#i know the most popular interpretation of her character is that she's lesbian-coded

[agir1ukn0w]

not that anyone cares but the fact that this is what Nami's face looks like right after Sanji flirts with her is making me very happy

[lgbtqiapnfreak]

Why I think Byler is endgame

Before we start, you must know I'm really skeptical about theories and all. I like to read and have fun with them, but believe them? It's really hard for me as a 20 years old queer person. Since young I've suffered being queerbaited by mainstream series, Stranger Things wouldn't be the first nor the last to do that.

I know today things are a little bit better, but for the sake of my poor broken heart, I'm always expecting a deception. Yet, I can see byler happening in season 5.

Here we go to the reasons why.

The existence of Robin

I've heard a lot of straight people say, before season 4 and even now, that "Will can't be gay because Robin is the gay person in the show. There is no reason for another one".

Like? The show can have 38272 straight, developed and important for the plot characters, all of them with love interests and happy endings, and one gay character inserted as a comic relief is fine. Two? To much to deal with.

I know, I know, disgusting. BUT what if I say that Robin was not a character added to the show only for a comic relief or identity representation at all? That she was presented for the watchers to consider the existence of a gay character in the show. For them to recognize some queer coded things that, without Robin, they wouldn't be able to?

Robin was presented to us in Season 3. As we must know, the third season of the show is mainly dedicated to character and relationships development. Thanks to it, we got to see the characters way more cylindrically, their fears, mistakes, who they are in their normal daily life. Mike, El, Hopper, Joyce, Erica and Steve gained many new layers in this season, but Will had the most special one: the first explicit hint of his sexuality.

And then, Robin appears. At first we are conditioned to think she likes Steve, the Duffers play a game with the watchers' heteronormativity using the dubiousness of their dialogs. And then, boom! She is lesbian. Not only lesbian but repressedly in love with a girl - at least was - and jealous of Steve.

Thanks to this coming out scene

The interpretation door was open to see this as Will being in love with a boy, repressing his feelings and being jealous of the girl the boy is dating with.

Will's jealousy and feelings for Mike back then stamped the background of everything, it was being slowly built inside the show - but not inside the character, remember the Snow Ball script? It was always there, just unseen.

Until here we are only remarking that Will is gay. But what Robin has to do with byler as a ship?

Well, if she is the queer character created to open this door for Will, created to gain the sympathy of the general public as comic relief character who bonded with two of the most popular characters of the show - Dustin and Steve - since s3, showing the watchers the struggles of a queer person in the 80's in a "light" way and making the viewers to cheer for her love life, of course her character holds a big role with byler building a romantic relationship.

Robin appeared in Season 3 because the viewers wanted Milven to happen in season 2 - thanks to the heteronormativity and kids sexualization I may say - when it wasn't going to, it wasn't scripted like this and it's not going to be endgame. So Robin's creating a scape route for the writers.

The hints given about Will being called a f@g and Mike over protective and supportive behavior with Will were not enough to create this bridge between friends and lovers as we know very well.

Movie Date and Schrodinger Cat

Moving on. We know Will is gay. Okay. What is still uncertain in the show is Mike's sexuality and required feelings towards Will. Here, we are focusing in the required feelings part.

I read a lot of analysis about the "movie date scene". I remember people discussing the blushing frame and the holding hands theory even before s4 coming out and at the time it sounded like joke to me - as I said I'm really skeptical. Yet, after rewatch the part and reading a lot (especially @greenfiend 's one about the holding hands thing), I feel like I finally understood why the scene is so spoken of.

It's pretty simple, it's another open door. Not like Robin who is there to guide us to read between the lines but as something that is open to interpret and rely on when they finally get together. It was made for when people start to question "where did this relationship came from?" and create assumptions like "it came out of the nowhere".

In the scene, Lucas, Max, Mike and Will go to Starcourt's movie theater to watch a horror movie together. When arguing about Mike's behavior, Lucas remarks that he is spending romantic time with his girlfriend by going there. When they are finally inside, lumax and byler sits separately, then things start to get really fishy.

The construction of the whole next part, when they are inside the movie theater, from the beginning of the movie to the black out and end of the scene, are basically hands. Hands everywhere. In the close ups, in the people around them and even in the movie. Why? For us to see it, to think of it, to imagine. To imagine what? It's up to you of course, but we know people hold hands at movie theaters, specially when watching a horror movie, and we also know byler is the main focus on that scene for some reason.

But they didn't show us their hands, did them? No. Because of that, no one can really say they were holding hands, but the same can't be said about them not holding their hands. The construction of the scene deliberately leads us to question the possibility, however there is no true answer. Like the Schorodinger Cat, they are holding and not-holding their hands.

Also, the "are you okay?" Mike says, the camera play and Noah's acting leads us to think that, if they are holding their hands, it was Mike's initiative, not Will's.

The whole scene is purposefully dubious.

Noah looks down at his hand at the end of the interaction, up again, and then smiles. It's there but they don't show us! At the same time, if it was an unromantic moment, they would've shown us they were holding hands as they did before, so why not? Why do they keep the whole thing subtle, calculated, and masked by the MF plot if not to hold a secret meaning behind it all. A secret meaning for us to discover yet.

Like pleaseee, I swear this is some kind of torture for us gay people.

Mike's character construction and Finn's acting

I'm a ST fan since the beginning. I was here when the major public liked Jonathan better than Steve, when Mike was the favorite member of the party, and Finn was treated as one of the best child actors of the show. Looking back, it's pretty obvious things changed a lot since the third season.

Why things changed? In the last two seasons, Finn was accused of being "out of the character" and "having a bad acting". And Mike turned into a douchebag in public eyes.

The truth is: the way the writers had chosen to show us Mike changed. He still is the same insecure, paranoic, loyal, compassionate character who is a jerk sometimes from the beginning, but we didn't get the chance to see his POV since s2.

Mike is a character trapped in the expectations of the viewers. They expected him to date El, to love El as a girlfriend, to treat her the way she deserves - what he can do, but clearly not as a boyfriend. Their relationship wasn't scripted the way it happened, so his character needed to go through some changes to remain himself. And, of course, for mlvn to end, the viewers needed to hate his version with El. Again, it is a scape route.

His character is still the same, but the way we see him is different. The truth is the viewers expected Mike to acts towards El the way he did with Will after they started dating: unconditionally supportive, trusting, and understanding, but guess what? This was never on Mike's character to begin with.

He doesn't understand, trust, or support people unconditionally. They are showing how much he is inflexible and selective in what he wants to believe since the very first episode, we can see that in the relationship with his family and friends. Just remember his fights with Lucas in s1, s2 and s4 and Dustin in s2 and s3, they are his CHILDHOOD FRIENDS, but even them don't have the pleasure of Mike's unconditionally support and trust. The only character he is truly open to is Will.

These changes were made for us to see the difference between Will and the rest of the world for Mike. In season 3, when he appears to be a jerk to everyone, no exception at all, the only person he seems to retract this behavior for is Will. In season 4, Mike fights El and Will, but again, the only one he seems to understand and retract from his defenses for is Will. Again, the only person he is really open with.

Now, speaking about sexuality, the other reason for people to blame Finn's acting is the awkwardness in kissing and intimate scenes - like the first I love you he heard from his girlfriend.

I don't know about you, but for me, it is almost painful to watch them kissing. Not only kissing, the whole dating thing looks like a performance, and it's not a good one, if I may say. But here is the thing, it's on purpose! The same goes for the looks he gives Will's and Eddie's body.

Don't even think that every look, expression, or camera play is not calculated. These people spend so much money in the show for it to be half assed by bad acting or misinterpretation of the script.

[seahorsepencils]

Hi! Would it be ok to ask whats going on with ppl being biphobic about kate stewart?/gen

I legitimately dont know whats going on? I feel like the pizza guy walking into the burning appt from community meme. Idk if i ever put much hc or thought behind kates relationships tbh, other than maybe she was aroacespec or choosing not to be in a relationship bec of how dangerous UNIT is...

I don't remember anything in the show implying she was sapphic or into Ibrahim (or like another person said in the tags that she had a kid with someone too)

I genuinely dont know wtf is going on or why who fans are fighting about this

Hi anon,

Of course! Thanks for asking. Here’s my attempt at an explanation:

In 2016, during a panel Q&A at Long Island Doctor Who, Jemma Redgrave said that when she first started doing the show, she headcanoned Kate as being married to a woman. At some point in her answer, she alludes to the fact that this may or may not be the case anymore, as she often learns new details about Kate’s life from the showrunners whenever she films another episode. (Jemma's answer starts at 44:54 here.)

Regardless, her initial headcanon has caught on, either as a bit of wishful thinking or as a detail that some perceive to be almost canon in the absence of contradictory evidence on the show or in other materials (i.e. the UNIT audios). In the series 18 episode “Death in Heaven,” Kate described herself as a “mother of two” and “divorcee,” and a popular interpretation of this is that Kate may have been married to a man, and divorced him after (or before) realizing she was a lesbian.

