#if you can't handle more than one queer character in the same media that says a lot about you & maybe u should keep that to yourself

[sukibenders]

All of the Bridgerton siblings are queer in some way, the degrees vary between each of them respectively. No, I will not debate any further, that family is gay as hell and I'm here for it.

[luesmainblog]

i'm not gonna reply directly to the post because i don't wanna get into a bunch of shit, but i was surprised to see a mutual i respect reblog it, so i'll say this much. the reason people in bdsm didn't like 50 shades of grey was not as simple as "this is harmful". they didn't like it because it was an innaccurate portrayal of bdsm - or, more accurately, a portrayal of how bsdm can be used as an excuse to abuse - that was CLAIMING to be ACCURATE, GOOD BSDM. the problem wasn't the content itself, the problem was that anytime a criticism was brought up, you were accused of not being able to handle the spice, and the author was CONSTANTLY insisting that what her character did was totally fine and he definitely wasn't Like That. yes, we SHOULD have bare minimum standards of kink, but that doesn't mean "fictional depictions of abuse as kink are automatically harmful". it's about the context and attitude you're entering with, just like any other media. what matters is the conversation around it, not the content itself. Let's all remember that Lolita's biggest problem was readers viewing it as a romance, when the author was certain any sane reader would know how awful the situation was. and i've said it before but it bears repeating until this becomes common sense again: equating fictional abuse, even romanticized, to real abuse causes more harm than its existance does. equating lolicon to actual fucking child molestation is a massive disservice to CSA victims. equating anime twincest to the actual real life abuse of incest lessens the impact the word has for real situations. and i REALLY shouldn't have to say this, but telling a black person that they can't partake in raceplay is SIGNIFICANTLY more racist than anything they're gonna be agreeing to.

and whenever someone tries to give praise to weird and problematic kinks, or talks about how fictional darkness can't hurt you any further than you can hurt yourself with it, or anything remotely related, somebody always comes in with "um okay i agree unless its pedo shit", and we KNOW you mean the fictional stuff. you ALWAYS mean the fictional stuff. and i'm sorry, but no. if nobody was harmed unconsentually in the making of this god damn fanfic then you can just walk away. any argument you try to make for why it's actually Too Harmful To Be Allowed is going to use the same logic that christian moms use to say that pokemon is DEFINITELY going to make your child a satanist. yes, some people can use fiction to cause or perpetuate harm. authors can convince their fans that some fucked up shit is okay, abusers can use ANYTHING to build trust and convince their victims that what they're doing is fine, and people with little self-control can use things that trigger them to emotionally self-harm. all of this is true, and deserves to be talked about and considered. but if you can handle the idea that the majority of people playing violent video games every day are not actually violent people and will react negatively to real world violence, and can enjoy the mayhem they cause in-game while also being aware of how bad it is in real life, and SOME people being inspired to violence does not mean we should ban those games entirely, you can apply the same to kink. even the shit you find abhorrent. to be very frank, we shouldn't HAVE to bring up the therapeutic benefits to victims of real crimes for you to be consistent in your beliefs on censorship. edit: also pointed out to me and extremely important: "pedo shit" is EXACTLY how queer stuff is painted by conservative censors. it is one of the oldest arguments they have. so YES, the best way to immunize ourselves from allowing gays to be censored because too many people find them gross and immoral, is to get used to there being fictional csa depictions even if you find them gross and immoral. your disgust and fear that somebody MIGHT be hurt by it or MIGHT be taking it the wrong way is not, and has never been, a good reason to remove it. again: if no actual people have been harmed in its creation, then it should be allowed. we're obviously not defending actual CSEM here, that is irrefutable harm. we're defending the stupid fetishized anime shit that helps the people who went through that process and move forward.

[hislittleraincloud]

Jesus Christ, where to start with this mess.

@hislittleraincloud there is a LOT wrong with shipping platonic friends.

Newsflash: In the cases of Potter and Wednesday, we're all "shipping platonic friends", even after they've paired up in canon (Harry/Cho, Ron/Lavender, Romione, Hinny; Weyler, Enjax, and presumably Bianca/Lucas). The same could be said of any fandom on Earth that does not necessarily take place in wizarding/outcast schools. That's what fandom is about. We explore all ships, big, small, fluffy, and degenerate...because it's fiction. Fiction offering escapism, and offering deeper perspectives than the cursory character images we're gifted onscreen.

But go on.

I can make a long post about it later. But for the time being: don't forget that children at the ages of 6 to 10 are watching Wednesday.

I haven't forgotten, but I can tell you that 6 to 10 year olds aren't participating in this chronicaly online fandom bullshit (and if some of them are, they need to GTFO fr, because fandom is not for children). I know most of the young fandom here are being fed adolescents are children, but they're not. Adolescents are going through a rough hormonal change that will affect the entire rest of their lives; some do it early, some are late bloomers like Enid. They are very much different from kindergarten and elementary school children, brain-wise.

