#i say straight but really i might be bi who the fuck knows i sure don't lmao

[bidisasterevankinard]

Not even close to 7 sentence sunday

i have plot and some sentences that I was quick to imagine for my fratboys bucktommy au, but ofc it might be editing when I'll write the whole thing still i need opinion on this part(again not really bucktommy)

“So, you bang both girls and guys?” The guy, Sal, who Buck already during his first shift pinned as a jerk, definitely just proved that he is right. 

“Sal!” Hen hits the man’s shoulder, and Buck smiles at her with a slight nod in appreciation, but he knows how to fight his fights against the type like this one.

“What? I'm just curious,” Sal says it with the same assholish manner and Buck just rolls his eyes. He looks at Buck with the challenge and Buck will not let this idiot win. He is not ashamed of himself and he will not let anyone try to make him ashamed. 

“Yes. I bang both,” Buck sips the coffee Hen bought him, making a mental note to say sorry to her, Chim and Bobby, and even Tommy, for the way he behaves now, but he should say it to shut this guy.  

He looks Sal straight in the eyes and smirks.

“Even tho, most of the time I prefer guys to bang me. Or girls. Or anyone who wants to actually,” Buck licks his lips and leans closer to man, using his best charming lower voice, in which sarcasm is heard, and smiles, not forgetting batting his eyelashes. “Wanna try as it's our day off tomorrow and you're so interested? I’ll even ride you so you don’t have to do a lot of work.”

Tommy chokes on his food and Bobby and Chim hit him on the back, while they are like Hen laugh so hard Buck’s sure they can start crying.

Sal the one who looks pretty angry, clenching his jaw so that Buck can hear his teeth sliding against each other. Buck loves the face Sal makes. The jerk knows he lost and Buck is too smug. Buck 1, Sal 0.

When laughter dies and Tommy stops coughing the pasta Bobby made, Sal makes the worst fake smile.

“Nah, I'm not that interested. You are definitely not my time. I like chicks,” the man says it like he is the best guy ever and any woman should be happy he looked at her. Buck just rolls his eyes again and he smiles at Hen who does the same.

It was such a weak come back, Buck barely contains his laugh. 

“Yeah, I had enough guys who said that they only like girls. And you know what? They really liked fuck me so I can't walk for at least half a day after or cried in pleasure under me, begging me to fuck them harder and deeper. So never say never, sweety,” Buck blows the kiss into Sal’s direction and decides to make himself useful. “Now if your ‘cool straight guy’ questioning of bi guy is done, I'm gonna go and clean the truck.”

He sends a fake polite smile to Sal, and then real apologetic to everyone in the room and goes away from the loft.

I was tagged by @wikiangela @dangerpronebuddie @daffi-990

@watchyourbuck @rogerzsteven @tizniz @theotherbuckley @pirrusstuff @saybiwithme @spotsandsocks @devirnis @diazsdimples @fortheloveofbuddie @hippolotamus @cal-daisies-and-briars @bibuckbuckley @bi-buckrights @bewilderedbuckley @neverevan @monsterrae1 @rainbow-nerdss and anyone who wants too

[thetommoway-oioii]

Rant Time™ !!!

so i recently became invested in the 9-1-1 universe. not gonna lie I started with lone star because tk and carlos kept popping up all over my feeds everywhere with their wedding pics and of-fucking-course I immediately looked up the show because I'm not gonna pass up any canon queer rep?? hello!! anyway this ain't about tarlos. after I was done with lone star I started interacting with stuff from that fandom and came to find that one of the characters from the main show recently came out as bi and boy oh boy was I excited as fuck. two days later I'm starting my 9-1-1 binge. I knew absolutely nothing about the characters, storyline or the show except what I saw in the crossover episode and I was so pleasantly surprised that there's already canon queer rep present from the beginning of the show!!! (shout out to henren and michaeldavid absolute legends)

anyway I keep getting sidetracked, what I'm here to rant about is how fucking dumb some of the new watchers like me are?!! I had no idea how this t*mmy person was because all I knew was a gif of him kissing buck. you can imagine my surprise when I first saw him in the flashbacks and found out what an absolute dickwad he used to be?!?! and I could not believe that buck was gonna kiss this dude in the future. there was no fucking way. either there was gonna be a huge redemption character arc or something or he'll have a fuckin twin or something cause no chance they're setting future buck up with this asshole.

anyway lo and behold s2 comes around and in comes eddie diaz with this big brown eyes and slutty tank top and of course I knew who eddie was. come on now be for real. I might have not been a part of the fandom before but there's no way you can exist on tumblr and not know who eddie and buck were. and like any other shipping-prone fan, I thought people were setting buddie up based on subtle sterek-esque subtext but imagine my surprise when slowly throughout the show they became deancas-esque obvious. the connection they developed, the trust, the bond. how they found home and family and sense of belonging and safety in each other. how eddie and chris and buck himself baby trapped himself. I was so sure that buddie would eventually become canon in s7 because there's no other way right. maybe the the whole BT thing was some weird profound realization moment for buck or something.

back to the point. what I'm mad about is how the new watchers are completely Ignoring clear signs of buddie and on top of that shaming or right out calling the buddie shippers crazy all the while blindly supporting a character that is clearly a Major Fucking Dickwad from the beginning. making excuses like he was figuring himself out in the past or he's canonly queer while eddie clearly isn't. as if T*mmy figuring himself out excuses him being a shit person or the literal fact that just because eddie has not come out yet he's not queer. buck was straight UNTIL he came out as bi. anyway that's mostly all I wanted to say. yes I started the show because of a BT kiss gif but once I actually watched the show, it was easy to figure out what was right in front of me.

I urge new watchers like me to take the time and really understand and watch the show and not just look at it from face value or consume information through social media osmosis.

[sukiipjs]

✮ BLONDIE : PT 1

°:. *₊ ° . ☆ °:. *₊ ° . ° .•

↳ nick sturniolo x masc reader

↳ words - 2239

↳ summary - you’ve been having a hard time realizing and accepting the fact that you’re gay, and in love with your best friend. you try to ignore the feelings but that only makes everything worse until you can’t hide it anymore.

↳ contains - swearing, angst, use of y/n, internalized homophobia, depression, crying, idk??? [READ PT 2 - PT 3]

↳ song - blondie by current joys

°:. *₊ ° . ☆ °:. *₊ ° . ° .•

°:. *₊ ° . ☆

nick has been my best friend for years, he’s always been there for me, and me there for him. we met in the first grade when he saw me alone at recess on the swings and he ran up to me, asking if i wanted to play with him and his brothers. one of the many things i love about him, hes always there, always there to help, or just be with. from that day on he’s always been my number one but honestly, i’ve been kind of avoiding him lately.

of course i don’t want to, i really really don’t want to, trust me, but i don’t want to make anything bad between us either. even though pushing him away is probably fucking things up anyway.

the thing is, for months, maybe even years now i think that i might be coming to a realization: i think i’m gay, or not gay but bi? i hate labels, i dont want to be put into a box, its honestly just hard to fit into one too. i mean i’ve had girlfriends before and i’ve liked that, but nick…

okay i might be coming to another realization: i think i’m in love with nick. and to make everything worse, i can’t even talk to anyone about this because the only person i would tell is nick, but if i told him, well i just cant, it could destroy our friendship. he’d hate me, i cant lose him.

but maybe i’m not in love with him, i mean i love nick, i always have but maybe its not love love? maybe its just me appreciating our friendship more. okay who am i kidding it’s definitely becoming more, I LOVE HIM. he’s just perfect, in general, to me, to everyone. i want to spend every moment of my life with him, i want to hug him and never let him go, i want to be with him, i just want to see him again.

i can’t even imagine what he’d say if he knew i liked him. he’d probably be disgusted, i’d ruin our friendship forever. i cant do that, i can’t risk anything like that, i need him even if that means the best thing i can do is just stay away, make up lies of why i cant hang out, slowly stop texting him, i mean maybe it's not the best thing but its either i do this and try and force these feelings down or i tell him and ruin everything. this is better, or at least that’s what i keep telling myself.

☆ °:. *₊ ° . °

nick 🫶

| wanna hang out today? haven’t seen you in forever, i’m boredddd

| i know i’m sorry, but i cant today, really really sorry. still not feeling good

| that’s okay, hope you feel better though 💕 if you need anything tell me okay?

| i’d rather hang out with you and get sick then spend one more second with my idiot brothers over here 💀

i stare at the message on my screen, i’m not sick, i’m just trying to be a good friend… by avoiding my best friend… sure, whatever.

i slam down my phone on my mattress, rolling over and burying my face in my pillow. muffled screams from my mouth as tears, start to pour from my eyes. every time i message him, saying i cant hang out i immediately regret it. i want to see him, i always do but again, i cant, i fucking cant. it would only make my feelings stronger and i just need to get rid of them as soon as i can so things can just go back to how they were.

fuck, here comes the spiral that ive been replaying in my head forever. do i even really like him? am i really bi, gay, straight, whatever the fuck? i don’t even know, it’s all too confusing and stressful right now. why can’t i just be me? and have my best friend with me again? actually hang out with him, see him?

all i can really do right now is continue screaming and crying into my pillow about how much of a shitty friend i’m being, great. I constantly stalk his instagram, trying to see if i do really like him and try to see what he’s up to without me, i miss him so much.

…i wish he was a girl then i would be straight and all this shit wouldn’t hurt so much. i’m not trying to say that being gay is bad, all i’m saying is that it would be easier to figure all this out if i was straight and he was a girl. i know that’s so messed up to say but i don’t know how else to put it.

if he was a girl, i’d know that i’m in love with him, i wouldn’t be so afraid to accept myself because there wouldn’t be anything to accept. i’d just be me and he’d she’d be him her, i’d get to be his her boyfriend and we’d be a happy couple. i’d be happy and i wouldn’t have to push the person i love most in this stupid world away…

i smash my face into my silky white pillowcase over and over, shaking my head as i force the sides of the pillow into my face more. i want to suffocate.

i scream into my pillow more and more. ‘i love you nick, i love you nick, i love you. i DONT love you nick, i DONT love you nick, i DONT love you… but i do, i really really do, but i cant… i really really fucking cant.’

°:. *₊ ° . ☆

i stay rotting in my bed, spiraling about random shit, taking random quizzes of ‘am i gay?’ or ‘am i in love with my bestfriend?’ or ‘is it a crush?’ like i know.

soft blankets cover me, my silky pillows supporting my back as i rewatch rupaul's drag race on my computer until i finish it again, oreos and empty dr pepper cans surround me. and of course, nick always in my mind, everything reminding me of him, those stupid quizzes, his favorite show, his favorite drink. i wish he could be here, like how we used to hang out before i started ruining everything but i could be ruining it more, at least im keeping my mouth shut.

every once and a while, a message from nick pops up. him sending me a tiktok or telling me about how spacecamp is going or just something random, asking how im doing, if im still sick. most times i try to ignore him, turning off the notifications but i answer sometimes, only one or two words, maybe just an emoji, just trying to say something. i don’t want him to think i hate him or anything, i still of course love him.

the only time i ever get up from my bed is to go the the bathroom or get more food, ive been wearing the same two sweatpants alternating them and random shirts that i throw on the floor after i wear them for enough. my hair shaggy and a scratchy stubble on my face. i look and feel gross. i didnt think that forcing my best friend away and trying to figure out my sexuality could make me this depressed, who knew.

☆ °:. *₊ ° . °

weeks pass of me ignoring (or at least trying to ignore) nick and weeks of screaming into my sheets and sleeping all day become more and more. i finally decide to leave my apartment and stock up on some random things that will help me rot in my room even more: coffee, chips, oreos, whatever else i might want.

as i scan the aisle for dr pepper, standing in my gray hoodie with the hood covering me and one of the two sweatpants i’ve been wearing on, i hear a voice at the end of the row calling to me, “y/n?” my head turns to see who knows me that’s here, about to see how disgusting i look and just my luck, it’s nick.

“nick” a bright smile floods my face, i haven’t seen him for what seems like forever, i look at his blonde hair with grown out brunette roots, plus that signature nose ring and star earrings, of course he looks great.

he runs up to me, giving me a warm hug as he smiles too, “oh my god i haven’t seen you in decadessss” he exaggerates, laughing at me, “you feeling better now?” i tilt my head a little, confused but then i remember my lie. “oh yeah, i am. even though i dont look it” i try to scoff a laugh, looking down at myself, excusing how ‘i dont care’ i look right now.

“you look fine.” he laughs back again, “you know… me, chris and matt were gonna go out for dinner soon, wanna come?” i can tell he really wants me to be there and i really want to but i try to push it away, still.

“uhhh, i think had something later, sorry” my small smile slowly fading as his does too, i don’t think i’ve seen his smile leave that fast. “really? we haven’t talked in weeks, i miss you” he jokes a little, but really we do miss each other.

“i know, i’m sorry, but i promise we’ll hang out soon yeah?” i try to fake a small smile, trying to make this a little better but nick still looks sad, “yeah okay, see you later then?” he looks like he hates me, he looks just annoyed, hurt. i feel terrible.

“yeah, later” i’m about to walk closer to give him another hug but he leaves, to i assume go find his brothers, before i can. i’m terrible.

i finish up grabbing my things before leaving and driving off, replaying our interaction in my head. i could’ve just went? it was one dinner, that’s all. not a big deal. but it’s too late, it would just be weird if my schedule suddenly cleared up now.

°:. *₊ ° . ☆

i make my way back to my apartment, putting my bags down on the counter before going straight to my room again, flopping down on top of the pile of blankets and stuffed animals that cover my bed.

i dig in my pocket for my phone, taking it out as i grab a blanket to pull it over my face, closing off the sun that shines through my window.

i go straight to me and nicks messages, thinking of texting him. ‘i’m sorry’ too short, plain. ‘sorry, i was wrong i can go’ feels like i’m pitying him, plus just dumb. ‘i love you’ yeah definitely not. ‘come over? sorry’ again, stupid and he can NOT see the mess i have over here.

i decide on nothing and put my phone to the side of me, burying my head into my pillows again, tears flooding my eyes again again again. it’s too much. this is all stupid and i need to get over it all. this is terrible.

i go back to my cycle of curling up in warm blankets, eating my now new oreos and dr pepper and rewatching shows i’ve seen a million times before. and obviously stalking nicks instagram, he posted a story of him and his brothers at dinner. he’s still wearing those earrings and that same beige jacket he was wearing before, and he still looks great.

i swipe up, about to message him. ‘you look great, sorry i couldn’t come’ i quickly delete it and just like the story. i need to stop trying to message him when i’m trying to ignore him.

