#i have a friend who is entirely cishet

[mars-ipan]

i lovelovelove ambiguous but very clearly queer friendships

[shopcat]

im sorry my opinion on genderbends changes every seconddddd i just think there's a difference between liiike for example gay girls drawing male characters fem for fun / yuri reasons, or trans ppl having fun w characters in a not weird way, VS (mostly cis) ppl getting up to well cisgender situations because they're crazy and are just drawing random women or men (8 or V) with 2 identifying characteristics slapped on and they look NOTHING like the actual character (or take into account how they COULD look different and aren't doing that either, like how a hyperfeminine chara who is that way bc she likes feeling pretty would still be a pretty boy. etc.)...

you can sniff out transphobia/weird gender shit/blatant homophobia in some people is all. i think it's also helpful im not exposed to annoying genderbends lately they've been fun or cool for fun reasons and not weird reasons like erm doing gender essentialism 😀

[magentagalaxies]

i really want to start making a table collecting statistics on the audience demographics i'll perform my aubrey material for (like what generation most of the audience is, whether i'm performing in a predominantly queer space, etc.) and how well the jokes land bc like. i need to collect more data points before i can properly present my findings but the results so far have been fascinating

[carcinized]

i have srsly had irl queer people make fun of me for being queer + liking sports and tell me that is like, not gay or something. like ok just say youre chronically online. womens soccer is the queerest thing i have ever been a part of hands down. also youre an awful person

[noirtek]

recently i’ve been fixated on tom of finland’s artwork hardcore and it is not helping the heterosexual persona i play in public

[maximumzombiecreator]

I think my most painfully egg TTRPG character was my mage who came from a culture where female magic users were stigmatized as witches, and so she cross dressed male any time we were adventuring and only presented as her true self amongst trusted friends or when commiserating with other witches.

I feel like if the entire table hadn't been cishet teenage boys, someone might have taken me aside and said, "hey buddy, anything you want to express?"

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

would you like to tell us about your research on virginity?

but also...wdym STIs aren't as scary as we think??? I was told most of them are incurable? I know you can make aids untrasmittable and that they've even succeded in curing it a couple times but that's about it. I would love to be educated about this

yeah, the basic idea with the virginity project was that the whole concept of virginity is pretty bullshit in the context in which it was initially significant, namely cisgender women being penetrated by cisgender men, so as soon as you take it outside of that context by introducing gay and trans sexuality it totally falls apart. I mean, hell, it stops working if you even look at two cishet people doing literally anything OTHER than penis-in-vagina sex. I tripped up so many people initially when I started asking questions like "okay, so you don't think a woman loses her virginity from a man going down on her. so what if it's two women? what's the difference?" and just really getting people to face down their very penis-centered view of the sex, to the result of several people telling me that it kind of made them reevaluate what they actually think of as the first time they had sex. it's also fascinating to either read other people's accounts or discuss firsthand how queer people have either tried to make themselves fit into the binary of virginity - queer man disagreeing over whether or not you have to have penetrative anal sex to lose your virginity or oral sex is sufficient, a fascinating case of a lesbian who felt that have sex with other cis women didn't "count" and asked a cis male friend to have sex with her just so she could feel satisfied that she'd lost her virginity - or abandon it entirely. Hanne Blank's book Virgin was a formative starting point, and it really exploded for me from there.

as for the STIs - hey, bad news! you fell victim to the scare tactics used to make people afraid of sex! almost all sexually transmitted infections are very easy to treat and cure with the right medicine, which is why it's important to get tested regularly and check in with your healthcare provider at the first sign of something amiss. pubic lice, scabies, trichomoniasis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis - all of those are pretty easy to get rid of with some help from your doctor and a run to the pharmacy!

the major exceptions are the 4 H's: herpes, HIV, HPV, and hepatitis B.

herpes is with you forever but is an incredibly mild companion to share your body with, considering most people never experience any notable symptoms and those who do can curb the severity with medicine.

it's also worth noting that herpes is so common as to be virtually ubiquitous; the World Health Organization consistently estimates that somewhere around 80% of the world's adult population is carrying herpes simplex virus 1 or herpes simplex virus 2. a great deal of those people don't even get it from having sex, but rather by catching HSV-1 from a parent or other people they come is close contact with as a child.

you're actually thinking of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) when you mention AIDS becoming untransmittable, but that's still a very good thing! the care available for people with HIV has come incredibly far since AIDS first became known and claimed so many lives, and today it's more than possible for people infected with HIV to live long, healthy lives by taking the proper medication to manage their viral load.

with management, people with HIV will not develop AIDS (which happens when the immune system is sufficiently depleted by HIV) and by consistently taking their medication people with HIV can become undetectable (the viral load in their body is too small to be detected or measured in tests), at which point they are unable to transmit the virus to other people.

HPV (human paillomavirus) comes in many different strains, most of which are absolutely harmless and go away on their own after a couple of months or years of freeloading in your body. I cannot emphasize this enough: HPV is so common that virtually everyone who has sex has, will have, or has had it in their lives, and the vast, VAST majority of those people will never be troubled by it literally at all.

the trouble comes from a few strains of HPV that can cause genital warts, and a few others that can cause cancers in the throat, anus, cervix, vulva, vagina, and penis. while HPV can't be treated, you can reduce your risk of developing cancer by getting the HPV vaccine if you haven't already and, if you have a cervix, getting regular Pap smears to catch early warning signs of cancerous developments.

hepatitis B is a viral infection that targets the liver. in rare cases it can cause chronic health problems that can be very dangerous, but I have to emphasize that's not common. in most adults who get hep B, there will be no symptoms and it will resolve itself in a matter of weeks. the infection is riskiest in children, but at least in America most people have received vaccines against hepatitis B as babies since the 90s.

in conclusion: get your shots, take your medicine, use protection, get tested, and talk to your doctor, but know that if there's one thing humans are good at it's figuring out how to manage STIs. we've been doing it for a long time - most sexually transmitted infections and parasites have been with us since before we we became modern humans - so we're really good at it!

[memryse]

if mcyt isn’t fiction then

people who create dnd characters that are similar to them in personality are just playing themselves and should not be treated as having made a character

people who make any other dnd character should also be treated as just playing themselves since people refuse to even consider roleplay smps as fiction

any ocs someone puts a bit of themselves into? nope not fiction!

actors who play a character with the same first name as them aren’t really acting

and so on

maybe YOU can’t separate characters and real people and think that everything you see from a youtuber even when they’re explicitly acting is how they are in real life but we as a fandom just don’t have that issue lol. we’ve had disclaimers and indicators for when we’re talking about characters and not content creators for years because a certain smp contained a character having suicidal thoughts as a result of abuse at the hands of another character and we needed to make it absolutely crystal clear that we were referring to a fictional storyline and not real guy #1 being an abuser and real guy #2 being suicidal. these customs have either extended into other corners of mcyt fandom, or some developed their own independently like hispanic mcyt fans have used the word cubito to distinguish mc guy from real life guy from years, a term that other language speakers liked so much we’ve also started picking it up lol

we know exactly what we’re doing. i get that the line maybe does seem more blurred to an outsider looking in (i wouldn’t know given that both my first fandom at age 12 and current fandom at age 20 were mcrp lol) but it’s universally understood amongst us. i don’t have a problem separating hermitcraft!gem and empires s1!gem the wizard with a twin brother and empires s2!gem the princess and cc!gem the real life canadian woman.