But lemme tell you what the average child sees when they watch Wednesday: They see two friends/best friends. Kids at that age are still adjusting to our colorful world, and socially (in America at least) are still clueless about things like The Cramps' version of "The Goo Goo Muck" being about oral sex and the whole visual 'joke' of a blowjob regarding Enid and Lucas; they just hear a funny, creepy-ish song with a danceable beat and see a girl who accidentally spilled something on her date. (Adults have been putting Adult Jokes in children's fare since the dawn of animation. See: OG Warner Brothers cartoons, Animaniacs, the Muppets, etc.) They're hardly thinking in subtexts or double entendres because their brains are still grappling with reality, they're still trying to learn how to read and comprehend what they're reading. Subtext is usually taught when children start maturing into young adults when they can start to question and understand the complexities of language and communication, and for me it was in 9th and 10th grade.

Is Wednesday then inappropriate for kids that young? I wouldn't say so, since they're ignorant of the subtext that the older adolescents are taking from it. Kids are resilient, more resilient than we give them credit for, and some kids adore dark n' creepy (because they ARE dark n' creepy 🫠). But it is rated TV-14, and it's always up to the parents to parent their kids as they deem appropriate. If they think that their kid can handle the gore and the teen love stuff, then that's on them.

But no parent should ever let their elementary-aged child participate in online fandom. Even if it's just uploading stories to AO3 under supervision. There's a good reason why a lot of sites say you must be at least 13 to join. And I'm talking this kind of fandom shit right here *gestures all around me*, not like...an official Star Wars website for young fans. I've seen so many cute little kids at cons with their parents who are all involved with fandom in one way or another, but this here is a cesspool of twisted ideas that they can't fully understand and aren't meant to fully understand.

These kids are exposed to daily se*ualizition of two girls( all over social media), who are portrayed as an embodiment of a sibling-like friendship.

Once again, kids aren't supposed to be here in fandom. "All over social media" is part of fandom. The kids you're worried about aren't here, and if they are, they're not supposed to be.

(ETA: Now realize that was a huge wall of text and added the cut.)

You may be queer, but you grew up in an era where platonic friendships were celebrated in TV and films, and everyone respected them. Children were allowed to be just kids and just friends for long years before they started thinking about romantic and sexual relationships.

Don't tell me what I am or what I grew up in. I've got 20 years on your ass, and the reason I can tell YOU what era you, your peers, and your generational subordinates (Z) are living in is because I'm living it too, and am capable of the comparison.

I grew up in an era where social media didn't exist, and none of us had a camera/video camera with us wherever we went. You know what we did as kids, though? We played doctor with each other (a lot like how it was depicted in Afterburn between young Wednesday and young Xavier). With each other and our plushies and other dolls. (And in my case, it was also playing gynecologist with the life-sized blonde doll my grandma sent me one year. I was the same damn age that you saw in the previous Face Reveal post.) Our parents didn't freak out over it, either, because none of it was sexual; going to the doctor was never sexual or sexualized for us kids. It was common and healthy curiosity. That was our "kids being kids" in terms of transactional discovery, but today someone somewhere would scream about how their children were sexually assaulting each other when the worst thing that even happened most of the time was a pants drop.

We had more freedom to act like little assholes, we got punished for it when we were way out of line/someone got hurt or traumatized, but I can't even pretend that we were completely shielded from 🏳️‍🌈 in the media. I was 6½ years old when I watched the first gay character on primetime TV (Steven Carrington of Dynasty; my mother liked Dynasty, Dallas, and Falcon Crest, so that's what we watched). I thought both actors who portrayed him were cute but then was educated on what gay men were by my mother. But instead of immediately feeling disgust, I was a kid who just understood that men can be with other men the way they were with women. It was no big deal to me, even as young and lacking in social connectivity as I was.

The internet, social media, and irresponsible parenting are making people so fucked in the head. Sometimes people are too suggestible, and when one person says something that is patently false, it will just be accepted regardless because they fear losing that shred of connectivity.

And then under that huge hive mind they're unable to recognize what the rest of the world outside of that mind sees. Millar & Gough and their writing crew set out to tell Wednesday's story of how she went from hating people and having no friends to tolerating people and having friends.

But lemme address this "you grew up in an era where platonic friendships were celebrated in TV and films, and everyone respected them" assertion of yours directly:

Like I just said, we didn't have social media. But we had print, and the first Captain James T. Kirk/Spock slash fan fiction was published fifty years ago this month. It was called "A Fragment Out of Time" by Diane Marchant. So for at least as long as I've been alive, NOT "everyone" has respected the celebrated platonic friendships in TV and films. "Fans" have always been freaky like that, and that's fine (I mean, I've mentioned it before, but I wrote my own fucking Purple Rain fan fic sequel 40 years ago, but it's lost to time/my parents probably tossing it...imagine how many others like me wrote fan fic that was just never published or shared anywhere). The only difference is now, we can communicate with others in ways that we only dreamed of before, and we can go out and find our peoples to commiserate, create, and share.