The “almost canon” perspective also holds a lot of weight among some fans of the show because of Jemma Redgrave’s long history of playing queer and queer-coded characters. Even her most ostensibly straight characters tend to offer some sort of challenge to compulsory heterosexuality or patriarchal norms (i.e. they turn to violence after spending years in loveless heterosexual marriages). This has made it very easy to headcanon pretty much any character she’s played as queer. I think some fans tend to also think that Jemma has more influence over her characters than she does - for example, after seeing episodes of DW in which Kate has worn plaid or flannel, fans have suggested that Jemma probably provided her own wardrobe for the show and purposely selected those items to give off gay vibes. (A very niche issue that has contributed to this is Jemma’s habit of repeatedly purchasing her characters’ wardrobe items at half price and then wearing them in real life - in the past, some fans incorrectly assumed that this meant Jemma was bringing her own clothing to set and asking the costume designers if Kate could wear it.) Effectively, many fans have hoped that Jemma’s earlier headcanon for Kate effectively manifested into canon over time, or potentially inspired the showrunners to agree that Kate is queer.

In terms of the Ibrahim stuff, the first piece was a lot of fans noticing that the hand-holding between Kate and Ibrahim in this week’s finale lasted a few seconds longer than one might expect a platonic hand-hold to last. Similarly, some have thought that the moment when she comes back to life and he pulls her up has a certain closeness or intimacy to it. From what I’ve seen, people are split on the topic - some people consider it to be a platonic “happy to be alive” moment, or a show of feelings from Ibrahim that Kate might not reciprocate; others have theorized that Ibrahim and Kate have a very close platonic relationship for some reason, etc.

Shortly after the finale aired, a version of the episode with a cast and crew audio commentary was released on the BBC’s website. In this commentary, while the two aforementioned scenes are playing, the producer, Vicki Delow, makes some comments suggesting she thinks that Kate and Ibrahim are, or should be, a couple. RTD responds to her comments in what sounds like a teasing tone. Here’s my transcript of those moments:

Helping Kate up scene (36:50) Vicki: “I love this. This is my favorite thing in the whole world." RTD: "What, these two?" Vicki: "These two. I just love them.” RTD: “What do you mean, Vicki?” Vicki: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” RTD: “What do you mean? You think they’re friends?” Vicki: “I think they’re more than friends.”

Hand-holding scene outside (37:43) Vicki: “Look, look, look. This is it. Look, look, look.” RTD: “What are you looking at, Vicki Delow?” Vicki: “I love them. I love them.” RTD: “I don’t know what you mean, Vicki. I don't know.” Vicki: “It’s the greatest romance.”

Some folks have interpreted this as Vicki Delow hinting that there’s going to be a future romance between the characters in series 2 - and that RTD is egging her on - i.e. the “I don’t know what you mean” is a wink nudge way of him refusing to directly confirm a future storyline. That’s definitely a possibility. I think it’s also possible that Vicki just really wants them to be a couple, and has gotten a reputation on the production team as a hopeful shipper who wants Kate and Ibrahim to wind up together. In that context, RTD’s teasing her might have a vibe more like “oh Vicki, here you go again, shipping Kate and Ibrahim.”

So basically, a number of fans who have taken Jemma’s past headcanon as canon-adjacent have interpreted Vicki Delow’s “it’s the greatest romance” comment as confirmation that Kate and Ibrahim will have a romantic storyline in the next series, and have posted on social media (mostly Twitter, but a bit on Tumblr) criticizing what they perceive to be the show taking an unexpected position on Kate’s sexual orientation.

The rest might be stuff you’ve already seen, but I’ll summarize just in case: Several of the posts on Twitter and Tumblr have used language that inflexibly imply a gay/straight binary - i.e. “how dare they make Kate straight, she’s a lesbian” - not allowing for the possibility that she’s a bisexual woman to enter into the equation at all. In my other post on this subject I referred to a pattern of bi erasure and biphobia in the Jemma Redgrave fandom. As someone who’s an active member of that fandom, it felt like a concrete instance of some things I’ve seen pretty regularly in the community - and although I’m not as familiar with the DW fandom more generally, it sounds like there may have been some similar past instances of bi erasure or microaggressions in that fandom.

While I’ve categorized the “how dare they make her straight” posts specifically as bi erasure (and I imagine one could make a case that they’re biphobic too), the clear instance of biphobia for me has been in the comments I’ve seen by viewers who said that they would rather pretend Kate died at the start of the episode than accept the presence of a scene where she held hands with a man. In my mind, even as a joke, that seems to imply “better dead than bi or straight.”

I don't know if I'm decided on what Vicki Delow meant, and the lingering in that hand-holding moment definitely did make me wonder. And as someone who loves Jemma's performances as queer characters and has read my share of Osgate fic, I think it would be awesome to see her character in a relationship with a woman. But at this point I feel like the conversation has been so saturated by others' moments of bi erasure that it's hard to even know how to get back into it.

So, yeah. You're not wrong - even for someone who knows a lot of the pieces, it's been a very confusing couple of days. 😅

[burningvelvet]

this is a long analysis on titanic (1997), re: my last reblog on titanic’s depiction of rose coming into her own sexuality, being sexually dominant, & actively pursuing jack romantically, + LGBT themes, feminism, & the cal/jack/rose triangle as a freudian representation.

—this is one of the great and unique things about this film and also i’d like to point out that although we see jack liking rose first, rose is the one who actively pursues him every step of the way which is almost never seen in films. the roles are almost always reversed. she’s the one who lies to protect him, she’s the one goes to see jack again on the deck under the guise of thanking him, she’s the one who snatches his art book and asks about the nudes, she’s the one who asks to be drawn and specifically drawn nude, she saves him with an axe, she’s the one who initiates sex, etc.

i despise it when people talk about titanic like it’s the most boring cishet movie of all time when it’s one of THEE most progressive/subversive imo (in terms of popular mass media). jack is one of the only major male romantic figures i’ve ever come across who never says anything sexist even in jest, who never dominates their scenes together whether emotionally/romantically/sexually, and who genuinely helps the female protagonist become a better person rather than vice versa. i can’t even think of comparable male characters, so yes in a way he is the perfect example of a manic pixie dream boy. i would go as far as to call their dynamic a subtle gender role reversal and i don’t know why this isn’t talked about more.

there’s also been a lot of queer interpretations and analysis on titanic which i think is apropos. jack and rose have been seen by some as being butch-coded/lesbian-coded ever since the movie came out, and you can also make a case for rose representing (metaphorically or literally) the experiences of gender-envy or being GNC, especially in the scene where jack nonjudgementally teaches rose to “ride like a man, and spit like a man” — and she says “why can’t i be like you, jack?” — etc. — jack actively encourages her to go against the gender norms and i don’t think it’d be a reach to say that he would be supportive if she was LGBTQ+ and vice versa & that they’re both clearly allies regardless of interpretation. Take for example Rose’s line to Kack: “I know what you must be thinking— poor little rich girl, what does she know about misery?” & Jack’s response: “No, no, that’s not what I was thinking. What I was thinking was, what could’ve happened to this girl to make her feel she had no way out?” — As Rose says, Jack “sees” people, and validates/recognizes them in a way that is similar to the queer theories on queer kinship, allyship, & solidarity. Rose and Jack find each other and feel kinship for each other through their mutual progressive/bohemian values in a way that is commonly experienced by LGBT people finding other LGBT people, which is heightened by Rose/Jack’s mutual attraction & their blooming relationship being socially frowned upon (due to classism + Rose’s engagement).

I also think it’s important to point out that sexuality is a core theme of the movie in general, & this is esp important considering it takes place in 1912. From Rose’s Piccaso painting of the prostitutes, to Rose’s comment at the table about Freud re: male overcompensation, to Cal slut-shaming Rose, to the nude French prostitutes, to Rose saying she’d rather be Jack’s whore than Cal’s wife. The theme of being a “ruined woman” is rampant. Many of Cal/Rose’s scenes are laced with subtle sexual implications with him wanting Rose to be sexually submissive/passive/exclusive/available (“do not deny me”) and her clearly not being interested in that role (Cal asks her why she didn’t come to his rooms late at night when he asked her to, and he’s always the one initiating contact, & she clearly hates him). It is also very clear that Rose sees her wifely duties as performative, and to some extent her gender itself is performative (see: the scene where she watches in anxious disgust as she sees a little girl being taught how to act like a lady through table etiquette, and Rose immediately runs off to Jack). I also think it’s ironically symbolic that Cal gives her his mens coat toward the end, and we see pictures of young her wearing pants and riding horses “like a man” as her and Jack fantasized, etc.