idk it rubs me the wrong way that after years of trying to explain this we’re either met with people calling us racists because of three guys that the rest of us (all of us, really, because dream team fans do not claim to be minecraft fans. those are the type to actually write rpf and ship the real life racist guys) hate probably a lot more than any of you do, or they watch a few minutes of a less roleplay-heavy series/part and decide that the entire medium is invalid as a form of storytelling

it’s so annoying. i don’t think we need to be understood to have validity as a fandom we’ve been doing this for years already without that but it is so infuriating and sad how whenever there’s some kind of fandom poll thing one of three things happens

mcyt fans are banned outright and placed on the same level as something like hp

an mcyt fan runs their own and gets harassed for it

a non-mcyt fan allows us in until they get harassed so badly by whatever fandoms we go up against that they end up deleting our bracket

in what world is that normal behaviour. and that harassment always involves calling them all racist cishet white men such as misgendering both eret (real life bisexual genderqueer person) and their character (also queer), attempting to harass jimmy solidarity fans because jimmy makes mc videos so he must be a dream associate (the only time they interacted was in a tournament during which dream and georgenotfound shittalked jimmy’s best friends to his face), all the shit quackity has gotten for being a former friend of the dream team as if he wasn’t the #1 victim of their racism and xenophobia, the fact that any time c!technoblade is involved in a poll we have to beg other fandoms not to talk shit about him because the real life man died of cancer before dream’s grooming allegations came out, similarly when tfc was in one. and so on and so forth. all because people can’t separate roleplay and real life and think that the entire minecraft sphere revolves around dream just because their idea of mcyt does (not even his own smp named after him did that).

[burst-of-iridescent]

No, Shipping Zutara Is Not Supporting Amatonormativity (Please Use Some Fucking Braincells For Once)

- a treatise by a severely pissed off aroace zutara shipper

since words don’t mean anything anymore (if they ever did on the esteemed piss-on-the-poor website), let’s start with a definition.

amatonormativity: the set of social assumptions that everyone prospers with a romantic relationship, thereby positioning marriage as a universal goal of adult life. amatonormativity forms the basis of several institutional structures that are built to cater to romantic bonds over all others, also manifesting in social pressure on individuals to find a romantic partner by pushing the false narrative that those who do not experience romance are automatically lonely, unhappy and unfulfilled. it is usually characterized by the prioritization of romantic love over other forms of love, particularly platonic.

the anti-zutara argument based on this is as follows: wanting zutara to happen is amatonormative because it a) devalues zuko and katara’s platonic bond b) pushes the idea that men and women can’t be friends and c) doesn’t align with the themes of the show, as romantic love was never the point of atla.

i would like to take the time today to tell you that this is some fucking bullshit, for the following reasons:

one, this may come as a shock to some of you, but zutara shippers did not invent the concept of romantic love in avatar: the last airbender. you are more than welcome to criticize the pairings of suki/sokka, katara/aang, mai/zuko, yue/sokka, jin/zuko, jet/katara, and even kanna/pakku for perpetuating amatonormativity through their unnecessary romantic subplots. and if you don’t have anything to say about any of those pairings, then here’s a word for you: hypocrite.

zk shippers are not introducing the taint of romantic love into some kind of wholesome platonic utopia where it never existed. when we say zutara should have been canon, it is a statement that ends with the implicit instead of kat.aang and mai.ko tacked on at the back because if we were going to get a romantic relationship anyway, it might as well have been one that was well-developed, narratively impactful, and thematically relevant.

two, saying zutara is amatonormative is fucking rich when the main “romance” of atla is a three season long struggle to get out of the friendzone. aang’s desire to be in a romantic relationship with katara is one of his primary motivations throughout the show, and not once does either he or the narrative ever entertain the thought that just being katara’s friend might be enough. to the contrary, aang’s crush and the potential of its reciprocation is a fundamental part of how the story gets its audience to invest in both his character and the kat.aang relationship. they want you to want him to get the girl, and that’s the driving force of the ship’s development from start to finish.

you can see the influence of this in the way people defend why kat.aang had to happen: “aang would be crushed!” “it would break aang’s heart!” “aang deserves to be happy!” and that in and of itself is more amatonormative than any version of romantic zutara, as if this idea that aang is somehow doomed to a life of misery and loneliness just because he can’t be with the girl he likes isn’t inherently based on the assumption that platonic love can’t be as meaningful and satisfying as romantic love.

three, let’s be so fucking fr: a show written by cishet men in the early 2000s was not “subverting amatonormativity” by not making zutara happen, especially not when they went for the fucking olympic gold of romantic cliches — the hero gets the girl trope — instead. otherwise, why did the entire show end with an uncomfortably long liplock? if romance would’ve devalued zuko and katara’s platonic bond, then what the everloving fuck happened to their friendship in the comics and the legend of korra?

it is blatantly false to say that zutara shippers are the ones devaluing their platonic bond when the creators did it first. they evidently don’t view zutara’s platonic bond as equal to kat.aang’s romantic one, judging by their treatment of both relationships in the comics and LOK and the fact that they talked about kat.aang “winning” the ship war in the first place. because if the two relationships were of equivalent standing, why would there be a winner and a loser at all?

amatonormativity is baked into the DNA of atla, and while some people choose to reject this framework entirely (zk friendship >>> ka romance anyday), it is also not wrong for zk shippers to be annoyed at the treatment zutara received within the context of said framework. since the creators clearly thought a romantic relationship was better than a platonic one, they could at least have picked the couple that actually made sense instead of adding insult to injury by making that romance kat.aang. it is not amatonormative to acknowledge that zutara was not afforded the distinction it should have been in the eyes of those who wrote it, because it’s obvious that the decision to keep zuko and katara’s relationship platonic wasn’t to respect their friendship, but to position them as inferior to kat.aang.

four, detractors of romantic zutara often argue that their platonic relationship is inherently better & i’ve discussed before why that isn’t the case, but i also hate this argument because it’s perpetuating the very thing that aromantic people are trying to get rid of in the first place: the hierarchization of love. it is not the “gotcha!” you think it is to genuinely state that platonic love is better than romantic love, because it’s still buying into the idea that there’s some kind of order to categorizing human relationships. the solution to amatonormativity isn’t changing what form of love gets to be at the top of the list — it’s doing away with the hierarchy entirely.

i ship zuko and katara because canon already gave me their friendship. i already know what their platonic relationship looks like and that gives me more room for imagination in developing their romantic one because it’s a place canon didn’t go.

at the end of the day, friendship and romance are just different avenues of exploring intimacy. neither is inherently more valuable than the other, and neither is inherently more problematic. and if you truly believe in dismantling amatonormative beliefs, you would recognize that making a distinction between the two is only perpetuating the problem, not challenging it.

[breathlesswinds]

(Devlog) What We Learned Making A Trans Dating Game

Hello, Amelia here, the writer for Breathless Winds. It's been 250,000+ words, countless revisions, and three years since this game entered development, and I wanted to talk about what I've learned leading up to release.