You are my peoples when it comes to a het ship like Wavier, but you are certainly not my fucking peoples when you keep doing things like saying "there is a LOT wrong with shipping platonic friends" while using ONLY slash/LGBT ships as your examples.

That's homophobic behavior.

I don't necessarily ship Wenclair, but I can appreciate the less obnoxious people who do, i.e. the reasonable people who know when they've got their ship goggles on. I support peoples' right to ship who/what they want, but shipping does not come without criticism. I get the criticism all the time, I'm an easy target because Wenovan is That Ship that only few will publicly sail. You get the crit because Wavier/Wenvier involves White. It's time that the Wenclairs also faced some crit, but you're fucking doing it wrong and it is heavily laced with homophobic intimation, so I'mma tell you one last goddamn time: KNOCK IT OFF.

This generation, however, doesn't have that option 🫤. Since every friendship in every show and film gets se*ualized. How is this OK?

This generation that's as strong on shipping as the Wenclairs also had their schooling and social development absolutely fucked by COVID, as well as being influenced by so. Much. Confusing. Shit. Online (which is also fucking with their social development).

None of y'all understand the separation of actors and characters because identity politics is suddenly taking a front seat in everything we do. And a lot of it revolves around gender and sexuality. People/humans have had their hangups about sexuality, but right now it's worse since the kids are objectifying the actors by meddling in their personal lives and aggressively dictating who they're permitted by fandom to be friends with (that much we can agree upon). It's a Mean Girl mentality to get cliquey and tell someone, "We don't like him, you need to stop hanging out with him!" As a former girl, I've seen girls do this to people for little to no reason at all. Anyway.

You feel like you're being inundated with gay ships and disrespect for 'platonic' friendships, but it's nothing new and has always been present in modern fandom. Don't use "because of the kids!" as an excuse to call a ship disgusting or wrong. That's not and has never been how it works in fandom. I was most active in Potter when Ortega was born (💀), and when you were in grade school. I think I can recognize when someone is couching (though not very well) their own homophobia behind the veil of concern, and if you can't see that you're being homophobic, then cycle back up to the beginning where it's about Ron and Harry.

You don't know the consequences of this phenomenon on young minds who unfortunately, never understood the value of building human friendships before they move on to more intimate relationships.

I do know because we're seeing it right now, however: I will agree that it's a massive, massive leap for someone like [Millar & Gough's and Ortega's canon] Wednesday to go from having zero friends to having a girlfriend. THAT'S not how THAT works, either. But at the same time, that would mean that we can't ship Wavier or Wyler either. If you want to respect real Wednesday canon, then by the end of Season 1, Wednesday still isn't looking like she will be partnered with anyone, let alone the werewolf who left her to deal with Xavier while she went to go make out with her boyfriend (canon Wednesday can't even bring herself to apologize to Xavier for fucking up his life because she doesn't ever apologize like a socially adjusted human would).

But fandom's fan works aren't absolutely required to respect canon (unless it's something like an official screen-to-page novelization of a show with a robustly nihilistic narcissist as its main character), you know that. Everybody should know that. We make shit up all the time about the characters, properly objectifying them as the fictional objects that they are. Sometimes studios can be irresponsible and try to play into fandom like they have with the queerbaiting in Wednesday promos/merch like Mejia's book, forgetting that online fandom is fractured and separate from the more casual (and youngest) public, non-chronically online fans.

Stop worrying about the kids who aren't a part of our fandom and start worrying about how the fuck you're coming across in your arguments. Sincerely ask yourself whether you hate the ship because of a fat chunk of its fandom fans and their delusional behavior around it, or if you just hate the ship because you find LGBT shipping distasteful.

Because from where my fat ass is sitting with your additional Harry/Ron comments, you're sounding increasingly like the same moralists* we've been fighting for decades, and I don't wanna fucking fight you. But I will.

@hislittleraincloud there is a LOT wrong with shipping platonic friends. I can make a long post about it later. But for the time being: don't forget that children at the ages of 6 to 10 are watching Wednesday. These kids are exposed to daily se*ualizition of two girls( all over social media), who are portrayed as an embodiment of a sibling-like friendship.

You may be queer, but you grew up in an era where platonic friendships were celebrated in TV and films, and everyone respected them. Children were allowed to be just kids and just friends for long years before they started thinking about romantic and sexual relationships.

This generation, however, doesn't have that option 🫤. Since every friendship in every show and film gets se*ualized. How is this OK?

You don't know the consequences of this phenomenon on young minds who unfortunately, never understood the value of building human friendships before they move on to more intimate relationships.

[olderthannetfic]

One anti talking point that I don't often see addressed specifically is that many antis are coming from the perspective of, "racism and homophobia are bad and should not exist in media, and therefor these other things I think are bad also shouldn't exist in media." Idk if this is common all over but it's really common in my corner of fandom, especially since many of the fans are POC and/or queer and have experienced the effects of negative stereotypes and misinformation spread by mainstream media.

