told to steer clear of gay men as a child because they were assumed to be pedophiles—never mind the fact that i was AFAB and presented as a girl!!!

similar stereotypes stick around today. for example, transgender women and other transfem people are viewed by conservatives as threats to childhood innocence, especially for young cis girls. If you can convince parents that their white cishet children are in active danger, then you can frighten them into supporting discriminatory measures against the Queer Other.

"99 out of 100 times kid goes missing, the kid is with a parent or relative."

Paul Renfro writes the following:

“Anxieties about feminism, gay rights, and sexual permissiveness nurtured the idea that children within the American family household faced intensifying threats from strangers and other malevolent actors outside the home. Concerns about crime and moral decay, exacerbated by the mid- to late twentieth-century rights revolutions, pivoted on the image of endangered white childhood” (Stranger Danger, 44).

outsiders and the unknown are treated as the main threat even though the overwhelming majority of kidnapping and sexual violence cases against children are not committed by strangers, but rather by people already close to the child in question.

the family is almost never afraid of what trauma it can cause the child, but instead afraid of the child becoming corrupted by outside influences. this concern comes up in the first episode of Stranger Things. when Joyce goes to Hopper to ask for help, he says, “ninety-nine out of a hundred times kid goes missing, the kid is with a parent or relative.”

despite what an absolute piece of shit Lonnie is, Joyce doesn’t believe that he could have anything to do with Will’s disappearance.

“What about the other time?” she says. “You said, ‘ninety-nine out of a hundred.’ What about the other time? The one?”

because this is a sci-fi show, she happens to be right. Will is the special, highly dreaded missing child case in which the adults who know him are not to blame. instead, it's the unknowable stranger, the horrific thing that marks the gap between language and experience, that is responsible.

maybe the upside down and all of its creatures symbolize Queer corruption, endangering yet another young white boy. but such a reading is too simplistic. Stranger Things criticizes Reagan-era authority as well as the marginalization of those who shirk norms.

Will is not the perfect straight victim. his gay-coding exists years before his disappearance.

if the stranger danger movement’s biggest concern was "corruption" of the youth, then Will Byers was already "corrupted."

something that i'm going to stress over and over again in this post and later posts is that ST is about THE FEARS of the 1980s and the Reagan era, not necessarily THE REALITIES.

in my next installment (jesus that sounds fancy), we'll talk about Will and the way that ST subverts the trope of the "Ghostly Gay Child."

[woodsteingirl]

is there smth wrong w the song of achilles?? genuine question bc i read it like a while ago and i thought it was okay. then again i dont know anything abt greek mythology so thats probably why

okay hiiii!! answering this as impersonally as i can to avoid just being outright mean so bear with me sjdhsjd. there are some yeah! i’ll try and outline them as well as just mentioning how i feel about it (which is just. most of the reason i dislike it.)

i’ll start with my own feelings just to get those out of the way, so number one! it’s a myth retelling. this honestly just means a book is already on my shit list to be quite honest. especially if it doesn’t bring anything new to the table (i guess just because it’s about achilles and patroclus?? i mean like. plot wise. just yk. go read the iliad…) even more when the things that retelling claims makes it different are like “feminist” “queer” “diverse” i get that those things are very important to portray in stories, but they are not often found in greek mythology, queer people, yes! but not in the way we would use the term today. (which is an important distinction to make and also not to label mythological characters as having strict sexual or gender identities. it varies story by story and also!! just. don’t <3 for me <3) but to make those stories from myth into this like. vaguely gentrified versions of themselves takes a lot of the original away. are they always good and moral as we know now? No. but they’re not really supposed to be. also my own personal views on achilles as a “protagonist” but i’ll leave that for later <3

now for the actual issues with it!! number one: achilles mother is seen as trusted and loved by achilles. she is there when he is fighting with Agamemnon in the first book!! he prays to her for help!! she is the one who asks hephaestus to make achilles armor when he rejoins the battle!! and miller portrays her as openly homophobic towards achilles and patroclus?? like! no… not her…

number two: patroclus is seen as like. a soft boy healer and achilles as the masculine fighter of the relationship, which in and of itself falls into a sort of heteronormative way of thinking about gay relationships. not only that but also!! it’s not accurate. achilles genuinely spends most of the book Not Fighting and literally moping around just. because. patroclus on the other hand, is totally a fighter throughout the book (the iliad), he’s managed to fight, and Survive!! the near ten years of war they’ve already been through, and he’s still fighting! he’s shown to be a rash and passionate, so dumbing him down to a cinnamon roll can do nothing wrong character is. irking.

this could be chalked up to the fact the book is told from patroclus’ pov for most of the book, but achilles is not a sympathetic character. he’s not really meant to be! he’s arrogant and mean and spends most of his time wallowing and then he’s brutal and merciless after patroclus dies. i think this is also more of a fan base issue but like. he’s not a sweet character no matter how he acts around his lover. he’s a tragic hero in name alone!!

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Lily Evans and Severus Snape: Headcanons

So, I was asked in the ask about Sirius and Regulus what I thought about Snape and Lily. At this point people are probably going, “Oh that Carnivorous Muffin is just clearly a Snape stan who thinks he could never do anything wrong and anyone who was slightly mean to him is evil.” Shockingly, I’m actually not, I just happen to think sexual harassment and attempted murder are bad and probably worse than JKR intended (I do think she was trying to go the “boys will be boys” route versus “oh my god, they just dumped pigs blood on Carrie at the prom and then threw her at a starving vampire”)

So let’s start on Snape.

First, Snape did live an incredibly shitty life, with circumstances beyond his control, that did lead to many of his poorer choices. In no way am I saying that it was alright for Snape to have grown up in an impoverished, abusive, household and endured years of humiliation and torment at school. 

That said, I believe that we all, in some respects, are responsible for our actions and our decisions. Yes, even when we come from non-privileged backgrounds. Life is hard, some people will have it much easier than you, that doesn’t excuse you becoming a domestic terrorist or tormenting and terrifying your students, young children, so much so that an entire generation comes out with a loathing and incompetence in your subject.

I guess let’s start back on his friendship with Lily Evans. We get... a really weird perspective from Snape on that friendship. Time and her tragic death have warped it into this strange worship where I’m not sure the Lily Evans that exists in his mind and memory is the one that really was there. She’s this shining Madonna idol who he failed, actively betrayed, is very very hung up about it years later.

I suspect they weren’t as good of friends as either of them thought they were and it comes down to Snape’s resentment of his own upbringing and muggles. I believe Snape was very racist towards muggles, specifically, due to his father. It was his way of grappling with his home life and only fueled by being in Slytherin. Lily was probably, in his mind, always a golden exception to the rule (Lily is the token, gold standard, muggleborn where she’s pretty, brilliant, charming, etc.) That Severus himself was a halfblood clearly caused him some angst. What I’m getting at is that I believe throughout their entire friendship, especially when they got to Hogwarts, there was an unacknowledged undercurrent of intense racism that eventually boiled up with that one incident in Snape’s fifth year.

Calling her that, while he views it as a slip of the tongue that damned him for all time, I see it more as a Freudian Slip. That sort of thing doesn’t just slip out from nowhere, not at that age when they both knew exactly what that word meant, it simmers beneath the surface, and was ultimately what he thought of her. Later, she became the Madonna figure that he views her as today (ironically perhaps even less of a person than he viewed her as at the time).

That said I think a number of factors played into the young Snape becoming a Death Eater. One, becoming friends with Lucius/that crowd who were all being sucked into Tom’s influence. Two, having his terrible home life and all the implications of Snape resenting his own blood status as well as muggles and muggle borns at large. Three, the loss of friendship with Lily (now there’s nothing to hold him back anymore, he has no reason to preserve muggleborn life). Fourth, Dumbledore’s letting Sirius, James, and Remus entirely off the hook in the werewolf incident.

That last one, especially, I imagine cemented Snape’s utter hatred of ‘the light’ (don’t get me started on the stupidity of light/dark in Harry Potter but I guess I’ll use the term) and those that cater to muggleborns. They’re hypocrites of the highest order, Dumbledore claiming to defend the poor and non-nobility, when he goes and does the exact opposite (James is the next lord Potter, Sirius is still pureblooded even if disowned, Severus Snape is a dirt poor halfblood). 

So what I’m saying is I understand why Snape did become a Death Eater, I do not condone this action. Especially as, unlike Regulus, Snape never gets cold feet. He loves being a Death Eater at first, he’s living the dream, getting all the revenge he ever wanted and burning the stupid wizarding world to the ground as he scrambles for ways to climb in Tom Riddle’s graces. We don’t see any hint that he was wavering, thinking of the fact that beloved Lily might die in battle, perhaps at his hand, until the prophecy. 

Now, I’m a little kinder than some about the prophecy. We know Snape overhears the first portion of the prophecy in early 1980. He eagerly rushes to the dark lord, regales him with the prophecy in both a) aid to the cause and b) in the hopes of climbing in the ranks and gaining the dark lord’s notice. At this point, Lily Evans is pregnant, perhaps knows the gender, but has not given birth. Months later, when both Neville Longbottom and Harry Potter are born at the end of July, Snape realizes he has signed Lily Evans’ death warrant (because despite Dumbledore talking, I imagine Tom always planned to kill off both children, Pettigrew just happened to make things convenient for Tom to go to the Potters first).