The concept for Breathless Winds was actually sort of a joke between friends. I was talking with Doris about how there should be a dating game where you play as a trans woman and your dating options revolve around certain ‘tropes’ we’d both seen in trans fiction-- the totally accepting cishet guy who falls in love with the trans heroine before she even knows she’s a woman, the cool trans woman who the heroine doesn’t know if she wants to date or wants to be, and so on.

Doris wound up suggesting we make this game ourselves. We both like visual novels and want to tell LGBT stories. Still half-jokingly and half-seriously, we started fleshing out what the romance options would be and coming up with a setting-- and soon, we were fully committed to making this game real.

I was a fan of visual novels but had only ever written prose. I knew which visual novels I liked and which scenes stood out, but I didn’t know why they did or how to make my own. 

I read some great advice from visual novel developers, but a good amount of my knowledge came from just working on Breathless Winds. As our first project, this game has grown a lot with us and we’ve learned a lot while making it.

Learning How to Write Visual Novels

A bad habit I had to break out of was only using the ‘novel’ part of the game and not the ‘visual’ part. I would sometimes write “He smiled” or lines like that, and Doris informed me that we can convey this much more simply with a sprite change.

It sounds obvious in retrospect, but lines like that are often pretty invisible when you’re reading a non-visual novel. These lines change the sprite of the character inside your head (if that makes sense, haha). I realized that I’m so used to them being ‘invisible’ that I didn’t notice their absence in visual novels I liked, so I would accidentally include them while writing. 

I was also writing these routes in a word processor, so I didn’t have the visual portion to reference, myself. I wound up making a lot of ‘tone’ notes like, “Lantana should be smug here” so that the meaning would carry when revising and implementing these into Ren’py. 

So, while visual novels share a lot with prose, they’re an entirely different medium. On the subject of representing things visually, I’ve struggled trying to figure out how much can be visually represented and how much should be written. 

Every asset in the game has to be drawn by Doris, so if I want the characters to go to a new location for a scene, I have to keep in mind that’s another background that Doris has to draw. If I want a new character to show up, that’s another sprite she has to draw. I don’t want to overload her, but if I’m trying to avoid this entirely, characters sometimes wind up standing in one room talking for ages without anything significant changing on-screen.

I’ve learned that it’s recommended for something to almost always be changing on-screen, though, so sometimes I just have to ask Doris to make a new asset for a certain scene. I still try to stick to locations/characters that already exist more often than not.

Every single thing in a visual novel is deliberate. Another thing I’ve had to learn that I never even considered before is how to write each line so it fits in the text box. It sounds obvious, but when I’m playing a visual novel, I don’t usually think about how each line has to be carefully constructed so it doesn’t need to be split up into two or more text boxes. In my mind, if a visual novel is well-created, there’s not much that breaks a reader’s immersion.

Planning & Outlining

The previous section might sound really weird to some people, so let me elaborate.  I’m a lifelong ‘write by the seat of your pants’-er, so the biggest trial-and-error of creating Breathless Winds for me was planning out the game.

Initially, I created outlines for each of the four routes, and we agreed ahead of time on which CGs each route would have. That way, Doris could draw the necessary backgrounds and CGs while I was in the long process of drafting this game.  My original outlines weren’t great. I know a lot of people have different experiences with writing, but for me personally, a story is always shaping itself in my mind. When I started making the outlines for Breathless Winds, I knew the concepts we wanted to convey, but I didn’t know what each route (and the game as a whole) was really about yet. This might sound weird and unprofessional, but sometimes, I don’t know what a story is about until I finish the first draft.

So while I was writing, I would look at my outlines and I would think, “this doesn’t actually make sense, he wouldn’t say that” or “this plot point would work better if moved to this other section” or “there’s a plot hole here I didn’t notice”. The story wound up changing a lot in this way as I learned what it’s really ‘about’. 

And even after I finished the first draft, I’d get feedback from Doris and/or my editor and they would suggest fixes to problems that even I hadn’t noticed, and then I would revise the route some more, and later on I’d come back and need to redo part of the route to comply with something I wrote in a later route-- I haven’t really felt ‘finished’ with Breathless Winds at any point, and I think I’ll still feel this way after the game is released.

This means that sometimes, a background was created but would go unused because there was no space for the scene that would use it, or we’d need a new CG last-minute, or so on. 

When I’m figuring things out as I go while writing a non-VN, the only person that I can adversely affect is my own self… so I’m eternally grateful for all of Doris’s patience with me on this matter. I think Breathless Winds has come out a much better game for all the re-plotting and revision. 

I redid the outlines several times as I went. I think I’ve understood how to create outlines that personally work for me-- ‘living’ outlines that hit all the main points, but leave wiggle room for moments when a character does something unexpected, work the best for me.

Scope Creep

So, originally, each route was meant to be 40,000 words. “With four routes, that’s only 160,000 words!” I thought. “And some of my favorite visual novels are about that long, so I can write that much, too!” ← clueless

This is the most infamous mistake that new creators make, and I walked right into it. I should have known better since I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with past non-VN writing projects before, but I was starry-eyed and didn’t realize how much work it is to make a VN. Some of those favorite visual novels I referenced were made by much larger teams, writers whose full-time job was writing (I wrote all of these routes on the side while working at a day job). 

If I could have done it again, I would have asked Doris to start out with a really short VN. But, I don’t regret making Breathless Winds at all. It’s brought Doris and I a lot closer, for one. Every time I thought I wanted to give up on this, Doris would motivate me to continue. Without the two of us both and our strong friendship, Breathless Winds wouldn’t exist, and I think that’s beautiful. 

No matter what, we’re going to see it through to the end. (I hope people like it, though…)

Anyway, here I am talking about how much 40,000 words is. Each route now is about 60k to 70k words. The problem with having evolving outlines is that they can often evolve into double their original size.

We came up with the idea of the poachers really early in development, and then not addressing the poachers felt like a failing, but by that point it was too late to remove the poachers entirely… and so the game wound up a lot longer dealing with the poachers. 

I think that if we had an editor sooner on in the game’s development, then we might have had someone to tell us, “do you really need all of this in the game? Does this plot point really need to be there? Will you be able to write all of this in a reasonable amount of time?”, haha. But Doris and I were really excited about the possibilities of this game when we started creating it, and without anyone to reel us back in, we wound up coming up with more and more things we wanted to put in the game.

Did you know there was going to be an island full of talking rats who say things like “the big cheese” and stuff all the time in Breathless Winds? Yeah. 

The Core Design Philosophy of Breathless Winds

So, for anyone who’s read this far but doesn’t know yet-- the premise of Breathless Winds is that you play as a trans woman who doesn’t know she’s trans yet, and she finds love with one of four love interests as she discovers her gender identity. 

In real life, it can be a lot messier for a person to date when discovering their gender identity. To put it briefly and mildly, a trans person’s life and sense of personal identity can rapidly change during a gender crisis and the early stages of transition. 

However, we wanted to make this game a ‘wish-fulfillment’ type story-- a trans fantasy about acceptance, community, and love. During a gender crisis, it can be easy to feel as if one has lost touch with themselves and become isolated from others. A sincere wish shared by many trans people is to be accepted, loved, and even celebrated as their true gender, not just tolerated. 