Obviously fandom and mainstream media are two totally different arenas and can't really be compared on that level, and also racism and incest aren't really comparable either, but I was wondering if other people have seen this specific argument and have any other takes on it.

--

Yes, those takes are very common.

Most people are well-meaning, but this kind of thing often gets weaponized by assholes. The biggest problem with such arguments, in my experience, is that the "bigotry" a lot of people point to is badwrong porn with a person of that demographic or else a story that deals with bigotry.

--

For big publishers, I think it can be quite fair to say "Hey, the author tried to write about this serious topic, but they did a piss poor job of it, and the editors should have done something about that!"

Admittedly, some of the times people say this, I think they're wrong that this particular work is poorly done, but the theory is sound. Because this is a commercial work, because it's big time, and because it had not just an author giving it the okay but multiple levels of agent, editor, etc., I think it's fair to say "Look, if you can't do it better than this, don't do it."

For fic, "You have to be at least this talented/skilled to ride this ride" is a much more contentious statement. Should we be telling some 16-year-old black girl that she can't write about tough subjects because she's kind of a crappy writer still? If she gets called out for racism, should we demand that she reveal her identity? Yikes, yikes, yikes.

Many complaints about fic that handles things poorly are really complaints about lack of skill, and that opens a huge can of worms in this amateur context.

--

Many other complaints are like "You wrote rape fantasy about this character, so that must mean you're a racist who believes this stereotype". This is moronic and clearly not valid.

Quite a few people arguing this genre of argument seem to also spout a lot of radfem talking points without realizing it. They claim to be sex-positive because that's a buzzword we think is good, but they don't understand anything about common sexual fantasies and how untidy and messed up they tend to be.

--

Some complaints are like "Racist porn contributes to societal racism". This one's more complicated.

I think that Big Black Cock type live action mainstream porn does contribute to societal racism. I don't just say that because it's playing with racist tropes but because we have a certain amount of evidence that 1. the target audience is white racists who hold these exact views and who are looking for confirmation of them and 2. the black performers get treated poorly on set. 2 is especially objectively clear and a big problem. We've seen black porn stars speak out about this issue.

Does the small amount of fanfic that actually plays with tropes of this type contribute in the same way? I doubt it, but it's reasonable to have questions.

Just given how humans are, there are going to be ethnic minorities with bigotry kinks the same way there are plenty of women horny for misogynist denigration in their porn. Any reasonable approach to this kind of thing needs to balance these perfectly normal fantasies with the need to not promote shitty ideology or mistreat performers.

That said, the majority of fic accused of being this is... well...

Full offense, it's clear that many people bitching about AO3 do not actually know what standard porn tropes look like in any non-AO3 context. A character having a size kink for feeling full or a character having a big or small penis without the other markers of racist kink is not the same thing. Anti-African American stereotypes are not identical to other racist stereotypes. In some cases, there's a lot of overlap. In others, there's very little.

Many fandom complaints about bad content sound like they come from dumb teenagers who've just heard of these tropes for the first time and who are reeeeeeaching to prove that they apply to their NOTP so they can win a ship war.

I am a lot more open to listening to theorizing on these topics from people who actually know what they're talking about, and that means a broad knowledge of porn and erotica and fic outside of AO3.

[deanwasalwaysbi]

Thinking About How This Wasn't Actually a Denial

But was it self preservation?

The year was 2013 and rather than a denial, Jensen said "Don't ruin it for everybody now."

What was the fan 'ruining' for everybody? The Con? or something else? So if I was a tinhatter - and sometimes I am - I might think about other tv shows from the past that were covertly queer and how they handled the question, were TV shows 'out'?

Mainstream shows like Bewitched, you know, shows that are so clearly straight, you can tell because... well. ... they never technically used the word 'gay'. ... witches honor

SPN Film Studies is Back in Session! Join Under the Cut for more on supernatural & the story about how Bewitched! came out of the Broom Closet

Bewitched aired from 1964-72, it's so old the first season was in B&W. The show starred Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha, the strange housewife with a stranger secret. Her husband, Darrin, unwittingly married into the whole witchy family, from the now drag icon Agnes Moorehead's Endora with her open marriage, to the unmarried and batty Aunt Clara (Marion Lorne who played the mother in Hitchcock's heavily gay coded 'Strangers on a Train'), to the extremely coded Uncle Arthur (gay actor Paul Lynde). (We can't know for sure, but it seems at least 4 members of the cast were gay themselves.) The core premise of the show involves Samantha balancing who she really is with repressing that self for the safety and comfort of her family.

Samantha and her husband keep her [ahem] 'queer' nature a secret which gets harder on Samantha when she has to tell her daughter to live the same way, “I know what fun it is to be a part of the magical life ... to have so much at your fingertips. But we’re living in a world that’s just not ready for people like us, and I’m afraid they may never be. So you’re going to have to learn when you can use your witchcraft and when you can’t.”