₊ ° .☆ °:. *₊

after falling asleep shortly after i finished looking at nicks story i wake up to like five texts from who? nick, of course.

nick 🫶

| are you ignoring me?

| like did i do something or what?

| are you okay?

| can we just talk or hang out please?

| y/n?

| okay sorry actually, never mind

my heart drops, i feel so TERRIBLE. nick did nothing and i never want him to think that he did something wrong. he’s perfect.

i pick up my phone to respond but honesty i don’t know if i should… i want him to know that he did nothing but he’s right about me ignoring him… fuck this. i just ignore him, still.

i shut off my phone fast and roll to my other side, curling up my legs and staring at the small textured bumps on the off-white wall that i face. i take in every detail, trying to distract myself with something else. i spot all the tiny discolorations or stains on the wall, the way it all starts to blur when tears, again, rain out my eyes.

they drip on the curves of my cheeks and lips, my hands are tucked under my legs as he tears drop onto my sheets, i don’t bother wiping them off. they make a small circle ish shape when it hits on my bed with a darker gray on my gray sheets.

my spiraling hits again when the ridges on my wall go dark as my eyes close. why can’t my best friend just be my best friend? why can’t i just be a normal person? why can’t i just forget it all? why can’t this all just go away? why? why? why? why?

☆ °:. *₊ ° . °

taglist : @slutforchriss @mattsleftnipple03 @mattsdinosweater @ccolleenn @mixvchelle @leah-loves-lilies @sturn-wrld @redz0nez9 @cheriematt @freshloveforthefit @nickuniversity @whore4matt @txssvx @will-yummy

[cha-melodius]

Fic Fest!!

You know it’s gonna be FirstPrince … and I need that Kennedy Garden AU!

Congrats on your 100th work!! You’re an incredible writer and person and I feel quite fortunate to know you.

(Thank you for this lovely prompt Sam!! I'm sorry this took forever, but I hope you enjoy this AU!)

Flowers Only Grow Where There Are Seeds

(T, 4k, read it below or on AO3)

“Are you watching that guy like a weirdo creep again?” June asks, too close to his ear, and Alex jumps a fucking mile.

“I’m not being a weirdo creep,” he huffs, folding his arms over his chest as he steps away from the window overlooking the Kennedy Gardens.

June gives him a look. “But you are watching him.”

“I was just— I was walking by and I happened to notice him, and—”

“You should go talk to him,” June interrupts blithely, already sauntering away.

“What? No,” Alex scoffs.

“Why not? He’d probably be flattered he caught the attention of the First Son.”

“He’s working, June,” Alex says. “He doesn’t want to be bothered.”

June shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

~~~~~

Alex doesn’t know exactly what about the gardener first caught his attention. Maybe it was the fact that he was younger than a lot of the other people who were employed to work on the landscaping at the White House—Alex’s age, or thereabouts. Maybe it was the way he was always still somehow so pale after working in the sun all day. Maybe it was the fact that he could have been a model, with his long legs and swooping cheekbones and full lips, and yet he was spending his days clipping bushes and digging up bulbs.

Actually, all of that’s a lie: Alex knows exactly when the gardener caught his attention.

It had been an abnormally warm early spring day, and he’d been pacing in front of a bank of windows as he tried to wrestle his ideas into something that might resemble a coherent essay for one of his classes. He wasn’t even looking out at the gardens, not really, but a flash of movement caught his eye and drew him over to the glass. A hose had failed somehow, leaving the man who’d been working with it looking like he was re-enacting Mr. Darcy emerging from the lake (what? June has those movies on all the time, it’s not like it’s his fault if he gets caught up in them sometimes). The gardener had plucked at his thin white shirt as it clung to his torso, revealing a truly breathtaking collection of muscles sculpted by regular manual labor, before he’d finally peeled the whole thing off, taking his dingy ball cap with it.

That was when Alex discovered that they were currently employing what might very well be the most gorgeous man on the planet.

That was also when Alex realized he might be something less than 100% straight. Ok, it had taken some more time after that, and more than a few instances of catching sight of the beautiful gardener again, before he started to understand what he was feeling. He still isn’t really sure if he’s actually bi or just lonely and horny, but that was definitely the start.

He’s well aware of how weird it would be to go hit on the man, for many, many reasons, so he just… appreciates from a distance. It’s fine. In a few months it will be winter again, and Alex probably won’t see him around anymore. He’ll get over his stupid little infatuation on someone he’s never even spoken to, and that will be that.

~~~~~

It’s one of those days, when there’s too much going on and he can’t get Cash to go with him on a run outside of the White House grounds, so Alex just ends up looping endlessly around in little circles on the path around the South Lawn, trying to get out some of the excess energy that’s thrumming in his veins. Eventually, he manages to tire himself out enough and ends up sprawled out on his back behind some bushes in the Children’s Garden, staring up as the clouds drift past. He doesn’t know how long he lies there, only that he still hasn’t quite come back to earth when he hears the sound of footsteps on the nearby path. Probably he should get up, but he can’t really bring himself to care who sees him like this.

That’s before the hot gardener comes around the corner. His light blue button-down shirt is hanging open, thrown loosely over a white tank top that’s smudged with dirt and sweat-darkened at the neckline, and Alex might have fallen over if he wasn’t already on the ground.

“Sorry, I didn’t know anyone was out here,” the gardener says. The accent is a surprise. An extremely sexy surprise. Fuck. “Do you need a hand?”

Alex could use a hand with something, all right. In his own tank top and the running shorts that June says are an inch away from a misdemeanor, he’s really not wearing enough clothing for this. Or maybe he’s wearing too much. Closing his eyes, he forces himself to get a fucking grip before he starts to push up off the ground. The gardener’s proffered hand appears in his line of vision, so he takes it because it would be more awkward not to. It’s warm and dry and rough with callouses that Alex feels no particular way about, and he lets the gardener’s strong grip tug him upward, until he gets his feet under him again.

It’s only then that the gardener seems to clock him. His eyes go wide as they track over Alex’s body and linger on his face. “Oh. You’re…”

Their hands are still clasped together, and Alex tightens his hold around Henry’s. “Alex.”

“Henry,” the gardener says in return as his lips part in a smile, which is devastating, actually.

“Nice to meet you, Henry,” Alex says. He might let a little of the southern drawl slip out, honey smooth. Sue him.

“The pleasure’s all mine,” Henry replies, his rounded vowels dipping low, and ok, he’s a smooth motherfucker too. Alex is officially fucked.

“You’re British.”

Henry laughs, cocking an eyebrow at him. “An astute observation.”

“No I just mean—” Alex cuts himself off and shakes his head. “I didn’t expect it, but I guess it fits.”

“Why?” Henry asks, tipping his head as a little furrow appears between his brows.

Alex bites his lip. “Because everything about you is unexpected, Henry.”

~~~~~

Alex should leave him alone. He should listen to what he told June and not bother a White House employee when he’s working.

The thing about Henry, though, is that he’s ridiculously easy to talk to, and he always seems so pleased to see Alex. It’s impossible to stay away whenever Alex spots him working in the gardens, which is frequently these days. It’s the middle of summer, which means Henry is mostly working in the mornings and evenings when the heat isn’t quite so bad, but occasionally Alex finds him doing something ridiculous like digging a hole to plant a bush in the middle of the day.

As he’s now wont to do, Alex makes his way out to the gardens with a large glass of lemonade. Henry’s entire face lights up when he sees Alex coming, which Alex is sure is less because of him and more the promise of ice cold refreshment. The poor guy is absolutely drenched in sweat, which Alex absolutely is not thinking about licking off his collarbones. As Alex walks up to him, Henry sinks the shovel into the loose dirt and pulls his ball cap off, the muscles of his arms rippling when he pushes a hand through blond hair darkened with sweat. Alex narrowly avoids swallowing his tongue as he hands the glass off, and when their fingers brush, Alex feels the contact tingling in his fingertips long after Henry’s pulled away.

And that’s before Henry tips his head back and takes a long drink of the lemonade, the muscles of his throat working as he swallows. Thank fuck it’s hot outside, because Alex is sweating like he’s the one who’s been working in the sun for hours.

Somehow, he manages to regain his faculties for conversation by the time Henry’s finished the lemonade, and they fall into their usual easy banter as Henry works. (Alex once offered to help out, feeling bad for standing around while Henry was sweating his ass off, and Henry had laughed and laughed and told him that he’d be fired if he let the First Son do his job for him.) They talk about everything and nothing—about movies and music, about the best food trucks that frequent the area around the mall, about what Alex has been up to during the summer, about the many projects always going on in the gardens.

“How’d you end up working here, anyway?” Alex asks from where he’s reclining in the shade, plucking bits of grass out of the lawn and tearing them apart.

“It’s a long story,” Henry grunts as he shovels. “I moved to the US for a fresh start. The gardening, I sort of fell into. I needed a job, and I always liked working with my hands. I’m certain that my friend sent me this listing as a joke because I—” His voice fails as his eyes cut over to Alex, then drop quickly to the ground again. He clears his throat. “Well. It’s not important. But I decided to apply anyway. I think Rodolfo thought I was having him on when I showed up at the interview, but he must have seen something in me.” Henry huffs a laugh. “Or maybe I was the only one who passed all the frankly mental background checks that were required to work at the White House. And now, here I am.”

“You’re my age,” Alex says, squinting at him. “You didn’t go to college?”

“I dropped out of Oxford,” Henry replies simply.

Alex can’t help it; his jaw drops open. “You dropped out of Oxford? What happened? Did you not like it?”

He knows he shouldn’t pry, but he can’t help it. He wants to know everything about Henry.

“I loved it,” Henry says, and there’s a smile on his face but an unmistakably melancholic note in his voice. “I wanted to be a writer. But I couldn’t stay. Not with the pressure from my grandmother and the way she was insistent on ruling my life.” He stops speaking for a long moment, but never pauses in his digging. “Sometimes I think about going back to school eventually. For now, I’m happy with this. I like it. There’s a beautiful simplicity to my life.”

“Wow,” Alex breathes. For once, he doesn’t really know what to say. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Henry. But for what it’s worth… I’m glad you ended up here.”

Henry leans on the shovel, smiling at him. “Me, too.”

~~~~~

Alex is trying to make any kind of sense of a bill that the Republicans are going to try to push through the Senate—don’t ask how he got the draft—when Nora lets herself into his room without so much as a knock.

“Wow, entitled much,” Alex huffs, barely glancing up from his work. At least she brought burritos.

“You invited me here, dumbass,” Nora retorts as she flings herself onto his couch. “Remember? Bisexual awakening movie night? Don’t tell me you forgot about Rick and Evie.”

Alex groans, wiping a hand over his face. “No way it’s fucking Sunday.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I might be.”

“All the more reason you need a break,” Nora tells him firmly. “Your classes don’t start for another week. Why are you working?”

“Because I’m gonna be a senior next year and I have to have something lined up for afterward,” he grumbles.

“I’m sure your mom will give you a job on the campaign,” she says as she finds the remote to his TV and starts navigating through streaming services.

“Maybe I want options. Don’t want everyone to think I’m just a useless nepo baby.”

Nora snorts. “Because I’m sure no one will think your connections got you a job in Rafael Luna’s office.”

“Fuck off,” he groans, turning away from her again. “We’re not talking about this.”

“Ok,” she agrees, too easily. “You got a secret admirer or something? Who sent you those?”

“What?”

“Those,” Nora repeats, gesturing to the small vase full of multicolored roses that’s sitting in front of her on his coffee table. Red, lavender, orange, blue, and even these neat yellow ones tipped with red around the edge of the petals.

“Oh,” Alex says dismissively. “No one sent them. Henry brought them by.”

“Who the fuck is Henry?”

“He’s a gardener who works here.”

“Hold on, the gardener? Your gardener?” she says, sounding too delighted by half. Alex may have talked about him before, once or twice.

Alex huffs and sets his pencil down, turning back to glare at her. “He’s not my gardener. He’s an employee of the White House.”

Nora grins smugly. “He’s the one you’ve got a crush on, though.”

“I don’t—” He breaks off with a frustrated grunt. “We’re not having this conversation, either.”

“And he brought you flowers,” she continues, ignoring him.

“It doesn’t mean anything. He has to prune the roses so that they keep producing more blooms, and he brought me some extras because I said I liked them one day while I was out in the garden. That’s all.”

That’s what Henry told him when he showed up with the first ones, his face flushed red from being out in the sun. Alex’s heart had done something very fucking complicated in his chest, but he’d accepted them in the spirit with which they were given: as a friendly gesture, and nothing more. The haphazard arrangement is all Alex—Henry brings by a different color almost every day, and Alex adds them in the vase, which is getting rather full.

“That’s all,” Nora scoffs with obvious deep skepticism.

“What?”

“Alex, when a boy gives you roses, it always means something,” she says solemnly. “Did you look up the colors?”

“Huh?” he replies, becoming increasingly lost.

Nora shakes her head at him, like he’s the crazy one. “Different colored roses mean different things. Maybe he’s sending you secret messages.”

Alex snorts dismissively. “Pretty sure they’re just whatever’s blooming in the garden.”

“If you say so,” she says, sounding extremely unconvinced. “Can we watch the movie now?”

“Please.”

~~~~~

By the time November rolls around, the gardens are looking pretty dire. Alex never really took notice of what was going on before this year—the plants were just there, in the background, and sometimes it was more colorful than others. Now, though, he notices. Notices the autumn flowers as they come into bloom and die back, notices the trees dropping their leaves, notices the bushes getting thin and scraggly. Henry’s still been around, working in jackets and hoodies as the temperature dips, but between the lessened need for garden care and Alex’s punishing course load, they haven’t seen each other as much. Alex pretends like he doesn’t know that’s why he gets unaccountably grumpy sometimes.

Today he’s on a mission, though, and after confirming that Henry was on the work schedule, Alex scours the grounds until he finds Henry by the tennis court, trimming some bushes. There’s a biting chill in the air, and Henry is bundled up, his nose and cheeks red from the cold. He seems surprised but pleased to see Alex, and Alex bites down on a too-large grin as he holds out the envelope he’d brought with him.

“What’s this?” Henry asks, pulling off his work gloves before he takes it and carefully breaks the seal.

Alex shifts nervously and jams his hands in his pants pockets so he doesn’t fidget. “It’s an invitation. To our big New Year’s party? You’ve probably heard about it.”

“I’m familiar, yes,” Henry says dryly, smirking a little as he glances up from the embossed paper. “But I was under the impression seats were thousands of dollars and reserved for the who’s who of America’s hot young glitterati.”

“First off, you’re young and hot, and it doesn’t matter if you’re not rich,” Alex says, pretending that he didn’t just call Henry hot to his face. Whatever. It’s an objective truth. “We waive the seat cost when there’s someone we really want to come that can't afford it.”

“And you really want me to come,” Henry surmises, still looking vaguely amused by the situation.

Fuck it. “Yes,” Alex answers firmly.

Henry looks back down at the invitation, trailing a finger over the engraving. “I can afford it,” he mutters.

“What?”

“I said, I can afford it,” Henry repeats as he meets Alex’s eyes again. “I know I don’t look it most days, but I have a rather large inheritance that I’m delighted to spend on good causes.”

Alex blinks. He knew Henry’s family back in England was wealthy, but he kind of assumed that after Henry dropped out and moved across an ocean to work as a gardener, he wasn’t in the same boat. “Oh,” he breathes. “Well, you can certainly donate if you want.”

“I do,” Henry confirms. He taps on the invitation with a finger. “It says here I get a plus one.”

Alex’s heart plummets to somewhere near the Earth’s core. Of course Henry has someone. He’s young and hot and amazing, and it’s frankly ridiculous to think he wouldn’t already have a significant other. Or maybe there’s someone he wants to impress—an invite to the year’s biggest party would do wonders. Alex is just the guy that pesters him while he’s working. He never had a shot.

“Yeah,” he manages, cursing the way the word croaks out of his throat. “Of course. It’s, ah, standard, I guess, so if you want to bring someone…”

Henry just smiles at him. “Wonderful.”

