#it was lesbians who pulled me out of my post coming out misery & made me create joy despite all of it

[baravaggio]

yo im a dyke but ur rbs make me think sm more critically of sexual politics and queerness i love bisexuals i jst wanted to lyk ur like a celebrity or a sexy philosopher to me. long live bisexuals from lesbians we love u guys!!

this is so so sweet omg I’m really touched 🥹 love to all lesbians now & forever!!

[pointnumbersixteen]

How do you see The Captain's coming out, and growth in confidence and self acceptance thereafter taking place?

I like this question! …and I’m probably going to elaborate on it a bit more than many people will want to read (I noticed back when I was regularly writing essay length posts that they did not get a lot of love) and it’s probably going to get even more ramble-y than usual (brain has not been braining as cooperatively as it should recently and the decision to drink half a bottle of wine right before answering this- sorry- probably does not help), but here we are.  

 About coming out scenarios, none of mine are particularly elaborate. While I do think he needs to come out for his story line to progress, I can’t imagine him making a big thing out of it (long or elaborate announcements, heart-to-hearts, emotional displays of bearing his authentic self or any of the like), either with the group, or person-by-person, for several reasons:

First off, that sort of a coming-out to-do is a more modern notion, and I doubt he was a particularly modern person even when he was alive, seventy-five years ago. His notions of privacy and propriety are probably much more conservative than ours, and I feel like that makes it unlikely that he’d go into any sort of detail, at least at early in this process, about his feelings/emotions or the specificities of his attractions. We’re talking about a man who doesn’t even use his own name. It’s difficult to picture him going into depth about his desires and love life.

Secondly, he’s a bit of a social coward. (He’s not a physical coward, of course, he jumped on that bomb in the garden without hesitation, and acknowledged after the fact that he gotten caught up in the moment, and therefore hadn’t really thought about how a bomb couldn’t hurt him.) And I get it, I’m a bit of a social coward, too, so no judgement. He probably faced a lot of ridicule in his life. Being a social coward is totally fair. But he doesn’t put himself into situations that might involve awkward interpersonal interactions if he can help it, and legs it whenever interactions he’s already in become to awkward for him. I feel like he’s probably quite desperate (although he’d never admit to it) to save face and protect what bits of his ego remain unscathed.

Think about it: he could have spoken to Fanny on his own about her nightly screaming disturbing him in s1e1, they have a clear association established at the outset of the show, they leave Heather’s room together at the end of the very first scene, but he doesn’t do so until he has the weight of the whole group to back him up about the screaming at their meeting. He had to buck up his courage and give himself his little ‘over the top we go’ pep talk before going to speak to Alison in Gorilla War. Also, if there was actually something wrong with his soldiers’ horseplay after hours in Reddy Weddy- if it was breaking regulations or even his own orders for quiet hours- and he heard it, he could have gone down directly when he heard it, confronted whoever was involved and order them to stop or put them on report. But no, instead he addressed the entire group of soldiers in a sixteen point morning brief. He even dispatched Pat to confront Alison about the party in s2e2, instead doing it himself… and spit out his apology/reconciliation with Pat at the end as fast as possible. And as for legging it when things get awkward, see his retreats following the group confronting him in Getting Out and after Alison telling him he wasn’t needed in the Grey Lady- and on a more figurative than literal level, but most relevantly, his quick turn from ‘I’ll miss you’ to ‘we’ll miss you’ with Havers in Reddy Weddy.

This is not a man who wants to be in awkward or embarrassing situations. And I think that coming out, at least at first, will probably be a bit embarrassing for him- it was scandalous in his time, and I think it will take him longer to get over that feeling and come to terms with himself than it will to finally acknowledge that he’s gay. So I doubt he’d make more of it than he utterly feels he has to, at least at first. And of course, he’d have to be a bit afraid that people would judge him or stop associating with him over it, as sadly, in his own time many people would have done, and most of the ghosts are from even earlier times than he was. So that might add more hesitation…

And thirdly, he doesn’t like and/or respect many of his house mates. The other twentieth century ghosts are the only ones he spends much time with. I doubt he’d go out of his way to communicate much of anything to the rest if it wasn’t “mission related” much less discuss his sexuality with them. He mostly disregards Humphrey. See his, “Oh, it’s you.” Mary obviously doesn’t like him and he only associates with her when it might be useful for his ‘missions.’ He clearly doesn’t think much of Thomas and doesn’t really even bother including him in his plans. These aren’t people he’s going to have heart-to-hearts with.

With those constraints in place, here’s a non-exhaustive list of possibilities by which I might see his coming out finally happening. They’re really just scenarios I made for myself on how I might see him coming out and I like to keep my options open (the first three are strategies he might go for, the last is an alternate scenario, presented in decreasing levels of directness on his part):

1) The ‘pull the bandage off quickly and hope it doesn’t sting too much’ strategy.