There are plenty of generic 60s wacky hijinks but there are also whole episodes metaphorically about repression being harmful, episodes where characters asked if another was a 'thespian', episodes where Darrin was queercoded while under a spell, episodes about representation & bad stereotyping in media, and even two episodes where witches discussed whether it was time for witches to come out to the mortals, (whether mortals could accept that they were just nice normal people trying to live their lives like everybody else - or not - and would just freak out and kill them again).

When it came time to recast Dick York's Darrin with a new 2nd lead, Elizabeth and her husband, William Asher, knowingly cast the gay Dick Sergeant. (Although he wasn't out publicly at the time.) Then, when Sergeant came out in '91, Montgomery supported him and the two served together as the grand marshals of the Hollywood pride parade.

Dick Sargent expressed in the 90s what he would want in a Bewitched reunion episode: for Darrin to meet another like couple, a witch and a mortal who are married, and another, and another, and end up forming a whole community and support group, finding out that it was never so uncommon after all, that it was actually "about 10% of the population." The two would march in the first mortals and witches pride parade, saying they should have come out years ago.

In '94, Montgomery had this to say about the queer themes of the show, “Don't think that didn't enter our minds at the time. We talked about it on the set, that this was about people not being allowed to be what they really are. If you think about it, Bewitched is about repression in general and all the frustration and trouble it can cause. It was a neat message to get across to people at that time in a subtle way.” (x)

Interviewer: Are you concerned that your involvement in the gay-pride parade will lead people to believe you're a lesbian?

"[Laughing] I'm really not worried about that. There are bigger things to worry about. Like the presidential election and finding a cure for AIDS. I did the parade in support of Dick. I mean, in the end, didn't we all?" (x) (Montgomery was also one of the first celebrity allies to fight for LGBTQ rights and support HIV/AIDS-related fundraisers.)

So did they talk about it at the time? No. You can bet they didn't speak about it publicly. What would have happened if a fan, publicly, had asked Elizabeth, William, or Dick about the show's queer allegory content? This was a time when being gay was a literal felony. They would have had to have lied or risked losing the show, their careers, and possibly subjecting themselves to violence.

Now. back to Jensen and the Schrodinger's long con:

This was in 2013 - The same year that the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a federal ban on gay marriage. You certainly couldn't call homosexuality illegal in the US at that time. It's the same year that Dabb and Sgriccia spoke about the Aaron moment on the DVD and whether there's 'this potential for love in all places' for Dean. Of course Jensen said this about the very same scene: "But it was - you know - it was comedy. It was a comedic moment in the show and fortunately Dean gets a lot of the comedic moments in the show and it was just, you know, Ben was poking fun at the fact that - you know, how can we make this very kind of manly, heterosexual guy uncomfortable - uh -you know, or  or have him back on his heels and throw him off his game a little bit.”

I'm reminded of 2012 when Ben Edlund stepped in about a Destiel question at comic con, pretending it was some freaky thing that fans had made up even though he'd already written and directed TMWWBK, which had already aired.

Jensen: “What’s Destiel?” Ben Edlund: That’s some weird shit. Jensen: Is this something that you created, Ben? Ben: You don’t want any part of that.

Or the next year for season 9 when Jensen said “I think the whole Cas and Dean thing has gotten out of hand”  “I don’t think there’s anything secret to their relationship even though a lot of people wish there was” EVEN THOUGH- that season we got the nightstands acknowledgement and Misha (or both of them?) was told to “play him like a jilted lover”

Or Jensen's knowing bromance smile in 2015

I think recent events (cough spn gate) have made clear that the network and many viewers were still uncomfortable with CAS being gay in 2020, deleting even familial mentions of Cas from the finale episodes once he was revealed to be not only gay but also in love with Dean. (x) (x) (x) Can you imagine then what Warner Brothers would have said to an acknowledge bisexual Dean Winchester in 2013? Granted, there was no Trump election, but legitimate, could that have been the end of the show? Or the Russian and Conservative US viewership? Is it possible that Jensen would have feared so?

Is it possible that Jensen had a more personal reason for a knee jerk defensive response?

So was Jensen covering in 2013? Well. This happened 5 years later in 2018:

That hostile "? No." came even though Misha confirmed that he and Jensen had discussed Destiel by that point. Granted, discussing Destiel as a concept and accepting Dean being inherently bisexual are two very different things - Cas is GN after all - still, less than encouraging.

I may never get over the jumps back and forth that Jensen did. At this point I think there's no denying that a lot of SPN's queer content was on purpose, even as writers and actors were telling fans and network execs otherwise. Yet when each person involved was brought in? that question haunts me at night. I have gone off before about the timeline in my pursuit of whether Jensen was Ben Hur'd (x) and, if so, for how long. I'm sure many in this fandom have so much to add.

In the meantime we'll just have to cherish this moment from 2019:

Interviewer: 'So, tell us just a little bit about what you’re most excited to tackle with your character this final season.’ Jensen: “Cas. Just like a full football form tackle.”