With Lily’s death now so inevitable, and her blood on his own hands, Snape has his existential crisis, goes to Dumbledore who puts the Potters in hiding and becomes a double agent. Snape also pleads for Lily’s life with Tom and he puts in a minimal amount of effort to spare the woman. 

Then Lily dies anyway and now Snape lives in the bitter cynicism most commonly seen in characters from Game of Thrones. He’s Dumbledore’s agent and sort of a Dirty Harry character, getting to see all the nasty things that many of the other order members never have to deal with. He’s one of the more intelligent characters in the series, able to see the truth of the world he lives in, but he also doesn’t care enough to actually do anything about it. He’s a bitter, resentful, and angry protector of Harry Potter, choosing to hate a naive child for all the reminders of his own terrible life (both in Lily, for failing and betraying her, and in James his most hated rival and tormentor). He gleefully enables the favoritism of Slytherin (my god how he panders to Draco Malfoy) while tormenting poor Neville into terror (that Neville’s greatest 13 year old fear is Snape is very telling).

Basically by the time we get to him in canon Snape not only isn’t happy but I think he doesn’t want to be happy. He’s accustomed to his bitterness, his cynicism, his quiet rage and moves forward out of both resignation, guilt, and a sense of obligation to a woman’s ghost. The actions he takes in canon aren’t so much for Harry as they are for the memory of Lily Evans.

Even if Snape could be happy at that point, change his life or his purpose, I do not think he would. He’s a man who has given up on life.

Now, onto Lily Evans.

You probably think I’m going to rail on her to for the sheer hypocrisy and nerve of marrying James Potter. I’m actually not. Lily Evans is one of my favorite characters in the Harry Potter series and probably the one I’d label as the most moral (though that’s a very low bar in Harry Potter, the characters are almost all assholes, but even so Lily would still be very high on the list).

You know what, I’m just going to damn myself and sound like a crazy person. Lily Evans always reads to me as a more moral young female Tom Riddle.

What the hell? You undoubtedly ask but I’ll explain.

Lily, while having a far more stable homelife than Tom Riddle, also comes from a muggleborn background. She’s exceptionally brilliant, very good looking, and very charming with a lot of people who would call her friends but no one close. Lily, aside from Snape (and that’s debatable), has no friends.

If Lily had not been a Gryffindor, and were Dumbledore not a raging misogynist, his Tom Riddle bells likely would have been ringing with her.

“But wait, that can’t be right!”

Oh, yes it can. First, as I went into above with Snape and Lily, there was something deeply wrong with that friendship. I believe they both considered themselves best friends, didn’t see many of the warning flags, but ultimately we see the giant fissure when Snape lets loose the m-word. Given all of that, I would not label them having been true friends in the first place. Just the appearance of friends.

Otherwise, while it’s very easily to canonically point out James’ friends it’s incredibly difficult to do so with Lily. First, people hardly remember Lily. We get Dumbledore talking about her like she’s the Virgin Mary, saving her son with the power of her love. We get Snape’s weird Virgin Mary impressions of her. Otherwise, it’s pretty much just Slughorn. Everyone else remembers that she married James and that was great because JAMES WAS SO COOL and that she had very striking eyes and was “nice”. Lily is less than a ghost in Harry Potter canon (sadly Harry never really realizing it).

Also, unlike James who has Sirius, Remus, and Peter to point towards (that are very important characters in canon). Lily has no one. The godmother was Alice Longbottom, a woman many years older than Lily and James who probably liked Lily well enough but I can’t imagine was a close friend. In canon there’s an offhand mention of two girls named Mary and Marlene but we don’t see much of them/Severus was always cited as Lily’s closest friend. As for Lily’s sister, well we know they’re estranged. I think it’s very telling that Lily writes a letter to Sirius, James’ best friend and certainly not hers, telling him that James is pouting over his invisibilty cloak. It’s because there was no one else to write.

So Lily Evans is a brilliant girl, who everyone likes and is very charming, but has no friends and led a very lonely and short life.

Here’s where my slack towards Lily comes in.

When she dumps Snape I completely understand why she did so. Snape dropping that word wasn’t simply a mistake, a moment of infinite regret, but something that revealed what he truly thought of her and where she came from. Lily was absolutely right in walking away.

However, without Snape, her closest friend is suddenly gone and the world is cold. As graduation approaches I imagine Lily’s career options become clearer and clearer. While very talented and smart, Lily is a muggleborn, what job she does manage to get (thanks to the sheer nepotism of the wizarding world/lack of jobs) will likely be through Slughorn if she manages to get a job at all. The world is cold and it is cruel and no one seems to even notice.

Cue James Potter. I do believe, probably until seventh year, Lily loathed James, not simply because of the horrifying things he did to Severus (and I’m sure she knew very little of it, Snape hiding most of it from her out of pride and shame), but because he’s just a giant dick. He’d make flirting with her a kind of game and joke to be shared with Sirius, something to hold over Snape’s head, like she’s a prize to be one.

However, by seventh year the werewolf incident has happened, Snape’s retreated further and further into Death Eater recruit land and she’s cut him off, and for all my “James is a dick” I do imagine he calmed down a little. Now that Snape is no longer friends with Lily/after the whole almost murder incident I imagine they didn’t bully him nearly as much as they used to. Though yes, they probably still bullied him, but Lily probably doesn’t know that now that she’s lost contact with Snape. 

James is charming and very good looking. He seems a bit more mature than he used to be. Lily is desperately lonely, living in a world that rejects everything she is, and James seems like one of the few who does support her (that James is more of a ‘pretty fly for a white guy’ kind of support for muggleborns doesn’t hit until later). So Lily is charmed and makes the largest mistake of her life, she and James start dating.

Now, given their extreme youth as well as Lily’s pedigree (say what you like, I don’t think Mr. and Mrs. Potter were thrilled that their son was dating a muggleborn) I imagine the wedding was a shot gun wedding and Lily got unintentionally pregnant. Yes, go ahead and throw fruit at me or call foul, I just can’t imagine they’d want a child that young while in the middle of a war while they’re part of an active resistance movement and only just out of Hogwarts.

Then things start snowballing downhill. Lily and James have just joined the resistance movement, Lily’s son is prophesied to defeat Voldemort, they strongly suspect one of James’ close friends is a spy, and they’re forced into hiding.

In hiding is where I imagine stress runs high and their marriage begins to fall apart. We know from Lily’s letter that James was routinely leaving hiding, using the cloak, so he could meet up with Sirius and Peter (I imagine Lupin’s on the out as they suspected he was the spy). While James might not realize what a big deal that was, I imagine Lily always did, and she begins to realize just what she’s gotten herself into but there’s no way out while in hiding.

Now we go really off the rails into headcanon territory in: what the hell is up with Harry Potter?

In my stories, I often choose the unwitting god route. Harry can’t die because he is a god, he becomes the master of death and always was the master of death. This is an answer, but it’s one that makes canon Harry a god and... I would not want canon Harry as a god. JKR and Dumbledore push the “Lily loved her child so much that it deflected death... multiple times” but this always felt... unsatisfying. Many parents love their children (fathers too, JKR, let’s not make this weird Virgin Mary thing) and yet Harry Potter alone in the history of mankind survives multiple times. 

Most likely, Lily pulled off some insane bullshit with absolutely no resources and minimal education AND EVERYONE IGNORES IT. We do know that Lily crafted the blood wards, wards stronger than anything Dumbledore himself can come up with/than Voldemort can break. Ones that protect Harry not only at home but away from it as it melts Voldemort for simply touching his skin. Lily pulled off the impossible in only a few months and did it right under everyone’s nose.

This makes her easily one of the most intelligent characters in Harry Potter. Probably beating out Dumbledore and maybe tying with Tom Riddle. And Dumbledore tells us, “Your Virgin Mary mother loved you so much, Harry, that it courses through your veins and lights those that would want to harm you on fire.”

So, that’s Lily for you.

Now, that said, I’m probably a bit biased and clearly very lenient with her marrying James. To be honest it took me years to figure out why the hell Lily would ever marry James after what happened with Severus and was always one of those weird canon things I never quite understood. He’s that good looking and charming, I guess, was my response.

The answer I now land on with some confidence was that the world is that cruel and bleak and Lily was utterly alone for two years.

By the way, a side note/plug, of all my stories while head canons do pop up here and there I think “October” is one where they tend to crop up more. It’s a vast AU of canon, but it gives an idea of what I think x character would do in y situation. 

[dannyboyzone]

Samuel, if he would have a child

this was not requested, but it's children's day in korea! and who is the most fun to read about if none other than our tiddy king Seungeun! yaaay! Also, I could like, make one of Eli and Yenna, but we all know Eli is the best dad in the lookism world 🖤

꒰ 🍨 ”♡ᵎ꒱ˀˀ ↷ ⋯ Sammy with his child...

baby life

- Samuel isn't the type that necessarily loves kids, however that doesn't mean he necessarily hates them. He wouldn't know how to react if his partner says they are pregnant or want to adopt. - or anything of the sort! - He would react in a polite and pleasant manner, but the heaviness wouldn't shrink in until a few weeks or month.

