#it reflects the people in my life more than any bland sanitized ‘we’re just like straight people!’ shit

[forbiddenseason]

It literally means so much to me, some little weirdo who used to draw slender man in dresses to have a show with an all powerful max cringe queer demon man and it’s doing so well and it means so much. Like this is something you can just do you can be free. Choose to be fucking free.

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

I Don't Wanna Grow Up (And Neither Can You)

You can't show women being hurt. You can't show child abuse. You can't show rape. You can't show incest. Pedophilia, self-harm, intimate partner abuse, necrophilia, violence against children; if you're going to so much as talk about any of these things you need to do so at a 5th-grade level and behind the dual firewalls of safe, pastel-colored animation and explicitly education-based presentation. The art has to show you in painstaking detail the exact way in which to behave. Even then there's no guarantee it won't provoke a public outcry, doxxing, death threats, and even campaigns to strip artists of their jobs and livelihoods.

The idea that by depicting an act an artist is endorsing that act seems baked into the minds of certain left-leaning sets of younger people, particularly teenagers and early twentysomethings. That they have such deep concern for the safety and social equality of their traumatized peers and the traumatized in their own ranks can only be admirable, but more often than not the form it takes is mass harassment and scapegoating targeting not institutions or major studios but independent creators, many of them marginalized themselves. If the whole thing sounds, with its zeal for censorship and its self-righteous hate campaigns against the disenfranchised, a little like the American Family Association with a glittery coat of paint, well, that's kind of what it is.

The usual arguments about internet anonymity and the horrible deformities it breeds in human interaction all apply here, and there's much to be said of the young age and unformed personalities of the people perpetrating the worst of it, but even older, more experienced art aficionados aren't immune to the fervor for purity in art. There seems to be a much deeper affection in these circles for corporate art -- for the Marvel cinematic universe and its bland, calculated inoffensiveness, say -- than there is for art made by artists. Movies like Wonder Woman and Captain America: Civil War are evaluated with a generosity of spirit that borders on delusion, cults of enthusiastic acclaim forming around actress Gal Gadot's onscreen thigh jiggle and the "subtle homo-eroticism" of Thor: Ragnarok.

Corporate art exists to please. It exists to reaffirm the status quo and to build affection for and loyalty to corporations. From the callous Islamophobia of the Iron Man movies to the US Air Force and CIA-approved wokeness of Captain Marvel and Black Panther, the whole enterprise is bent on saying as little as possible while looking as socially conscious as it can. Fandom's fixation on finding gay themes and subtext in these blockbuster juggernauts was more understandable when independent gay art was harder to find, but today you don't even have to brave a convention-- you can dig it up with a quick search on Etsy or Gumroad. When independent artists release material featuring actual deviant sexuality, though -- from gay content to incest -- the reaction from these same people is overwhelmingly prudish. There is little to no desire among them to interact with adult work created by adult gay and trans artists. That art -- small art, created for personal reasons -- is too dangerous to touch, too full of moral imperfections and frightening images.

But what's left in art once you scour away the things that make you uncomfortable? What's left for the people who make their living and/or maintain their sanity by approaching our own suffering from a place of skill, assurance, and safety? What's left for readers and viewers trying to grow as people, to find empathy for those they've been taught to despise, to understand their own sexual shame and fear? What's left for people struggling with the isolation of abuse who have no support and no words to help them name it? Art is the lifeblood of human connection and introspection. It is the foremost way in which we can confront our own weaknesses and failings. Sanitized and focused solely on the comfort and entertainment of its audience, it's no more meaningful than a halfhearted handjob from an indifferent lover.

The idea that depiction equates to endorsement has been pedaled in our society virtually since its inception. Its modern proponents range from anti-violent video game morality groups to the Westboro Baptist Church's unhinged campaigns to remove television with gay content from the airwaves. Imagine a world where Debbie Dreschler never made her autobiographical comic Daddy's Girl, one of the most scorching, hideous things ever committed to paper. How many people would never have seen their own experiences with parental incest reflected in her work, and thus felt able to finally break themselves open and process their deep pain? When a subject becomes taboo we lose our ability to process the pain surrounding it, to talk about it openly, to understand why it happens.