Bewitched references in SPN:

2.05 - Dean: Well, it looks like he can't work his mojo just by twitching his nose, he's gotta use verbal commands.

2.20 - Dean says Barbara Eden was hotter than Elizabeth Montgomery - sigh - Dean.

7.05 - Dean thinks a husband has no idea his wife is a witch, and refers to him as Darrin. Dean also indicates he likes the first Darrin better. - (I guess I can't make a comment about how much TV Dean watched as a kid if I get all of his references and also haven't saved the world.)

14.03 - Jules refers to the witch as 'Brunhilde' - this is a minor character in bewitched but more so from mythology and likely referred to the cartoon witch from WB cartoons - the stereotypical witch that faced bugs bunny with the green skin and straw hair.

let me know if you have any to add. Stay Witchy ✌

[brieflyimpossiblecreation]

So, this has been bothering me all morning.

@xcrisscrossx's point is what I see as the epitome of being aromantic and seeing others understand what is a huge part of me and relate it in a way others can understand made me quite happy even though I am not in either of those fandoms.

But @sasu-loves-naru's and @kawosh1inning's responses are the epitome of why I'm terrified of expressing my love for any fandoms or interests.

Now before I go on a tangent I want to preface this with:

1. I don't know anything about Sherlock or Naruto and any controversy about how the show's respective characters interact and handle their relationships

And 2. I'm not directly attacking any user depicted here. This is just the first solid example I could easily find of what I'm talking about, there are hundreds of post and whatnot that get the same point across.

As stated before, I am aromatic. Aromanticism is the lack of romantic attraction/ feelings or the need for those feelings. When I consume any media I like I'm of course going to find ways to relate to it. But from this post and hundreds of others, any mention of characters being 'just friends' or really anything but romantically or sexually involved with eachother is usually met with backlash like this. Accusations and being made into a joke. It hurts a lot and makes me and others scared to share our thoughts.

And no I'm not dense. I know that throughout history recent and far that lovers have been described as "best friends." I know people try to play off romantic relationships as really close friends when they're uncomfortable with it. I get it! Haha make fun of the stupid homophobes who can't stand seeing anyone of the same gender smooch or love eachother. I'm not homophobic though and I couldn't care less about whether mlm or wlw is shown! What I'm worried about it when I say I like seeing that these characters didn't end up dating because I relate to having friends I love so very much and being attacked!

ROMANTIC LOVE IS NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY OTHER TYPE OF LOVE!!!

The most recent example of this for me was with DreamWorks SheRa. WAY BEFORE the end of the series, one of the blogs I followed made a sort of callout post over someone who had commented something along the lines of seeing Catra and Adora as sisters. And the poster along with everyone in the comments and tags expressed disgust and calling them all sorts of names. I knew Adora and Catra were written romantically but I couldn't help the denial and want to see characters like me. Seeing that made me feel like if I had said anything similar then I'd also be called out and made fun of as homophobic and blind. Then the ending happened and I was happy for the major win for the LGBTQ+ community representation. I wasn't upset that two women kissed and married, I was totally indifferent! Then Bow and Glimmer ended up together, Mermista and Seahawk were implied, Scorpia and Perfuma got together and I just felt bitter and conflicted. I'm so happy for the representation that was given from the show but hated the message that ended up coming from it.

"Everything ended up a-okay in the ended because everyone ended up dating and getting married! Those besties? They loved eachother as romantic lovers all along! Even if you felt they didn't have the chemistry and thought it was kinda added in as a second thought! Doesn't matter because love! Yay!"

The fact that this message is pretty prevalent in both heterosexual and queer stories makes me feel isolated and hated. Stuff like this made me think I was broken and if I just get a girlfriend and force myself to "be romantic" then maybe eventually I'd be fixed. But that didn't happen, it never would, and that relationship hurt both of us. I'd never feel what she wanted and I'd never love her the same way she loved me. And I thought something was wrong with me. In reality, it was the thought that my lack of romantic attraction was something that needed to be "fixed."

Asexuals and Aromatics already have a hard time from both queer and non-queer communities so to have any secret speck or crumb of comfort get intentionally (or not) smacked from our hands is awful. I DON'T CARE about queer romances YOU DO YOU I'M PROUD OF YOU just don't come on to ME when I sheepishly and quietly mumble under my breath how I like them better as friends because I can see myself in those characters.