- Not going to lie, he would prefer a son over a girl. It's not that he is sexist, it's that he is afraid that he would kill whoever hurts his little princess, which would scare and distance her.

- However, he doesn't mind what the end result is, he would just want to be a good parent because he never had an actual good one. You would expect him to have the mentality of 'I suffered, so why shouldn't they?' But he truly doesn't.

- He would absolutely be lost with babies, but would be very willing to learn about how to take care of them. He would surprisingly smile at them a lot, and even speak in a babying voice. Big scary gangster has a heart.

- The crying would sometimes drive him crazy, but he would absolutely never take it out on the baby, just try to learn which cry means what exactly. If it goes on for long, he might as well cry too.

- He would absolutely never trust anyone expect his s/o with holding his baby. That's his baby, whoever hurts it will die. He has set his mind on that long ago, truly. He had a terrible childhood, he won't let that happen to his own kid.

- People are absolutely not allowed to be loud around his baby, or even smoke around them. He would go out of this place to protect them, but maybe be a little tense during it.

- Honestly, when he would be around his family, he would be very very vulnerable. It would be his special safety net, and his weak spot. He wouldn't try to show that though, so people don't hurt his family, he can't let that happen.

- He still wouldn't become a full on softy though, but when he is around his baby? Lord! He has a whole personality change. Samuel who? There is only SuYoung's dad here!

- Ah, did I mention? He would want the baby to have a name that starts with an S. It will either have Seung in it, but even if not that, it will definitely have 'Eun' in it. If that's not an option? Y'all are going to look at baby-name sites at 2 am. The! baby! needs! a! name! that! starts! with! an! S! Seriously, if the child is adopted and has a name already, it will just become their middle name. Samuel will not chill out.

- However, whatever happens, the child will either be his Princess/Prince/Snowflake. He will probably buy a lot of things that will make not only having a baby easier, but having a baby life easier. As in; Both the child and the parents will have it easier.

- Samuel would absolutely love to dress up his baby in ridiculous clothes, like a baby overall with a hoodie, that just makes them look like a big carrot. He would just take pictures of them, but dress them back up in normal baby clothes, to not make the baby uncomfortable.

- What he would love as well is to take pictures with the baby, and record important moments. Like first words, learning, saying first word ect. That baby would probably become the most important person in his life.

- Absolutely not going to lie, Samuel is the kind of person who would love his child(ren) way more than he loves his s/o. Sure, it's great to have a loving s/o, but his son/daughter/child? They are top priority, he is responsible for their birth, and he will make them have the best living experience possible. He isn't going to put them through what he went through.

- I think he would also feel very loved. Especially if the baby falls asleep on his chest or tummy, he would definitely feel like he is a good dad. He would just be proud 'hey! i created that! It's beautiful and lovely!'

- Sammy is also the type of person that would peck his baby since he loves them so much. Please don't think of anything sick though, it's pretty normal and a lot of parents do it. However, if the baby hits him or pushes him away due to uncomfortable, he would of course stop and stay with hugs. It's just that his monkey brain would go 'woah!!!!!!! princess/prince/snowflake!!!!!!!!!!!'

- Talking about hits, babies hit people since they are developing and don't know that it's not fine. Whenever he would get hit by the baby, he would stay totally calm. He would kiss their little hand and kindly say that hitting papa/dad isn't nice. He would find it quite adorable, actually. He would probably have a hard time to not laugh if the baby bites his nose even.

- He would absolutely be the best dad. He would feed the baby, bath the baby, change diapers, cut their nails so they don't scratch themselves! Literally best dad.

- Maybe, if in the future he will be on good terms with Eli, he would even ask for advice. He is a good dad, and that includes admitting that he doesn't know everything, and he needs help.

kiddo big baby life

- Samuel would honestly be the kind of dad other kids are jealous for. They would want a dad like him, you know? But at the same time, they would all respect and fear him because if they hurt his little baby? It won't have a happy end for anyone. Samuel wouldn't need to raise his voice or hand for that to happen.

- Samuel would always prepare bento for his kiddo, and definitely even make them breakfast. No matter how picky they are, he would try to make the food they ask for. However, he would never let them eat in bed, unless they are sick.

- Talking about that, sometimes he would pick up his kid from school earlier than he is supposed to, either because he feels like his kid doesn't want to be there, or just because he wants to make family memories. He would also lie to the teachers.

- Also! 'Hello' and 'Goodbye!' hugs and cheek kisses are a must. Samuel is not an affectionate person, but both him and his kiddo would agree that they should always do that. Also, 'goodnight' and 'good morning' forehead kisses are a must too. He does it because he loves his kid, but also because you can never know when will you see someone for the last time. He would never say that out loud tho.

- He would do it even if he is mad, but when he is mad he would be scary. Not because he would get violent with his kid, but extremely silent. The kind of silence that screams disappointment. Funny thing is though, he would be like that exactly to not turn violent. He doesn't trust himself, so he has to control himself. It wouldn't happen often tho.

- He would be a little strict, but nothing too much. Just general healthy strictness. Like no chocolate after 6pm, limited tv time, children lock on the tv, computer ect. He is protective, but not overwhelming.

- If his kid would as a lot of questions he would be fine with that. He would just look at it as an opportunity to teach them, so he would answer all in an appropriate way. Also, hey, at least he can teach his kid that cheating is disgusting.

- Talking about that, he would be terrified of becoming like his dad. So even if he wouldn't love his s/o after a few years, he would still keep in the relationship and hide his feelings so his baby can grow up in a happy environment. He would never cheat though, so that's that.

- He would still be a good dad though! He would be happy if his child has independence and his own interests. He would let them pick their clothes, but also choose aesthetic matching outfits for them.

- Also, Samuel wouldn't really care what their sexuality, gender, religion, style and thought manners are, as long as they have morals and don't have disrespect in their heart. He values respect a lot.

- Also, he would teach them to be polite because that brings them far in their life. However he would also teach them to never do what they don't want to. Seriously, he would at some point teach his kid to remember the quote that says "The hill that you carry was only supposed to be climbed"

- He would also like, be chill if they fight. Teacher calls in that his kid fought? Cool, he would calmly tell the teacher to watch out properly next time. At home he would ask how they stand and hold their fist while fighting. To teach them how to do it properly.

- He would probably also prefer to have them in a fighting class of some sort. He would list multiple material art styles, explain the rules and ask his kid if they would be fine to go to at least one. It's not that he wants his kid to be violent, but he wants them to be able to protect themselves.

- HEALTH IS TOP PRIORITY!! Sammy is the type of dad you can tell anything to because he won't judge. That includes health and mental health, he would be careful and set up a comfortable mood. He wouldn't be ablist at all and just take care of his kid the way he is supposed to.

- Also, when the kiddo needs to get a shot or their blood taken, he would be next to them, holding their hand. Softly talking to them so they can get through it. He would also praise them, probably buy stickers and ice cream.

- He also absolutely wouldn't mind spending money on his kid. Their room would look like a dream land full of plushies.

- The support in this house would be above the roof. His kid likes painting? There is a whole art room. His kid likes biking? There is a whole biking day each weak.

- He would also help the kiddo study, although he wouldn't always be the best. Samuel didn't get rich by studying after all.

- He would also teach them stranger danger, and have a secret word with them that means 'something is wrong, please come here and help me'.

teen ♡

- He would probably stop babying his child when they become 14, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't be affectionate! He just wouldn't want to embarrass them.

- Not going to lie, he would hit his kid if they do something big enough to deserve it. For example, if his kid would willingly do drugs - forced is something different - he would definitely hit them. Or if they hide smoking, or smoke in general. It wouldn't be abusive, or a daily thing. He would only use if necessary. He saw how those effect people, and he experienced how bad smoking is, he would have strict rules and he wouldn't let his child go through it. They will either choose the easy way, or the hard way.

- Do not misunderstand though, he won't get mad at every single little mistake. He would be a smart parent, just a little stuck up to his own views. He would tell them that he would rather get a call from them saying they snuck out and need to be picked up than a call from the police that his child is dead or went missing.

- Also, he wouldn't tell them what they should wear or not, but he would always make sure to put something in their bag that they can cover themself up with incase they are around someone that makes them uncomfortable incase their outfit shows skin. The gender wouldn't matter, as he is not sexist.

- He would be supportive with whatever their dream is, but would make sure to tell them that dreams can change and that they should make a back up plan incase it does. He is just realistic.

- Talking about that, he would make sure that his kid has a safe to work at next to him incase they want that. He wouldn't force them, but he would like to be a good role model.

- Funny enough, he would know how dumb teenagers can get. His worst fear would be his kid becoming as dumb as him when he was a teenager. Literally, he knows he made bad decisions and let his worth be measured by others, and he wouldn't want his kid to be like that either.

- He would also be fun though, he is the type of parent you can have inside jokes with. He would sometimes not laugh, as he is used to kids saying dumb stuff, but if it's a good joke he definitely will just have a great time with you.

- He is a proud parent too! Literally, even if his kid is a dumbass or a himbo, he would love them and their achievements whatever those may be.