I also think it’s intentional that Jack is slightly tomboyish/androgynous looking, younger, and open-minded, whereas Cal is older, dominant, and represents a sort of Byronic “tall, dark hair, handsome, rich” version of masculine appeal. There’s also the split in politics, class, etc. — they represent opposite ends of male sex appeal while both being attractive. The love story wouldn’t be effective if Cal was unattractive bc his sex appeal is necessary to the narrative. Jack and Cal’s contrasting versions of sex appeal are what make this love triangle so effective yet conflicting (aside from their differences in personality and Cal being abusive/Jack being supportive) because the contrast between Jack/Cal highlights and brings out Rose’s sexuality and her transgressive sexual desires. She refuses to be sexually passive for Cal. In nearly all of their scenes together, Rose and Cal are constantly competing for sexual dominance through their dynamic—whereas with Jack, Rose doesn’t have to compete for dominance bc Jack accepts her for the way she is and actively lets her take the reigns and sexually guide him, and Jack feels comfortable in the role he plays. During the drawing scene and in the car scene, he’s presented as being shy and nervous but is still clearly enthralled by her, whereas Rose is suddenly the comfortable/confident/more knowledgeable one, even making jokes when Jack reacts to seeing her disrobe. Typically in cishet romances, the roles would be reversed, which is what Cal desires—that’s Cal’s tragedy, that in the end when he searches for Rose during the sinking and then later on the Carpathia, he’s mourning a fantasy of who Rose was, & tried molding her into a submissive version of herself & destroying her dominant/masculine side.

For these reasons, I believe Jack also represents a part of Rose’s subconscious mind, and that the lines “he exists now only in my memory,” “it was the ship of dreams, and it was, it really was,” are symbolic of this. I see their relationship as being more importantly a deep bond of friendship and a connection between two kindred spirits than being solely romantic. To use a Freudian model, Jack helps bring out Rose’s “id” whereas Cal tries to supress it and bring out Rose’s “superego,” and Rose ends the film by forming a healthy “ego”—this is what makes the Cal/Jack/Rose love triangle so riveting and effective, because it represents this clash of values and this tug-of-war thru this Freudian Trio.

I’m considering turning all this into an actual academic essay atp lmao

[athenafire]

What feelings does your character most often instill in their fans? Affection? A desire to protect? Open lust? A love/hate dynamic? Why do you think their fans feel this way? By contrast, what would their haters dislike about your character? Is it a petty complaint? A mischaracterization of the character or their intentions? Are they just a woman in a largely male-centric series? What would be the ‘incorrect but wildly popular’ interpretation of your character in fandom? How does fandom characterize/mischaracterize your characters ship in fanworks?

META ASKS:If Your OC Was Canon. [Accepting]

This is going to be a long one.

First, I need to define what Meredith is as a character, and it's pretty personal. I came up with the concept of the void, and it being fucked up, a decade or so back when I was having to face my own mortality. An endless entropy that cannot be stopped. But facing down the end of your life in a situation you cannot control does things to your brain.

Then after I found out I had beaten back the virus, but came out scarred from it, that changed a lot about my teenage perspective. It was pretty paradigm shifting. And the base concept of Meredith was born from that.

The idea that societal boxes mean nothing, and learning to work with yourself, and your demons, rather than pushing back all the time. It's not about becoming better, it's about finding peace and comfort with yourself. I can't say much else without spoiling ideas I have coming up but :)

With all that in mind, I feel like people would dilute her meaning down to "Big strong lesbian cottage core" calling her mood and #lifegoals without understanding how toxic she is to herself. I've been in fandom long enough to know ladies are not respected in the slightest. Some people are also going to either say she's trans coded or autistic when... hey, if that's what floats your boat, fine.

Haters I don't have to imagine, I have anon turned off right now for a reason :)

Meredith has boobs, is lady, and has any form of power/agency, so she is a Mary Sue.

On top of being distilled down to cottage core lesbian, people would treat her as even dumber than she actually is. Meredith is smart, but in her own way. She does not understand a lot, but people would translate that to 'haha dumb beefy strong lady'. Which is just...sad.

To answer the last one, this sounds highly negative but..again, female character. Time to hate on them relentlessly for 'getting in the way of the gay' despite being a character with little to no interest in relationships due to her own mental health issues.

[mdhwrites]

I heard Dana gave toh fans the freedom to consider their headcanons canon, or smth like that. There's probably more info on twitter but I don't use the app. What do you think?

So what I've heard is that it's not entirely this. It is just saying that whatever Dana says outside of the show, like in livestreams, panels, etc. don't count as canon. The only things that are explicitly canon is that which is in the show. Otherwise, everything else is her personal headcanons which are just as valid as any fans'. I was introduced to this a few days ago by someone sharing it with me (this was apparently said in a livestream btw so will almost certainly get lost to time) a tweet with me about someone being happy about their fan children being 'canon' It was cute and I didn't check what the ships were. I mostly responded to that person being happy that they could headcanon Lumischa as having eventually happened because that was more fun for me especially with my hands being bad. Besides, I think the statement is dumb on multiple levels that I'll get to eventually. Reading this question, I spent more than a single second thinking about it and went "Wait, but Amity is only a lesbian because Dana says so. This is absolutely going to make 70% of the fandom choose to make her bi because then they can ship her with whoever they want." AND GUESS WHAT SHIP THE TWEET WAS ABOUT!? FUCKING AMITER! It has always been a problem for the show that Amity's sexuality is not stated in it. It creates a similar excuse to what people who have to defend stuff like SasuNaru (my introduction to shipping through my older sister btw) of "They don't have a canon sexuality." Well... No longer does Amity. We do know she's interested in girls but that doesn't mean she isn't pan or bi.

I personally do not agree with this interpretation. For me, changing characters who appear to commonly be straight to gay is fine... Because there's close to zero gay characters in most genres, let alone mainstream popular shows. How many are in Shounen anime in general? Okay now remove the villains who are queer coded and tell me again. If the LGBTQIA+ (which I want to remind you I'm not a part of so I don't benefit from this interpretation) want to tell their stories within the media they like, they HAVE to change sexualities. They have no other choice. Meanwhile, Amity is not a particularly special archtype so if you're a straight dude wanting to ship her with yourself, you can find that elsewhere. Even within the same show, just use Lilith who in S1 was similar to Amity. Though yes, Lilith is technically aro/ace but only by decree from Dana and the show never actually sways one way or another on her feelings on relationships because... Why the fuck would it? It's a comedy adventure. Which brings us to the complicated question of what is right to include in a story or not (which I could go into a LOT more in a different blog). It's not like everyone is constantly stating their sexualities in real life after all. It's a rough place for a lot of creators, just like saying if a character is nuerodivergent. A lot of stories just don't have a place for that sort of exposition and honestly the author letting us know outside of the work IS useful for that. Would it be better if it were stated in the show? In TOH's case, because of how much it stakes its reputation on representation, YES. For most? Not really but most don't court the romance genre, where saying those sexualities is more reasonable, like TOH does.

So that's one reason why I don't like the statement. Dana sticking to her guns on her ideas is one of the few saving graces I could give her and just saying "Fuck it, you all decide what you want to be canon so long as it isn't in the show" is just... not that. Not unless she was going to go whole hog and say that the IP was in the public domain so LITERALLY MAKE THE CANON YOU WANT! Which would have been novel but is also NEVER going to happen. Instead, her statement amounts to "I officially give you permission to make fanworks." Which... Lady, you don't get to decide that. No creative does. If people want to make work off of your story, they're gonna do that regardless of what you say. The creator of Calvin and Hobbes is FAMOUS for how anti-commercial he was of his work and spent much of his career making sure that his strips, panels, characters etc. didn't appear on t-shirts. And he still failed mostly because stopping EVERY avenue was simply impossible.

Also Dana has not really put much authoritatively on the scales besides the sexualities, making the statement even more pointless. If she's dropped giant lore dumps, I haven't heard about them and I've been in this fandom long enough that I feel like I should have heard about them. Instead we got small things like Amity dying her hair because her mom forced her to. That isn't going to break anyone's story and I even personally used it as a bonding moment between the two because I made Odalia neurotic about stuff like that.

So I guess my big question is... Who cares? Unless you actively don't like the few answers we've been given by the crew. And if that's the case... That's what fanworks are for. For when you don't like canon and want to change it. You don't need permission for that. You never have. =========

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

[lunatriense]

Surviving Romance starts out as a typical “reincarnation as main romance novel lead”, only for a sharp veer when zombies start to appear out of nowhere. Our protagonist is stuck in a timeloop, trying to save the main lead at first. She actively dehumanizes the side characters to the point she can’t see them as proper humans. As the story progresses, however? Throw the male lead to the side - and start focusing on the female classmates and her relationship with them. As they open up to her, she perceives them as human - and genuinely comes to care and bond with them. They fight to stay together and live - and she looks for a mysterious figure from one loop called the Unknown Extra, who motivated her to survive and who she holds dear. She evolves from uncaring to desperate to allow everybody to survive with her - and, again, the romantic interest is purposefully kept a side thought as her goals shift and she becomes happier and more complete as a person.