[land-of-brains-and-chocolate]

so, symbiotes in the larger social dynamic. something i've always liked to say is that the one thing truly inherent to symbiotes is that they can give you power. the fact that they can give you power means that they will be (and are! all the time!) exploited. the fact that they are exploited means that people will justify that exploitation: either symbiotes aren't actually meaningfully alive at all, or they are, but they're so monstrously aggressive and dangerous for no reason that we need to control them and make them a little less alive, you know.

that has some parallels to real-life political processes: racist stereotypes didn't just appear, they were specifically created to justify projects like slavery and colonialism, to secure power. i (who is white and open to criticism on this) don't think that makes it an outright Fantasy Racism Allegory, though. it doesn't claim that symbiotes can be substituted for a real life oppressed group or vice versa, it just integrates them into our current societal structures. it's just what makes sense and would happen (and even out of universe it does).

now THIS

is an outright, explicit, bold-faced Fantasy Racism Allegory, specifically drawing from immigration, in reaction to symbiotes (and previous invasions like the skrull, presumably). and that immediately runs into all the usual problems: there's no fucking parallel to be drawn between immigration and an alien species that has now literally razed the earth and gone on mass slaughter sprees like three times in a row, even if they're claiming it was always totally against their will in this post-knull world. you're also running the risk (or even intention) of focusing on it to the exclusion of, you know, actual oppression, because people fucking love to put characters of colour into fictional oppressor categories or disregard their real-life status (let's not talk about mutants).

there's also the general otherness of symbiotes, i do think that can be used in many ways reminiscent of queer themes. it HAS been FREQUENTLY used like that, scream was even setting it up, true symbiote bonds are literally a matter of foreign relationships and identities. but even though the theme is there, it tends to be more personal than large-scale political organisation... nobody's out there carrying signs that say GOD HATES SYMBIOTE HOSTS. that would feel gauche! and weird! and forced! the rhetoric wouldn't be the same, you can't just claim it from a real life group.

idk. i guess some form of it was inevitable, with symbiotes being everywhere. we'll see how it's handled. the core conceit of "there's people trying to hunt and exterminate the last of the symbiotes" is, again, fine and only makes sense. even chauvinism and paranoia in doing so make sense. maybe people also think it's fine and valuable to get the perspective of the other while they're being demonised by the right-wing media. even if it's aliens who literally acted like demons, possession and all.

[likeabxrdinflight]

I posted 2,376 times in 2021

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My Top Posts in 2021

#5

anyways not to be like, super gay all the time but can we just. talk about the soft way hanajima looks at akito

I genuinely don’t think we’ve ever seen her look that compassionately at anyone besides tohru??? I mean I know I ship akitohru, but in a kyoru endgame world I’d want akito to end up with hanajima instead of shigure. sorry not sorry lol.

316 notes • Posted 2021-06-08 02:09:30 GMT

#4

azula really is much funnier when you remember that she’s functionally an 8th grader

like can you honestly tell me that this: 

“maybe you should worry less about the tides, who’ve already made up their minds about killing you, and worry more about me, who’s still mulling it over”

isn’t something an edgy teenager trying to be intimidating would say. because it is. it 100% is. 

332 notes • Posted 2021-01-10 03:08:03 GMT

#3

seeing a lot of bad takes about disney during pride month and I really need people to read books like tinker belles and evil queens because disney has a very complex and unique history with the queer community that not many other brands do, and it's an awful lot more nuanced than "corporation bad".

I mean disney does do a lot of shit with their constant buy out of every media company in existence, but that's independent of their treatment of queer folks. they were, historically, one of the best organizations to work for if you were gay in the 20th century. people could be out and work for disney. they moved the entire production of beauty and the beast to new york so howard ashman could still work on it while he was dying of aids.

please it's just so much more complex than what you're seeing on the surface. disney is far, far from perfect, but if any corporation has the right to post performative stuff on twitter, it really is disney.

409 notes • Posted 2021-06-04 17:33:12 GMT

#2

I also want to talk about llith’s role in this episode because I feel like the fandom kinda has this twisted right now. it’s not that she was the “least favorite” child so much as she was the healthy child. the abled child. 

I saw absolutely no signs in this episode that gwendolyn actively favored eda or disliked lilith in any way. instead it came across that gwendolyn felt eda just needed her more. this happens sometimes in families with a disabled or sick child- especially if that illness is something serious and/or life-threatening- the parents become consumed with the care of the sick child and end up neglecting the healthy ones. it’s not okay, but you can see why it happens. 

it isn’t intentional, it isn’t the same thing as favoritism. it’s just that the parent perceives the healthy child as being able to handle things, and the sick child needs more of their attention. gwendolyn became consumed with her quest to cure eda, she devoted all her time and effort into finding treatments and cures that she went so far down this pyramid scheme rabbit hole out of sheer desperation to do something to make it better. and lilith...lilith didn’t need any of that. lilith seemed to be doing well. she was in the emperor’s coven, she was successful and smart and capable. so her needs fell by the wayside, and she felt neglected and forgotten by her mother. 

and that’s so common in these situations, so it is critical that families with sick or disabled children not fall into this trap of overprotecting one child because they assume they’re incapable and neglecting the other because they assume they’re fine. but again, it’s not like it’s this malicious thing and it’s certainly not the same thing as favoritism. 

800 notes • Posted 2021-07-03 16:55:26 GMT

#1

Somewhat ironically, I think possibly the most human story about 9/11 is the one about the tree they found in the rubble.