- Absolutely wouldn't know slang, but would still attempt to joke around and do it. It would be fun because he would use words incorrectly.

- A must is definitely teaching his kid about life. In how to view humans, how to treat them and that he should understand that everyone is different.

- Samuel is the type of dad that knows his kids every interest, but not because he is pushy but because they feel comfortable talking with him. It would make other parents jealous for sure. He doesn't understand though, he thinks it's normal.

- When it comes to dating, he wouldn't be a helicopter parent. However, he would teach his kid to not just trust anyone and choose wisely, also, to always have protection. Let that be pepper spray or condom, it works in different situations. Poor person who dates his kid tho. They would constantly get looks that say 'I am watching you, better be careful.' He wouldn't be watching.

- Well, there would be CCTVs around the house though, so if they come home drunk, or past their bed time he will know. And wait. It's not that he would scold, it's that he would have a serious conversation.

- He would still do fun things with them too though! Like having bike fridays, vacation weekends, movie marathons ect. He would be a mix up a lowkey fucked up parent and a mix of the fun and loving parent that's always there.

Yaaaayyaaay its done! Hopefully, it was enjoyable. I tried to focus on the positive aspects, but still be honest. Of course it's fine if you don't agree with me! Please be understanding if there is a mistake, I made 57 points and my brain felt like it was melting the more I wrote. Thank you for your time! ♡

[kelvintimeline]

Wait so are you acephobic?

Have to copy/paste myself:

Ace individuals are fine. There’s nothing of moral value negatively or positively in not experiencing sexual attraction. It is a frankly irrelevant piece of information, the same way I don’t care about how people experience any of other facet of their sex life or lack thereof. I do not judge people on how they feel about sex unless it deals with rape.

But I have major issue with anyone who claims that cisgender straight people who don’t feel sexual attraction have a spare orientation that magically makes them LGBT despite oppressing Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisexuals, and Trans and Nonbinary people. I have major issues with ace rhetoric sexualizing LGBT identities via the SAM. I have major issues with ace rhetoric that you can healthily fuck people you aren’t sexually attracted to and date people you aren’t romantically attracted to, seeing as that is rhetoric taken directly from conversion therapy where LGBT people are told to forego their feelings and marry into a straight relationship and remain closeted.

I have issues with the idea that 10-18 year olds are being told that they are oppressed for being disinterested in sex or romance and that if you haven’t finished puberty yet, you’re LGBT and are Different From Your Peers which is fearmongering and just… fucking offensive.

I object to ace rhetoric that sexual orientation is just about your relationship to sexual intercourse when sexual orientation/ the suffix sexual is about sex as in gender, thus saying WHO you are attracted to and nothing more about said attraction.

I have issues with the ace history of using holocaust imagery in their flags and symbols on AVEN. Of using stripes in their flags so people associate them with LGBT people “but not too much" because a lot of cishet aces actually DIDN'T want to be associated with "those people."

I take issue with aces comparing cishet exclusion to TERFs excluding trans women from women’s spaces. When one is LGBT people protecting themselves from their oppressors and the other is cis people treating those they oppress like fucking shit and leading to actual real life violence and suffering as well as legislation that could fucking kill people.

I take issue with ace inclusion going hand in hand with the corporate take over and pride and the liberalism in mainstream LGBT activism.

I’m tired of ace inclusion rhetoric being identical to kink, polyamous, intersex, and pedophile inclusion rhetoric.

I’m tired of people thinking it’s okay o tell strangers and minors their relationship to sex.

I'm tired of those same people thinking that when I use the word bisexual instead of biromantic I am also telling people who I want to fuck when bisexual isn’t about sex. Bisexual aces, minors, and sex repulsed people exist.

I'm tired of people like you dogging me because you so desperately just want me to say "aces are valid!"

When… validity means nothing. Just like the word asexual. Asexual can mean doesn’t experience sexual attraction (except if you’re grey, demi, cupio, lithro... then yeah you can) but does experience romantic attraction, doesn’t experience ANY attraction (unless you’re grey, demi, etc), or just doesn’t want sex. I’m tired of people whose words mean nothing going into the LGBT community and trying to make OUR words mean nothing through shit like the split attraction model or claiming cishets can reclaim queer. All to promote the idea of microidentities that supposedly make you more “queer” the more terms you collect, even though a solid 20% of them just mean shit like “so addicted to porn you can’t get off to real people anymore.”

So, yeah, if you don’t feel sexual attraction, I have no fucking issue with you. But if you support ace rhetoric and the ace community’s destruction of language around sexuality and LGBT identities, then, that’s what I have an issue with.

Not aceness. But ace “activism” which isn’t about destroying rape culture or promoting enthusiastic consent in sex (which I would support) but rather about bullying LGBT people for not including every fucking scatter brained hot take the cishets at the helm of your community can come up with in between watching episodes of Camp Camp and Steven Universe.

That enough for you? Have I made it clear?

LGBT aces are LGBT. Not experiencing sexual attraction and not desiring sex are completely valid, morally neutral things. There is nothing wrong or broken in not desiring sex or romance.

On that front, I am not "acephobic."

But if you're gonna cry "acephobia" when an LGBT person excludes their oppressors who become NO LESS OPPRESSIVE just because they MIGHT not want to fuck their romantic partners... than sure, yes I am.

If it is aphobia to criticize ace terminology instead of taking it on the chin and letting it hurt LGBT people, then... sure, buddy.

If it feeds your victim complex to read this, I Hope you feel full and content. Enjoy being fed.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 06 (first part)

(Masterpost)(Episode 05)

Warning: This contains spoilers for All 50 Episodes

Bad Boys Bad Boys What You Gonna Do

Nie Huasang’s brought his nuts, and someone’s brought wine, so the boys are drinking in Wei Wuxian’s guest house. Finally he gets to drink some of the Emperor’s Smile wine that he’s been doing all those product placements for.

Boys, get a bowl or something for your shells, were you raised in a barn?

Wei Wuxian hits on waxes poetic about the wine, and Jiang Cheng tells him to shut up. 

Wang Zhuocheng’s raw-fish-eating face may have failed him, but his drunk faces do not disappoint.

Wei Wuxian teases Jiang Cheng about his list of standards for a chick: She should have natural beauty, be virtuous and caring, from a good family, not too talkative, with a gentle voice, and not too capable. Also she should not spend too much money. Drunken running ensues.

Cue Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin

(more behind the cut)

Much of the fandom has decided this list is a good fit for Nie Huaisang himself, and it sorta is. But he is both talkative and unvirtuous, what with all the current sneakiness, and all the eventual murders. 

This also definitely doesn't fit Wen Qing because she's capable as hell.  

This list is, however, a 100% a match for Jiang Yanli. Not in a weird, Jin Guangyao way--a lot of men want to marry a woman like their sister.  In a gender-divided and generation-divided society, a man’s sister might be the only woman he’s ever known well. Jiang Cheng adores Yanli and she’s his ideal model of a woman, as opposed to his mother, who...isnt.  

All these robes and talismans over the door do nothing to stop Lan Wangji from strolling in.  

Okay so - Lan Wangji is the senior disciple of the Lan Clan, yea? There is no way that patrolling the guest area is in any way his job. He is just walking around here at night specifically to see what Wei Wuxian is doing.

I already did a gifpost of the boys and their totally nonsexual horseplay, over here. I’ll just add, for sad factor, that Jiang Cheng is play-choking Wei Wuxian when they’re all on the bed, and later in the running-and-crying episode he is gonna for-real choke him. Foreshadowing! or maybe just coincidence!

One fun thread running through the young-cultivators episodes is that Nie Huaisang is legit terrified of Lan Wangji while also having a major aesthetic crush on him. Look at how flustered he is here, trying to act sober while also checking him out. 

Lan Wangji is shocked and visibly upset - what are you guys doing? This is not his busting face, this is, for a moment, his vulnerable and disillusioned face. He is super not used to what normal people are like. 

Wei Wuxian doesn't lie or otherwise try to get off the hook, which has got to have Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang grinding their teeth in frustration. He invites Lan Wangji to join them for a drink. LWJ cites a the “no drinking on campus” rule and WWX tries to convince him to chill. 

Then we have this lovely coordinated faint by the boys, to get out of going to get punished. Nie Huaisang has been practicing fainting in front of a mirror just in case he ever needs a skill like that in the future. 

Wei Wuxian keeps trying to turn this into a date. Eventually Lan Wangji is so upset he admits he can’t take all three of them by himself. 

Then the boys run away fake-barfing and Wei Wuxian hits Lan Wangji with a talisman. 

Steal His Agency That’s What You’re Gonna Do

What Wei Wuxian does to Lan Wanji here is definitely wrong. But it's not entirely a disaster.  It allows some crucial information to be shared between them, and it results in Wei Wuxian getting the utter shit beat out of him and never doing this again. I mean, he continues to mind-control his enemies and their eventual corpses, but he doesn't intentionally violate a friend or ally's autonomy in the future. Uhh not counting that whole golden core surgery-without-consent situation. And probably some other situations I’ve forgotten. He improves slightly, okay? 