They do have a char who fits the “yan for female mc” role but. I think she’s handled in a tragic manner even if I hate the stereotype. Because it’s revealed the woman who reincarnated? She’s the author of the story. The original main character gained a soul and became trapped and horrified . She wants our MC, the author, to give up and take her place - costing her own soul… and now the soul of all the other girls who are growing past their narrative roles. It’s a story about a relationship between author and fiction where both can support and love each other.

There’s a canon side relationship I think is genuinely adorable. Girls all have diverse personalities and body types that suit them (a.k.a. When they say a char resembles her twin brother, they don’t mean a femme version of him, they mean she’s androgynous as hell. Genuinely muscular women. The popular girl student president is overweight and it’s not a big deal.) I know people debate an ace vs lesbian Mc interpretation but both work. I think the fact one character, one classmate, who is literally a background character with almost nothing becomes one of the ones most important to the MC and I personally think has coding with her is beautiful. Her arc is literally learning not to sacrifice herself - that she should be selfish and want to live even if she’ll a burden - and I just…think you’d appreciate that?

Okay yeah, that does sound interesting! I'll give it a look, thanks for the rec

[bonni]

i always saw it as “this immediately sets akio and anthy apart, directly emphasizes how anthy is a target in the school, which akio sidesteps by acquiring enough material/political power” but maybe that’s indicting ikuhara too much as well as giving him too much credit?

No, I think this makes a lot of sense! I definitely think that Anthy's race is meant to comment on the otherization of dark-skinned people/"foreigners" in Japanese society as well as the sexualizing and commodification of their bodies due to Japanese imperialism in south and southeast Asia (as most people consider Anthy to be coded as Indian). It could also be a played-straight-at-first-but-then-subverted application of the child bride stereotype, with Anthy being seemingly okay with her designation as an object at first, but later revealing her true contempt for the abuse she has suffered, as well as the emphasis that her scenario should not be perceived as special or unusual ("in the end, all girls are like the rose bride.") Also, in the same ways that Utena is meant to be GNC but still has long, pink hair (the way male characters interact with Utena's hair throughout the series and what it represents about her gender is actually incredibly interesting, but that's for another post), Ikuhara may have wanted to design the "femme" character as having dark skin and short hair as a defiance of Japanese beauty standards and to be a design foil to Utena herself. This is even more out there, but there is a tiny possibility that Ikuhara researched lesbian subcultures in America for the purposes of writing the show and learned that dark-skinned women in lesbian communities were more often than not relegated to the "butch" role, and attempted to invert this. Once again, it's not likely, but I also wouldn't put it past him considering he has an interest in American culture and history and has commented on both in his work.

Akio is a little more complicated, because I genuinely do not know if his race has any real intentions aside from "he's Anthy's biological brother so he should be the same race as her." It's possible that Ikuhara also took inspiration from the "mysterious dark-skinned romantic lead" trope popular in shoujo manga at the time, mainly due to the popularity of Please Save My Earth. One major problem with Akio's race is that it's treated as secondary to his gender; despite Anthy experiencing othering due to her race, Akio's race never compromises his ultimate authority, which seems to imply that racism is something you can opt out of if you're an oppressor in other ways or have enough power, like you pointed out. This is kind of true in some ways but also an overly simplistic understanding of how racism works. I do believe that the flashback scene showing Anthy and Dios being attacked for their powers could be seen as a metaphor for racial violence, and in this case your interpretation of Akio would make a lot of sense, because it would mean that he did experience major racial oppression at one point in his life and responded by stepping on Anthy to establish his own power dichotomy with him at the top. The problem is that, also like you said, since this possibility is only explored in a single scene, we have no idea if it's intentional or not! And the worst part is, there is no way Ikuhara will ever tell us..... >_<

[goosefeathercore]

hmm dovewing or ivypool?

bet I’ll do both >:3

dovewing

sexuality headcanon: bisexual

gender/pronouns headcanon: she/love/xe, demigirl

favorite thing about them: how she continues to hold so much love for everyone, even when they don’t appreciate it or offer love back to her. she’s also genuinely a good mother, I really appreciate how she loves her kids unconditionally and prioritized being a support system for shadowsight over the opinions of her clanmates and the warrior code. I also love how she’s found her place in shadowclan, and her relationship with tawnypelt!

least favorite thing about them: I guess the fact that she never really got to acknowledge how unfair thunderclan was to her at times, like i feel that she should’ve gotten to go off a little, but I understand that it’s kind of part of her character to be super emotionally mature and forgive others by recognizing that they’re hurting too. so not really a character flaw, more like a desire of mine as a reader! I do think that she popped off when defending shadowsight though.

why i first started liking them: I’m gonna be real with you when I first read power of three and omen of the stars i was like 13 so i didn’t exactly have the hottest takes and she was kinda disliked online until recently. so basically, i started liking her when i joined tumblr a few years ago and started reading long posts analyzing her character and defending her because that was how i realized that i had been missing a ton of nuance!

do i relate/project onto/kin them?: I guess I partially relate to her because i can empathize with the whole ‘i was put on a pedestal as a kid and it made other kids dislike me because i had opportunities they didn’t, but i also never asked to be this way’ thing. that’s kinda where the similarities end though and she’s way more chill than I am about it!

favorite quote/moment: I really liked all her moments with shadowsight in the broken code! she was such a good mom to him through everything.

my fav ship: idk tbh! i think she and tigerheartstar are cute but i’d love to hear about any wlw dovewing ships!

my fav platonic friendship: ooh i don’t really know tbh i don’t remember power of three and the first half of omen of the stars well at all T-T I did just reread tawnypelt’s clan though, and dovewing’s friendships with the tribe cats are nice!

a ship i hate: bumblestripe x dovewing of course, that’s clearly not a hot take lmao i think everyone hates him

do i prefer canon or fanon?: i think i’m somewhere in the middle, like i prefer reading about the fandom’s interpretations of canon dovewing based on the books

random headcanon: i’ve been designing a lot of cats recently, and the image of dovewing in my head has eyes that are a gradient from blue to green! not the most original, but I like it :3

what color do i picture them as: light gray and white

cat breed headcanon: maybe scottish fold or munchkin cat

unpopular opinion: this opinion is much more popular here on tumblr, but she doesn’t deserve the hate she gets.

things i associate with them: doves of course, and for some reason i also heavily associate her with angels and angelcore aesthetic, i have no idea where that came from!

song i associate with them: definitely evelyn, evelyn because of the MAP

favorite MAP/PMV/AMV with them: https://youtu.be/3MdnLGpZSw0 this one! i just like the song a lot in general

ivypool

sexuality headcanon: demiromantic lesbian

gender/pronouns headcanon: she/he/it

favorite thing about them: i liked her a lot as a kid, i guess i’ve always admired the balls it took to be a double agent in freaking hell. idk she was an angsty mood to 13 year old me and i always viewed her as a badass lesbian!

least favorite thing about them: i guess the fact that the erin’s never seem to keep consistent character development for her. i feel like she really reflects on her life and mends her relationships, but then the erin’s just kinda undo that when they want her to be super angsty again for the sake of drama in the plot

why i first started liking them: i liked her from the start but i recognize her flaws a lot more now and i think i appreciate her more as a whole because of it

do i relate/project onto/kin them?: yeah i definitely relate to her a bit, except i’m an only child. instead, i relate to her for the whole ‘getting caught up in a very toxic friendship and losing sight of your personal morals while searching for validation’ thing. she’s a badass though and i just sit in my room and read funny little cat books 💀

favorite quote/moment: again, i do not remember the middle arcs that well but i will always remember the scene where she confronts hawkfrost at the great battle and hollyleaf dies saving her. i will also never forget her in the end of a light in the mist.

my fav ship: i really don’t know, i’ve always seen her as a lesbian but never had a good ship. i know some people ship her with blossomfall but i’ve also seen people say that blossomfall kinda treated ivypool like shit and i can’t really join that debate because i don’t remember their relationship like. at all

my fav platonic friendship: HOLLYLEAF!!!! the 2 reject siblings with flawed morals and self esteem issues 🖤 i think it was so fitting for hollyleaf to die saving her it was angsty af

a ship i hate: not really a big fan of ivypool x fernsong, this girl has been a lesbian in my mind since day one

do i prefer canon or fanon?: fanon all the way!! my main way of enjoying ivypool lately has been consuming fanon content where ivypool basically just goes to therapy lmao

random headcanon: this isn’t really a headcanon but i have an au where she goes to live with dovewing for a while after a light in the mist, and dovewing and shadowsight help her overcome her grief. i also see her as a butch lesbian!

what color do i picture them as: gray and white, the gray bits have darker gray stripes on them

cat breed headcanon: don’t have one :3 i see her as short haired and kinda blocky though

unpopular opinion: i don’t really know..i guess just that i like both her and dovewing equally??

things i associate with them: thorns, train tracks, nightmares

song i associate with them: devil train because of the MAP!

favorite MAP/PMV/AMV with them: devil train!!!https://youtu.be/iZjb-ATaYVk

but i’m also still hyped af about the copycat MAP, the call was posted 3 years ago and it’s so close to being done!! there’s a ton of big names involved i think it’s gonna be awesome!! here’s the parts playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmTDc0x_Z-a_XA5LQujJ7qsx7PWxlYl4V

[violentshine]

hollyleaf for the ask game!