About thirty days or so after the attacks, as rescue workers were trying to clear the wreckage and find the bodies of the dead, they found this little tree branch sticking out, otherwise unremarkable...but it still had leaves. And do you know what they did?

They dug out this tree. They dug this burnt and blackened tree out of the pile, took it out of the city and re-planted it to give it a chance to survive. To grow back. Just because they saw these leaves. And by some miracle, it did, and ten years later they brought this now 30-foot-tall tree back to lower Manhattan to plant it in the memorial at ground zero. They brought the tree home.

And is that just not...the most human fucking thing? These guys saw this one thing in that pile that was still alive, and they said dammit, we're gonna save this little tree. We can't save anything else, but we're gonna save this tree. And they did.

Say what you want about people, but I truly believe we are good at heart.

12470 notes • Posted 2021-09-11 13:02:13 GMT

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[itsclydebitches]

I can't remember if it was you or someone else who talked about it, but I wonder if the sharp turn into "all adults are now wrong and the younger generation is the only hope" is because of the current political climate surrounding us. I know RT and Miles are very liberal (I can't speak for Kerry or the other writers), and that they have retweeted some posts with the same sort of theme (pt 1)

This exactly. My issue has never been with RWBY’s messages, only its execution. Younger generation surpassing those who came before them? All girl power team? Dictators are Bad™? Queer rights? Fuck racism? Hell yes to all of it! The problem is simply that, more often than not, RWBY fails to accurately craft and implement the messages it’s aiming for. It’s not a show that’s particularly good at nuance (everyone has one (1) reaction to Ozpin’s vision) and when that nuance shows up it’s often ignored by the writing (Ironwood’s heroics, Blake asking Weiss not to get involved with the racist, Adam’s brand, Qrow’s alcoholism getting fixed off screen, Whitley left on the stairs at the end of the volume, Oscar going shopping, etc.) Which isn’t an issue with some aspects of storytelling, but these are all subjects that demand nuance. Intentions are great, but at the end of the day the viewer only has what we’re given on the screen. Just like a writer might go, “I wrote such a romantic relationship!” and the fandom might respond with, “Actually no. You may have intended to write something romantic but what we got was abuse,” RWBY has a long history now of the writers (presumably) thinking they produced something - a morally gray Ozpin, a villain Ironwood, satisfying queer rep, fill in your preferred blank here - and my side of the fandom is going, “I see what you wanted but that’s not what we got. And canon isn’t superseded by a tweet published weeks later that only some of the fandom ended up seeing. We’re well past adhering to the authorial voice.” 

Which isn’t rare by any means. Stories try and fail at things all the time. In regards to RWBY and RWBY criticism, the disappointing thing is that all of these controversial subjects invite an easy way of slandering other fans. I delete a lot of asks in my inbox akin to, “Just admit that you hate queer people” because the assumption is that if I’m criticizing the execution of something like the Blake/Yang relationship then I must really just hate them together. It’s a stance I can understand because some people do use criticism as an ever moving finish line: to them queer rep is never good enough to justify it’s place in the narrative. They just keep coming up with reasons for why it’s “bad writing” and thus shouldn’t exist. For me and RWBY it’s the opposite though. It’s because I’m invested in all these topics that I want them treated accurately and respectfully (at least however “accurately” and “respectfully” translates into a fantasy story). When we talk about something like generational differences it does no good to have your characters stand up and insist that they’re perfect, they never needed an adult’s help at all. Not unless the story intends to prove them wrong and/or liars and/or you’ve shown us that they’re right to say that. I’m all about media’s impact (though many sneer at the concept that media can actually influence us in any negative way) and we see that kind of mindset here on tumblr all the time. On my dash it’s most prevalent in conversations about queer history and internet safety: younger fans insisting loudly that they know best without even bothering to hear out those who are older than them - those who lived through these situations and thus have experience to impart. That kind of stand-your-ground-it’s-cool-to-say-‘fuck adults’ mindset is learned. So yeah, it’s just a silly animated series. It’s just a couple of scenes. But those scenes impart messages when a) the writing isn’t polished enough to display nuanced sides to the debate or b) the viewer isn’t primed to question whatever the characters are imparting. RWBY is popular and having that popular series suddenly getting its fanbase to identify with characters who treat others this way and doesn’t acknowledge them as villains/morally gray/at least making mistakes to learn from is... a bit concerning. The fans who insist that their faves could never have an impact on their behavior are the same fans who slam into my inbox to cuss me out about it. 

Even if you don’t care about how RWBY handles topics like racism, abuse, political power, generational divides, and how that handling reflects real world situations... that lack of nuance hinders the storytelling. It’s just not as good as it could be which, as you say, is a shame because there’s so much amazing potential. As a writer I get it, it’s damn hard, but if RWBY wants to tackle such subjects they need more revision time. The chance for someone to say, “Okay you want to say A and made a stab at it... but really you’re conveying C at the moment. We need to do X, Y, and Z to actually get to A.”