~~~~~

Alex stares up at the stars, watching as the cloud of his breath briefly obscures them, making them twinkle before it dissipates. It’s freezing out here, especially after being in the heat generated by the crush of bodies at the party, but for once, Alex appreciates that. He takes another breath, letting the cold air flowing into his lungs numb the ache in his chest.

The crunch of footsteps on the frosted lawn draws his attention, and he looks over to see Henry hovering nearby, still nothing short of stunning in his clean black tux.

He’d arrived with an ostentatiously dressed man he introduced as his best mate Pez, which was a fucking trip because of course Alex had heard of Percy Okonjo. Pez was charming and handsome and immediately the life of the party, but Alex couldn’t tear his eyes away from Henry. Saying he cleaned up well would be a trite cliche, but fuck if it wasn’t true; he looked more like a prince or a movie star than the boy with dirt ground into the creases of his hands that Alex knows. Alex had been buoyed for a while by the fact that Henry had not brought a date with him, but as midnight crept closer, his spirits had started sinking again.

The Kennedy Gardens had seemed like a safe place to retreat. He should have known better. 

“I’m fairly certain the host isn’t supposed to hide from the party,” Henry teases gently, a tentative smile playing on his lips.

“I’m only one of three. June and Nora have it on lock,” Alex replies with a sigh. “Sorry for leaving you to the wolves though.”

“It’s fine,” Henry says, shaking his head as he walks a little closer. “Believe it or not, this isn’t my first time at this kind of soirée.”

Alex snorts at that. “Oh, a soirée. Aren’t you fancy?”

“Says the man in a velvet tuxedo.”

“Touché,” Alex returns. His smile falters a little as he stares back up at the stars. “I needed a break. Don’t get me wrong, I usually fucking thrive at these things, but sometimes being ‘on’ all the time starts to wear on you, you know?”

“Why do you think I’m a gardener?” Henry says wryly.

“Fair enough,” Alex says with a puff of laughter. “I just… needed a moment to myself, I guess.”

“I shouldn’t intrude, then,” Henry replies softly, already stepping backwards.

“No,” Alex blurts, probably too desperately, but he couldn’t care less about that if it means Henry won’t leave. “I mean, you don’t have to go. I don’t mind the company. When it’s you.”

Henry halts in his tracks, his eyes going wide. “Oh.”

Thankfully, he stops trying to leave and instead comes closer, until he’s right next to Alex, a few bare, aching inches separating their shoulders. For a moment they both just stand there staring up at the sky, until the champagne soaking Alex’s brain gets the better of him.

“If I’m being honest, I wasn’t so excited to count down to the New Year.”

Henry shifts a little to face him more directly. “No?”

Alex shrugs. “The winter’s one thing when you’ve got the holidays to look forward to, but after tonight, it’s nothing but cold and gray. Everything’s dead and brown, and it’ll be months until things are growing again, and you won’t be around…”

He trails off slightly too late to save himself. Whatever. He’s allowed to say he’s going to miss seeing a friend. He stares fixedly up at the sky, resolutely refusing to look at whatever Henry’s face is doing, but then Henry moves to stand in front of him, and he has little choice but to meet those gorgeous blue eyes. They’re crinkled slightly in amusement, but not unkindly.

Fond, he thinks distantly. Henry looks fond.

“Let me make sure I have this right,” Henry says carefully. “You’re out here pouting tonight because you think this is the last time you’re going to see me until spring?”

Alex huffs out a laugh and looks down, feeling his face heat. “I mean, I don’t know if I’d put it that way.”

“You’re wrong about some things, love,” Henry replies, inching closer. Moving slowly, he reaches out to slide a hand onto Alex’s waist, the mere pressure of it lighting a fire under Alex’s skin even as Alex trembles involuntarily under his touch. Then he looks out at the gardens. “They’re not dead. A bit dormant, perhaps, but still in need of care. And I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’re not?” Alex asks breathlessly.

Henry shakes his head. “There’s plenty to do over the winter. Planning, cleaning, prepping the beds… Rodolfo has plenty to keep us busy. I’ll admit, I was intending on taking some time off, but you certainly won’t get rid of me that easily.”

Alex feels like he’s fucking flying, or would be if Henry’s steady presence wasn’t tethering him to the ground. He’s shifted even closer now, nearly pressing Alex back against the tree, and Alex lifts his arms to loop loosely over Henry’s shoulders as he lets a pleased grin curl onto his lips. “There aren’t any roses, though.”

“I’ll buy you roses, you absolute menace,” Henry huffs, but he’s smiling too broadly to sell being put out about it.

“I have another confession,” Alex breathes into the rapidly vanishing space between their lips. “I also ran away because I wanted to kiss you at midnight, but I couldn’t.”

Henry pauses, pulling back a little, though he thankfully doesn’t let go. “Ah. I understand if you can’t afford the questions—”

“No, that’s not it. I don’t care who knows. I mean, I should probably make a plan for officially coming out, but that’s not why,” Alex jumps in before he can get anything else out, because it’s important that Henry knows.

Alex isn’t ashamed and he doesn’t want to hide but, like so many things in his life, it’s not that simple. He takes a deep breath, forcing his jumbled thoughts into something that makes sense, which is no mean feat when he’s tipsy and his arms are full of a very handsome gardener who he’d much rather be kissing.

“It’s a lot, being in the public eye the way I am, and I couldn’t ask that of you,” Alex says as he stares fixedly at Henry’s tie. It’s got little yellow roses on it, and he can’t resist dropping a hand down to run a finger down the silk. “You like your quiet life.”

“I like it,” Henry murmurs. He lifts a hand to Alex’s chin, his fingers icy cold on Alex’s overheated skin, and nudges Alex’s face up so that their eyes meet. “I like you more.”

“Oh,” Alex breathes.

“Now, about that New Year’s kiss…”

Henry is biting his lip, looking hopeful and coy all at once as he stares down at Alex through pale lashes, and Alex… can’t believe this is his life, actually. He’s going to enjoy it while it lasts, though—just them, in the garden that brought them together, and a kiss that holds as much endless potential as the plants around them. Not fragile but resilient, perennial, ready to grow and bloom into something truly incredible.

[redhoodinternaldialectical]

30 for the writing ask?

30: describe a fic that almost happened, but then didn't.

Whilst away from my computer and therefore all my WIPs, I started a little one shot titled "Who the Hill?" and actually the premise is easier to explain by just giving you what I wrote for the fic before I abandoned it lol!

The bass thud of the club rattles Jason's sternum and thrums through his organs pleasantly as he surveys the rest of the room from his spot in the corner. He's not really looking for anything in particular, just too in the habit of counting exits and tracking glasses to stop even when he's just here to be around other people having fun.

Then he sees Tim - or well maybe that isn't Tim - or no that is absolutely, definitely Tim - but probably Tim's not the right name for the spike and chain adorned person leaned against the bar with the dark, expressive makeup, the short, black skirt, and the high heel boots.

Then he's caught staring and (Not?) Tim's eyes go wide in what looks like fear and ah shit, there's no way he she was ready to come out to him, but hey, he can be cool, he can roll with this and make sure she knows he's not gonna be a prick about it.

Tim watches Jason approach with absolute dread, because he never, EVER wanted to have to explain the whole 'hi, I'm bi and I love the way my ass looks in a mini-skirt' thing to the most depressingly unavailable straight guy he's ever met. He braces for simply the most awkward 'so is this a sex thing?' conversation ever held between two vigilantes.

Instead though, Jason surprises him, "Sorry for putting you on the spot like this, but can I ask for your name?"

Tim blinks and realizes that between the makeup and the breast forms there's a very good chance Jason has no idea who he is! In fact he probably only intended to chat up some cute goth girl, and if he can manage to play along right he might get out of this with his secret intact!

He pitches his voice up a bit and hopes to god that feminine cadence and the loud music carries him, "Carolina, but you can call me Carol if you like."

"Cool! I dig the spikes by the way," Jason smiles like Carolina's name is some beautiful treasure he's been allowed to glimpse and the dread comes right back up as Tim realizes that he's somehow going to have to find it in himself to turn Jason down.

He ought to do it right now. He ought to tell Jason he's an awfully polite guy but she's already late to go home and dropped her phone in the harbor and is currently walking out the door-

[That paragraph's phrasing was inspired by this song hehehe]

But right now Tim is a weak, weak man, who chooses to pluck at Jason's jacket flirtily, "Thanks, I dig the leather and the white streak! You dye it like that?"

Jason gives him the most adorable deer-in-headlights expression back, "Uh, it's um, it's actually a cold brand? You can kinda see the scar around it if you look close."

"Wait like, liquid nitrogen and metal- deliberately?"

"I mean I dyed it the once, but then uh..." He trails awkwardly with a shrug, "I like it. Nice not to have to do anything more to keep it there. Kinda annoying it doesn't keep any other colors, but, ya'know." Another awkward shrug.

"Huh," He'd always assumed Jason just came back with it, but it being an injury instead actually makes a lot of sense? Was it really deliberate though or was he just saying that? "That's pretty fuckin hardcore."

Jason smiles again, feeling warm at all the compliments, and then internally panics.

Tim Carol is flirting with him probably?! That was not- did he say something weird? How did he come off like... And even if he did how the fuck is he supposed to handle this??

She's a girl, and he's very gay.

It feels sort of awful and cruel to think that he might fall out of love with her just because she changed a few words and her shape. Are human hearts really so fickle that the same person in a different cloth cannot be loved the same way?

At the same time though, Jason has historically been a solid six on the kinsey scale and he's sadly gotta admit the boobs are really not doing it for him. But maybe the above the belt feelings will stay? Is that how this works?? Or maybe he can just kinda... Coach himself through moving to a kinsey five???

He nervously fidgets with his hands and tries looking at her legs. He usually really likes Carol's legs and wants to do all kinds of things with them, and legs are things most people have regardless of gender... He attempts to force himself to focus on all the same features he usually likes, but it's just not the same with the heels and the skirt. The spark is gone.

This is so fucking stupid. He's stupid. This isn't how anything works and he should know it, and maybe he even does know it...

He just can't bring himself to give up on this, though. He's never had a crush reciprocate anything before, and now the world demands that he breaks both their hearts over basically nothing?!

He can't and he won't and he fucking refuses!

[Lots more awkward and not so awkward flirting flipping between their perspectives. Tim enjoying the power trip of turning Jason into a nervous mess just by being fem, thinking it's newly realized attraction that Jason can't normally feel towards him, and Jason panicking about whether or not he can be attracted to her at all. This goes on until they leave so Tim/Carol can catch his/her taxi]

Tim glances out at the road, and prepares to rip his own heart out by giving him a fake number, "Hey, um, I kinda ordered a taxi like before I even went out, so... text me?"

"Yeah sure, I've still got your number, and I'll see you back at the cave tomorrow anyways."

Tim, half turned away, goes rigid, "When the fuck did you figure out who I am?"

"What? Who the fuck else would I think you were?"

"A woman!"

"But like, you are a woman though??"

Tim stares at him, baffled, until the taxi driver leans on the horn and he decides to have this conversation on the way home. He grabs Jason by the wrist and hauls him into the car.

Jason hiss-whispers, "Wait are you in disguise right now? Did you just fucking use me for a case?!"

"No!" Tim hisses back while slamming the door shut behind him, "No, it's unfortunately infinitely more stupid and embarrassing for me!"

"Then...?" Jason gives him a confused gesture to spit it out already.

"I'm a crossdresser. My name's not any different. I'm not a woman. I'm sorry, I swear I didn't mean to lead you on, I just didn't know what the fuck to do when you came up to me asking for my fucking name."

And that's as far as I got before I abandoned it!

The problem I had with it and the reason I'm never gonna finish it is because there's not really a way to resolve the core tension/conflict that would be satisfactory to me. I need to emphasize here that I don't care about trying to find some kind of """"morally correct"""" way to end it, I just mean personally satisfying for me; any of the possible ways to end it would be morally fine, they just also all make me feel bad lmao

So like obviously the original resolution to the miscommunication was that Tim was a cis dude who just happened to be into dressing up in girly clothes and enjoying men's attention that way. That part on its own would be good, but it does mean that the moment of resolution from Jason's perspective comes out to being "Oh thank goodness you're not trans/not a woman/not a trans woman" and I don't feel great about that. Again, not a morals thing, it'd just leave a bad taste in my mouth.

My second idea was to have Tim realize he might be non-binary/a woman via Jason treating him like a woman and being so accepting of her. As a gay trans man who likes to cross dress in order to enjoy men's attention, this would give me bone dissolving levels of dysphoria!

There was also the problem of how to resolve Jason's sexuality.

As a gay man who spent many, many years of my life attempting to convince myself I was bisexual, any version of making Jason bisexual would give me bone dissolving levels of dysphoria! But like sexuality dysphoria instead of gender dysphoria. It would also eliminate an important source of narrative tension and character motivation.

The traditional version of keeping him gay would mean that Jason turns Carolina/Tim down altogether, which would break Jason's heart, and break Carolina's heart, and break my heart, and also turn the reveal into "it's a tragedy that you're trans/a woman/a trans woman". Infinite pain for zero gain!

I'd actually love to have Jason simply want to try being sexually intimate with an enby/woman Tim and have him decide he likes it even though he's still gay and still not attracted to Carolina/Tim at all. The experiences of sex having ace folks and people who have sex with people they aren't attracted to are really interesting to me and I'd love to explore that - if there was a bit more room to explore it right. This is a tiny one shot. I don't feel like I could properly convey that without putting in way more time and effort than I have to spare on this side project.

I MIGHT someday be convinced to finish this for a few different reasons, but for the forseeable future it won't be worked on. I have SO MANY PROJECTS that are better, more interesting, less awkward to handle, and already half published, like I got better things to do lol, so for now this is the one that got away.