Another core pillar of this movement is the expression of outrage toward sexual kinks based around transgression. Surviving rape, abuse, and other traumatic incidents is never an easy thing, and it's never clean. You'll carry the marks of it in your sex life, in your sense of safety, in your beliefs about the world until the day you die. In Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden, a 1975 collection of women's anonymously submitted sexual fantasies, multiple Jewish women who had survived the Holocaust wrote with deep shame of their need to sexualize that experience, to relive it with their partners in a safe and loving environment. It's a relatable sentiment for anyone whose sexuality has been shaped by trauma, which can force shame and need against one another until they grow together inextricably. A close friend of mine was attacked as a "vicious anti-semite" for quoting the book.

The same friend was attacked en masse for her erotic comics featuring gay and bisexual men, comics which depict those men with complexity, heart, and loving attention to detail. The argument was that as a straight woman it was fetishistic for her to portray sex between men, a position so mind-bogglingly dense that I'm hard pressed to find a way to fire back at it other than "really?" It's difficult to parse until you realize that the targets of these little brigades of loudmouths and scolds are always, always women. For all that they're marching under the banner of social justice, the people they feel most comfortable threatening with harm and emotionally brutalizing are women. Men both in the independent art scene and in the mainstream make violent, hateful art every day, but screaming at men doesn't satisfy the misogynistic impulses beaten into us by a culture that sees women as weak, stupid, and venally evil.

What you have in the end is a movement which in practice enforces a sort of neoliberal social conservatism, demanding the sanitization of art produced by women and labeling existing art degenerate with the same verve the Nazis displayed in putting the torch to centuries of Europe's artistic history. It's a small, impoverished way to understand the purpose of art and it's fueled by deep, repressed misogyny. If we pretend everything is good, if we act like Marvel will fix racism and sexism if we just give them another four production cycles, if we make our branded dollies kiss and claim it's because the movies portray them in a symbolically homo-erotic context, OBVIOUSLY, then we don't need to look at ourselves or see what we're doing to the people around us. We can close our eyes and slip into the lukewarm water of purposeful mediocrity.

There's nothing wrong with escapism. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to or not being able to engage with art about horrific things. The problem begins when you look at the people who can, who need to, and decide that they can't either, that they're going to have to bend to your worldview or you'll call them pedophiles and nazis and incest apologists and run them out of town. And what then? When you've crushed the hopes and dreams of every woman writing dark erotica or making beautiful, sensual comics about love and loss, what's left but staring at each other in a creative wasteland and waiting for one of your own to show the tiniest sign of weakness so you can recapture the thrill of moral outrage by ripping them apart. It's a cannibalistic cultural dead end where corporations are our friends and other human beings are the enemy.

I stand with sex workers, with pornographers, with artists of all kinds struggling to make something hot, something vulnerable, something raw and sickening and terrifying. If they fuck it up, well, at least they're a person, not some faceless sea of suits trying to get their arms down my throats to pull out my organs. Enjoy your popcorn movies, your Steven Universe and your X-Men comics, but ask yourself, what are you immersing yourself in by not reaching beyond those things? What is prolonged and overgrown childhood doing to your mind and to your moral sense of the world? Growing up is painful, yes, but if you want to learn to love, to open yourself up to others, to touch the deepest, rawest parts of your psyche and your sexuality, you're going to have to suffer.

From: https://www.patreon.com/posts/25994657

[caffeineivore]

Many thanks...