Since many trans people don’t get love and acceptance in real life, especially with the ongoing transphobic moral panic, we wanted to create a game that would bring this feeling of trans joy and celebration to trans audiences. 

We also hope that cis players will still enjoy the story and characters, and maybe come away from the game with a new understanding about being transgender and other aspects of LGBT identity (although we never intended this game to be ‘educational’).

Making Characters that Celebrate Trans Identity

Although we went through several revisions, the core identities of each character stayed the same since the game was first ‘jokingly’ pitched. In another post, I discussed how each character is themed around a change in seasons. (I also wound up theming them around the four humors when I was initially concepting them-- I really wanted to avoid too much ‘overlap’ in the LI’s personalities, haha). 

Ultimately, characters are created to serve a role. The LIs in Breathless Winds were designed to be love interests, of course-- characters who would appeal to the hypothetical trans femme audience. As mentioned earlier, we modeled them after other trans fiction tropes because these types of characters have a certain tried-and-true appeal, but this left plenty of flexibility to put our own spin on it. 

A trans woman being loved as a woman by a cishet guy can feel like a high form of ‘passing’, ‘fitting in’ to the female gender role, and being validated by his orientation. He only likes women, and he likes you, so you’re undoubtedly a woman. As a cishet guy, he represents a sort of acceptance into a societal norm that trans women can desire to live to. (Lantana, as a cis lesbian, represents the sapphic counterpoint to this-- although there is of course a big gap between the ‘normalcy’ of a cishet man and a cis lesbian woman, and I don’t mean to say those two are equivalent.) 

But not all trans women want to live to that (cis) societal norm. Rue and Valerian, as a trans woman and a trans man respectively, are the t4t options. 

Rue’s route represents that trans/sapphic ‘envy’ (“do I want her or do I want to be her?”) as well as finding power in community aside from what society considers ‘normal’. We’ve always been pretty clear about what we wanted to do with Rue’s route.

We went back and forth a lot more on Valerian’s route. Initially, we were unsure if he should be trans. He and Rue are the two less-friendly love interests (at least initially), so I was afraid it would come across that t4t is a more hostile option, which is not true at all. But it also felt like a mistake to not have a trans man in the game-- but making Gallardia trans would have required a big overhaul of what we had in mind for him and his route. (Although, childhood friends t4t is a really good idea...)

Beyond that, Valerian takes a villainous role in any route that isn't his own. We were worried that it would be wrong to have a trans antagonist who represents unjust power. However, Breathless Winds is a queer game with other positive trans characters, and we've always approached Valerian as a hot anti-villain man that you can't help but like.

In the end, Valerian’s route is about breaking generational cycles and what it is that makes you a man, and I also managed to sneak in a scene where they dance at a ball in the royal palace, so in the end I think it all worked out great.

Wish Fulfillment and Catharsis

Doris and I both agreed that we wouldn’t depict on-screen transphobia in Breathless Winds. Poppy worries about not being accepted, but fear of acceptance can come with any change in identity. Rue was rejected by her family for being trans, but this doesn’t take place ‘on screen’ in the game. There exist certain metaphorical parallels for transness and transphobia, but every route has a happy ending. 

Following up on this-- it can be difficult to write about discovery of gender identity without writing about transphobia, considering how many trans people suffer from internalized transphobia during their period of repression.

Sometimes, repressed/closeted transgender people ‘hyper-perform’ their assigned gender as a form of denial. A trans woman might grow out a beard and join a gym, while a trans man might become very interested in makeup and feminine clothing. 

In Breathless Winds, Poppy often struggles with ‘strength’ and what it means to be a man. In several routes, she tries to prove her strength under the assumption that being stronger would make her happy. Afraid the world would reject her if she became who she really is, she preemptively rejects herself.

Not every trans person suffers from prolonged denial, internalized transphobia, or even gender dysphoria. I don’t think it’s impossible to tell a purely-positive story about trans joy. 

While Poppy never gets rejected for being trans, faces transphobia, gets called a slur, etc, she faces both internal and external (metaphorical) obstacles to realizing and accepting her identity. 

Gallardia represents a societal norm that Poppy can’t live up to herself as a man.

Lantana suffers from certain aspects of her identity as a woman, which makes Poppy feel guilt for wanting to be a girl.

Rue is isolated from town at the start of her route, a ‘punishment’ for breaking this societal norm.

Valerian has to hyper-conform to his masculine gender role at first in toxic ways before finding acceptance from within and from his loved ones.

These struggles are real to a lot of people, but instead of pretending they don’t exist, I hoped to tell a story about catharsis. Poppy is able to live up to her truth as a woman and finds love with Gallardia, Poppy and Lantana redefine what being a woman should and does mean to them, Rue and Poppy find community in others who don’t fit the norm, Poppy and Valerian stop seeking gender validation from a society that was never made to serve them. 

Although these powerful forces of oppression exist, loving yourself as a trans person- and loving those around you, protecting the natural world, and standing up for what you believe in- can save the day. That’s the kind of story we wanted to tell.

Wrap-up

There’s a lot more I could write, but this has already gotten really long (sorry!) so I’ll wrap it up here. 

Learning how to write a visual novel in terms of technical skill (how to depict events on-screen, how long each line should be) as well as in terms of writing skill (how to outline the game, how to plan visual assets) has been a massive undertaking for me. 

Writing Breathless Winds has been a big challenge but also deeply rewarding, and all of your support has made the experience even more wonderful. Thank you for reading and thank you for supporting the game!

[lakesbian]

here's every way wildbow accidentally made pre-meiosis "russel" thorburn transgender that i can remember. if you can think of any reasons i forgot please add on

his parents named his younger sister "ivy," as if the obvious grandmother-pandering name "rose" had already been used up. blake theorizes that they used a male version of "rose" for PMT, but this is nonsensical--there is no male form of the name rose, and everything he comes up with as a possible option (in other words, everything wildbow came up with as a possible option) is a major stretch. most don't sound even tangentially like the name "rose." it makes far more sense to assume that PMT was afab and had the deadname rose. (this also makes sense on a thematic level wrt how rose thorburn jr is supposed to be the Real heir that grandmother is forcing blake to die for, but that's getting besides the point)

rose has memories of being harassed over the inheritance by her female cousins, and the idea of these memories just being wholly pulled out of thin air when basically everything else involves memories either being split btwn blake and rose or erased altogether is weird

blake is friends with, like. a lot of gay people. textually runs in poor gay artist circles. the idea of them adopting this weirdly cool cis straight guy is funny but it makes a lot more sense if PMT was trans + gay and only got turned into a straight guy (and a straight girl) yesterday, due to the homophobia demon

PMT literally thinks "Besides, why devote any more attention to your son, when you could just start over?  Have that beautiful baby girl you wanted, right?" which is also like one of the only pieces of internal narration we get from PMT in the entire story. first girl they named rose ran away and did some shit with their gender so now they have a second girl they can't name rose but can still try to raise to go for the inheritance

in the same chapter as when pmt says that, callan is like ohhh you think youre going to worm your way in-, implied sentence ending being "-to the inheritance," which is, like. the family knows it's going To A Girl. so.