In the meantime though: Please steal this!! If you find the premise interesting, especially if any of the versions that would give me bone dissolving dysphoria appeal to you, please take my words and write more onto them! I'd love to see some version of this finished someday, and I don't mind if someone (or several someones!) end up doing it instead of me, just lemme know if you do and throw a lil bit of credit my way and it's all good :3

[one-squash-one-end]

>1.6k words on bi Gansey

Hi! This belongs to my big Raven Cycle analysis, click here for the masterpost.

Today we are diving into all the reasons why I think Gansey is a bi king (and then some more). Enjoy!

(I think there might be mild spoilers up to trk, nothing too bad though, more character interactions than plot)

b) Gansey

Alright hear me out. This man. There is nothing this rich boy can do to beat the fruit allegations. He is a bi king, through and through. Everyone but him knows, including you, because what I have to say is the absolute truth and I am great at convincing. I once saw a tumblr post that said “Gansey has to physically restrain himself from kissing all his friends” and there has never been anything more true.

And it’s important to note that this is really not only reader interpretation. Or, at least, reader interpretation includes other character’s interpretations, which are sometimes incredibly straight(lol)forward.

After doing Adam a big favor, Gansey’s sister Helen (who is aro-ace btw, because I said so) immediately assumes he is sleeping with him, which is a conclusion she jumped to way too quickly if Gansey has never previously shown any interest in Adam or other boys. Like, she seems to know him quite well, and for her to just think he’s in a relationship with Adam says a lot about the homoeroticism prevalent in Gansey’s friendships with both Adam and also Ronan.

Because then we have Kavinsky, another canonically queer character, who thus might arguably have some sort of gaydar, assuming Ronan and Gansey are in a romantic (but most of all, sexual) relationship. Admittedly, this has largely to do with Kavinsky assuming things about Ronan and his sexuality, as is explicitly mentioned in the book. However, you can very easily speculate about someone’s sexuality without knowing their (previous) partners, if there have been any at all, so to correctly believe Ronan is gay does not have to randomly entail relationship speculations. So somewhere, even from not interacting with them so much, Kavinsky must have gotten that idea. That somewhere is the deep affection the two of them share, which is absolutely palpable for everyone around. Yes, I know their relationship is described as brotherly (please note I do not condone incest!), but also somewhere within “they’re bros” lies the implication they are gay. Two bros chilling in a hot tub. They’re having a bromance. Let bros kiss.

Another person who seems to believe in a Gansey romance above bromance is Henry, who at that point of book three had only interacted with him at school very superficially. We can assume the way Gansey behaves with Adam and Ronan at school is very much homoerotic, or elsewise Henry would have no reason to be surprised about seeing Gansey with Blue (“a chick”). He can’t be surprised about Gansey pulling… someone, considering he is apparently super good-looking, he just never had reason to assume Gansey was anything but achillean.

Now this was mostly people who don’t know Gansey that well, or at least people not part of the inner circle, so it can’t mean that much, right? Surely there would not be anyone who truly, deeply knows Gansey, who would assume he is queer. Right? Wrong. I have since forgotten the context of that quote, but Adam, someone who is very close to both of them, thinks that Ronan and Gansey could date. Make of that what you will, but I will it to be homoerotic subtext. (Or text, as what Adam says is what he says, no room for interpretation there.)

Lastly, Adam’s father called him the f-slur. Ok, I will admit that it’s not completely confirmed to be that, but what else would a censored word with f stand for? Again, it’s hard to tell, because my two options would be the slur and just straight-up “fucker”, but both “f*g” and “fuck” are used directly in the following books. The f-slur was used directly in Ronan’s narrative though, in that of a character who talks very obscenely in general, so I have no trouble believing Gansey just wouldn’t have wanted to repeat that word, especially if it’s just a memory.

The line between romantic and platonic interactions is thin enough in this series as it is, but Gansey seems to blur it especially. I am going to touch on that at a later point, but platonic affection is given a very important role, so much that in some parts it carries as much significance as romantic actions do (as it should- relationship anarchy rules), if not more. With Gansey that seems to be especially strong, a lot of the things he does with his friends seeming romantic.

First of all, he is co-parenting with Ronan. Yes, it is a bird, but Ronan loves her like a human daughter so the point stands. The two of them even squabble about it like an old married couple, Gansey’s legendary “this is exactly why I didn’t want to have a baby with you” speaks for itself.

Then there is the insomnia quality time, as I like to call it. We, as the readers, are probably supposed to focus on the late night phone calls and drives with Blue, the fact that “she makes [him] quiet”, and that he can sleep after talking to her. But what I find equally important is the time he spends with Ronan at Monmouth during those sleepless nights, them getting orange juice at three a.m. While it might not be something super comforting that makes them both fall asleep, this routine they seem to have fallen into, just spending time while not expecting anything from the other, is something that means a lot to me; they are very much giving platonic soulmates, but also what if they kissed?

Of course I cannot not mention “While I’m gone, dream me the world. Something new for every night.” That boy is being unnecessarily dramatic about going away for literally one weekend. And why? Because “they had been a two-headed creature for so long, Ronan-and-Gansey. He couldn’t say it, though. There were a thousand reasons why he couldn’t say it.” What are those reasons though? Is it because he is actually in love with Ronan but admitting to that would make the friendship super fucking awkward so he whips out a dramatic, half-romantic metaphor quote? Yeah, that makes total sense.

Staying on my Ronsey bullshit, let’s not forget the glorious, deleted pool table scene. In case you are not familiar with it, or have forgotten the way it sounds (probably the reason it was deleted), I’ll just let two quotes speak for themselves. “There was something suggestive about how [Ronan] wore the suit” Oh yes, of course there was. Sometimes you wear clothing with a certain intention, and in Ronan’s case, that intention is to be bent over the pool table by Gansey. This becomes even clearer here: “Gansey was well aware that Ronan rather fancied the way he looked while he played pool, and the way he reached across the felt now, intentional and elegant and coiled, indicated that he was fancying himself at this very moment.” Once again, everything is super intentional, and Gansey wants to fuck him so badly. Not even kidding at this point, the way Maggie wrote this scene really makes it look like Gansey finds Ronan super hot; even as an aromantic asexual person I have to say, this is a lot more than “bro appreciating his best friend’s glow-up in a completely heterosexual way”. This iconic scene is gay brainrot, which is exactly why we did not get to experience this masterpiece within an actual, published book. The Ronsey shippers would have gone too wild.

[Speaking of which, I’d like to clarify that I do not ship Ronsey in the way some other people do, I do prefer them with their canon love interests, however I clearly see the potential of them having had some kind of mutual attraction in the past, I just think it makes the dynamic a lot more fun and interesting, sort of like how Jesper had a crush on Kaz in Six of Crows.]

Gansey has received at least one (1) dick pic of Ronan. The circumstances do not say anything about either Gansey or Ronan, but I think it’s funny, it builds character, so I chose to include it in this.

Perhaps the strongest evidence for him running with the lgbtq+ is the fact that he goes to an all-boys school. Come on, what is he supposed to do, surrounded by all those guys rich enough to afford good haircuts and a private trainer? Should he just not have gay thoughts? Impossible.

Now all this was mostly evidence for Gansey swinging that way, somehow, but of course he’s one of those doors that open both ways. Yes, he has a girlfriend, but there is even more proof for him being specifically m-spec, just you wait. To begin with, apart from his friends Gansey has two true loves. Henrietta (the town with a female name, who his sister refers to as his girlfriend- the same sister who assumes Gansey is sleeping with Adam; Helen is a bi Gansey truther) and Glendower, the dead, male king. Obviously, this is totally serious business. Additionally, I have talked through to a very full extent how he is in love with Ronan, but of course he is also in love with Henry, I do not have to elaborate on this. He is also very much jealous when Blue and Adam are dating, as is described multiple times, but we don’t find out exactly who he is jealous of. Yes, he likes Blue, and he is sad that his best friend is sort of being stolen away etc., but what if he also just wanted to hold hands. With both of them. At once.

It’s not only Gansey being in love with all of them, it’s also all of them being in love with Gansey. His bi swagger. It was this: Blue finding him irresistible. It was this: Ronan wanting to smash his fist through a wall because of how hot Gansey is. It was this: Henry saying Gansey is a “Caucasian with great hair”.

Bi Gansey is the truth and I will defend that until the day I die.

However, I will admit that he is absolutely a cis guy, no question. At no point in his life has he had to be afraid to take up space or anything, but that man supports trans rights of course. He would not wear a crop top on his own, but considering how he is in love with them, Blue, Ronan and Henry could bully him into it and he would rock it.

[bachissidehoe]

no vacancy

chapter 2 of it's classy not classic

“Bachira? Hello?” Isagi panics into the phone, pacing around his bedroom in a plain white t-shirt and boxers for the second morning in a row. 

“Hey boyfriend.” Bachira’s groggy voice comes through on the other end. It sounds like he’s still in bed.

“So you’ve seen it.” 

“Yeah I saw it, it was sent to me like 50 times.” He yawns. 

“I’m so sorry. I can’t even believ- I’m really sorry I’ll tell everyone-” Isagi rushes through his words, speaking so fast that it doesn’t even sound like real sentences. 

“Calm down, calm down. Sheesh.” Bachira replies, sounding much too casual about this situation. It sounds like he’s just calmly stretching in his bed, while Isagi continues his panicked routine. 

“I need to tell everyone that’s not true, I can’t believe I dragged you into this-”

“You really don’t wanna date me that much?” Bachira giggles. How can he be so normal about this? 

“That’s not-” 

“It’s alright Isagi, it’s not a big deal. Some people took pictures of us together and it wasn’t hard to make the jump- you know, I just got out of a relationship and the breakup was pretty publicized in my circles.” Bachira explains.

Isagi holds his phone in front of them, scrolling through the tweets and articles about he and Bachira’s little date yesterday. Looking at it from an outside perspective, Isagi can completely understand why people may think that Bachira sipping from Isagi’s drink may indicate something more than a normal friendship. But anyone who knows Bachira personally would understand that these little quirks of his are just part of his personality.

“Oh- I didn’t even know.” 

“I know, my ex already texted me about it to ask what’s going on.” He chuckles. 

A situation like that would make Isagi even more panicked, but once again, Bachira just takes everything in his stride. 

“What? What did you say to her?” Isagi asked.

“You mean him? I didn’t respond to him yet.” Bachira replies.

Isagi pauses, nearly choking on air. That makes even more sense. “I didn’t know you were gay.” He blurts out. How did they hang out and it never came up? Especially because of the topic of conversation. But all things considered, that makes even more sense as to why the public seems to assume the two of them are in a relationship.

Bachira just laughs. “I’m bi.” 

“Oh. I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said it like-” 

“Yeah. In my community it’s very known, so it makes sense that people would see me with you, and you just “came out”, and assume something’s going on.” Bachira sighs. “I probably should have thought of that.” 

“Well-” Isagi pauses. “What are you gonna say to him?” 

It’s not necessarily surprising that Bachira Meguru is bisexual. Isagi wouldn’t think anything of it if he weren’t involved in this current situation. But honestly, Isagi feels bad that his friend identifies this way at this specific point in time. Because if Bachira were straight, that would be an easy fix. 

“Not sure.” 

Isagi just sighs. “I’m sorry man.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “I’ll make a public post and clear everything up.” 

“Actually.” Bachira pauses. Isagi can hear him shuffling around, possibly leaving his bed. “I don’t think you should.” 

“Huh?”

“I think you should wait. It might not be worth explaining.” He continues. 

“Are you-”

“I’m saying we should just fake it. I’m in Tokyo for a couple months for work, we fake date until I move away, and then we fake break up because I’m moving and you’re a pro player and all.” He suggests. He says it so casually too, like it’s not the most insane idea Isagi has ever heard. “You know, just like the movies!” 

“You’re insane.” Isagi replies. It’s really all he can say. This can’t possibly be real life. 

“I’m so serious.” Bachira laughs. “Hold on, I’m coming over. Send me your address.”

“What the fuck is even happening?” Isagi feels his body shaking, he’s sweating yet freezing. He’s probably having a stress reaction. He might have to end up in a mental hospital. How the absolute fuck is he going to be able to show up to practice today?

“We have to make a plan. So I’m coming over. I’ll bring some food.” Bachira says, explaining his intentions as if they’re spies planning the heist of the century. Like it’s some game they have to win. Even after so many years, Bachira’s Blue Lock ego still hasn’t wavered. 

Isagi agrees, since he doesn’t really see himself having another option, but the entirety of the situation still doesn’t feel at all real. Back in Blue Lock, Isagi truly felt like his friendship with Bachira was special, like even though they hardly knew each other, they were on the same wavelength from the start. He assumed both of them would make it out, and he still believes they would have if not for Bachira’s injury. 

After that, Isagi was too embarrassed to talk to Bachira as often anymore. He felt guilty, like he didn’t earn his title over someone as talented as Bachira. It felt too weird to maintain their closeness. But now, it’s like it’s all back to normal, where Bachira is just as comfortable with him as he was six years ago. 

But that’s just how Bachira is. Clearly Isagi hasn’t respected Bachira’s ability to innocently trust the world. 

“Hey there!” 

Isagi opens the door to a smiling Bachira Meguru, holding multiple bags of takeout.

“That’s a lot of food.”

“Is it?” Bachira giggles. “I don’t know what you liked so I picked one of everything. Except the stuff I hate.”

“Geez. How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing.” He lets himself in, placing the bags of food on Isagi’s dining table. “I have more money than I know what to do with anyway.” 

“I get that.” Isagi replies. It’s true, being 22 years old doesn’t really require as much money as the two of them make- Isagi being a pro soccer player and Bachira being a successful artist. They can pay their bills, buy their own food, donate to charities and whatever else will make them look good to the general public, give some money to their families, and they still seem to have a lot of it. Neither of them are used to it. “Thanks.”

“Think of it like a date. Our second date.” 

“Stop it.” Isagi looks away, feeling his face flush. He doesn’t understand how Bachira can still be so casual about this despite being caught up in a blatant lie. Isagi can’t help but assume that the worst will happen, that he’ll be outed for being a liar and a horrible person and fired from being a pro player. Bachira, on the other hand, seems like he couldn’t care less. 

“So let’s talk about it.” Bachira sits at the table, making himself at home as he starts unpacking some of the food. “I think we should just keep giving the public what they want, we can hang out and go on “dates” and stuff, go to each other’s events, and it’ll die down on its own.” 

“You’re being so normal about this.” Isagi replies. 

Isagi figured he couldn’t eat with how much stress he’s under, but those pork buns smell good enough to convince him to sit across from his friend and try one. 

Bachira shrugs, shoveling a few chopsticks full of rice in his mouth. “Well, it’s not as big of a deal as you think it is.” 

“Huh? I trapped you in this with me because I lied on an interview. Now you have to pretend like you’re my boyfriend and I’m not even gay, I don’t know if you’re trying to fix things with your ex or whatever, and if you weren’t but wanted to date other people your entire time in Tokyo is just ruined because you wouldn’t be able to date if everyone thinks you’re dating m-” 

Bachira flicks a grain of rice at Isagi, hitting him in the nose. 