I don't have many thoughts about her actually i think she has a good arc though (or at least potenial for one) sexuality headcanon; ace lesbian (only really saying this becuz it's popular i don't have any special headcanons for her)

gender/pronouns headcanon; i want to say she doesn't care about her gender identity (but still goes by she/her) but also...i think she's not the type to want anything with untied ends if that makes sense ? she probably says she's a molly but doesn't feel super strong about it or anything else

rate them out of ten; 5/10

favorite thing about them what her arc could have been ? idk

least favorite thing about them The wasted potential...but on a more personal matter; her devotion to the warrior code Now it Makes a wonderful character trait esp even better if the cats knew just how Bad the code is but idk anyone big on the rules r boring

why i first started liking/disliking them it's been forever since i read oots/po3 but i do know i didn't like her

do i relate/project onto/kin them? Not really

favorite quote/moment killing ashfur <3 my fav ship not too big on an holly ship tbh but she'd be a better partner for cinderheart

my fav platonic friendship i like her interactions with willowshine

a ship i hate HER W/ FALLENLEAVES he's like older than the tree cinderheart fell out of </3 i think it's a tad weird

do i prefer canon or fanon? going to assume this means my fanon and not the entire fandom's interpretation so just consider every answer to this is fanon

random headcanon she looks the most like her kin than her brothers do since she's the only one not a reincarnation. Her lanky body type has been chalked up to coming from Sandstorm and not...you know...

what color do i picture them as solid black, like a void

cat breed headcanon just a kitty

unpopular opinion don't have any i think...i dont think about her enough to come up w/ anything

things i associate with them a to-do list

song i associate with them Buzzkill by MOTHICA take this w/ a grain of salt. It's not a perfect fit i just found it being the only song in my Hollyleaf playlist

favorite MAP/PMV/AMV with them i actually...don't watch maps like...ever so erm void question <3...

[davekat-sucks]

homestuck fandom amazes me let’s see what is on the list for today

-toxic people telling you to die for not liking a ship

-calling you lesbphobic for shipping rose with a male even tho it was never said she was a canon lesbian

-getting mad at you when you ship a female character who is canon sexist with a male without knowing that not every sexist woman is toxic to men and don’t always suffer trauma from a man

-think rape and abuse jokes are funny

-call you sensitive over a “joke”

-tries to tell you how romanticizing/normalizing pedophilia incest and abusive relationships are okay because “love is love and we shouldn’t judge who people want to date”

-see nothing wrong with vriska being an abuser because “women are all so sweet cute and innocent”

-see nothing wrong with dave abusing karkat in homestuck2 because “lgbtqia+ people aren’t bad they’re all nice people it’s only the straight and cisgender people that are bad and evil”

am I missing anything else? feel free to add on

Nu-fans forgive Eridan Ampora because of the dumb gender arc, despite people had hated him for being racist and wanting quadrants filled. 2. Would even go after another trans who disagree about June Egbert. 3. Backpedals on Meenah being black coded, since in a timeline that she would become The Condesce, the main villain, they get scared that it would imply black people are evil and racist. Same applies to fanart of human Eridan is mostly drawn to be white by fans. They never make him a darker shade because of his character. 4. One could even say they subconsciously enforce racial stereotypes for some in the guise of progressiveness. Ex: Kanaya Maryam being headcanon Muslim. 5. Nu-fans try to justify on Rose's infidelity and that it was okay for Kanaya to be cheated on. Be it claiming it's still a healthy poly relationship that Kanaya "consented" them having their secret child for 15 years or since Space Player destined to be alone, this is her arc for independency away from Rose. They are ignoring the fact that most people in WhatPumpkin actually hate Rosemary. 6. Cherry pick certain facts from book commentaries that Andrew Hussie made. They would be fine to accept that Davekat was "planned" all along and that Eridan Ampora was the proto-Caliborn, but ignore about Doomed Dave and Doomed Rose having fucked each other. 7. Nu-fans disliking people for drawing the characters as they are and not the popular fanon interpretation. There is a lot more, but I definitely want to see people in the replies or reblogs about other messed up stuff that happens in Homestuck fandom. It's okay to point out the hypocrisy or flaws within the series and fandom. Though I would disagree about Homestuck fans thinking incest and pedophilia ships are okay. I mean, they used to be fine with all ships because it is fictional, but now? They hate it so much that they have to equate it with reality. If anything, I would say creeps and groomers could be around for Homestuck fandom. I remember it happened to Vast Error, but that's a different mess in itself.

[lost-in-yujikiri]

SAO Pride Week 2021 Final Day

Due to various irl reasons, I can not finish all 7 days of SAO Pride week as I want to. So I can give you a post on the rest of the ships I want to tell you about that still have a fair amount of tributes in official SAO media.

Eydis x Alice

Eydis is an interesting case. She's a mobile game's original character and yet she got popular among SAO game fans very fast due to her bright & energetic personality and badass when needs be, yet she's way more attached to girls and is meh or so-so towards guys including Kirito. Also, her story does not contradict canon events and she can be integrated very well to canon without anyone raising eyebrow. Among the interpretations of her character, many fans (even straight cis males) actually suspect or think she's a lesbian, despite the game throwing in parallels to how she loves girls is the same as how she loves her blood younger sister (much same old backtrack tactics that Japanese media tend to do to sell queer-coded females to the male audience), and yet some catfight with Lipia, her enemy who doesn't fit her sister type contradicts that because they has so much chummy lesbian UST that even Bercouli joked about it with Eydis. Originally I wanted to write a full blown post on Eydis Synthesis 10 and how much chemistry and attraction she has to girls, either it's her self-proclaimed younger sister type (Alice) or the ones who don't fit that category at all (Sheyta - the super cool, deadly & silent knight, Lipia - foul-mouthed brash & brave Dark Territory enemy, Goddess Stacia Asuna) but well... it's too much, I can't cover all unless you play the ARS game since launch, so at least I can speak a bit about her most popular ship: Eydis x Alice

I can speak with confidence that out of all alive characters in SAO franchise, Eydis is the one who genuinely cares the most for Alice the Knight. Eydis used to catfight with Eldrie over getting affection and time with Alice. Eydis thinks Alice has romantic feelings for Kirito, and yet she respected Alice's feelings when she visited Alice at the log house when Alice was taking care of coma Kirito unlike Eldrie who was mad with it. Though Eydis is a good person, when she knew Kirito x Asuna is a couple she's fine with it and supported them happily, then wished for Alice's happiness in the real world. After the War, when Kirito said he thought Eydis loves Alice, she replied that "Of course I love her!". In one event when Eydis was talking to Delegate Swordman Kirito, if Kirito said probably Alice is not all that happy in real world, she demands to go to Alice immediately. In another option, she threatened Kirito that if Alice is unhappy in real world she will make Kirito pay. If Eydis is still alive after the 200 years timeskip, I think she's still waiting for Alice as she said.

One of Bride Eydis homescreen's lines is about her marriage partner having crystal-blue eyes and only Alice fits the bill.

Renly x his best friend

These two were once said to be Eugeo x Kirito 0.5 because of their similarities. Also the 2 coupling birds symbol and crossing sword symbol. How obvious are they? They also have a (very gay) dedicated section in Renly & Sheyta's story event in ARS game.

Asuna x Kizmel

Kizmel is a NPC character in SAO Progressive. Without spoilers (as it's a matter of time all of Progressive gets anime adaptation), let me tell you this ship has a small dedicated faction among the Japanese readers. Even the first Progressive manga artist ships them.

Here is a small panel in the manga. Look at what Asuna wrote on the ground when Kirito & Asuna were separated from Kizmel:

Asuna

❤

Kizmel

(Though I once feared true to Reki's old tendency Kizmel will die before Kirito & Asuna parted way in Floor 25, or maybe not as he has changed his way since Unital Ring and current Progressive. Who knows, we'll see)

[itsclydebitches]

(WLW anon) I really don’t like the “bad rep is better then none at all”. I hate that. We should want good rep, because bad rep has been used time and time again by homophobes as to say we shouldn’t get representation. To me it’s not “gay can have the same flaws as het”, it’s “fix the flaws in the het”. Also I know Renora being independent was a good, I was just saying in comparison BB. Also, yes, they were separated, but also didn’t stop thinking about each other. Especially bad with Yang.