PMT was childhood friends with paige, who is The Gay Cousin. it is deeply sensible to imagine them bonding over this, regardless of whether or not PMT (or even paige) knew at the time

it is, like, fully possible for a cishet dude to get sick of living with his shitty toxic abusive family and abscond at the age of 17, but also homelessness is an extremely prevalent issue among transgender kids in abusive families. the narrative of a transmasc kid growing up in an abusive, catholic extended family where girls are pressured to compete for a very gendered inheritance + leaving at the age of 17 & finding a new home among a bunch of gay artists is Significantly more compelling than the cis dude alternative. it just is.

okay i think im running out of, like, logical errors that make sense only if pmt was trans prior to the Obliteration, so as for the thematic stuff. like i said, rose being the half grammy decided was supposed to be "real" and blake being the half that's supposed 2 die for her 2 exist, rose just being unhappy and disconnected by nature of existence while blake is the parts of pmt that escaped from the constraints of the family + found happiness, so on and so forth. "catholic grandmother literally obliterated her transmasc nonbinary grandchild by splitting them into two binary gendered halves & expecting that the man they could've been die to allow the acceptable woman--literally forced to dress in grandmother's clothes--live on and do as grandmother wished" is Everything, doing the same thing but to a cis man grandchild is significantly less compelling

Others who r very old/operating on what are explicitly stated to be oppressive and antiquated gender roles as per the book's themes about inherited/traditional forms of harm keep mistakenly calling blake she/her and rose lmao

??? probably some other thangs im forgetting

[utilitycaster]

Unpopular opinion: parts of the cr fandom are really dismissive/ reductive of Travis’s characters. It feels like it’s due to Travis being seen as THE cis het man of the group, and by extension his characters must be heteronormative and bad, despite the fact that you could have queer interpretations of his characters. At the very least, Travis’s characters explore masculinity and the different ways it might look. It’s like the people who are all “ew men are gross and shitty” and act like that’s an absolutely normal reaction to a man just existing.

So this is another one in that I agree with the initial statement, but I'm actually not sure re: the reasoning why. I think it's possible but I could not tell you for sure.

I used to, again, think this was people carrying through Campaign 1 elements well beyond the point where C1 had ended, and so Grog having an intelligence of 6 was being applied to Travis; and this definitely does come through to an extent when people treat Fjord (objectively as smart as Beau without her circlet) as stupid or act shocked that Chetney is the brains of Bells Hells or that he can play a Cerrit, Fjord, or Nathaniel. However, again, I think this is one of those opinions that pops up among people who weren't around for Campaign 1 (or early enough in C2 to be exposed to it regularly) so I don't know if that's the case anymore. It could still be - it could be that Approved Fandom Opinions get passed down even when the logic behind them has long since been lost; that's a really common thing in institutional memory. But I can't say for sure.

I also have in the past credited it to, as you said, people assuming his characters are the cishet guys and then writing them off. That's still possible - I've seen both Fjord and Chetney called "token straight" despite considerable evidence of bisexuality, and they also paradoxically are both commonly headcanoned as trans while still getting called "token straight," which sort of ties into a post I would need to find from someone else from quite some time ago about which cast members are granted agency by the fandom in their choices vs. which are assumed to be the victims of circumstance. And I do think that there are people in fandom who have decided men are icky or whatever, and I used to think this came from a place of bigotry and a slide towards t*rf ideology but I now do genuinely think it's just idiots who don't grant interiority to characters outside their own limited understanding.

But I think it's also useful to consider a few things, most of which I've brought up before:

Travis is extremely offline. He is not here to entertain your headcanons; he has been politely but openly dismissive of some (imo, really fucking dumb) fanon/fan theories. I think the cast frequently talks about how it's their table, and I think that's valid and correct, but Travis is one of the players who lives it the most. He is playing this game with his friends, and he'd like it to be a good story, but if you don't like it, he is not here to make you like it. I think that really fucks with the parasocial connections some people desire with the cast.

Travis's characters tend to examine masculinity as a performance but also the general performance of the self, and the fact that you cannot in the end control how you are perceived entirely, and I think that really unsettles people who have equated presentation with reality and are again, looking for external validation of the self.

Travis can play it big but he's often extremely subtle, especially with his more serious characters, and he's not as easily quotable out of context as some others at the table. I think because he is a lot more naturalistic than dramatic at times (Chetney notwithstanding) and isn't as pithy and quotable in his characters as many of Taliesin's PCs are, and a lot of the strength is in the delivery, he gets overlooked despite being very good with words on the fly.

And finally: this would be a whole post on its own but people are still very foolishly wed to this idea that pressing the big red button in D&D is Wild and Chaotic and haha Big ADHD Man when it's actually how you play D&D if you're not a coward; the button is where the story is stored, and a lot of Travis's strength is that he is extremely good at understanding what the GM wants and supporting it with sufficient grace that it's only visible if you know what you're fucking doing.

[punkeropercyjackson]

Ultimately the reason Percabeth is such horrifically bad ship yet gets praised so much is that while Percy and Annabeth canonically love eachother,they also canonically don't like eachother LMAO.Percy's constantly wishing Annabeth was extremely different than who she actually is because he finds her unbearable and hard to be around and finds escapism in being around people who're unlike her with the biggest example being him having been in love with Rachel before they settled into still close exes

There's also his friendships with the Grace Sibs,Thalia had infinitely better progress with him in TTC than Annabeth has in the entire saga and he admires her a lot more too and it's a running theme that Jason is Annabeth's opposite and Percy became instant best friends with him upon first meeting and all three of their first meetings are more charming and unique than Percy saying his type is princess-y girls in his narration but Annabeth hating being seen as one because she's gnc and 'You drool when you sleep'.I also think if anybody is Percy's cosmically intertwined soulmate it's not any s/os but Nico and Hazel and by that i mean in a found siblings with him also being their pseudo-parent way.All their dynamics are interesting and richen their characters and they're from different time periods which only adds to how special their bond is

And on Annabeth's end.......She kinda straight up hates his existense.She's always talking about how stupid he is and that he's useless without her and i get that Rick tried to sell it as affectionate teasing but she's angered by it so often it's obvious it's just Rick being a cishet nt white old man.She gets angered by finding him attractive too?????This trope can be good but Percy never actually does anything,he's literally just existing and that includes not actively pursuing her back since he dosen't want her even half as much as she thinks she wants him.It's rare compared to her mean-spirited comments he explicitly never consented to and finds unnecessary and one of the many thing's he wishes she wasn't and he never returns her physical assaults so 'they're demigods and it's normal!' excuse dosen't add up

Yeah,they're dating in canon and gonna get married.Percy's also gonna not only go to college but a demigod college when again and again and AGAIN he says he dosen't want to be a half-blood and he's only going so he can live out a traditional lifestyle with Annabeth so so much for 'his thether to his mortal side' i guess.Annabeth never got any shit from Poseidon like Percy did Athena or terrorizing like Aphrodite does everybody else she talks to and Percy was forced to narratively forgive Luke,again,only because of Annabeth when he groomed him for a bit and abused him tons too and it's so vile to gaslight us into thinking Luke was anything but a serial pedophile and beyond far right to Percy's lifelong outcasthood and anarchy and Annabeth as a direct victim of his sick sexual 'interests' in plausible deniability font due to being a pg series.Percabeth is the peak cishet romance norms taken up to 12 like the Olympians and it's embarrasingly obvious nobody saying they're t4t has ever been in a transmasc4transfem relathionship