It’s important to note, incidentally, that the Lan rules about drinking and other “vices” should not be viewed through a Christian lens. The Lans are neither puritans nor ascetics (look at their clothes, furniture, and jewelry, for starters). Being drunk is forbidden probably because it’s a loss of self-control. 

Speaking of self-control, mad props to Wang Yibo for being able to have zero physical reaction to fingers snapping in his face.

Drunk Lan Wangji

Under duress, Lan Wangji knocks back a cup of wine and promptly passes most of the way out. 

Wei Wuxian puts Lan Wangji into bed not unkindly, but pretty much like a sack of potatoes. Compare this to how tenderly he handles Lan Wangji the next time he’s drunk. 

WWX tells LWJ to call him Wei Gege, and giggles. Is this a term of endearment in this context? So far the various boys are calling each other -xiong, not -ge or gege.  In Western media, men calling each other “bro” is basically saying “no homo,” but brotherhood and sisterhood in C-Drama is often a way of indicating stronger love than friendship, without saying whether it's sexual or not. 

They finally start to have a conversation, and when Lan Wangji explains that no-one can touch his headband except, etc etc, Wei Wuxian stops trying to touch it. So at least he's not a handsy bastard in addition to all his other faults. 

Wei Wuxian tells Lan Wangji that his clan is boring and women won't want to marry him. Lan Wangji says that's fine. On one level this is the show acknowledging that he's gay, but I think he's responding in a gender-neutral way; he doesn't want to marry anyone. Marriage, from his perspective, is the literal worst. 

We don't know how he felt about his father, but he definitely loved his mother deeply, and she had a profoundly unhappy marriage, in which her husband did not provide companionship and her children were taken from her.

A note about all that: The dynamics of heterosexual marriages in The Untamed are not based on contemporary companionate marriage. Sex and reproduction is a wife's job in this world, and giving a gentry woman the option to choose her husband is radical. Wei Wuxian is the only one who dares say that Jiang Yanli should have a choice when Jin Guangshan casually tries to give her to his son in front of everyone.  

OP made this today but will totally reuse it when episode 23 rolls around

So Lan Wangji’s parents' marriage was extremely problematic but not necessarily for the reasons it would be in contemporary terms. Having signed on to marry Lan Dad, Mom would have expected to live together and get laid regularly (important for health, in some traditional views, regardless of love/no love) and to have the company of her children. Instead, she was isolated. Lan Dad wanted to have it both ways and so even though he loved her and apparently hooked up with her sometimes, he didn't do his duty by her. She didn't love him but she did her duty. 

Wei Wuxian continues to not get it, calling Lan Wangji dull and babbling about Lan Wangji’s parents until he realizes that LWJ is an orphan like him. 

A nice shift happens here. Once the penny drops, Wei Wuxian doesn't ask a single additional question - he just sees - by reading Lan Wangji’s face - what the deal is, and shares his own story to show he understands. 

This is the first time Wei Wuxian mentions being chased by dogs, which is kind of a big deal, because why was he left all alone when his parents died? 

Why didn't anyone take him in before Jiang Fengmian found him? How isolated are independent cultivators in this world? 

Tea Time

Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen are having tea, and the Lan Clan is so uptight they don't touch each other's teacups. I don't know what this thing is called so I'm going to call it a tea speculum. 

Lan Qiren is back from the cultivation conference and says the red crack plague is happening over in Qinghe where the Nie clan lives.  Lan Xichen fills him in on the water demon, specifically saying Wei Wuxian figured out the connection to the red crack dudes, and explaining who WWX is, as if Lan QIren hadn't already thrown stuff at him and threatened to eventually kill him. 

Fun fact that I just noticed this week so didn't make it into earlier posts: In Episode 46, when Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are in the Jiang ancestral hall, WWX says he was often punished to kneel there, and LWJ said that they heard about this in Gusu.  

So when WWX came to Gusu he already had a reputation as a troublemaker, and the Lan brothers were aware of it.   

Busted and Beaten

A Lan snitch comes in to say that Wei Wuxian has successfully corrupted Lan Wangji, which really shouldn’t cause as much surprise as it does.

“Wei Wuxian got drunk”

“Lan Wangji got drunk”

Lan Xichen takes a moment to consider carefully whether Wei Wuxian is a good friend for his little brother and whether perhaps he was too hasty in throwing them together. Ha ha ha no he doesn’t. 

On the punishment porch, Lan Xichen tries to lecture Lan Wangji in a calm way, but Lan Qiren wants to beat him and Lan Wangji wants to get beat. Wei Wuxian can’t understand why Lan Wangji doesn’t let him take the blame for the drinking. 

Lan Qiren goes way the fuck overboard with this punishment because he's angry--losing control and losing his sense of proportion--and Lan Xichen is shocked. The drone camera watching from above is also shocked.  

Lan Qiren has a few (very few) redeeming qualities, but his extreme rigidity and chronic resentment of anyone he perceives as bad are serious problems. His nephews are both struggling with complex moral quandaries as they get older, and he is absolutely no help to them in resolving their conflicts.

This is definitely...a style of parenting & teaching, but you can see how poorly it works, with Lan Wangji straight up saying “fuck it” after many years of conformity.  Lan Xichen is devoted to the middle path and tries to be obedient. But he is actually not walking anywhere near the middle path, as he gets pulled into colluding with a murderer at the same time as getting dragged onto his brother’s carnival ride. These men need parenting that isn’t so, uh, fucking stupid. (Yes, grown adults still need good parenting; watch Go Ahead if you doubt me) 

Wei Wuxian initially yells and falls down when he gets hit, but then he sees Lan Wangji is taking the beating without any reaction and he tries to do the same. 

Aftermath

Jiang Yanli gently lectures the boys, blaming Jiang Cheng for Wei Wuxian's drinking.  Jesus Christ, he's the younger sibling, could you just NOT, Yanli?  

Both boys ask Yanli not to tell their parents. The boys bicker about who's at fault and then Wei Wuxian shifts to baby voice and starts whining to Yanli about the pain. 

Yanli tells him to suck it up, and says after school she'll -- ok and I know this will be a surprise for everyone -- make soup for them. The boys immediately get back on the same team, which is team Please Put Meat In the Soup.

There's a nice character building moment for Wei Wuxian here. When he sees Lan Xichen he initially turns away to avoid running into him, but then he adults-up and goes to face him and greet him, giving him a half of a bow because of the pain, the pain. Rather than complaining about his punishment he meekly asks if he's broken another rule. 

Lan Xichen tells him that he did wrong but that Lan Qiren’s punishment was too harsh, and then in what is one of my favorite Lan Xichen moments, invites Wei Wuxian to use the cold spring to heal, but doesn't invite Jiang Cheng to go with him even though Jiang Cheng also was beaten. Lan Xichen, Matchmaker Auntie Extraordinaire. 

Then he answers Wei Wuxian’s question about his mom by saying she was just like Wei Wuxian and drove Lan Qiran up the wall. Jiang Cheng's reaction to that is really sweet. He does enjoy Wei Wuxian at the same time as being constantly irritated by him. 

Lan Xichen does his patented “breaking off in the middle of saying something and leaving out a chunk of the story” maneuver, although this time he doesn't include a flute solo. 

OP is mildly obsessed with Xuan Lu’s shoulders in this outfit. Also Yanli has an interesting sword, that's got some wood carving similar to Subian, but without the organic look, which OP only noticed because of screen capping Xuan Lu’s shoulders.  

Club Ruohan

Wen Qing continues to be pretty and slightly evil at this stage, sending magic fire notes to her boss using this talisman that is definitely floating in the air and not just hanging from a string. 

Wen Ruohan is in the mosh pit with his zombie groupies while he reads Wen Qing’s extremely vague status update and says "it all makes sense." 

Reach out and touch faith

Soundtrack

Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode

Writing Prompt

How did Wei Wuxian’s parents die?

Admin Notes

I’m going to start spacing out my “first part” and “second part” posts by a few days.  I’ll update this post to link up the second part once I post it, and my masterpost is always up to date. 

Also: if you want more of my original content but don’t want to follow my whole blog (not following is fine!), I keep a pinboard of fun stuff at the top of my blog. I try to post original content at least once a week.

Continued in the second part later this week!

[southeastasianists]

Making movies about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender can be daunting under Singapore’s restrictive censorship laws, but that didn’t stop one filmmaker from doing so in his directorial debut. Getting his work to the big screen, however, was a whole other obstacle to overcome.

It only took one month for Jet Ho to conceptualize, write, cast and film Aqua Man, a short film about a young Singaporean boy that looks at the hot-button topic of gay conversion therapy. But that was just the beginning of his struggle for anyone to see it. Because it touches the media third rail of homosexuality, his story of student Jun Jie, his distressed mom, and Bible-armed pastor was rejected at least 15 times, by Ho’s count, by streaming platforms and film festivals.

“It [was] quite fast to film, but it took me a very hard time to promote the film,” Ho told Coconuts. “It basically was rejected everywhere from the start until I decided to just launch it on YouTube and give it some justice to itself.”