Indulge me for a moment because I want to take a trip down memory lane and list some—just some—of the queer rep that has been important to me over the years:

Ellen comes out both as herself and as her character… years later, she’s a hated millionaire who is criticized for how she treats her staff

The wildly influential Buffy gives us two women entering a loving relationship… except then Tara is killed off, Willow goes evil for a time, and Buffy comes under fire for Joss Whedon’s everything

The beloved and respectable headmaster of one of the most popular book series ever published is revealed to be gay… except it doesn’t count because it wasn’t in the text and now all of Harry Potter is cancelled because JKR is transphobic

Kurt is an unambiguously gay teen in a hugely popular TV series, acting as one of the first overt representations a generation has seen… except he’s way too stereotypical and Glee is a joke now

Orange is the New Black gives us a number of queer women, including one of our first trans characters… but isn’t it problematic that they’re all criminals?

Brooklyn Nine-Nine hosts an out gay captain and gives us a bisexual coming out story that resonated with many, myself included… except now we’re supposed to hate all the characters on principle because they’re cops

Korra and Asami walk off into the spiritual sunset together… but they never kiss or anything, so that doesn’t count either

Steven Universe gives us a queer relationship and a wedding… but it’s an issue that this is just a kid’s show and, really, does it count when the rep is embodied by space rocks whose entire species only creates a single gender? Feels like a cop-out

Same with Good Omens. Yeah, Crowley and Aziraphale clearly love each other… but you never see them kiss or declare their intentions. It’s great ace rep though! Unless you want to level the criticism that asexual characters are always nonhuman

A character intended to be a minor guest becomes a show staple and eventually declares his love for one of the two main characters… except then Castiel immediately dies, Dean doesn’t respond, and they never meet on screen again

I finished Queen’s Gambit the other day and the main character had a one-night stand with a woman! … but everyone is talking about how bisexuality is used to represent her lowest point, so that’s bad too

I could go on for literal pages. Some of these arguments I agree with (Dumbledore), others I’ve pushed back against quite strongly (Crowley and Aziraphale), but all of them are valid criticisms depending on what part of the queer community you’re in and what your expectations are. My point here is that it’s all “bad rep.” I mean that seriously. If anyone reading this is scrambling for the comment section to say why [insert media title here] is actually fantastic rep, I guarantee that someone disagrees. Or if they don’t, give it some time. Just wait until the characterization becomes offensively outdated, or another part of the story ruins the relationship, or it comes out that the author did something truly horrific, or the terminology changes and it’s labeled as “problematic” now… just wait. At some point, any rep we feel is good rep now will be criticized, cancelled, and dragged through the mud. The rep that I personally haven’t seen much push-back against—like the beloved Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who, or Schitts Creek that just won a ton of awards—is wrapped up in the criticism, “So it’s all just about able-bodied, cis, (mostly) white dudes, huh? :/”  Even the argument that queer characters need to be written by queer authors doesn’t hold up. I absolutely adored Sense8. “Wow, a gay main character in a loving relationship with another gay man, both of whom enter a loving poly relationship with a woman, another lesbian trans main character who marries the love of her life on screen, an entire cast arguably queer due to them sharing orgy scenes centered around the emotional intimacy they share, everyone survives, and this was written by two trans women! Great, right?” Well, not according to the wealth of opinions explaining how Sense8 is horrible rep, actually. Every piece of rep we’ve got is either currently flawed or will become flawed in the future.

So what do we do with that?

That’s where my “I’d rather have bad rep than no rep at all” comes in. For me, that’s not waving the white flag. That’s not an oath that I won’t expect better rep in the future (I do) or that I won’t criticize the rep we get (BOY DO I), but rather just an acknowledgement of reality. The vast majority—if not the entirety—of rep is “bad rep” in one way or another, but I’d still rather have it than nothing at all. Because I’ve lived just long enough and studied media just enough to know what nothing looked like. It was watching all queer characters meet untimely deaths. Before that it was watching queer characters be derided and treated as jokes. Before that it was nothing but coding, where queer characters didn’t exist except in our own headcanons and interpretations. Obviously “bad rep” covers a very large range of issues and “They haven’t even confirmed this relationship yet” is a bigger issue than “This queer character embodies one or two, mild stereotypes,” but ultimately I’d take any of it over nothing at all. And enjoying what we’ve currently got doesn’t mean I’m willing to settle for it indefinitely.

To use an iffy analogy, imagine there’s a factory. This factory makes plates. So. Many. Plates. Big plates, small plates, plain plates, decorative plates, plates for every possible occasion in your life—and everyone with a steak for dinner is pleased as punch. You though? You’ve got soup. You need a bowl. Your entire life you’ve been struggling to eat your soup off a plate (it doesn’t work) and listening to friends and family claim that the plate with a slightly raised edge could be a bowl if you squint (it’s not). To say it’s frustrating is an understatement.

But then, one day, the factory starts producing bowls too. Hurray! Except as soon as you get your hands on one, you’re told you really shouldn’t be using it, let alone praising it. Look at the state of that bowl! It’s cracked right down the middle, ugly as hell, shoddily made all around… you’re not really going to settle for that, are you? And no, you obviously still want the factory to produce better bowls, but at the same time, this is a bowl. You’ve never gotten one before and you can finally enjoy your meal, even if the soup leaks at times. Sometimes a lot. But you’re still feeling better about your meal than you ever have before. And what you then begin to realize is that lots of the plates are a mess too. They also have cracks, they’re also ugly, many are also shoddily made. The difference is that the factory is producing so many plates at such a rapid pace that every steak eater is able to get by. One plate breaks completely? You’ve got a thousand fallbacks. Don’t like the look of this one? A thousand other options. You disagree about what “shoddily made” means? Luckily there are enough plates that everyone can find what they prefer! But the bowls… there’s only a few. Some are really expensive. Others are only available for a limited time before they suddenly disappear. Your bowl breaks and you have to wait months, years sometimes, to get another one. You’re constantly told to go buy this one obscure bowl no one else has heard about and yeah, you like it... but you’d also like to buy one of the bowls everyone is already enjoying. You find yourself looking at the plates and thinking, “I’d like that. I’d like to have so many options that the flaws, while still a problem, are much more bearable.” You’re still going to demand that the factory get its shit together, you’re still going to (rightly) complain about the awful quality of your bowl… but it’s still nice to have a bowl, period. There are still things you like about it, even if it’s a mess: the color, the size, the beauty of the shape of it. Its potential. You’re still pleased you have something to enjoy and that helps serve the need you’re looking to fill, even if that something is imperfect.

That’s “bad rep is better than no rep.” To bring this very long response back to Blake/Yang, I don’t think their problems negate their benefits. Is their relationship currently non-canonical and filled with a number of writing issues everyone has a right to be angry about? Yup. I express that anger a great deal. Are they still half of a team on a very popular show that is (presumably) set to be canonized as queer? Yup. I’d much rather live in a world where big shows like RWBY try to include queer rep and fail in a multitude of ways—with the expectation and hope that they’ll continue to improve—rather than in a world where authors a) don’t care or b) are too scared to try. Because that’s where a “good rep or no rep” stance leads. The danger isn’t homophobes because they’re, well, homophobes. It doesn’t matter if the rep is good or not, they hate it on principle. But if queer authors writing for other queer identities, or allies writing queer identities, or even queer authors writing their own experiences (like in Sense8) continually come under non-stop fire for their attempts… there’s a good chance that many people won’t ever try. We’re already seeing that here on tumblr with young authors admitting that they wouldn’t touch [insert topic here] with a ten-foot pole because just look at what happens when you get it wrong. And authors will get things wrong because authors are fallible people forever unlearning their own ignorance. So though it might sound strange coming from a blog that has turned into such a RWBY critical space, I am glad that RWBY’s queer rep exists, despite all the frustrations that I share about it. I think a RWBY with various types of “bad” queer rep is better than a RWBY with no queer rep at all, particularly when “bad” or “good” is so intensely subjective. There’s a middle ground between passively accepting whatever we’re given, and tearing into rep with such ferocity that we end up rejecting it all. There’s a space where we can be critical of rep and embrace the parts that work for us, simultaneously.

I hope and expect the het rep will get better too, but… that’s never going to happen instantly. To quote RWBY, there’s no magic wand we can wave to fix all our problems. Rather, it will take slow, plodding, meandering, lifetimes’ worth of work to see that change occur and I personally don’t want to spend the one life I have waiting for that perfect rep to show up. Because it’s unlikely that it will. While we work, I’d rather find the good in what rep we’ve already got.  