To @apsaraqueen and @antivanonmytongue for helping me plot out this segment of fic. Therefore, dedicated to them because they are awesome ladies :P

Title: Yuan Fen

Ship: R/J AU

Notes: Yuan Fen: Fateful coincidence; destiny which brings two people’s lives together at some point, often through astronomical odds. “It takes hundreds of rebirths to bring two persons to ride in the same boat; it takes a thousand eons to bring two persons to share the same pillow.” A concept related to karma in Chinese Buddism.

Rating: PG/PG13

In which R’s life in NYC catches up with her...

Rachel is dropped off by the hotel by the “Chinese Uber” and returns to find seven missed-call notifications on her iPad’s facetime, all from her ex-boyfriend, Kade Bowen. It’s bizarre and unexpected; certainly, Kade had not made any effort to contact her since their breakup, and seven missed calls in rapid succession hints at a type of desperation very unlike the cool and collected lawyer. Frowning and wondering if something bad has happened in New York, perhaps to her father or maybe some other mutual acquaintance, she returns the call.

Kade picks up after three rings, and his handsome face settles into harassed lines on the screen. “Rachel. It’s half-past nine and I have a meeting in five minutes. I don’t have time right now, I shouldn’t even be answering this at work.”

Rachel’s eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. “Excuse me? I’m just returning your call. I had seven notifications from you. Is everything all right?” By some miracle, she keeps her voice calm rather than shrewish despite the quick surge of irritation at his tone.

“Yes, everything is fine... look, I have to go very soon. Meeting, like I said. Where were you, anyway? I would have thought that you’d have returned to your hotel a lot sooner than now.”

“Out having dinner with a friend, not that it’s any of your business any more,” Rachel snips out, raising her chin. “It’s what normal people do here at seven o’clock or so, local time.”

“You don’t know anyone there. Even if there are some of your grandfather’s contemporaries left in China, I doubt you’d know any of them, considering he was only a young man himself when he’d left.”

Rachel closes her eyes and exhales slowly, counts to ten in her head. It would not do to give Kade the satisfaction of riling her up, not after the nice evening she’d had, and manages to modulate her voice to a tone of bland politeness so pleasant it could freeze a wildfire. “I’m sorry, it’s been close to a month here, in a small group of people that spend lots of time together on a daily basis. Surely you consider me socially adept enough to have made the acquaintance of one or two by now? I would hardly waste it upon you, but I have a more-than-adequate amount of charm at my disposal should the situation require.” The smile she lets cross her lips as she makes this statement is chilly and sharp enough to cut glass. 

“Of course,” Kade seems immune to her sarcasm, and returns her smile with a condescending one of his own. “I never implied otherwise, Rach. Look, I really do have to go, I’ll call you later.”

“Oh, goody. I can’t wait,” Rachel sneers, then disconnects the call before he could get another word in edgewise. 

She deliberately turns on the television and watches an hour of some period drama, complete with wire-fu and swordplay and elaborate costumes, in spite of language barriers and not the faintest idea of the plot, to distract herself before going to bed.

**

Kade facetimes her again, at a quarter to six in the morning, and it wakes her up. Rubbing sleep out of her eyes, she glares at the face in the screen. “What do you want, Kade?”

“I’m sorry if I woke you, but I have a dinner meeting with a client, so this was the only time,” he says, not sounding particularly sorry. “I suppose I should ask you how your trip has been. Hopefully you’ve been taking care of yourself-- I saw a documentary on sanitation standards in foreign countries, and while I’m sure you’re sensible enough to get vaccinated before leaving, you should still take certain precautions...”

“I only drink water out of rusted drain pipes every other day,” Rachel cuts him off with an eyeroll. “And only once did I five-second-rule it when I purchased dodgy street food and dropped it on the ground by accident. Did you need something, or can I get dressed and ready to go about my day?” 

“Go ahead, I can talk while you do all that. I know how long you take in the mornings.” The smug tone in his voice grates on Rachel’s nerves, and she wonders how she’d ever managed to put up with it, let alone for so long. “I don’t have long-- dinner meeting, like I said, so I’m just going to get straight to the point. I want you to come back to me, Rach.”