“What the fuck Bachira?” Isagi swipes the rice away, meeting the gaze of his smirking friend. 

“Just say you don’t wanna date me.” He giggles. 

“Can you be for fucking real for one second?” 

“Fine, fine.” He picks the face-rice off the table and tosses it in an empty bag. “I don’t care that you’re straight, I like hanging out with you and this would just mean hanging out with you more. I am definitely not trying to get back with Hiro, and after that relationship, I’m also not trying to date or fuck anyone else for the forseeable future.” Bachira explains. “I think that covers everything you were concerned about.” 

Though much of Bachira Meguru’s cutesy, eccentric personality remains the same as it was back in Blue Lock, much about him has changed as well. Isagi can tell that he prefers to be lighthearted, but that he’s also matured a lot. He’s put together, he dresses nice, it’s clear he’s maintained his physique and takes care of himself, and he’s obviously working hard. 

“Any of that could change, though.” Isagi says, but much quieter and less confident than before. 

“Stop making it seem like you’re ruining my life.” Bachira smiles, softer this time. 

Isagi sighs. It doesn’t seem like a big deal to Bachira now, but anything could change in the next couple of months. 

“Fine.” He says after a while. “It’s not different than just hanging out with you, I guess.” 

“Yippee!” Bachira raises his chopsticks into the air. “My new classy relationship, Blue Lock best friends to lovers, rich boys from different worlds-” 

“Damn don’t get too excited.” Isagi jokes. 

“Can I tell you a secret?” Bachira leans in as if there could be anyone listening in Isagi’s completely empty apartment. 

“Uh, ye-”

“I sort of want Hiro to be jealous.” He admits. 

“Oh-”

“Anyway!” Bachira quickly shoves some more food in his mouth. “Moving on.” 

“O-kay?” Isagi finds it best if he just lets Bachira lead the conversation. It’s always been that way, with Bachira doing whatever he wants and Isagi simply letting him. 

“I have to ask, have you ever even dated anyone? Sorry if it’s too personal.” 

“No, no, I guess we should make sure we know things about each other.” Isagi answers. “I’ve dated here and there, but never a serious relationship.” 

“So you’ve kissed girls?”

“I mean yeah-”

“Have you had sex before?”

“Not super often but occasionally-” 

“Ah.”

Isagi answers the barrage of questions quickly, but it’s clear Bachira needs some additional context. They’re definitely personal questions, but nothing Isagi is super uncomfortable sharing with him. They’re “dating” now, after all. He decides to elaborate.

“I just can’t saddle anyone with being in a relationship with me. Any girl would always be second to soccer. There’s no vacancy in my life for a person to come between what I really love. I just don’t think it’s possible for me, so it wouldn’t be fair to her, you know?” Isagi explains, looking down at his untouched pork bun. Now’s as good a time as any to actually start eating. 

He makes a mental note to ask Bachira where he ordered from later. This food is damn good. 

“Do you know that girls are interested in you?” Bachira inquires further.

“Yeah, I mean of course. But like I said, there’s no room for anyone between me and soccer. It’s the only thing I care about that deeply, I guess it’s like my one true love or whatever.” Isagi answers, taking another bite. 

Bachira chuckles. “I totally get it, but I think you’d be surprised.” 

“Hm?”

“You’d be surprised how simple it can be to have two loves at the same time, where both of them are number 1.” He smiles. 

[oh-surprise-its-me]

Roy/Jamie fic idea: Instead of hate, what if when Jamie first comes to Richmond it is love at first sight between him and Roy. Like Jamie's always loved Roy since he was a kid and is starstruck at finally meeting his fav while Roy has to battle to keep up his gruff and grouchiness when all he wants to do is gawk at the gorgeous new striker who walked through the door and immediately looked at him like he's hung the fucking moon. How differently would things have played out if Roy took Jamie under his wing, Jamie stopped being so much of a prick because he wanted to be a good teammate and please Roy too, and then when Ted Lasso himself arrives, Jaime and the boys soak up his positive ethos quicker and start winning?

AWWW I LOVE THIS

(Also are you a mind reader I was literally thinking about this last night)

Roy knows he needs to stop looking at Jamie.

He hasn’t had a problem with keeping his eyes to himself for years. Why is this kid any different. But the way Jamie is practically bouncing in place with energy, his eyes, his ass. Roy normally hates when new players say they loved watching him growing up but Jamie? Jamie saying it made Roy feel special.

They are the only two in the locker room at the end of the day, Roy has been debating this for the last 15 minutes but fuck it. He taps Jamie’s shoulder, “wanna come over and eat? I’ll cook. Give you some advice.”

Jamie blinks at him for a second like he can’t believe Roy is real. “Uh yeah sure mate that would be incredible.”

Roy nods. He takes Jamie’s phone from his hand, he typed in his house number into Jamie’s map app. “Come over whenever, I’m going straight there.”

Jamie nods. “Yeah fab I’ll be there.”

—————

It’s been about six weeks of the them getting to know Lasso, Roy’s gotta say he’s impressed. Jamie works like magic under him, even dropped a bit of the prick attitude.

They still have dinner together almost every night. Roy every once and a while asks if Jamie has been on any dates. He selfishly hopes he hasn’t because that means he’ll be Roy’s more nights.

Jamie doesn’t really seem to date. Roy figures he’ll drop the fact he’s bisexual tonight just to see how Jamie reacts.

•

Jamie is sitting on Roy Kent’s kitchen counter. Fuck if 17 year old Jamie could see him now he’d be crying.

Okay lie.

He’d be asking to blow Roy under the dining room table they eat at some nights. But that doesn’t matter because Roy is straight and Jamie just needs to adjust his love for Roy to a more platonic intentions.

He’s swinging his legs when Roy drops the biggest bomb of all times. He’d asked Jamie if he’d dated recently. No. The answer is always no. Why date when he could be here with Roy. He returns the question to be kind, but prays to a god he doesn’t believe in that the answer is no.

“No no dates since a failed date with a guy two months ago.”

Jamie slams his foot into the cabinet. Shit.

“You’re gay??” Roy freezes. He spins and looks at Jamie, “no bisexual. Problem?”

Jamie can’t shake his head fast enough, “no god no I mean same, me too, I’m. Uh. Bi. First time I’ve actually said that out loud. To someone it actually could effect.”

Oh goddamn it Jamie you really fucked it. Your goddamn big mouth wouldn’t shut up.

Roy clicks off the stove, he sets down the whisk with such care that the whirl of emotions Jamie sees when he turns is shocking.

Roy steps over in between Jamie’s legs, shit.

He slowly places his hands on Jamie’s thighs, “tell me if I’m wrong but I think we both want to kiss each other.”

Jamie frantically nods, he reaches and holds Roy’s face.

They kiss.

Once Jamie needs to breathe again he pulls away, shit. He loves Roy. “Shit I might love you.”

Jamie goes bright red. Cool great fabulous this was nice. Time for him to go die of embarrassment.

“Think I might love you too Jamie.”

Scratch the dying he’s about to become a fucking God. “Seriously?” Roy kisses Jamie’s collarbone, “yeah. Guess love at first sight does happen.”

“Shit Roy you are literally never getting rid of me now.” Roy laughs, he leans in and kisses Jamie again. “Wouldn’t want to get rid of you anyways.”

(They move in together in two months) ((and are extremely but healthfully co dependent))

[lover-of-mine]

your post about how eddie fell first is literally what made me follow you last year 😄

i know you said you’re enjoying the time before the show might… well, squash the theory… but you never know! it could be the reveal/pining/slowburn of the century!

what are your theories for if they don’t go that route? eddie didn’t know all along?

I love that you followed me through that post because I feel like that one really sets the mood for the madness you're about to experience following me kspakspakpakapaka

No but can you imagine, revealing that Eddie has been in love all along and aware of it for whoever long they decide (I know I say even all the way down to the lawsuit could work and that the shooting was his oh moment, but my guess if they ever went that route it would be post breakdown, like, he figures it out and accepts between dumb luck and starting over, so confirm he was pining during all of season 6) and then make Eddie canonically explicitly pine as Buck dates a guy who's literally him in a different font? What kind of fanfic bullshit would that be? I would die, like legit. Buck being bi almost made me call my psychiatrist to adjust my meds, Eddie being in love with Buck all along confirmed would put me in a psych hold kspalapalapopkspsk

That being said, if they are going there with buddie, which I'm 90% sure they are, since Buck is fully unaware of the Eddie of it all and Eddie is about to have problems with Marisol, you can have Eddie watch Buck with Tommy and be like "I want that", especially when it seems like they'll focus a lot on being soft and fun and something that just makes Buck happy, and then be like "oh shit do I want Buck?" Because they never really saw each other in a happy relationship, so that can absolutely spark something for Eddie and Eddie wouldn't need something as on the nose as being grabbed and kissed by Buck to realize he loves him, yk? So he can be longing for what they have, even more if he does break up with Marisol before he finds out Buck and Tommy are dating, and then have him be like oh fuck. Because even though I strongly believe Buck needs to make a move, the show needs to explicitly state Eddie's interest in Buck before that happens or else you risk people saying it came out of nowhere or it's just repeating the bucktommy start. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if there was something like Buck and Tommy dancing at the wedding, and Eddie watching them, and you just see the progression happen on his face (that Ryan would BODY because the way that man can make you feel exactly what Eddie is feeling without saying a single word amazes me) and then we enter a pining era that eventually would evolve into a mutual pining era and eventually getting them together. But my guess right now is not that Eddie is gonna be jealous, it is that he's gonna be longing, and that will lead to him finally being like oh! for real.

Fantasy scenario though, is the reveal that Eddie has in fact been aware of it at least throughout all of season 6, settled into the fact that Buck was "straight" and he had to move on, now has to pine as he watches Buck with a guy he has so much in common with, and not do anything about it again not because he thinks Buck can't feel the same way, but because Buck just doesn't want him and is happy, so he won't mess that up and take the secret to the grave. Especially if you consider the way you can totally frame the cemetery scene to make it seem like Eddie thinks Buck "broke up" with him (cemetery scene my beloved 🫶), you have him double down that feeling, "I'm still not what he wants, that doesn't change just because he's attracted to guys" and you have him try to figure out what to do with it since moving on didn't work he and he would want to be as supportive as possible because Buck is still Buck and he is his person and he wants Buck to be happy, all while trying to figure out how to be happy with himself, and while Buck and Eddie work on their friendship (talk boys, please, I'm begging). Then Buck and Tommy break up, Buck and Eddie almost die together in the finale and we have a buddie cliffhanger to close the season (drown Buck 2024 I will always believe you) and buddie get together at some point during the beginning of season 8.

Also, can you imagine the CHAOS if the show gave us bi Buck and buddie canon on Eddie's side within a week of each other after only 5 episodes in the network? We would LEGIT break the internet. And I would owe everything to abc lol

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL

Feb 2023 Wk 1

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying most. 

Ongoing Series - Thai

My School President (Fri YT) ep 9 of 12 - WinSound totally won me over in this ep. They were great. Their competitive style of romance, made me really happy. Double tsundere it’s so rare to get and not be annoying or depressing. Of course the mains were adorable too. 

Never Let Me Go (Tues YT) ep 8 of 12 - Solid little episode. Perth in the pool, thank U BL gods. Peeling the shrimp to rope, always a favorite of mine. Some awesome couple flirting and a nice romantic sex scene. What’s not to like about this episode?

Hit Bite Love (Sat YouTube) ep 2 of 6 - King is fucking adorable. Burger is clueless and (apparently) entirely straight. Shogun is one of the gayest characters ever put in high school BL. Heda is kinda awesome, basically a chaos wingman. Matteo is interesting. I genuinely like the central friendship between King & Shogun a lot. Queer baby besties! It’s Ming & Wayo-esk but better. Holy KINK FEST outta nowhere, BLman! I’m getting total whiplash with this show. Very Make It Right. What does it want to be? Who tf knows but I’m into it, that’s for sure. It’s accomplishing something, which most pulps don’t.

609 Bedtime Story (Fri WeTV) ep 11fin - my backup computer is down so I haven’t had a chance to watch this yet. Hopefully but next week’s report.   

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

HIStory 5: Love in the Future (Taiwan Weds Viki) ep 6 of 10 (or 11&12 of 20) - Jonny’s hair is driving me nuts. Hai Yi’s behavior is confusing me too. Office boys remain totally adorable. Very doomy mid run ep 6. Ah Taiwan, how unpredictable you are. 

Candy Color Paradox AKA Ameiro Paradox (Japan Fri Gaga) ep 7 of 8 - these weirdos make for very strange boyfriends. Frankly? K seems like a useless bit of business, if you ask me. 

Individual Circumstances (Korea Thurs Viki) ep 5-6 of 8 - I’m just annoyed with Mr. Tsundere at this point, he’s gone from grumpy to mean. I just want him to have a really good reason for having disappeared without saying anything, and good does not mean “sensitive pathetic authorial feels.” You don’t abandon your best friend just because you fell in love with them, that’s an unforgivably shitty thing to do. 

The End Of The World, With You AKA Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu (Japan Sun Gaga ep 1 of 8 - Stars Toshiki Seto (Senpai, This Can't Be Love). The world is about to be destroyed by a meteor, so Masumi visits his old uni library to read as much as he wants until the end. There he meets Ritsu, his player ex. It’s a bit awkward, and I’m not sure about the premise (it scares me that it might be sad). It’s racier, gayer, and has better kissing than i was expecting (again a sign it might go dark). Also Is Ritsu a big time bi-slut player or is that Masumi’s perspective? Regardless I’m intrigued if wary. 

Finished this week

The New Employee (Korea Weds Viki) ep 7fin - They are so cute it’s unbelievable. I thought it was a good office romance ending, if not a great Bl ending. All in all this is a darn near perfect nugget of an office romance BL, sweet and much gayer than we have any right to expect from Korea. Rainbow rice cakes forever! 9/10

Between Us (Sun iQIYI) ep 12fin - It’s a serviceable series about hot swimmers flirting and dealing with family drama in a sweetly earnest manner, but ultimately it squanders the talent in play. I would’ve preferred a cleaner narrative arc, less angst and more plot, fewer couples, and a shorter series. That said, there’s nothing objectively wrong, sub-standard, or off-putting about this show. And it has lots of consent and other good qualities. It’s fine. Watch along here. 8/10

I Will Knock You (Fri Gaga) ep 12fin - I did think a lot over why I disliked this one. Because on the surface it’s just your standard slightly terrible Thai pulp, and I’m usually not that mean about them. I think in the end it comes down to the uke who just seemed to never warm to the boy pursuing him, and never really actually wanted to be his boyfriend. Also terrible dead fish kiss. 5/10 

Gossip

Apparently we have new scions (waves goodbye to BrightWin) - GeminiFourth: The Crown Princes of BL. If you’re wondering how their chemistry is so good (My School President), this article may explain it. 