That's why this moment is so fucking depressing.She knows him and she dosen't like any of what he is and he dosen't say it outloud because he's scared of the truth,that he ended up with the wrong person,that he fucked up again and she's hollower whenever she's around him because she exists FOR him and for almost nothing else.They weren't eachother's choice,they were eachother's destiny decided by everyone but themselves.This fucks up my autistic ass so much man,no wonder i only ever liked that lesbian!Percabeth au with transfemme Percy and butch Annabeth that was popular when i was a kid,that's deadass the only way you can make it work,they'd need an entire rehaul but at this point i don't care to try because the shippers don't deserve it after how demonic they've been since the 2000s.Percabeth was never a good ship,you were just a tween

[pinchinschlimbah]

On "Coming Out" and Noel Fielding

I mentioned forever ago that I had this post in mind and then never got around to it, but now with the new interview quote I was yelling about recently it feels like a particularly good time to get it out of my brain and onto the page! tl;dr: musings on the concept of "coming out" as it has evolved over time, whether it's something that should continue to be necessary or expected of queer people, and why Noel is particularly inspirational to me in that regard since this is, after all, my brainrot blog. This may be extremely long and a bit disjointed but I hope some of y'all will enjoy it!

So a while ago myself and several friends were discussing the concept of coming out. All of us are some flavor of queer both in gender and orientation, but each is in a different place along their self discovery and identity journey, with some being long since out and proud, and others just starting to dip their toes into exploration past the expected cishet.

This discussion actually was prompted by a different discussion about Noel, spurred by comments we'd come across slamming him as being homophobic/transphobic on Bakeoff for making comments suggesting he has romantic or sexual attraction towards Paul, referring to himself with female-centric terms, playing female characters in the skits, and a particular moment where he brings up Old Gregg while talking to KimJoy and says "he was a sea transsexual....quite a demanding role for me" while laughing to indicate that that last part was said in jest. Hey fellas, is it homophobic/transphobic to be a little bit gay and trans? This got us talking about how the current culture of queer identity has evolved to the point where "coming out" feels more like something the public feels they're owed in order for them to view one's expression as valid, rather than its original purpose as something one does for themself in order to live most authentically. I don't think I need to go into detail about how many artists have been harassed by their "fans" into coming out before they were ready because people wouldn't accept the validity of that person's work without knowing exactly how that person identified, there've been plenty of articles and video essays and better written tumblr posts about that, but it's definitely a concerning trend. It can be particularly dangerous when it comes to people who aren't feeling confident or safe enough to come out, who end up being criticized and shunned by the queer community as being somehow problematic for not being able to fully articulate to a group of strangers the ways in which they're experiencing their identity. In this situation, the people who are struggling the most end up with the least support. Forcing people to either declare an identity or get out just leads to more people staying closeted out of fear of doing it "wrong" and never getting the chance to explore the most authentic and joyful versions of themselves, or even worse, feeling the need to out themselves before they're in a safe place to do so and suffering the resulting consequences. Questioning or cautious people deserve space in the community to experiment even if they haven't yet or maybe never will come out! My high school's Gay Straight Alliance was comprised entirely of "straight allies" when I was there. There was not a single "out" person in the school at the time. Nearly all of us in the GSA ended up being some flavor of queer or trans years later after graduation. But whether it was intentional closeting or just feeling an innate affinity towards something we couldn't quite pinpoint at the time, we all knew we belonged there and made that space for ourselves and others like us. Back when "coming out" first became a concept in the public consciousness, it was during a time where cishet identity was not just considered the default, but the only option. By coming out, queer people were giving genuinely revolutionary representation for themselves and others like them by telling the world that, as the old saying goes, we're here, we're queer, get used to it! Nowadays, we're lucky to live in a culture that is much more cognizant of queer identities being a thing, so in many cases coming out has become less about having to explain to those around you the basic concept of queerness existing, and moreso about which specific identity you fall under, and that's where things get messy.

My friends and I shared our own thoughts and experiences. One is currently identifying as "unlabeled" because they haven't found a term that feels correct yet, and therefore hasn't come out because they wouldn't know what to say. One spoke about how when they first came out they were much more insistent on what terms or pronouns people used for them but as time has gone on they've grown to find joy in being inscrutable and letting others wonder what they're perceiving. One expressed that given the state of the world they've been retreating somewhat back into the closet for safety reasons rather than being super outward with their queerness like they used to and is working on learning to embrace those parts of themself again. One said they felt like they'd already been existing as queer and expressing that queerness "before I even had the terms to come out to myself" and is now working on catching up on the conscious end of figuring out what's what. I myself never really had an official "coming out", I just became increasingly visually/socially/vocally queer as I became more and more confident in who I was and what I wanted to be and who I had on some level always been, and decided if people didn't get the hint that's their own problem. I came into consciousness of my queerness during the early 2010s original tumblr MOGAI microlabel boom, where there was a ton of focus on figuring out the hyper specific identity labels that exactly described what you were experiencing. I did a lot of digging and soul searching and experienced a lot of unnecessary stress trying and failing to find my perfect labels and landed on clumsy terms like "full time drag queen" because it was the closest I could get to what I was feeling about my gender, only to be told it was problematic for me to call myself that as an AFAB person because drag "belongs to cis gay men" (don't get me started on that statement, that's a whole other essay lol) It was a real wake up call once I distanced from these aggressively labeled and segmented online spaces and made my way into real world queer communities where I was relieved to find that in fact no one there asks to check your membership card before letting you in, if you feel like you belong there you're welcome no questions asked.

I had other people in these communities referring to me as "queer" and "fag" and "gay" and "queen" before I felt comfortable doing so myself based on online Discourse I'd experienced over who is Allowed to use certain terms, and having these community leaders I respected recognizing those things in me and welcoming me in like that gave me the confidence to really find my own footing in ways that attempting to find my exact correct identity label so that I could officially proclaim it never did. Once I could answer the question of what I was with a shrug and "queer I guess!" things became so much easier. Microlabels can be incredibly helpful and liberating for some, don't get me wrong if it works for you that's great, but let's not pretend that everyone is going to have the same experiences.

So anyway, back to Noel. Noel has never, to my knowledge, ever had any sort of official “coming out” or explicitly referred to himself as queer. So I know there are people out there who will disagree with me considering him to be queer. But so much of what he’s said and done throughout his several decades long career has indicated to me that this is clearly someone of queer experience navigating the world as such, and just as the queers in my local community welcomed me as one of them before I knew to do it myself, I extend that welcome forward. 