There’s no Jason Momoa here coming to the rescue, so why Aqua Man? Aqua sounds similar to a derogatory Hokkien term for gay men, Ah Kua, which literally means transvestite. In Ho’s film, actor Josh Lim is the titular character, who comes home one day to find his mother has brought a pastor to pray the gay out of him with a praying ritual form of conversion therapy.

It’s a timely topic as Singaporeans clash over extending or suppressing LGBT rights and recognition in an uneven struggle that has seen one side given a voice over the other.

Because of the subject matter, Aqua Man could never be shown on television, as films featuring characters who are gay – an “alternative sexuality” to government censors –  is automatically rated 21 and up.

That restriction, most often applied to movies containing nudity, was not something Ho was OK with. After all, he wanted to reach those who would most identify with his protagonist.

“It is a societal problem that starts out even with kids at a very young age,” Ho said, referring to the younger generation who struggle with their sexual identity. “This has got nothing to do with explicit pornographic material, that perhaps needs a higher age rating.”

So in December he premiered his film on YouTube, where it has struggled to find a large audience.

Unseen …

The commercial photographer for the National Museum and National Geographic channel said he was motivated to make his movie by the lack of a quality queer representation in Singaporean television shows and movies.

Queer characters portrayed as regular people are unheard of on national television, where they are relegated to cross-dressing tropes by the likes of Jack Neo and drag queen Kumar, or are sources of comic relief, such as transgender comedian Abigail Chay.

There is some good – last year’s depiction of a family man turning to drag culture to feed his family was nominated for two Taiwanese film awards – and a whole lot of ugly, such as Mediacorp TV series My Guardian Angels, which portrayed a gay character as an STD-infected pedophile.

“They just include this character and always hint him in a very bad light or bad influence, driving a misrepresentation of the LGBT population in Singapore,” Ho said. “Let’s say Disney has one gay character in a movie and it is premiering in Singapore. I can tell you a lot of people will make a big fuss out of it.”

Indeed Disney’s Beauty and the Beast did kick up some dust in 2017 from church councils, which denounced the film winning a PG-rating despite the inclusion of a gay character.

That said, Singaporeans are more open to discuss gender identity today than two decades ago, Ho said, noting that Aqua Man is set nearly 20 years ago, a time he thinks Singapore’s cultural conservatism was at its peak.

Now, in 2021, arch-conservatives appear to feel they are on the defensive, denouncing “woke cancel mobs” over arguments that seem to have moved on from their point of view as negative LGBT views continue to tick down. Singapore’s strain of evangelical Christianity remains a potent force, and the intersection between faith and family is an area Ho mined for his film.

“Sometimes when the parents face such a problem that is already existing in our very conservative society, they often find a solution with the church or with religious institutions but the answer to whether it is the right or the most moral approach, nobody is there to judge,” Ho said. “I find this dilemma in the film very interesting because there is no right or wrong answer.”

Ho, who is not Christian, had only heard stories of conversion therapy. So, prior to filming, he dove a little deeper into the topic by attending weekly sermons at churches and interviewing pastors in hope of portraying them more accurately. He sounded grateful for the opportunity.

“I don’t want to put any church or any organization in bad light, I want to make the whole film look as authentic as it is. With the church, I was very thankful to come out with this concept,” he said, describing them as “loving” and “very understanding.”

… but not unheard

Aqua Man could have reached a wider audience and been better funded were it not for the strict laws, believes Ho, who forked out S$16,000 (US$12,000) to make it. Even film festivals and competitions turned him down.

“The main problem was when I tried to send out to a few film competitions, I wasn’t notified on whether I lost or anything. Locally, like streaming platforms I actually send out a few emails to their main email and even directly to people who work there but I received zero emails,” he said. “That’s how serious it is, they are so repulsive against LGBT-centric films.”

Ho submitted his film to the Singapore International Film Festival and HBO Asia’s Invisible Stories series, which is marketed as surfacing untold Singapore stories. They were among the more than dozen platforms he says rejected or ignored his inquiries. But he took comfort in one HBO representative’s note.

“Even though we didn’t win anything, it was actually a great relief because she personally wrote an email to us, and that’s the only reply that we got. At first, I really thought the film was so bad and negative to the extent that it doesn’t deserve a place or it doesn’t deserve anything,” he said.

Though direct to YouTube wasn’t his first choice, Ho was gratified by the response he got.

“After the film was produced, it was very astonishing to find that many people actually reach out to say that this happened to them personally so it became a true story that I wrote. Initially, I just dictated the story and something I think will be interesting to show but it became a true story, told by people who watch the film,” he said.

Local LGBT group Oogachaga had also shared the movie on its online platform.

And it’s not the end of the road for Ho, who is still pushing for Aqua Man to reach a wider audience. He’s also writing another script and pledging to continue chasing stories on social issues such as transgenderism, racism, and abuse.

“Singapore has to have its own culture when it comes to filmmaking, our culture is our identity. We should portray more and show more, we shouldn’t hide it we should embrace it and move forward,” he said. “Trying to conceal the whole LGBT-centric material is not going to be helpful for us to progress into a more empathetic society.”

[hiriajuu-suffering]

Reasons I believe in Polyamory

I’ll preface this by saying I’m not attractive enough to be able to have more than a single partner at once, but there is a reason for that, and really, the thesis of this wall of text below: heteronormative relationship standards in every culture have always been, and will continue to always be, more about possession than love in a post-imperialistic world.

Personally, I’m a huge proponent of engendered sexuality variance to the tone of males have a constant slow drip of libido and a female’s sex drive hits them like a freight train once a month (in mammalian bioepigenetics, this makes sense). I’m inclined to infer, because I’m not idyllically normatively attractive, only a fraction of a percentage of women will be attracted to me 24-27 days of any given month. As a cisgendered man who is regrettably straight, having the least attractive genoethnic identity intersection (South Asian Muslim) in Western culture, I’m never actually presented with the choices to act on a poly mindset (in fact, I would be ridiculed for it because people think it aligns with some other gross tribal stereotype when it couldn’t be further from the truth). In retrospect, I have everything to gain from interpreting the main benefit of an intimate relationship as ownership like heteronormative culture generally does yet I still think disavowing poly as a legitimate personal choice is immoral.

I know saying monogamous relationships are more about possession than love will offend lots of people, so before you throw hate at me for your emotionally defensive skepticism, hear me out. An unflinching, unyielding love is seen as the highest parameter in any type of romance. So why is it cheating is so much of a bigger problem than a dry spell specifically? Is it because it’s legitimately a breach of trust, or is it more about “if I can’t have you, no one can”? More importantly, does it go a step further and say “if I don’t want you, no one should”? To me, any sort of dry spell (whether physically, emotionally, mentally) signifies a much larger breach of trust than simply having been shared because it shows said commitment in the relationship was not unflinching, not unyielding. The monogamous lens looks at others like: I want to have the best partner, not just so that I’m happy, but no one else can receive the specific happiness I get. Doesn’t that whole mindset come off as brutish? Just me? Well, maybe your pitchforks will start coming down when you realize monogamy is a function of toxic patriarchy on both feminine and masculine ends.

There are bioevolutionary reasons for toxic femininity to value the possession aspect of a relationship over its substantive “quality of life” components, the birth-giving gender in any animalistic specie always had to be beheld to a provider they reproduce with. Does it not then represent a sense of feminine fragility when a single mother immediately demands a long-term relationship and nothing else? If I’m to believe said woman is capable of genuine lust in her system, having a child shouldn’t evaporate all carnal desires completely and, therefore, should leave room for compromise. Said stance also indicates she made some sort of error in judgment of her chosen reproductive mate and feels entitled another man ought remedy her strife even though, evolutionarily speaking, he has nothing to gain from helping to rear offspring not of his kin. Harsh, to be sure, but it does show in the obnoxiousness of the connotation of becoming a stepdad being a positive one and becoming a stepmom assumes the motivation of some gain in status (wealth, fame, power, etc.) which I would argue is negative. Where does toxic masculinity come into play? Desire for possession on the part of a male promotes the viability and exclusivity of his own children with his most desirable partner. While that’s damn near nowhere as compelling, it has to be stated because there are always two benefactors to patriarchy. Patriarchy is not a zero sum game, patriarchy seeks to concentrate all familial social benefits in the monogamously-driven, heteronormative genus, away from those who deviate from the ideal picture of stereotypical gender roles. The ill effects of patriarchal standards exist in every human civilization, but the ontological root to the specific brand of patriarchy that oppresses all genders today was spread by a culture that uniquely preached monogamy.

Polygamy, in a historical sense, was a testament to the more status a person of the provider gender could achieve, the more their genetics would proliferate. Many cultures globally practiced this, the issue is, the ones that didn’t were the ones who, often violently, “conquered” the ones that did. Christian fundamentalism is in every fiber of international morality, whether the nation in question believes in Christianity or not is often irrelevant. Monogamy is enforced, anything outside of that is deemed as necessarily being deviant (whether choosing to be alone or choosing more connections than a monocule). Fetishization of the step relation is eluding to this deviance in a not-so-subtle way because it’s something where its allure is derived from its forbiddenness moreso than its convenience, every one of these scenarios has a subtext of implicit gain, not loss, in engagement. Meaning, the idea is planted because a hot person is there not because a person in general is there and can satiate an urge. Tl;dr - we believe polyamory is a morally negative act because the Holy Roman Empire did and every nation that spawned from it spread, imparted, and coerced that ideal on every culture it came into contact with. Before the Holy Roman Empire, no historical documents made distinctions to behest multiple lovers as desanctifying of life itself, not even the coalescing of nations that made up the Holy Roman Empire before its inception.