Rachel pauses, foamy toothbrush halfway from her mouth, and stares at the screen, speechless. He continues, without apparently expecting any response from her. “We’re good together, you know. You’re smart, beautiful, ambitious-- and while I may not have always shown you how much I appreciate those qualities, you should certainly know that I do. Come on, Rach. We’ve known each other forever-- our fathers are partners at the biggest and most prestigious law firm in Manhattan, for godsakes. Your father even dropped in to speak to me after you left me to say how disappointed he was over that whole debacle. His dearest wish is for us to take over the firm eventually. Harris and Bowen will always remain Harris and Bowen-- I’d even let you keep your maiden name if we married, if you liked.”

Rachel sets her mascara wand down before she stabs herself in the eye by accident, and stares at her reflection in the mirror, unsure of whether to cry or laugh hysterically at what she’s hearing. Deliberately, she takes a minute to turn back to the screen. 

“So, you mean to say that you broke it off with Tiffanie. You know, the yoga instructor that you were seeing on the side.”

“Come on, baby! You know that wasn’t-- that was only physical, and...”

“You really called me seven times for this?” Rachel’s voice is vibrating with rage. “So you mean to say that the bimbo, whose g-string I found in the laundry hamper, was ‘only physical’, in the sense that clearly I am not exciting enough in bed for you. But because I am so much more suitable in all other aspects, you’ve, what, progressed from making decisions with your dick to making decisions based on stock portfolio options and the opinions of the country club?! You know what, Kade? I think that yoga instructor Tiffanie with an ‘ie’ is perfect for you.  Congratulations. I hope you two will be very happy together. Goodbye.” 

He calls two more times, and Rachel ignores him both times, but when her father calls, she sighs and picks up. “Yes, dad? If this is about Kade, the answer is no, never again.”

“Well, then.” Trent Harris raises an eyebrow in an expression identical to Rachel’s. “I guess I just got told.”

“Sorry,” Rachel huffs out a breath and takes a seat on the bed. “Kade’s been calling. He’s trying to get back together.”

“I know,” her father says slowly. “I spoke to him the other day-- he’d mentioned that he didn’t really understand why you’d go on this trip, and that he missed you since the two of you broke up.”

“Well, we won’t be getting back together, so you can put that hope to rest if that’s what you’re trying to do.”

“Not completely,” Trent���s voice is low and careful. Rachel has never heard him raise it, except in the courtroom. “I never did the full story on why you broke up, though.”

“He cheated on me,” Rachel says without preamble. “Of course, he says he’s sorry and that it meant nothing. But I don’t feel as though I should have to put up with that.”

“Certainly not,” Trent’s dark brows draw together in a scowl. “My daughter does not have to settle for anything or anybody. I did mention to him that it seemed as though he had made you unhappy, and to fix it. I didn’t know the details, though.”

“Not worth knowing, dad,” Rachel sighs. “Can we not talk about him?”

“Okay.” Trent looks as though he might have something to add, but acquiesces easily enough. “Are you having a good time in China?”

“Yeah, I am,” Rachel smiles her first genuine smile since last night. “It’s beautiful here, even if I’m apparently not physiologically super-compatible with high altitudes. I can see why Gramps wanted to go.”

“That’s good,” Trent nods, then there’s an awkward split-second pause before he speaks again. “I’m glad you’re happy, connecting with that side of your heritage. Your mother would’ve wanted that, too.”

Rachel doesn’t have many memories of her mother, who’d been buried the same year that she’d started first grade, but the solemnity of her father’s expression lets her take his words at face value. Before she says anything else though, her borrowed Chinese iPhone rings.

It’s John. “Where are you? I’m in the hotel lobby, mei nü,” he tells her when she picks up, and she jerks up her head, realizes the time. She was supposed to be down ten minutes ago.

“Crap, I’ll be right down.” She hangs up, then turns back to her father on facetime. “I have to go. I’ll see you back in New York, dad.”