Let’s take a look at some of the facts. In the public span of his career, Noel has.....(in no particular order, also if anyone wants to add additional instances of note in the reblogs or comments please feel free, this is by no means a fully comprehensive list) -repeatedly called himself "the woman of the Boosh" or Julian's/Howard's "wife" in ways that suggest that's how he actually felt about it rather than it just being a punchline that he was mistaken for female in the show [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] -referred to himself at the GQ "Man of the Year" awards as "never been a man" and "a sort of girl, he/she" -been referred to by Sandi Toksvig as being "on the cusp" in regards to gender, to which he reacts with amusement and acceptance -consistently expressed excitement and appreciation when others refer to him with feminine terms or say he looks like a girl [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] -said "I love being a man-woman, it's much more interesting than being one or the other" and expressed that the loved shooting the Boosh Electro episode for this reason -referred to Vince Noir (a character who he's been pretty open about being based on himself) as "wasn't seemingly one gender or the other" -expressed that he felt most free and happy when presenting femininely [2] -had Julian, one of the people closest to him, express that Noel and Sandi (an out lesbian) may have "real sexual chemistry" because Noel is "all over the shop, he's a different sex" -used the "Confuser" line of "Is it a boy? Is it a girl? I'm not sure I mind" to refer to himself rather than Vince, and express that he's had to work to find new ways to feel as androgynous as he'd like now that he's older -referred to himself as a lesbian [2] -said that he "sometimes looks in the mirror and sees a woman", in the same interview that Julian implies that Noel is in fact a girl -referred to himself as a "girl/boy" -consistently referred to himself with feminine terms on panel shows and bakeoff -made a joke on bakeoff about not being a testosterone-based person -responded positively when asked about the ways Boosh had influenced queer and nonbinary youth -has said he's "quite obsessed with the man/woman mixup thing" -has said if he was an animal he'd want to be a seahorse because the males get pregnant -Had Lee Mack, who Noel used to live with, refer to him as "the little transsexual one, yeah I think she's fantastic" in a Boosh documentary and "a young lady who came out here happy to be herself" in response to Noel's Wuthering Heights drag performance -had his own mother refer to him as "the daughter I always wanted" -described his own appearance as that of a "transsexual witch" and when an interviewer attempted to make fun of him for calling himself "a transgender witch" by showing Noel a drawing the interviewer clearly found repulsive, Noel responded that the interviewer was "holding up a mirror" and called the image his passport photo

And I'm not even going to bother citing sources on the countless times he's made comments suggesting romantic or sexual attraction towards men. Literally just watch any non-character appearance he's ever done, it's kind of his whole thing??? Not to mention his penchant for picking up explicitly queer and gnc character roles, and also just [gestures vaguely to everything Noel and Julian have said about each other suggesting romantic and sexual tension between them and how they used their characters as an excuse to explore those feelings in a less scary way, again that could be a whole other essay on its own but ooh boy] I also think there's something interesting to explore in the idea of Noel repeatedly referring to his appearance as transgender or transsexual rather than identifying himself as such- at what point does the appearance of something become reality?

It all begs the question- is it even a joke anymore if it's that consistent? Either it's not a joke and it's an authentic expression of his real feelings and experiences, or he for some reason really really wants everyone to believe that he's queer when he's not, with this behavior spanning back to a time before the concept of queerbaiting was on anyone's minds and when being publicly queer could mean the end of your career. Which scenario do you think is more likely? And, does someone who’s been conducting themself like this for their entire career really NEED to come out? Honestly, I find this level of simultaneous authenticity and inscrutability aspirational.

In this Velvet Onion interview from 2012, Noel compares his penchant for dresses to both Grayson Perry and Eddie Izzard. This is interesting because those two people represent pretty opposite intentions behind their presentation- Grayson identifies solidly as cis male, and for him the shock value of crossdressing is the point, saying “I signed up for a gender and I want them to be very clearly delineated so I know I’m dressing up in the wrong clothes.” This doesn't seem particularly in line with where Noel is coming from given him famously referring to himself as "the Confuser" and stating in that same Velvet Onion interview that he "never even bothered giving it a label, I never went oh I'm a transvestite, I just went yeah if I fancy wearing a dress I do, never really thought about it really" Eddie on the other hand has famously said "They're not women's clothes. They're my clothes, I bought them." indicating that they were a genuine part of her authentic expression rather than a crossdressing costume, and has subsequently over the years identified more and more solidly as transfemme. I find Eddie's trajectory particularly fascinating because it's been so non-linear. In the 90s when the language for transness was much less public knowledge, she referred to herself consistently as a transvestite- a cishet man who enjoyed dressing as a woman, as well as using terms like "male tomboy" and "male lesbian" and "a full boy plus extra girl". Despite doing most of her standup shows in femme looks, most of her acting jobs were male-presenting, and there was a period of time in the 2010s where she dropped the femme presentation entirely in an attempt to be taken more seriously as the "crossdressing" was seen by many as a gimmick. Swinging back around more recently, Eddie has been explicitly identifying as genderfluid and transfemme, and in recent years has made the decision to "be based in girl mode from now on", and use primarily she/her pronouns. Since this announcement, in her trans advocacy work Eddie has described herself as being "out" as trans since the 1980s despite all of the above. She always knew who she was, it's just she's gotten access to more accurate terms over time to describe what she was experiencing, as well as feeling more safe to do so the more that transness became a known and accepted concept in the public eye.

The interview I mentioned at the very start of this post isn't really a coming out from Noel. And I don't think we'll ever really get one from him. In my opinion Noel has spent the past several decades conducting himself as someone who is in fact already out- it’s pretty clear Noel knows and is proud of who he is regardless of how he chooses to describe that identity. At this point, making some sort of official statement would just be for the benefit of others looking for clarification on their own perception of him and people who want to be able to put him in one box or another, and that’s not what coming out should be. The statement in the new interview is not "I am genderfluid", its "I've always been genderfluid", simply putting an accurate name to what's always been publicly visibly true now that he's got the terms to do so.

[decolonize-the-everything]

Hi, I saw you other post and wanted to contribute to the discussion if that's cool.

I'm white, grew up middle class in the suburbs. My parents were both first generation immigrants. I grew up connected to their culture, their parents were Catholics from Northern Ireland who came to the US with their kids during the Troubles due to the violence there. But both of my parents were also pro assimilation; they taught me about my family history, but I wasn't meant to talk about it with others outside of our culture. I didn't understand that as a child, but I later learned that it's because they were afraid of being judged and were worried that it may decrease their social standing.

They are both conservatives, always voting red, and they constantly talk about how immigrants do harm and are terrible for this country to others, acting as though they themselves aren't the children of immigrants. Their parents fled violence and discrimination, yet they judge other people for doing the same. They see themselves as the exception. They're white, and see themselves as entitled to all of the benefits of that.

When I was in middle school, I started becoming aware of the contradictions present in the house I grew up in. I realised I was queer, I started experiencing more misogyny, and I started making friends and finding support in punk/anarchist spaces in my hometown. When I started to push back against my parents, I was met with anger and indignation. How are I not want what their parents "fought so hard" to get? Why couldn't I just accept the privilege and be happy with it? How could I find kinship and community outside of the spheres of whiteness? Why couldn't I just be cishet, and follow those rules to preserve my family's "dignity"?

What was especially crazy to me is that though they felt a "connection" to their Irish culture, the moment I began supporting Irish republicanism and Irish socialists/communists, I was suddenly a traitor. I was somehow a traitor for opposing the oppression that Britian wrought, entirely because I was applying that to other people. They want Ireland free from the British Empire, but they are against Landback in the US, Palestinian sovereignty, and other movements against colonialism arcoss the world. Basically - its not okay when they do it to us, but its okay when we do it to others. They also support kicking the brits out of Northern Ireland, but don't support the destruction of the capitalist policies that have hurt and killed thousands of people. Their people too!