We are now in an era when women have access to full reproductive control, yet we still see men lust more than women, e.g. archetypal lesbian tendencies versus archetypal gay male tendencies. Do we not question why this is the case? All lifeforms are hardwired with a desire to survive and reproduce, so why does that drive not reach equity when risk does? There are two answers, and it could even be both: women are only socially conditioned to have sex via patriarchal pressures and don’t have as much inherent desire to reproduce OR sex is a means-to-an-end to exclusively possess a desired provider, whatever said person provides. If said person has a trait valuable enough to want to possess, is it not self-contrived to keep that quality to oneself, not share it with the world where it can provide more utility? Heteronormative relationships, in a sense, are anti-altruistic at their very core. As facetious as this sounds, either of these trains of thought are validated by men being more willing to engage in polyamory than women, not because men are somehow any less loyal than women. On its own, I feel this line of reasoning is enough to justify a vehement disgust of polyamory as immoral, but I want to conclude on the most pivotal facet to this conversation and not just heavily imply monogamy encroachment on moral turpitude is problematic at best.

As I mentioned a few times, I am likely to be a spoke on a polycule, not a member with multiple connections. Exclusive possession is something I probably stand more to gain from than any woman, logically and realistically, given the current social climate and general global beauty standards. My advocacy of polyamory stems from me accepting I may not be enough to be the full extent of happiness my romantic interest desires. That doesn’t even come from a place of insecurity, it comes from a place knowing I could never be perfect even if its pursuit is a righteous cause. I see real insecurity as a fear of loss when the rules of engagement you put into place were exclusivity: you don’t want your partner looking at anyone else because it’s disadvantageous to you, meaning you’re not fixated on their best interest and looking at relationships in said manner is deliberately selfish. To me, the best frame of reference to morality in interpersonal social connections is altruism. Yeah, self-love is important and knowing your own boundaries is beneficial but everyone else’s boundaries don’t have to match yours. I’m not anti-monogamist, really. I’m more anti-polyamorist discontent.

Not having thought this deeply isn’t an excuse, either.

[recurring-polynya]

I have to say I knew that at one point renji, ikkaku, yumichika and iba were in the same squad with kenpachi but good god you managed to paint a beautiful picture for me. I simply assumed that for them it was simply party time all the time along with a few bald jokes but this is much better. Emotionally healthy squad 11 which still love fighting more than anything. I always cringed when someone would just describe them as hooligans that do nothing but fighting. I mean they do that too but I love the idea that they are all emotionally healthy and mature, a loving and supportive family to their own - in their own wakka doodoo kind of way thats endearing - and of course they are in my opinion they single capable force against sexisim. Because they don't care about anything else - gendere, sexuality, gender performances, race, mentality or anything - other than if you fight good you respectable and if you fight good in squad 11 you family. ( like when kenpachi just became captain he made yachiru his lieutenant and no one was against it no one thought it was beneath them, sure thru nag at her sometimes but that's mostly in a banter like way because she call them stupid nicknames but no one hates her for being unrightfully their superior. One day they got a new captain and a new lieutenant that's a child and they just went with it.) I admit their disdain and disrespect to squad 4 is still frowned upon but I do believe some squad 4s can handle their own, it's just that we saw the really peaceful ones. Anyways sorry for ranting. Just wanted to say that yeah, I really like how the past squad 11 with iba and renji in it was a great place in general. I think if they found out some one was being sexist - for whatever reason - they would be there right next to nanao - or iba's mom protesting. Kenpachi and yachiru as well. And that makes me want to be squad 11 ,despite not being much for fighting, so bad.

So, for starters, thanks! I try to have fun whenever I write Squad 11, and I’m glad you enjoy my take on them.

My Squad 11 is just... really not very canon, though. Canon Squad 11 is actually pretty gross and sexist. Yumichika is transphobic, Kenpachi makes homophobic remarks about Yumichika, they bully Squad 4, there’s a filler episode devoted to a guy that Ikkaku bullied for, like 100 years because the guy lost his reiatsu saving Ikkaku’s dumb ass.

When you write fanfic, you occasionally run into these more problematic aspects of the source media, and you can choose to dig in and analyze them, or just... remake them in your own way. Take for example, Gin. If you read fanfic about Gin, there are some people who will peel away the layers of him and his fears and insecurities and still make him be a horrible gremlin, and it’s really stellar writing. Other people prefer to write him in an AU where maybe less bad stuff happened to him, and he’s more mischievous than sociopathic, and this is a less meaty interpretation, but it’s also more fun. Sometimes fanfic is a meal and sometimes it’s candy. It fulfills different needs and different fantasies and all of it is welcome.

Yumichika, who for me is the fulcrum of Squad 11, presents this problem. I really don’t like the way his “appreciation for beauty” plays out in canon. He doesn’t actually appreciate beauty, he just likes telling other people they’re ugly. I don’t think he’s ever pointed out beauty in anyone else aside from himself or his zanpakutou. I remember the first time I watched his fight with Charlotte and it struck me as so off -- why wouldn’t he find her beautiful? I mean, I know it’s a transmysogynistic joke, that’s why, men dressed as women is funny, hurr hurr, but Yumichika is gender nonconforming himself. This was an opportunity to make a cool character point, and Kubo took the cheap laughs road instead. Going back to what I said last paragraph, a skilled writer could, in theory, write about his insecurities and his brittleness and meanness and write a pretty compelling story, but a) Kubo certainly doesn’t, and I have never actually found a Yumichika-centric fanfic of this nature, and b) this doesn’t fit the role I need him to play in my stories. I am rarely really interested in writing about Squad 11 for its own sake. I like to write them as a backdrop for the period of Renji’s afterlife where he hit absolute rock bottom and bounced back up again. We already know the role Ikkaku played in this, except that Ikkaku is a complete moron in terms of mental health, and I really, really felt like this is where Yumichika needed to come in.

I like to massage Yumichika’s character a bit, but I do want to keep the flavor of some of his character flaws-- he’s still shallow and mean and judgy, and I love that for him, but I like to add in a positive side to his appreciation for beauty. Having Yumichika make fun of Izuru’s pores is funny but it’s even funnier if he’s just given Renji a compliment on his hair first. The idea that a Yumichika compliment is attainable makes all his drags the more vicious. Yumichika also judged people by their beauty instead of their moral character, which is humorous to me. He dislikes Byakuya as a person, but is obsessed with his haircare regime. I like to have him treat Rangiku as an equal, beauty-wise, and a person whose opinion he respects based on her aesthetic. Rangiku is actually a pretty savvy and very emotionally intelligent person whom many people write off because she likes to present herself as a lazy airhead, so in an extremely convoluted way, this all works out. I like to think that Yumichika’s ideas of beauty are also caught up in boldness and risk-taking and having one’s outward presentation ring true to their inner self. To me, this is the core of why he loves Ikkaku. To him, Ikkaku’s devotion to doing the most Ikkaku thing at all times, no matter how stupid, is irresistibly sexy. 

Aside: At some point, I decided that the fact that a lot of people in Bleach have colorful marks on their faces and elaborate hairstyle and accessory games implied that make-up in Soul Society is gender neutral. I like to think there is actually more of a divide between the nobility, who like their make-up to follow rules and be classy, and, well, Squad 11, who like to get make-up ideas from Jem and the Holograms. I don’t even wear makeup (I don’t know how and it’s expensive and I am ashamed of myself, we can talk about my own gender presentation later) but I like to write about both my male and female characters wearing make-up. I don’t actually know how my readers feel about it, but it just falls under the “Is that what people want?”/“It’s what we do” philosophy of all my writing.

I think one of the theses of my writing is that middle management is more important to the character of a squad than the person at the top. Captains sort of act as ideals to strive for, but they are generally unapproachable for one reason or another. Yachiru is more like her captain in this respect (which makes sense, since she is, in fact part of her captain). Ikkaku and Yumichika present this dual idea that 1) strength is awesome, fighting and being the best is awesome, and 2) part of strength is presenting yourself to the world in a bold and confrontational way. (The fact that both of them are hiding huge parts of themselves is laughably ironic). Kenpachi and Yachiru are shining examples of Do Whatever You Want and Be So Strong That No One Can Stop You. 

What really makes this work is that you need someone one layer down-- does anyone actually subscribe to this nonsense, and that’s why Iba - Abarai Squad 11 is Best Squad 11. I really, really enjoy the genre of Reddit posts where a total bro will find out that his girlfriend is trans and react by becoming a vehement advocate for trans rights. I love the bodybuilders typing encouragement to each other meme. Our world is flooded with disingenuous messages from concern trolls trying to tell us why being kind and inclusive to one another is bad or that you should reject help because struggle makes you stronger and the idea of a Himbo looking at something like that and saying “that seems dumb" is delightful to me.