In Case You Missed It

Caught up on 2020′s The Reason Why He Fell In Love With Me. (Gaga picked it up and I’ve been wanting to see it since it got announced in 2019.) 

TRWHFILWM Series 1 - 2 teachers who work together at the same high school, one outgoing and the other reserved, start an affair. Gave me Ossan’s Love vibes and that is my least favorite kind of JBL. It’s just far too cartoonish and slapstick and I don’t like it. That said, it has several kisses, a happy ending, and they are cute together. So if you can this style BL, it you might like it. 

TRWHFILWM Special - Completely ignores the first couple and the teacher premise, carrying over just one main character, and should have been a new BL (Boys Love flashbacks). I understand 2021′s season 2 continues this tactic. But I’ll watch it eventually. 

Next Week Looks Like This:

Not a lot actually, which is cool, I still got some 2022 catching up still to do. Why You Y Me, may be? 

Starting: 

Moonlight Chicken (Weds? YouTube) 1 of 8 -   

My Beautiful Man S2 - ??? sorry I’m scared of this one and not really paying attention, it being Japan and a desirable property, I’m assuming it will either be impossible to find or just show up on my dash in 2 places at once. 

Feb releases list is here. 

2023 forthcoming BL master post. (see comments some are inaccurate, NOT UPDATED)

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Hit Bite Love it’s classic terrible Thai pulp and I’m kinda loving it. 

Thank you very much GMMTV. 

FINALLY! 

Also FINALLY. 

More FINALLY (My School President). 

I love the acknowledged combative nature of this relationship. It’s great. 

(last week)

Current Kpop earworm? Under the Skin by &team, eh, it’s catchy I guess

[officialgleamstar]

Personal DnDads Pride Headcanons

some of these are simple but most are paragraphs long because of who I am as a person (incapable of saying things concisely), so they're going under a readmore. vaguely organized by age group.

one quick note: feel free to cheer on or rag on any of these that you please, variety in opinion is the spice of fandom life! everyone's headcanons are so real and valid to me, i am a strong believer in having as many contradicting fandom opinions as you want. for this list, i just went with everything that is "default" to my fan content. others' transfem sparrow is shaking hands with my gnc sparrow and yes, i'm listing that one on purpose, because if you make fun of transfem sparrow, you are getting hit by my bat. be fucking nice.

please enjoy!

Season 1 Dads and Spouses

Carol is a lesbian. This is simply canon to me. It’s important that this is first and visible to everyone.

Bi/pan polyamorous Henry and Mercedes is also simply canon to me. Honestly that one might be fully canon based on some of the things that happen in Odyssey

Henry is unlabeled but in the sense that he calls himself ‘queer’, ‘bisexual’, ‘gay’, or ‘pansexual’, fully depending on his mood and the conversation happening

Ron is also unlabeled but in the sense that he has never thought about it in his life and isn’t intending to now

Glenn is bisexual but never talks about it unless someone else mentions it first, and he tries really really hard to never think about his gender once in his life. The queer angst I give Glenn could be a whole post of its own but just know he has issues. He does fuck men though

Darryl still isn’t really sure on his sexuality and probably never will be, but he’s actually explored it a bit, so that’s better than whatever the fuck was going on with him before the show started. Henry likes giving him subtle bear pride flag accessories because Darryl actually wears them a lot. His favorite color is brown, after all.

Jodie, Nicky, and Taylor all are bisexual with a preference for women. Sexuality isn’t genetic but it is for them specifically.

Morgan is also bisexual. Literally none of the season 1 parents are straight except maybe Samantha and even with her, my opinion fully matters on the day and how I’m feeling.

Henry and Lark have definitely had an exchange at some point where Lark asked him how it was to ‘experience twink death’, to which Henry just went ‘get back to me in a few years on that, kid.’ and Lark spent the rest of the week furiously moping because clearly, he’s a twunk, Father- (words of a man who did not take care of himself well enough from the ages of 18-25 to ever be a twunk)

This is my little shipper brain but Jodie only realized he liked men after being stuffed into the Odyssey and being around Ron 24/7 for months on end (and the demon stuff, but he didn’t know that yet for obvious reasons). In his timeline, he had a whole arc about it and now he’s persistently attracted to strange men who don’t make sense as well as women light-years out of his league. He’s still a little miffed that Henry doesn’t remember the very long conversations they had about it, but him and Nicky get to wear matching bi pride bracelets now, so he guesses it’s fine.

Kiddads and Spouses

Lark is bisexual. He has known this since kindergarten when his parents explained what the flag all over their house was and has never thought about it since.

Lark also helped Rebecca realize she was bisexual because she would ask him about it in a class they shared in high school

This is utterly unrelated to LGBT headcanons but I think Veronica and Rebecca grew up in San Dimas with the kiddads, and were friends with them in high school. It just makes sense to me

Unlabeled Terry Junior is something that can be so personal to me. In a general sense, he likes everyone romantically, and identifies enough with the asexual spectrum to wear an ace ring, but he doesn’t really see the point in putting a name on it. He’s just Terry Junior and he’s happy with that.

Him, Lark, and Nicky did have a group chat called ‘bisexuals with an agenda’ in high school though, where they would make plans for pranking or otherwise harassing their fathers during group outings. Terry loves Ron but that does not mean he is above ruining his day. It’s done with affection.

My thoughts on Sparrow could be a full fanfiction but gonna try to keep it simple (retroactive edit: did not keep it simple). Sparrow is the token cishet of the kiddads, but in the queerest way possible. He’s an Oak-Garcia, of course he’s explored himself very thoroughly. At current, he identifies as gender non-confirming cis man, but he has had periods of his life where he transitioned and then detransitioned. In early high school, he identified as non-binary. From senior year up until just before Hero was born, he lived as a trans lesbian. He doesn’t see these periods as phases, just as his identity changing over time. Currently he’s perfectly happy identifying as a man, but wouldn’t be wholly shocked if he transitioned again. Calls himself “cis but gender is obviously, massively, a social construct and so it feels unfair to expect myself to fit into these boxes when identity can be so fluid and-”

Rebecca still calls him her wife, and also a granola lesbian or MILF from time to time because it makes him laugh, and while Nicky was still in his life, he would send Sparrow trans memes a lot. Sparrow also has always liked being seen as non-binary, he sees it as ‘winning at being androgynous’. Competitive to the sense of nonsensical Sparrow my beloved

Sparrow always wears women’s clothing but that’s for autistic reasons. They just fit nicer for his brain. It helps the gender(tm) thing though, he near exclusively wore hand-me-downs from Mercedes throughout all of high school

Sorry for talking so much about Sparrow. He’s my favorite character so he is the focus of many of my thoughts. Anyways

Never been a huge fan of the ‘Grant was outed by his crush in the Forgotten Realms’ headcanon, I think Grant came out about a year beforehand. Long enough where everything about it has settled but it’s still new enough that Darryl forgot for a split second and thought Grant might have a crush on Killa during the Four Knight arc. He’d known he liked boys a while before that, and also his parents kind of figured he was gay most of his life since he had 95% girl friends

Marco is pansexual! He met Grant in college because he worked the front desk of their dorm building and would always wear a bunch of pride pins

Nicky was Grant’s first good friend who was a boy, I like to think that they were childhood friends. Grant announced this to his dad at the age of 10 by going “Nick Close is transgender now, so that means you don’t have to worry about me only talking to girls because he’s a boy.” and Darryl went “…Alright?” and then googled what ‘transgender’ means

Speaking of, Nicky realized he was trans because of Mulan. Both Glenn and Jodie, in their respective timelines, googled ‘How do I know if my daughter is a lesbian’ before he came out because Nicky would rewatch the reflection song so often and also the tomboy-isms. Everyone felt very stupid for being surprised when he cut all of his hair off, cried, and asked to change his name

T4T Nicky and Cassandra is canon and they rubbed it into everyone's faces when they were together, Anthony is just afraid of the truth

Cassandra is trans het. I love trans het people more than anything and I love her so this makes sense to me.

Veronica is non-binary, in the sense of “girl but to the left”. They/she pronouns, calls themself a girlie and a mom but not a woman, dresses in a kickass pantsuit at formal events. I’m also in love with her

Season 2 Teens and Friends

Hero and Normal are both trans. When Hero came out, Sparrow sat Normal down to explain why Hero was now a sister instead of a brother and Normal responded with “Well, that’s not fair. How come Hero can be a girl but I can’t be a boy?!” and Sparrow just stared at him for a really long time before going “You can be a boy, honey.” and they went thrift shopping as a family for new clothes the next day

Normal is stealth trans, mostly because Hero is the same way and he copies her, but also because it doesn’t really occur to him that he passes. He just figures that people knows even though he is on testosterone and binds and presents masculine. It helps that his family presents pretty gender-neutral as a whole, so most people assume he had long hair as a kid because his parents are hippies. They had a son and daughter, both with long hair. They now have a daughter and a son, both with short hair. To the general populace, nothing has changed, they just misremembered which kid was older.

Taylor is a demi-boy and spends every year growing more and more feminine. Definitely calls their gender something like ‘boy with a dash of girl on the side’ with their friends. Growing out his hair was a newer thing and he regrets cutting it, even if it was a super cool sequence and he looked like an anime protagonist, because he liked how it framed his face.

Cassandra has always maintained an openness about her trans identity, so Taylor’s the same way. He’s always got the he/they pronoun pin on (I figure this is normalized by the time of season 2, but he’s just very pleased about it), he has a variety of trans and non-binary pride pins that he cycles through, and they like painting their nails because it’s an easy way for them to feel a little more feminine.

Cassandra’s living room is decorated with a massive trans pride flag and LED lights. The first time the teens walk into Taylor’s home, Scary says “it looks like a Twitch stream in here” at the same time that Normal says “it looks like my sister’s room in here” and they high-five while Taylor yells at them to be nice.

Hermie is genderfluid and uses any pronouns. This is real to me. He has my own teenage trait of gender shifting every three hours and never knowing what to do about it and he will be suffering with this until he exits puberty, at which point he gives up and just sees what gender other people choose for him.

Hermie is also pan/ace! No further thoughts here. She just is.

Erica just goes by queer because she doesn’t think the common passerby deserves to know her rich inner life and she’s right, they don’t

I tend to say a lot that all of the S2 kids are bisexual, and I represent them as such, but I truly believe that Lincoln and Normal both have no idea what’s going on with their sexualities. They say they’re bisexual for bisexual teen squad reasons but Normal is going through a constant crisis of “Am I gay or bisexual?” and Lincoln looks up the definition of aro/ace on a weekly basis. Neither of them will ever express this until Scary goes “maybe I’m not bisexual, actually.”

On that note, Scary is a lesbian but she’s not going to realize that until college. For now, she’s rocking with the bisexuality and pretends it’s not weird that her ‘crushes’ on boys feel wildly different than her crushes on girls. Yes I am projecting. This is not a secret. We project onto Scary here.

[dykeyote]

ok my dndads queer hc post randomly gets notes but i disagree w many of the takes now so im updating it . spoiler warning theres a WHOLE lot of lezzies . just doing the dads kiddads and teens HOWEVER i will say that mark likely is for sure a lezzer

darryl: bisexual and probably the most cisgender one here but he's actually SO cis that it becomes almost gnc . he/him

ron: transhet guy but he thinks his transition is like very unique to him and everyone else is doing it the exact same as each other so he doesnt really get that hes Transgender bc he thinks everyone else is doing it in a really different way than him all together . not in an angsty way hes perfectly okay w that . he/him

henry: trans bi guy we know this to be true . he/him but if you called him they/them prns he would be like well yknow ive never thought about that before but you know what go right ahead (: he doesnt exactly enjoy it but he appreciates just how gosh-darn nonbinary positive you are that he'd still encourage it

glenn: bisexual and like .... hes cis he doesnt really care abt gender much but when nick came out as trans he definitely said something about like . "dude if i was trans? id totally use they/them pronouns thats sick as fuck" and then moved on and this sort of haunted nick for a while . he/him but again he doesnt really care

jodie: cis and bisexual but in such a boring way that he might as well be straight

sparrow: tgirl lesbian who was out at one point but is not now for Normalcy Reasons . she/her in theory

lark: transneu nonbinary and aroace . not out about either of these things but not really as a like Actively Closeted thing they just dont really think abt it . they/he in theory

terry jr: tgirl lesbian also but this time out AND butch . she/he

grant: gay of course . and like .... he is cis and this wont change but he'd be a good deal happier if he was more gnc i think

nick: tguy butch lesbian . he mostly but he doesnt really care that much

link: kinda-stealth tboy (not really intentionally or anything he just doesnt really see it as relevant that often so most people dk) and gay . he/him but he doesnt really care that much

taylor: honestly idk what i think is going on w his gender but i DO know hes aro and bi . give me some time to think on that ok

scary: out nonbinary tfem lesbian!!!!! we know this!!!!!! she/it and when she writes her pronouns down she always writes the it in VERY BIG AGGRESSIVE HANDWRITING to make it clear that its SUBVERSIVE AND WEIRD

normal: bisexual tgirl . currently in a like . Questioning Phase in s2 i feel like ..... her turmoil abt being a Normal Son is tied to that . any pronouns but she primarily

hermie: bigender (girl + boy) gaybian :3 was an open bisexual tguy originally but around the poison ivy era had some Gender Complexity . he/she but certain Method Personas have diff pronoun leans whereas normal herm is pretty 50/50

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

I know it is only anybodys guessing really, and I truly do not want to sound like 'the historian' but you would go as far as calling these relationships of napoleon 'homoerotic'? Why? Couldn't it be the case of him having just very warm attitude and be close to his friends like that?

Again nothing against it, but I needed to ask since I as well am the person to get alike towards my close friends and I don't feel it having any attraction undertones.

Thank you for the ask! As usual for me, my response got really long.

I mean correct! It’s literally anyone’s guess. Who knows? Certainly not me! Certainly no one who is alive right now!

I’m just a queer on the internet having fun who sees Napoleon and goes "ah yes, a chaotic bisexual even though the concept of modern sexual identity wasn't a thing in his time etc. etc. [insert all the other usual disclaimers required on this webbedsite]" so that's why.

[How do I know he’s a chaotic bi? Well, it’s very simple, he couldn’t sit properly in a chair, liked to sit on his secretaries’ laps, pull their ears, and tell them Fun Facts he learned that day, and wanted to make the tsar of Russia his mistress. He also dearly loved Josephine and wrote about how he liked going down on her. This is clear proof that he was a chaotic bi king and we should be so lucky to know this about him. ;)]

I'm also a writer who likes to slap a queer lens onto most things because that's how I role and I'm very unapologetic about it. Which most people who follow me know.