When I got kicked out, I was taken in and supported by the punks, antifascists, anarchists, and communists of my community; a support that I had never seen before. The suburbs were always lonely, cut off from the rest of the town, and people there would rather die than ask others for help. The difference was insane. I'm broke now, disabled, uninsured, and struggling financially, but I have, like, actual friends. I have a community. We all pass the same $20 back and forth to each other to make ends meet, we pool money to buy things in bulk so we all have enough, we go all in on one Costco membership every year to make it easier. I have support here, even if I don't have the same degree of "comfort".

What I gathered from all this is that white immigrants and their children occupy a very weird place in American whiteness, especially those who came to this country fleeing poverty and/or violence. They're traitors to other immigrants, in thinking that they're somehow "more superior" due to their connection to whiteness. They're willing to throw anyone and everyone under the bus to further their own social standing. They feel especially entitled to it, believing that other white people just had it handed to them rather than having to fight for it, but are also terrified of other white people realising that. They put on a great show of whiteness in the hopes that being accepted into this group will makes them safer, while beating down others looking for safety.

I think Irish Americans are especially guilty of this, specifically Irish Catholics. They use the very real oppression and violence that their parent/grandparents faced to deflect from their own shittiness, while also keeping that under wraps around other white people, lest they be seen as less American.

The difference is insane. I don't know how they live like that, genuinely. They're so wrapped up in their privilege and their identity as white that they deprive themselves of real human connection. They beat others down with glee while exempting themselves from the same rhetoric.

I don't have a nice, clean end to this ask, this is more of a collection of observations than anything else. I think international solidarity is required to fix the problems in this world, but I genuinely don't know how to reach some of these people. They have a death grip on whiteness at the expense of their own humanity.

I never responded to this because I didn't know how or what to say; anon said it all already and there was nothing to add.

I am constantly thinking about the things being said here.

"we pass the same $20 back and forth to each other to make ends meet" and "they're so wrapped up in their privilege and their identity as white that they deprive themselves of real human connection" live in my head rent free

[booksandpaperss]

How Stranger Things (poorly) handles racism as a topic compared other heavy topics it successfully tackles

before we get started, I would to direct you all to some other accounts who have already discussed this that you should check out either before or after reading this post: @wewebaggit @googoogagaeyes @elekinetic and anyone else please feel free to tag yourself or another account that’s discussed this and I’ll happily boost it

Content Warning for in show examples of racism and discussions of racism, as well as mentions of homophobia and the AIDES epidemic

.

. While we're discussing historical accuracy in stranger things and homophobia + ignorance being present even in well meaning characters, I want to point out that if the writers of the show weren't so squeamish about addressing racism in any in depth way, than this type of historical accuracy would be for racism too.

what I mean by this: in this sense, the show is not consistent. It's clear that the writers have done their research on 80s homophobia and how openly prevalent it was, if the AIDES allegory in season 2 and the way homophobia was very clearly present in seasons 1 and 2 (it still is in seasons 3 and 4 but the first 2 seasons showed it in the scope of the entire town), but racism was just as overtly prevalent, and yet the writers have neglected to address it in the same thoughtful and coded way. if the show was just as consistent about racism as it is about homophobia, than the white characters would be at the very least shown as ignorant just like the straight characters are.

and I'm not going to say that it's completely ignored, because that's not true:

-in season 2; mike makes an ignorant comment that implies Lucas should have been Winston because he's black, and Lucas calls him on it. There's also the very racist undertones (that are practically overtones) of Billy's treatment of Lucas. -There is almost nothing in season 3 except for a jokey joke when Nancy says the whole party is her family and the receptionist, who is a black woman, gives Lucas a skeptical look.

-Season 4 is a little better, with the implications (key word: implications, I'll come back to that in a moment) of Lucas's season 4 arc being that he was trying to fit in because he didn't want to be racially targeted and bullied for being a nerd at the same time anymore, that he felt like even more of an outsider compared to the rest of his otherwise all white friend group who, as far as he knows, are all cishet and giving him shit for wanting to lessen how much he's perceived as an outsider because he's automatically seen as even more of a "freak", and his friends just weren't getting it because they were white and ignorant. So the writers aren't blind to race and racism.

However. None of the examples that I've just listed are addressed later in any in depth way; not like the homophobia is. The only one that's even remotely delved into instead of simply being glossed over is Lucas's s4 arc, and even that is still very flitted around and left up to interpretation of the audience.

The writers seem to have a very "hit and run" sort of policy with addressing racism. They clearly know they should, and they at least seem to know that having a black character in an 80s setting with a cast of mostly white characters inherently creates a lot of racial subtext-

-for example, the very loud subtext of Jason (a white boy much older than Lucas) seeing Max (a white girl) in a trance alone with Lucas (a black boy) and immediately assuming the worst + Jason's white friends tackling an 11 year old black girl to the ground: subtext that I'm still not sure if the writers and directors were even aware of bc they never addressed it and their track record isn't great-

-but they hardly do anything about it.

I'm not surprised, considering this show is headed by two white men, but what really gets me is that they all truly could have tried harder. Like I said earlier, it's clear they've done research and put thought into addressing homophobia (it still could've been handled better but that's an entirely different conversation), and it's evident from Max's s4 arc that they also did research on Depression, PTSD, and the impacts on someone of their abusive family member dying. So the lack of care and thought put into addressing racism in the same way is clearly more than ignorance (which would still be bad, when you're writing a show this big in 2023 with topics like this you're actually, shocker, responsible for making sure they're addressed properly, ignorance is a choice at that point), its just fucking lazy. they don't care. And this not caring is inherently harmful on a show this big and frankly, I'm tired of so many viewers and people in this fandom straight up ignoring this fact, just like the show runners.

And I haven't even covered the complete lack of effort put into Patrick's backstory, or the fact that Erica is very much the sassy, mature for her age black girl stereotype (she deserves so much better). Oh, And we can’t forget the copaganda.

I'm glad that season 4 started to explore the dynamic between Lucas and Erica and expand on both their characters, and from the looks of things that will continue in season 5, so the writers have a chance to do their research, actually put effort more effort into the sinclair sibling’s characters, and improve, and I'm hoping they will but as of right now I don't trust them to, and won't unless they prove me wrong.

TDLR; the main issue is that Stranger Things is clearly a show that addresses topics like depression, abuse, homophobia, and racism, but the racism part is neglected compared to the others, just like how Lucas and Erica's characters are handled poorly compared to the white characters,. it's lazy, horribly insensitive, and racist in and of itself. There's a clear bias, and even if it improves in season 5 we still should be talking about it, and more white people (yes white queer people included, we are not exempt from this discussion, if anything we should care just as much about it as when we’re talking about homophobia) in this fandom need to start listening when black and brown people do talk about it instead of just waltzing through and ignoring it for your own peace of mind.

also I should clarify that I myself am white, I made sure I did research before making this post in order to talk about this accurately and consciously, but if I made any mistakes or said something insensitive or used an incorrect term or anything else, feel free to correct me and I will readily fix it

as a final note: please check my rebligs of this for links to more posts that talk abt this issue