I actually feel like there are a lot of awful people with bad ideas in Squad 11, it’s just that Renji and Iba don’t put up with their shit, and over time, that becomes the culture of Squad 11. I think that Squad 11 has incredibly turnover, but the ones who stay are the ones who subscribe to the ideas you mentioned-- fighting is what matters, if you wanna go argue about shit, go join Squad 5. In the IkkaYumi story I wrote, which happens shortly after Zaraki takes over, a ton of people leave. The Bount Arc (which I know a lot of people skipped) features a dude who was extremely pissed off because he had liked the old Kenpachi and thought Zaraki sucked and was so mad about it that he betrayed Soul Society. You might think that this arc would feature Zaraki caring about this in some way shape or form, but he really didn’t. So, I think there are a lot of Soul Reapers that took issue with serving under a little girl as a vice captain, they just aren’t in Squad 11 anymore.

Oh, one last note on Iba’s mom. I am of an age where a number of my friends have mothers who were Second Wave Feminists. The moms in question are a real mixed bag, because they Came From a Different Time, and on one hand, you have to respect what they went through, and on the other hand, they are very difficult to get along with. I liked the idea that Iba has always chafed against his mom and her big personality, and then Renji comes in, and is like, “hey, your mom is strong as hell and she has a lot of ideas that I never thought of but they make sense” and Iba realizes that, even though she’s still a huge pain in his ass, his mom is the person who made him who he is. Moms are complex.

Uhhhh, I have definitely lost the thread of wherever I was going with this post. Thank you for enjoying my Squad 11, which is nothing like canon Squad 11. Hopefully maybe this year, I will actually finish my Squad 11 Self Care story, where Renji stops being a drunk disaster person after Yumichika teaches him how to fill his brows; I got stuck on a part where Rangiku gives Renji a talk on ethical sluttery.

[aro-and-tired]

HIIIIIII how are ya? humm so.. I don't understand the concepts of sexuality very well because I can't understand myself.

I like to say that I'm aromatic but I really have my doubts because I don't know anyone with whom I can talk about this or share my preferences.

I always felt uncomfortable when someone flirted with me, even when I "dated" with some boys and girls, I didn't feel comfortable at all and mostly treated them as friends to be able to maintain the relationship as long as possible hoping to fall in love with the time but that never happened, that doesn't mean that I didn't like those people, I consider them physically attractive and with great personalities, but at the moment we stopped being friends to start dating, everything was uncomfortable, even annoying, so we returned back to being friends.

It's a bit sad for me because I really enjoy romance comics and dramas, but not being able to experience that feeling of "love" makes me feel like a freak and makes me push myself to find a relationship, but I think that this effort makes me feel more annoyed with my "partners" :/ social pressure I guess?? so yeah, any advice?

Hello!

So, what you described about your dating experience aligns fairly well with what some aro people have experienced in their lives. Beginning to date someone for one reason or the other, only to later realize that your feelings are not romantic and/or that romantic things make you uncomfortable. Gay and lesbian people also experience similar struggles, forcing themselves to date the other binary gender because of internalized homophobia/societal pressure, but you said you dated both boys and girls and felt nothing for either so I would say this is most likely not an issue. Based on your words I would say that you might fit under the aromantic label.

I understand how this can be upsetting for some to realize. Especially if, like you, they enjoy romance “in theory”. Finding out that you may not be able to experience something that society has taught us is one of the best and most important things in the world can lead to a lot of bad feelings. It’s not a rare experience among aromantic people.

You need to remember that the idea of romantic love being the best thing in the world is just what society tells you, and not the way life actually is. There are many great things in life that have nothing to do with a romantic partner. You can have your friends, your family, non-romantic partners, your pets, your hobbies, a fulfilling job, there’s a thousand things in the world that can make you happy. Romantic love is just a facet of life, one that is to be honest vastly blown out of proportions. It’s upsetting to know that something you may desire is not an option, but I suggest trying to reframe it as it being just one thing among many, and if you can’t get that you still can have many other great things.

And please don’t think of yourself in negative terms because you don’t love romantically. Not loving does not make you a bad person or a lesser person. It’s not a flaw and it shouldn’t be corrected. Being able of falling in love does not define your morality any more than being straight or gay does. Please don’t force yourself into situations that are hurtful to you because of what society thinks. I know it may not be easy, but you will be much happier if you tell yourself not to listen to amatonormativity. If someone tells you you have to date to be truly happy, they are lying. Don’t listen to them.

There’s nothing wrong with the way you are or experience things, and I wish you all the best

[killian-whump]

I feel so bad about liking whump and I want to stop but I don’t know how

Oh, Nonny. If I could, I’d give you a big huge hug right now, because I feel like you really could use one.

First of all, I want to tell you in no uncertain terms that THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU. You’re a beautiful human being, just like every other human being - made up of a pure soul and a whole big mess of totally natural idiosyncrasies, impulses, and interests that are entirely beyond your control. There are a lot of things in life that we can control - our actions, where and how we apply ourselves to our goals, our career paths, our relationships and interactions with others... but when it comes to the very core of our selves, our likes and dislikes, the things that appeal to us, comfort us, or even arouse us - we’re truly at the whim of an intricate mix of neurons and chemistry that we humans can scarcely even understand, let alone control. There are aspects of the whole shebang that are determined by “nurture” rather than “nature” - but nearly all of those things (if not ALL of them entirely) were set in stone long before you were old enough and smart enough to do anything about any of them. So what does this all mean?

Liking whump isn’t your fault. It’s nothing you chose for yourself, and it’s obviously not even something you want. It just is what it is. It’s the same as how someone born with diabetes or autism just is how they are. The only difference is that science can see and measure where and how someone with a physiological divergence veers from the norm, and it’s generally acknowledged that those variances are due to no fault of their own. But thankfully, society is starting to realize that a lot of things that can’t be measured or “seen” in a person’s physical makeup (like gender, sexual preference, mental/emotional disorders, etc) are no less a part of who they are and equally beyond their control. Liking whump is absolutely no different.

It's easy to lump “liking whump” in with other things we might like - the movie genres we like, the shows we watch, the authors we read. However, the polls and discussions us whumpers have taken part in point to whump being something much deeper than just a trope we enjoy. There are emotional and sexual aspects to it (even in those who don’t consider whump to be a sexual kink - the fact that so many whumpers identify as asexual is too coincidental to BE coincidental!) that point to it being more of a core aspect of one’s personality than a mere intellectual fancy.

And that means... Liking whump isn’t something you just quit. With all of the whumpers I’ve spoken with over the years, I’ve never met a single one whose interest in whump faded or magically went away. It might change or evolve, but it tends to remain a part of who you are for the long haul. So the sooner you can make peace with it and stop feeling bad about it... the better!

To start with, you need to stop feeling bad about it. As I’ve said, liking whump is NOT something you chose for yourself. It’s even something you’ve tried to get rid of. So feeling bad or guilty about it makes about as much sense as feeling bad about a mole you might have or the color of your eyes. You’re being unnecessarily hard on yourself, Nonny, and you need to stop it.

Secondly, the things we think about or even enjoy in the privacy of our own minds is no one’s business but our own. Your mind, your thoughts, and your fantasies are all yours and yours alone. No one has the right to judge - or even know - what goes on in there. That is YOUR sacred space and literally anything that happens in there is perfectly okay. It’s what you DO, the actions you take and the choices you make in life, that determine what kind of person you are - NOT the thoughts and images that float through your mind or bring you pleasure. Thoughts are not action. Fantasies are not reality.

Liking whump does not make you a bad person.

Daydreaming about, say, your favorite character/crush/celebrity getting kidnapped and kept in a dungeon isn’t bad. It’s a private, personal fantasy that brings you some kind of satisfaction and makes you feel good - and hurts no one. It is entirely different from actually kidnapping someone and keeping them in a dungeon - which is really, really, really bad and also very illegal and would definitely hurt people and is generally an awful idea. You see? One is not the other, and you needn’t worry about one turning into the other - I haven’t yet met a whumper who’s gone off the deep end and acted on any of their whumpy imaginings!

At least, not with an unwilling partner ;) Which is the other thing to consider: Some whumpers are sexual sadists. They get aroused by seeing others in pain. Rather conveniently for such people, there are also masochists in this great world of ours - folks who get aroused by being in pain. One finds their counterpart in the other and both get their needs met. And, again, there’s nothing wrong with it. No one is getting hurt that doesn’t want to be hurt, and it’s no one’s business but the people engaged in that relationship.

So be nicer to yourself, Nonny. Whether you’re an all-out sexual sadist or just a more general kind of whump-lover, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’ve got an unusual interest (maybe even a kink, that’s your call) that no one ever even has to know about unless you want them to. That’s it. That’s all it is. You’re not bad, you’re not evil, you’re not morally bankrupt, you’re not destined to become a serial killer or end up in prison. You’re just a regular, normal person with an extra spicy imagination. Give yourself permission to enjoy it!

Just, you know, keep it in your head (or in your writing/art/etc) and don’t become a criminal mastermind ;) Or if you do... remember your good ol’ pal KW and send me a couple of cute sex slaves. I like ‘em dark and broody. Thanks ;)