I’m also someone who has incredibly deep, intimate friendships with a close selection of people in my life that are not romantic/sexual or whatever in their nature—but they are incredibly intimate. They are friendships where partners of my friends have been jealous and insecure because of how close we are—which is a them problem, not an us problem.

I would go so far as to argue that friends are more likely to slot into that problematic category of “soulmate” than anyone romantic (ymmv). And from the outside, I’m sure people might read my friendships with a few people (have read them, in fact) as romantic/homoerotic and frankly I don’t care. Whatever. I know what my friendships are, why does it matter what other people read them as? More to the point, why does it matter that someone reads a dead person’s friendships as homo-something? How does that impact my friendships which may, or may not, mirror that dead person’s friendships? Who cares? One should love one’s friends however one wishes to. Fuck everything else.

--

In an effort to avoid the Great Queer Napoleon Discourse War of 2013-14 I shall include a disclaimer because hot damn do people get REALLY uppity about this: I’m a writer, first and foremost in all things. I’m not a historian. As noted above, I’m a queer fag on the internet having fun. Take what I say with a grain of salt.

(Honestly, doing anything with Napoleon’s sexuality aside from He Was the Straightest Straight Who Ever Straighted, gets everyone’s hackles raised. I think that says more about those with hackles up than it does the person going: maybe he might have had a bit of a queerness about him, it’s not implausible.)

--

Some general stuff on Napoleon & That Doesn’t Seem Entirely Straight, Even For the 18th and 19th Century:

From Cronin’s biography on Napoleon:

“Napoleon found that his friendships with men often began with physical attraction, and this took a curious form. ‘He told me,’ says Caulcaincourt, ‘…that for him the heart was not the organ of sentiment; that he felt emotions only where most men experience feelings of a different kind; nothing in the heart, everything in the loins and in another place, which I leave nameless.’ 

The feeling Napoleon described as ‘a sort of painful tingling, a nervous irritability…the squeaking of a saw sometimes gives me the same sensation’.”

In addition, Talleyrand speculated Napoleon and Bourienne were, uh, intimate in all senses of the word. Talleyrand, of course, well—one should treat his hot takes with some caution.

There is also the (in)famous letter Napoleon wrote to Josephine about Alexander where he said that he and Alexander were inordinately pleased with one another and if the tsar were a woman, he’d take Alexander as his mistress (Napoleon, honey, don’t write that to your wife).

I mean, do what you want with that. Take it for what it’s worth /shrug

---

Of the three friendships under discussion: Lannes, Duroc, Junot—I always read Lannes and Napoleon’s friendship as just friendship. Duroc and Junot though. That’s where we start getting into arguments for a homoerotic friendship—or romantic friendship, if one prefers that term.

I’ll do a little ramble for each, because they all deserve it.

Lannes

Napoleon’s friendship with Lannes was intimate, close, and they loved each other dearly—but as said, I always read them as friends. Even if they lived today and were free/able to be whatever they wanted to be to one another, it’d still just be friendship.

People did make Achilles/Patroclus references to them—particularly around Lannes’ death—but that was the mode of how people spoke back then. It’s the 19th century version of comparing everything to LOTR or Harry Potter (read another classical epic people, jeez).

Their friendship was volatile for sure—these are two hot headed, strong minded, opinionated men who were not afraid to snap and snarl at one another—but at the end of the day I do not doubt their love for each other. But it’s what we would term a platonic love.  

Brian Martin writes this in Napoleonic Friendship: Military Fraternity, Intimacy, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-century France:

Napoleon’s grief for Marshal Lannes took on the very public character of open lamentation. Rather than grieve behind closed doors and conceal his personal vulnerabilities in order to show public strength, Napoleon’s mourning for his beloved friend became a matter of great public spectacle. Like Achilles mourning his beloved Patroclus, Napoleon wept publicly and openly expressed his affection in a way that was widely reported, discussed, and admired by the officers and soldiers in his armies.

[…]

Napoleon’s public grief at the death of Jean Lannes represented a new model for social relations between soldiers in the early nineteenth-century France. weeping over his friend’s broken body, Napoleon demonstrated how the revolution and empire had made it possible not only for an emperor to grieve openly for a fallen marshal, but for a soldier to love his comrade. This uncharacteristic expression of affection between Napoleon and Lannes was echoes in similar relationships between officers and foot soldiers in Napoleon’s armies. Military memories of the first empire bear witness to a wide range of intimate relationships among generals, colonels, and captains as well as sergeants, corporals, and grunts (grognards), the infantry soldiers who made up the majority of the imperial armies. Napoleon’s love for Lannes might thus be said to represent a broad spectrum of masculine affection and intimacy in the ranks of the Grande Armée, or what could be called Napoleonic friendship.

So yeah, I’ve not much more to say on them. Their friendship was loving, affectionate, intimate, and complex. Lannes could be frustrated with Napoleon (often was, the longer Napoleon remained in power—because Lannes loved Bonaparte not the emperor), but Lannes loved his friend and Napoleon loved Lannes. But my read on them has always been that it was what we would term platonic.

------

Junot

This one is messy. Because Junot and Napoleon are messy people. I also think this one is the strongest case for “something more than friendship”. I personally believe Junot loved Napoleon in a deep, phenomenal, possibly obsessive fashion that absolutely was romantic—maybe sexual/erotic—and Napoleon for a time may have returned at least some of those feelings. Then it all went south.

I’m ripping a lot of this from a previous ask I received about Junot—since it covered a lot of the more romantic aspects of his and Napoleon’s relationship.

Junot and Napoleon were close friends when they were in their 20s. Incredibly close. Laure Junot, whose memoires one should treat cautiously, intimated that there was more than just friendship between them at this point. But if that is the case, we’ll never know for certain.

Brian Martin sums it up well (and saves me from having to dig out my copy of Laure’s memoir):

Soon after his imprisonment, Napoleon was released and exonerated, but with little money and no desire to take on a new military post in Brittany, he returned to Paris where, as Laure Junot explains, he lived with his comrade Junot and depended on his friend’s emotional and financial support … The 1794 letter from Toulon initiates a half-year period in the lives of the twenty-five-year-old Bonaparte and twenty-three-year-old Junot when … these ambitious young men relied on each other during their impecunious days in Paris. Describing how Junot “loved Bonaparte as one loves at the age” (1: 188), Laure Junot implies that the young Jean-Andoche developed an adolescent crush on Napoleon, as the two young men grew in intimacy.

[…]

Laure Junot tactfully observes many years later that it was difficult to assess the nature of these friendships [with Duroc and Junot] without offending their masculinity: “These are the very profound and abstract mysteries of the human heart. It is difficult to explain them without first wounding a man’s dignity” (11: 131).

In relegating Napoleon’s military relationships to the realm of the mysteries, Laure Junot defines Napoleonic friendship — long before “the love that dare not speak its name” was articulated by Lord Alfred Douglas in 1894 and invoked at Oscar Wilde’s trial in 1895 —as an enigmatic and unspeakable love incapable of being articulated without shaming a soldier’s manhood. Amid such ambiguity, it is unclear if such “mysteries” encompass both the emotional and the erotic. What is clearer is that Napoleon and Junot shared a degree of affection during their youth in Paris that was undeniably intimate.

As Napoleon climbed up the greasy pole, the power dynamic changed and expectations of interpersonal relationships became more formal putting a strain on his and Junot’s friendship. Junot, like many who knew Napoleon from the early days, loved Bonaparte, not the emperor. As Laure put it in her memoire: “Now let me explain the sadness and pain which afflicted Junot on learning that Napoleon was no longer his General Bonaparte of Toulon. Perhaps the affair simply followed a natural decline. But Junot … did not see it this way. He wanted reciprocity, which he craved even more as his own affectionate fantasies increased … He loved the man, not the emperor.”

In 1800, Napoleon named Junot Commandant of Paris on the condition that he marry because, it seems, there were too many rumours flying around about the two of them. (As noted above, Talleyrand was already making some “huh. Interesting closeness, there” comments about Napoleon.) Dutifully, Junot married Laure.

Junot always exhibited some signs of mental illness throughout his life and at one point he received a head wound (I forget which battle) that massively exacerbated whatever existing mental health troubles he had. (And note that this was one of many wounds - nor was it his first head wound. It’s just the one people in his own life pointed to as a moment of change.)

Junot had jealous and possessive tendencies, something that drove Napoleon a little batty, and they got worse. While Junot was in Portugal, and later Spain, he wrote Napoleon a series of desperate letters begging him to reappoint Junot as his aid-de-camp. We unfortunately don’t have these letters anymore, Napoleon was notoriously secretive and private when it came to personal correspondence and had a habit of burning lots of it. However, we do have Laure’s account of Napoleon’s reception of Junot’s pleading. Laure writes:

"Look here, Madame, what your husband writes to me!’ said the Emperor, ‘Read this and tell me if he sends you such letters."

I read these letters, and this caused me some pain: my husband sent me affectionate missives, but never in the tone of a lover; here were letters that resembled those between Julie and Saint-Preux, or those of the Portuguese nun.*

Napoleon then goes on and says:

“In admitting that Junot loves me more than anything in the world … [he demonstrates] that he does not love me more than his own ambition”

To which Laure replies:

“He loves you, Sire, more than all the honours that you can give, more than your crown, more than me perhaps, for it was pride that made me say the contrary just now, perhaps even more than his children!”

-

*Note: She’s referencing Guilleragues’s Portuguese Letters (1669) and Rousseau’s Julie or the New Héloïse (1761)

Also, as I said above, treat Laure’s accounts cautiously. As with all memoirs, she is positioning certain scenes with a purpose and some things are downplayed, or exaggerated, accordingly.

-

In 1813, Napoleon dismissed Junot from military duty and sent him off to be governor of Illyria which Junot, rightly or wrongly, saw as a form of exile. During his ambassadorship he famously entered a ballroom wearing nothing but his epaulettes and his medals. [above para' edited per conversation in the notes]

Brian Martin:

While one could blame Junot’s naked diplomacy on his progressive dementia, his shocking entrance can also be seen as a kind of buff rebuff to Napoleon. After a lifetime fighting for Bonaparte, watching shrapnel rip into young men’s bodies, leading thousands of soldiers to their deaths, and suffering twenty-seven wounds* of his own, Junot offered his own ravaged body as a hideous and spectacular product of Napoleon’s violence.

-

*Note: Junot says he had 17 wounds, not sure where Martin got 27 - unless there were wounds Junot wasn’t counting.

-

After this incident, Junot was swiftly recalled back to France where he soon after died by suicide.

In his final letter to Napoleon he wrote:

“I who love you with the affection of a savage for the sun, I who am entirely yours. Well then: this eternal war that we must fight for you, I want no more of! I want peace! I want finally to repose my tired head, my sore limbs … to enjoy that which I earned … with my blood! The blood of an honest man, of a good Frenchman, of a true patriot. I therefore ask, at last, for that tranquillity that I earned through twenty-two years of effective service and seventeen wounds from which my blood has flowed for my country, and for your glory.” (emphasis in original)

After Junot’s death, Napoleon ordered that Junot’s personal papers be seized and destroyed as he was afraid their personal correspondence might make its way to a public forum.

So yeah, Junot’s love for Napoleon was definitely on the romantic side, I would say. Because Napoleon burned all their correspondence we don’t know what he sent in reply to Junot—especially in the early days of their relationship. I suspect it was intimate and possibly in line with what Junot continued to send him throughout their life and like hell did Napoleon want that escaping to the public.

Anyway—Junot and Napoleon, I would argue definitely had some homoerotic/romantic undertones and such to their friendship. I think it was mutual in their 20s then Napoleon’s feelings retreated to more platonic but Junot’s never changed.

It just man, gives me strong flashbacks to when I was a teenager and one of my best friends at the time  declared herself my soulmate and carved my initials into her arm and left me a million and a half messages on the home answering machine and said that I was cold like Napoleon and she loved me for it etc. etc.

When I look at Junot and Napoleon I see myself and my old friend in all that glory of the strange complexities of young, intensely emotional and intimate friendships that absolutely blur the line into romantic/erotic.

------

Duroc

Ah sweet Duroc! Duroc who regularly compared himself to Junot in terms of his relationship to Napoleon.

Duroc to Laure Junot in May of 1813:  “Poor Junot! It’s that he’s like me! The Emperor’s friendship is our whole life.”

And again, this is from Laure’s memoirs:

‘Junot and some others,’ Duroc said to me, ‘misjudge me and misjudge my position as well. The Emperor would disgrace me if he made me a marshal of France. What would I do away from him? No doubt it’s a great honor; but my attachment to him, how could it not be affected by that distance? I love the Emperor as Junot loves him. And isn’t he going to choose the post of first aide-de-camp instead of that of governor of Paris? So why judge me otherwise!’

-

Duroc’s a hard one to pin down because he was such an exemplary marshal of the palace, in addition he left us no diaries or memoirs so we have the word of others and what survived of his letters, little else to go on.

However, I think it telling that Duroc compared himself to regularly to Junot—who everyone was aware of how he felt about Napoleon—and that Junot was so jealous of Duroc. That Junot saw Duroc as a rival for Napoleon’s affection and love but not Lannes tells me that clearly Junot could see the similarity of what Duroc and Napoleon had to what he and Napoleon may have once had but didn’t anymore. And, that Lannes was different. It was a different relationship and one that Junot didn’t find threatening.

It's also worth nothing that Duroc was the only one of Napoleon’s officers, aside from Lannes, who was allowed to use tu with Napoleon. Las Cases writes: “I’ve heard the Emperor say that in all of his military career, Duroc alone possessed his blind confidence and received all his affection … Duroc loved the Emperor for himself; he was devoted most of all to the private man, even more than to the monarch”

Duroc’s role as marshal of the palace also put him in an interesting position as a sort of quasi-wife to Napoleon. The role he played was very much a “wife” role—Cronin summarizes Duroc’s duties thus:

"Napoleon was struck by Duroc’s sweet nature, his beautiful manners and the patience which he himself lacked. So he employed his friend as a diplomat and when he became Emperor chose him to run the household and court. […] He had his hands full ensuring that the grocer did not overcharge for the Chambertin, since Napoleon would be sure to notice, and, as Napoleon put on weight, tactfully persuading the Imperial Tailor not to make new clothes but to let out the old ones a couple of inches. He also had to make peace when Napoleon lost his temper: pushing over the table, for example, when he saw crépinettes of partridge. He did this admirably, because he was devoted to Napoleon. Many a time, when the Emperor had hurt a visitor with a sharp word, Duroc would murmur on the way out: ‘Forget it. He says what he feels, not what he thinks, and not what he’ll do tomorrow.’"

No one else of Napoleon’s intimate friends really takes on that wifely role—even after Duroc’s death. Bertrand has the same role, Marshal of the Palace, and he was damn good at his job, just as Duroc was, but there was a difference in their relationship and Bertrand doesn’t read as so close and devoted on a marital level to Napoleon. Not that Bertrand didn’t love Napoleon, he did, gods know he did, but it was more in line with Lannes than Duroc or Junot.