[tapiocatitty]

week 7 scrapbook: queer women power up

When exploring queer representation in mainstream media, there have been a number of instances where lesbian couples are oversexualized or treat queer relationships as a commodity. While, although queer people can live out their life any way they so please, it is often degrading boxing queer women into this box. However, not all representation in modern media is not ‘bad’ representation, there are numerous shows/movies that feature authentic LGBT+ love and personality. In essence, letting a character’s sexuality not be their sole purpose in a story. Often times, the “coming out” arc is a reoccurring theme in queer storytelling, which is also a harmful mindset to push since, it does not normalize other sexualities and almost ‘requiring’ a coming out as a queer person. Some shows that demonstrate the difference between a queer person from a person who happens to be queer include; Bloom into you, Teenage Bounty Hunters and The Handmaiden. These shows demonstrate how different queer women express their power, their sexuality, their impact on gender expression, sexual practice, and lifestyle choices.

━✁BLOOM INTO YOU┈┈

Bloom Into You or Yagate Kimi Ni Naru (2018) is an anime that explores the complex emotions of Yuu—the main character—as she finds it difficult to understand love and romance. She meets Touko, who also could not understand nor feel love, that is until Touko met Yuu. The reason I chose Bloom Into You as one of the best shows that depicts the queer woman experience was because of how it their exploration regarding their sexuality. There was no 'coming out' arc that defined the characters. It approaches a queer romance, making their queer identity secondary and treating it truly as a romance. Instead of commodifying or fetishizing LGBT+ relationship, usually in American media. Referring to one of our class readings “Claiming Lesbian Desire: The Romance Between Fact and Fiction,”, we were introduced to the idea of Lesbians being debated whether same-sex affection and erotic behavior can be considered “lesbian”. More often than not, the audience are usually in denial when seeing queer coded media. In many media that feature LGBT+ people, the theme of not understanding the boundary between being a lesbian or just being intimate best friends. You can see this especially in Bloom Into You, where Yuu and Touko experiencing those same feelings of confusion, not knowing if they are incapable of feeling their heart beating or understanding the idea of love. You can link this to the typical queer experience of not understanding one's identity or preferences immediately. Bloom Into You depicts the queer romance in an intimate light, straying away from the usual spiel of “I am confused if I am a lesbian”. Instead utilizing the notion that “I am confused if I am in love with you.”, while coincidentally finding love with another woman.

━━✁THE HANDMAIDEN┈┈

Referring back to how mainstream often misrepresents queer women. The male gaze that convolutes relationship between two women is quite harming. Harmful interpretation of queer women usually depict these women in a sexualized or fetishized scope. It is no wonder that one of the most popular pornographic genres is lesbian porn. The handmaiden (2016) is a film that further explores the relationship between sexuality and one's queerness—especially how the male gaze controls both. The story follows a pick-pocket coming up with a con scheme with a swindler, in hopes of seducing a Japanese woman of her wealth. Sook-Hee, the pickpocket, infiltrates as Lady Hideko's (the wealthy Japanese woman) maid. Overtime, Sook-Hee and Lady Hideko develop an intimate relationship, turning the tables to con the con man. The film as a whole critiques various aspects of being a queer woman and lesbian relationships. Though the most notable part of the film is the library thrashing scene. Later in the story, it is revealed that Lady Tamako is forced to read erotic literature created by her uncle, in front of other wealthy men. Having heared this, Sook-Hee goes into a fit of rage from how disgusted she was learning the perversions that are forced upon Hideko. This scene literally and metaphorically was a sexual liberation for both Lady Hideko and Sook-Hee. Referring to our reading, "The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power", it introduces us to the notion of eroticism and its relation to oneself. Similar to how Lady Hideko's uncle takes advantage of Hideko for his own sexual fantasies, the audience also consumes queer media and sexually exploits LGGBT+ relationships. To sum up by connecting our readings, "The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women.". Which is why this library scene is so significant, and shows how queer women can take charge of their own sexuality one one's own terms. The rawness of Sook-Hee destroying the erotica was a symbolic critique to society's fetishization of queer people.

--✁TEENAGE BOUNTY HUNTERS┈

The last modern media that I will be discussing about is Teenage Bounty Hunters, which features a kindling relationship between Sterling who is Bisexual and April who is a Lesbian. Out of the shows/movies I have mentioned in this post, Teenage Bounty Hunters explores the greatest "fallacy" known in both the religious and LGBT+ communities. What does God really say about homosexuals. When I first read this week's prompt, about queer women representations and their lifestyle choices, Teenage Bounty Hunters immediately popped into my mind. Both April and Sterling are brought up in a stereotypical white predominant, conservative, Christian town. As such, April being as devoted as she is to her religion, she shares her two cents on being a Christian whilst also being a Lesbian. In one of the scenes Aprils shares, "In case, you're wondering, No I do not believe that God is going to smite me for being a Lesbian", which is a very significant aspect when discussing a person's queerness and their relationship with God. In many mainstream media, queer people are showcased as God-hating Satanists who feel abandoned by a higher power. Teenage Bounty Hunter shifts the scope and reminds the audience that being queer should not implicate one's religious desire, in essence, Queer Religious people do exist. Which is why creating more spaces for all walks of life is so important, inclusivity is important. To reference another of this week's readings, Where Did All the Lesbian Bars Go? Increasingly, They’re on TV by NY Times, "The rise of online communities and the legal acceptance of same-sex partnership have further imperiled lesbian bars, according to the historians and research projects consulted for this article. As women feel freer to hook up in mixed spaces, and even closeted women are able to find community online, bars have become less integral to lesbian social life.". This statement applies for Religious lesbians who also in search of companionship with others who believe in God and are still queer. Teenage Bounty Hunters is a prime example of how intersectionality in mainstream media is very necessary.

[bisluthq]

when i was younger i was part of the outsiders fandom and s.e.hinton opinion didn't matter at all for example she said ''these characters aren't gay'' and we would headcanon them as that anywaysies art is open for interpretation and i don't need taylor's validation to headcanon something

Firstly what an iconic fandom to be a part of was it like the novel or the 80s film with Rob Lowe? Was it both? How big was this fandom and where did it convene? I have so many questions.

But secondly exactly like it doesn’t matter.

Taylor’s fans are so determined to be right and validated that they miss out on the fun of like... interpretation and criticism and speculation.

I keep saying - and I know it’s pretentious and wanky - but like queer theory and analysis don’t depend on if the author is gay. Jane Eyre is currently like mostly taught as a queer text at a tertiary level it’s like the most popular text. None of the lecturers or theorists who do it focus on if Bronte was a big ole lesbian they focus on how this is a queer coded novel.

I enjoy gossiping about her because again celeb gossip is a multi million dollar industry and they benefit from it.

But tbh the lyrical takes are divorced from it to some capacity for me.

Again, on a hetty level I think Coney Island is a deep dive on shit that was wrong in Swiftwyn but there’s that take floating around about how it’s daddy issue related and a distant father and child. Do I think Taylor and Joe meant that? Nope. Is it valid? Yes completely it’s a brilliant take.

[starberry-cupcake]

It’s the end of Aro Week and I decided to throw caution to the wind and talk about something that can potentially be a polarizing topic. I’m putting it on read-more not only because of length but also because in 2020 this blog turns 10 years of age and I’ve learned to leave a window open for retreat when it comes to Opinions, so I don’t know how long I’ll dare to have this up. 

This is going to be about the aroace experience, fandom, ships, representation, fanservice, amatonormativity, allosexual normativity and transformative fanwork. 

So, basically, a minefield, so tread with care. 

Since the dawn of fandom time, there has been an aspect of it that is known (nowadays) as transformative. There are studies, dissertations and essays about this, and most if not all agree on the fact that the portion of fandom that is transformative tends to belong to the less represented portion of it in the media they consume. 

It’s mostly people whose identities are rarely represented those who tend to transform, making a space in their favorite pieces of media for themselves and others. That has, in tow, created a scene in which authors and content creators are born within fandom and get exposed to these types of content and reproduce them as well.

The cornerstone of transformative fandom, to the point of being one of the main organizational elements in fandom-driven platforms, are ships. And when someone mentions the word “ship”, it most often comes with the added non-said descriptive of “romantic” and “sexual” attached to it. 

Now, like I said, a lot of those who are involved in transformative fandom tend to go for less represented types of identities, and heteronormativity tends to be questioned often. Sometimes, it is legitimately for representation purposes, sometimes it’s for objectifying reasons. 

On the other hand, in the media-creating sphere, there is a thing known as “baiting”. This word is used when pieces of media hint towards non het relationships that end up not coming to fruition. 

This issue has reached paragons of shamelessness with creators using fandom for their own purposes, like making a series win an award, getting renewed or gathering numbers in cons, to then turn against the same portion of fandom by banning transformative fandom from cons, meet and greets and having actors and crew members publicly shame fanfiction or fanart. It became serious shit. 