Napoleon describes Duroc to Las Cases:

‘Duroc,’ concluded he, ‘had lively, tender, and concealed passions, little corresponding with the coldness of his manner. It was long before I knew this, so exact and regular was his service. It was not until my day was entirely closed and finished, and I was enjoying repose, that Duroc’s work begun. Chance, or by some accident, could alone have made me acquainted with his character. He was a pure and virtuous man, utterly disinterested, and extremely generous.’

[��]

When he [Napoleon] went to see Duroc, after he had received his mortal wound, he attempted to hold out some hopes to him; but Duroc, who did not deceive himself, only replied by begging [Napoleon] to make them give him opium. …

After this recollection, the emperor, with an apparent effort, began abruptly to talk of something else.

I believe that Napoleon and Duroc were able to see each other’s interiority in a way that few others were able to and that formed the basis for their affection, love and friendship.

Duroc’s letters to Napoleon, anytime they were apart, are also more intense than usual. Plenty of Napoleon’s friends wrote about wanting to be by his side when they were sent off on diplomatic missions or what have you. But Duroc’s express a particularly intense form of devotion:

Duroc to Napoleon, May 29, 1801:

I am waiting to leave, Citizen Consul, until I receive a response to the letters that I had the honor to write you, unless the circumstances or the letters I receive from Paris let me judge that I can leave earlier. I beg you to remember that I am eight hundred leagues from you and, although I’ve been well-received here, I am never better than when I am near you. (Emphasis in the original)

Duroc to Napoleon, July 7, 1801:

I have sought to conduct myself here, Citizen Consul, in a manner that would satisfy you. I am well-regarded and thought highly of everywhere because I belong to you particularly, but I will not be happy until I’m sure that I deserve your approval. I am waiting to set my departure until I know that you’ve received the letter that I had the honor to write you and that I sent with Captain Leclerc. I very much want to find myself near you as soon as possible. (Emphasis in the original)

When Napoleon offered to have Hortense marry Duroc, Napoleon’s proposition was that Duroc would receive five hundred thousand francs and be named commandant of the 8th military division and would be stationed in Toulon (Napoleon was against having a son-in-law in the house).

When the proposition was passed on to Duroc he turned it down because he didn’t want to be sent away from Napoleon’s side and if marriage meant being apart, he didn’t want it, even though from all accounts he was quite fond of Hortense (and she was fond of him).

Later, when Napoleon was having to negotiate his name in exile he said to Barry O’Meara:

“The name of General Bonaparte was the one which I bore at Campo Formio and at Lunneville, when I dictated terms of peace with the Emperor of Austria. I bore it at Amiens when I signed the peace with England. I should be proud to bear it still, but the honour of France forbids me to acknowledge the right of the King of England to annul the acts of the French people. My intention was to take the name of Duroc.”

But he felt he had to keep Emperor Napoleon in order to Make A statement.

In another account, I forget to who, he repeated his intent to have taken on Duroc’s name in exile in order to be a little more incognito/not draw attention to himself, but because England refused to acknowledge that he had been emperor he was like “fuck that, I’m going to insist on being called emperor”. So, had England not been like “you were never emperor” it’s possible Napoleon would have taken Duroc’s surname as his own.

How very married of them.

------

Apologies for the long reply. Not sure this will really answer anything, but it's an amalgamation of my thoughts.

Junot is the clearest of the homo-something friendship between Napoleon and another man. Like, I think that's a tough one to read as anything other than a messy break up. Which is why, when we were all nattering on about queering Napoleon in film yesterday, I focused so much on Junot over the others.

But same sex intimacy, even in Just Friends, can have homo-something undertones to it. Friendships can be complex, multilayered and include some romantic and erotic aspects to them. This doesn't mean those friendships are Romantic Relationships as we think of them, but if there's a romantic tinge to it, or a strong homoerotic tinge to it, then why not explore it? See where it takes the story or the interpretation and undestanding of the person and their actions. Maybe it'll go no where useful, maybe it will. Only one way to find out.

Thank you for the ask!

[polyamorouspunk]

sleepover friday thing and im sorry if i've already sent you an ask about this, i have the worst memory in the world at the best of times. with that out of the way... how do i cope with my orientation doing a 180? my whole life, starting from when i was about 10, ive identified as a lesbian. i exclusively dated girls (or people who identified as girls at the time anyway) and non-binary people. i was only attracted to girls and non-binary people. when i thought about being married in the future, it was always to a woman or non-binary person.

then i met my soulmate and he was a man. i dont use the term lightly either -- im talking about love at first meeting, spending time together as often as possible, sharing secrets, the whole thing. i plan on getting a tattoo dedicated to him. i still called myself a lesbian, just with one exception, because he was the only man i ever loved. and then he went dormant and hasnt come back (hence the tattoo).

then i started noticing i sometimes got crushes on men but not very often. now it's a couple years later and it struck me the other day that i don't think i'm sexually attracted to women anymore. just men and non-binary people. and it really threw me for a loop. ive been a lesbian my whole life but now im not? i'm almost exclusively (sexually) xlm now. which is certainly hard to deal with since i'm dating someone who is woman-aligned.

this is really long im so sorry i didnt mean to ramble so much akskfkf but do you have any words of advice for someone whose identity flipped on its head and feels lost now

I doubt that I’m going to say anything revolutionary here, so I’m just going to talk.

Things change for everyone. Different things change for different people. I don’t want to discount the experiences of certain people like men who are attracted to cis women exclusively, women who are attracted to cis men specifically, men who are only attracted to men, women who only attracted to women, etc. When I say stuff like “sexuality is fluid” it’s in the same way you say “gender is fluid” knowing that for some people it 100% isn’t, but it CAN be.

Some people have a very hard time accepting that sexuality can be fluid. It’s been pointed out before that some people are all for playing around with your gender and calling yourself a woman as a cis man in drag or calling yourself a liquid because your gender is so fluid or going “none of the above” in those gender questions or any amount of things like that. But as soon as someone implies that sometimes you can be a lesbian and sometimes you can be a gay man and those things can coincide or change certain people get really up in arms.

Complicated sexualities and gender have been around longer than any of us, and certainly around longer than tumblr and the internet. Perhaps my own favorite example is talking about how bisexuals and lesbians used to fall under the same or at least a more similar label in Stone Butch Blues. Before the phenomenon of lesbian separatists.

Bisexual lesbians and pansexual gays and all those kinds of things, while perhaps POPULARIZED by social media, existed long before that. Why is the idea that trans people existed before tumblr not a novel idea but the fact that perhaps wlw were all lumped under the phrase “lesbian” because there were women with more complicated sexualities like might fit under the label “bi lesbian” today wild and unacceptable to some people?

The idea that you can call yourself a lesbian exclusively but have some exceptions or call yourself gay exclusively but have an exception or hell even call yourself straight but have an exception is not a new thing. I, personally, love straight cisgender male content creators who say shit like “I’m not gay but I would make out with that man”. Cracks me the fuck up. I want more of that shit. But suddenly if a lesbian says “I’m not straight but I would make out with that man” it’s like woah woah woah are you sure you’re REALLY a lesbian?

Plenty of people who are straight/gay/lesbian fully accept that you can ID as one of those things and still use that label if you have on exception or even a few. Some do not, and will say if your thoughts even stray from your assigned sex of attraction then you are not allowed to use that label.

There will people who will say you can’t call yourself a lesbian if you’ve had sex with a man before even if you didn’t enjoy it. Gold star lesbian mentality.

The idea of sexuality being fluid is sadly a controversial one, as is every facet of being “in the community”. But for many people it is.

I see it a lot like coming to terms that you are not in fact cisgender. You go your whole life believing, truly believing, that you are a cis girl perhaps, until suddenly one day you realize you are NOT. Maybe there weren’t “signs” that you were trans along the way. Maybe one day it just hit you like a ton of bricks. What do you do? How do you cope?

Well. How do you cope with any other thing that hits you like a ton of bricks? How do you cope with someone you thought loved you deciding to dump you and never speak to you again in a day? How do you cope with being fired from a job you felt so secure in and planned on being in for at least another decade? How do you cope with the unexpected death of a loved one?

Over time. You try not to stress it. You try and move through your days by keeping it in the back of your mind until time has dulled that immediate pain enough for you to reconsider. The pain isn’t going to go away. But it can become manageable. You cannot deal with things if you are screaming and crying and hyperventilating and throwing things. You need to wait until you’re not doing any of those things in order to deal with the issue at hand, for a vivid and extreme example.

What does it mean to you to be xlm? I call myself a bi lesbian. On this blog I call myself trans masc and mlm. On my main I’m a [girl] and a bi lesbian. To me that means I, Savanna, personally will have sex with people who have a vagina, as someone who also has a vagina. Be they trans men, trans women, cis women, nonbinary/other. I do not like the idea of having sex with an actual flesh and blood and cummy dick, HOWEVER I’m open enough to say “I haven’t really been in a position in my life right now where someone has wanted to jam their dick inside of me, so I haven’t really had to worry about that. If it comes to that point, I can’t say for sure that I’m going to be like ‘ew no a dick’ even though I do not like dicks. Depending on the person and the situation I might be willing to make an exception.” And hey. There are people I might be with who have a vagina that I might just be like hey you know what? I don’t want to have sex. For whatever reason.

Your partner is woman-aligned, so I’m sure in your mind that’s not something you’re aesthetically attracted to right now. But sexually might you be? Do you think you’re having another exception to your sexuality like you did before?

Try your best not to worry about it and try to come to any conclusions until you’ve given it some time. I’m not sure how long it’s been since you came to this realization, maybe it’s been a few days, maybe it’s been a few weeks. But take the time you need to not make an emotional response to it in regards to your current relationship. Do what you’re doing and talk to other people about it. When you’re ready, you should talk to your partner about it. Perhaps there’s accommodations and arrangements that can be made. I’ve said before even though I’m transmasc here like if a cishet guy wanted to date me only as his gf I would be willing to compromise on my gender expression for that most likely. My gender isn’t a huge deal to me. Things like that.

Take it slow and take your time. Don’t make any rash decisions. Talk it out. Don’t worry about feeling like you “made a mistake” or are “living a lie”. We wouldn’t tell someone who came out as trans things like that, so much as gender changes and/or is fluid so is sexuality.

[polyhexian]

In the brother vs brother au does Will also have a murder feild trip with Willow?

That's a good question. I don't think I've decided yet who's actually going through the portal with the kids. Jasper? Will? Jasper and Will? Jasper probably doesn't lose the arm this time. As much as I love jasper going through the portal- the potential! I could leave jasper home with Darius and have him in absolute grief that hunter slipped between his fingers AGAIN. In Bvb he's been way more active in trying to straight up yoink hunter- with another active golden guard it's WAY more likely that Belos will just kill him if his mood swings that way. Or worse- this GG knows he's going to die when he's replaced and he decides to increase his chance of surviving a little longer by taking out his potential replacement. Weighted risks, leaving him he's more likely to die than he might be if jasper steals him.

So just like. Jasper back in the boiling isles having just seen the castle explode and having no idea if Hunter and the other kids are alive or not-- what happened to them either, there's no bodies, did they make it to the human realm? Are they puppets? Did they get fucking vaporized like it seems Belos did? Are they safe if they're alive? Will he ever see hunter again?

That's good content. And also the Darius drama. You kept him from me all this fucking time. You kept him with Belos all this time. But the reality that Darius WAS actively trying to protect him makes it hard to REALLY blame him, even desperate for someone to blame... And gives them three months to work that shit out. Meanwhile will has just tumbled into another dimension alongside a bunch of random children and his apprentice and he's only just realized in the last twenty four hours how much Belos sucks and that the dude who keeps trying to kidnap hunter was trying to save him FROM HIM and he WAS legitimately the one keep hunter essentially a prisoner, whoops- shit, what now- and now he's ALSO got no magic and even if all the BI kids speak BI sign, Camila and Luz certainly don't, and MOST people in small town Connecticut probably don't either. He's a little fucked there.

Poor hunter is like hey... What the fuck. And will has to be like uhhhhhhh hey. Your dad's alive. Also you have a dad. Apparently. It's the guy who keeps trying to kidnap you. Yeah hes Darius' ex I think? I don't know he never really talked about it other than saying I'd never live up to him. Uhhhh I don't know, I think he grew you? In the dirt? I'm not totally confident that's how Grimwalkers are made, Belos didn't really talk to me about that. Oh shit wait was the Grimwalker thing supposed to be a secret. Fuck. I'm really fucking this up rn. Um. The last time I saw him? Uhhhhh. Yeah uhhhh okay this sounds bad but it was getting thrown off a cliff right before we left. No I mean. I'm sure he's fine. He's probably fine. I've done worse to him. FUCK. Sorry, no, uh, I mean-

[vintage-bentley]

never thought id defend hazbin hotel but life comes at you from unexpected angles lol

I think a lot of the lesbian rep ive seen has been so chaste and basically besties bc otherwise ppl say its fetishising or appealing to men? bc when i was really into the harley quinn show there was a lot of accusations how the main romance (harley x ivy) was super fetishistic even tho the buildup was really good and the only thing that changed when they got together was that they talked abt their sex lives a lot, and sex is half the show's humor otherwise so it wasnt out of place at all.

idk i feel like lesbian rep is always damned if you do damned if you dont

Unfortunately I agree. And I would blame misogyny, but I see it happening with gay male representation as well. You either have uwu soft bois for straight women who want the romance but think gay sex is icky, or you have fetishised hot dudes for the straight women who are obsessed with what gay men do in bed.

So I think it just comes down to how poorly heterosexuals view homosexuals, and how our representation always has to serve them first and foremost. It can’t make them uncomfortable by being explicit…but if it is going to be explicit, it better make them horny.

I haven’t watched Harley Quinn yet (it’s on my list!), but if the whole show is full of sex jokes I don’t think I’d mind a sexualised lesbian couple. Although maybe it has to do with the genre…women in superhero shows are always going to be sexualised because those kinds of shows cater to a (straight) male audience. Although I’m not sure if that applies to HQ. I can’t really comment because I haven’t watched it.

With HH, I agree that they’d be receiving criticism either way. Who knows, in another universe a version of me might be posting about how much she hates how sexualised Chaggie was lol.

But I think the reason it stands out to me so much, is because of how sexualised the rest of the characters are, especially the gay and bi men. Vox and Val are shown making out with tongue in the finale song. Angel Dust is the embodiment of what I would show as an example of how straight women fetishise gay male characters. So Chaggie really stands out to me as being sanitised because they’re an F/F couple, considering nobody else gets that treatment.

It comes off to me as a straight woman (or a bi woman with a heavy preference/bias towards men, idk the creator’s sexuality) who reallllly wants to think about men kissing and fucking each other, but doesn’t give a shit about or is uncomfortable with the idea of women doing the same together.