This, in tow, brought another problem. Baiting (and what used to be considered “queer-coding”) started becoming an immediate red flag for people, a warning to whether getting engaged or not with a piece of media. 

In the mostly legitimate pitchfork and torches march against baiting, canonically aroace characters were caught in the fire, and queerplatonic relationships suffered the price of not fitting in the amatonormative and allosexual normative space fandom created. 

It’s a standard for fandom that one of the most necessary reasons for transformative work, for fanfiction mostly, is to make characters confess the love they never did confess on screen/page and, most often than not, fuck each other senseless as a sort of “necessary guarantee of their bond”. Consummation, if you will. 

Statistically speaking, explicit fics tend to be much more popular than non explicit ones and romantic relationships are what move the main search engines of fanfic platforms. 

Headcanon-wise, anyone can do what they want. If a character is interpreted one way or another, that’s not for anyone to police. 

With aroace characters, though, it’s a bit tricky, because it’s incredibly rare the amount of times a character is explicitly in the spectrum, and any evidence you can gather, which isn’t outright hearing it, is a lack of something. 

A lack that fandom interprets in another way. 

You can have a character be sexually attracted and romantically attracted to another and have that be enough for an audience to understand their orientation, to an extent, but an aroace character seems to have to explicitly state it because the lack of romance or sex in their narratives will be interpreted by fandom as “incomplete”. 

It’s more frequent for fandom to interpret a character who is not in a romantic or sexual relationship as “lacking” it and “fix” it in fic than for it to be headcanoned as aroace. 

An adjacent issue happens with this and the old notion of “queer-coding”. Audiences tend to sometimes interpret that lack as the incapacity for a media creator to explicitly state that the character is homosexual. 

The unintended consequence of years of coding, baiting and censorship of non het relationships in media was the invisibilization of relationships canonically in the aroace spectrum. 

For example, the first reaction to Elsa from Frozen not having a romantic relationship in the movie was that she was an amatonormative and allosexual lesbian rather than somewhere in the aroace spectrum. Not that there aren’t a myriad of overlaying possibilities between the two things, but you get my point. 

The lacking, the incompleteness that fandom most often sees in characters is filled in, most often than not, with gay romantic and sexual relationships, as a result of the years of queer-coding in media. You know, the good ol’ “if she doesn’t have a boyfriend, she must be a lesbian” stance. Fandom is, sometimes, like a family dinner with a 60+ year old uncle. 

This is a problem because it creates, within fandom, instances of tug of war between two under-represented factions who both deserve the due representation and which sometimes, very often, overlay in the same people, who fall in both spectrums. It creates arguments and fights for one or other character between the two, as if they were mutually exclusive at all times.  

I recently came across different levels of discourse and comments on two pieces of media for this reason, in two different sides. 

One concerned Mackenzi Lee’s A Lady’s Guide To Petticoats & Piracy, in which the lead is aroace and there is a girl who is romantically attracted to her and there is a hint of a potential qp relationship. After reading it I found in some review spaces opinions that considered the author hadn’t “gone all the way” with it, as if it was “cop out” for a potential lesbian romance, taking into account that the first volume of the series was centered on an mlm relationship, which gave people certain expectations.

The opposite happened in the webcomic Go Get A Roomie, in which a female lead character who seemed to be aroace for years ended up in a romantic and sexual relationship with the protagonist and there isn’t so far much of a descriptive of where her identity lied to begin with, but with some meaningful conversations that seemed to imply the spectrum after having suffered trauma. And this can be perceived as a sort of “deception” and to the problematic notion of aroace-ness as a “treatable phase”. 

Both stories are valid. Both roads towards self-discovery are valid. There isn’t an immediate denial of the spectrum for one or other possibility and both narratives are experiences that happen to people, even maybe the same people at different times in their lives. 

But the two happen to include female relationships and boy are those underrepresented. Like I said, it isn’t that both things can’t overlay in a myriad of places, Lillian could be a demisexual demiromantic, for all I know, Sim could be homoromantic and asexual, we don’t know the specifics. 

It’s likely and valid to have a gut reaction when you think you’re being represented and then you’re not entirely. And that’s understandable. But it’s a pity that we have tugs of war for scraps of representation. 

So, on the one hand, with headcanons, we tend to get fandom fights, most often than not between underrepresented identities, because we’re fighting for the little there is, when in reality we should be uplifting each other...but anyway, moving on. 

That’s all in the realm of interpretation, up until the moment the author makes the characters explicitly make choices and take action. That’s someone having a headcanon because of things the piece of media was doing and then having it proven right or wrong, or never having it proved at all. 

The other thing, where it gets nasty, is when fandom “fixes” canonically aroace characters. This is also incredibly frequent, most often than not with mlm ships, or what fandom considers mlm ships. 

One of the nastiest last year was the Good Omens debacle. 

Neil stated that Aziraphale and Crowley weren’t “homosexual men” because they weren’t “men” and they weren’t sexual beings (the whole “making an effort” thing that explicit fic writers like to latch onto). Neil also said they love each other, however that wants to be interpreted, opening it up enough for it to be platonic or romantic or anything you want. 

Fic writers have written more GO fics in the last year than ever probably, because of the show, and they’ve experimented with a lot of places of the spectrum. I’m not here to judge anyone because a GO fic was my favorite ace explicit fic I’ve read, so interpretations can be fascinating, I’m all here for them.  

The problem arose when people (mostly cis het women) on social media (mostly twitter) started calling Neil a homophobe for not making them pretty much fuck on screen or explicitly state that they were fucking offscreen in canon. 

That’s where we need to draw a line and reevaluate our life choices. 

I can’t count the amount of posts, tweets and reactions I saw rejecting the possibility of Aziraphale and Crowley not being a) cis men and b) allosexual. The two things created a gutted reaction, to the point that you have to consider the nature and intended result of those comments and, in that case, who’s being an intolerant asshole. 

There was a point in time in which fake woke rep discourse became the excuse for people to demand fanservice from creators, especially in the cis het women + mlm media overlay, and this is a problem. We need to separate the discourses, we need to figure out why we’re here and what we’re demanding. 

Another similar example I saw recently, yet less overwhelming, was with Banana Fish and the queerplatonic relationship between Ash and Eiji in canon. 

I came into BF later than most, but when I read the epilogue manga I found one of the earliest descriptions of a qp relationship I’ve seen, and there were a lot of interesting comments made by the author and other people interviewing her about why sex was never a part of their dynamic and how the bond they had was more of soulmates than romantic lovers and why it was meaningful all the same. 

Still, even if the author doesn’t, Banana Fish is considered among the key “BL” animated series of the last few years, alongside stuff like Doukyuusei, Yuri On Ice, Given, etc. And fandom likes to “fix” that “lack of” situation often, apparently. 

This case isn’t as feral as GO but it is, however, deceptive. Coming into BF I never would have guessed their relationship was to be qp because fandom let me believe it wasn’t. 

And, in this case, the author explicitly stated that this was her intention, this was the story she wanted to tell, it wasn’t her adjusting to censorship or having to code her characters, it was, at heart, what we now can consider a qp relationship. 

And, in all of these cases, in which there are aroace characters or relationships involved, or at least somewhere in the aro spectrum or the ace spectrum or both, there’s one main issue behind it: the lack of belief that relationships that aren’t romantic and sexual can be crucial. 

That they can be storytelling worthy.  

In media-creating and in fanwork-creating, it seems to be the norm to have an endgame romance, or at least for romance to be a key part of your content. It’s the expected box to tick for a fulfilling story, it seems, and the lack of it is the “problem” fandom likes to “fix” the most. 

This is also mirrored in the platforms we use. There is a lack of possibility to tag qp relationships as something separated in ao3: the / is for romantic/sexual relationships and the & is for all-encompassing platonic relationships (described by the guidelines as family, teammates, friends, etc.). In order to write a qp relationship you have to tag it & as per guidelines but you have to add another descriptor because you’re not writing family or teammates, and in the case of fandom-polarizing ships, it can be a problem. 

And all of this influences us as creators, to the point that it’s easier to write something we’ve never experienced, like romantic attraction, than it is to write without it, because we’ve heard the romantic stories all the time, we’ve grown up reading them, and we’ve learned that no kudos will come to your fic if you don’t have them in there, because it’s that / what’s gonna move the search engines towards your stuff. 

Maybe, hopefully, with time and more media around us, we’ll learn different ways of exploring transformative fanwork. Maybe while knowing ourselves and others, we’ll start believing that a lack of romantic relationships doesn’t necessarily mean someone was “too much of a coward to not make these two explicitly x or y”. 

Maybe we’ll learn to coexist because, after all, some of these things coexist within our own spectrums sometimes, and it’d be nice to see the capacity for us to not fight for the scraps of rep that media throws at us but be able to understand each other and ourselves enough to create the media that we need.