The Captain waits for the end of one of their various group activities or meetings, where all announcements seem to be made, gets up, clears his throat, stammers a bit, announces it tersely, using the most proper popular word for homosexuality that existed in his time (think: “Heh-hem. Er. Um. Well. It has recently come to my attention that I am- er- well- as it happens- gay. I, uh, thought it should be noted. That is all.”), and then beats a hasty retreat, so he doesn’t have to try to cope with the potentially negative aftermath. Of course, there isn’t a negative aftermath, because many of the ghosts already have guessed and the rest don’t really care. Someone, probably Pat, because he does the bulk of the emotional labor in the group, and more importantly, he’s Cap’s closest friend, would have to go after him. He would of course be initially defensive, and Pat would have to sooth his feathers a bit- or maybe just spit it out over his defensiveness- that he guessed a long time ago and so had plenty of other people, and they were just waiting for him to be ready, and really, it’s fine, and no one’s going to disown him for it.  

2) The ‘well maybe I should tell my friends with the hope they support me’ strategy.

He gets together with a small group, the people whose company he actually values, definitely Fanny and Pat, maybe Julian, probably Alison either at the same time or after he finishes with his ghosts pals, and says it in much the same way as the previous scenario, but waiting for their reactions rather than retreating straight away. Pat and Alison, I expect, would answer with something like ‘yeah, we figured that one out a long time ago, actually, and it’s completely fine’ and Julian’s reaction would probably be something like, ‘well, obviously.’ Fanny’s had a lot of character growth since season one, when I expect her reaction would have been very shrill and judgmental, probably still would be a touch less warm and/or nonchalant, but I picture it as something like a sigh, followed by a pat on the arm and something like, ‘well, I still like you better than everyone else here, anyway.’ Word would eventually trickle to everyone else by way of social osmosis. Or not. No one seems to care if Humphrey or the plague ghosts are well informed.  

3) The ‘I’m not brave enough to actually go through the process of actually telling anyone anything about me so let’s just drop hints and hope everyone figures it out without making a big deal about it’ strategy.  

The indirect approach (I’m rather fond of this one, but mostly because it was my own primary coming out approach)… he first sends out feelers to certain people on the topic of homosexuality, probably Alison, since she’s modern, hosted a lesbian wedding, and very much implied that she’d be ready to keep scandalous secrets for him in Reddy Weddy, and  possibly maybe also Julian, as he’s the most sexually experienced/knowledgeable, and after Alison spent a while inundating him with ‘it’s okay to be gay’ messages (along with a sudden and entirely unexplained influx of LGBT media) as she’s socially clever enough to see that’s what he’s looking for and after Julian spent a while telling him probably far more than he ever actually wanted to know about the potentialities of gay sex, that might boost the Captain’s confidence enough to let him start dropping hints to people, instead of telling them outright (consciously commenting on the attractiveness of men they see rather than occasionally accidentally blurting it out- see ‘the handsome one’- occasionally putting forth an opinion or stance on the LGBT world ‘it would have been nice if gay marriage was acceptable when I was alive,’ maybe occasionally mentioning how certain men would make cute couple), expecting them to meet him in the middle and figure out the point on their own… of course, many of them have already realized, so this isn’t a problem. It’s entirely possible, though, that Mary (world view not terribly grounded in reality) and Kitty (lack of life experience and/or instruction about life, see the how are babies made subplot) never pick up the hints on their own and someone else eventually has to tell them.

4) The ‘someone puts him out of his misery’ scenario.

Cap acknowledges to himself that he’s gay first and then, wishing to avoid embarrassment or lack of acceptance, obviously, awkwardly, painfully tries to disguise it and in doing so draws attention to it, until a third party decides to put him out of his misery and tell him that many of them figured it out ages ago and that everyone is fine with it. Maybe Pat. Maybe Alison. I kind of like the idea of it being Fanny (with her lovely character growth and her couple of suspicious glances his way in the Perfect Day), actually, by way of something like ‘You know, I was entirely prepared to continue on living with my husband, George, keeping his secrets, about the, uh, sort of person he was, and you’re at least one better than him, given that you at least never murdered me- or, for that matter, never married some poor woman you had no interest in to shield yourself from scrutiny… and so, what I’m saying is, I wouldn’t turn my back on you for being the, uh, sort of person you are, either, and maybe things have progressed enough that you don’t actually have to keep secrets at all.’ Cap would take all of this in with a mixture of mortification and relief. I’m rather fond of this scenario, too.  

 As for the second bit of the question, once his sexuality is out there, though, and no one judges him or hates him for it- and some are quite supportive- I do see him becoming more self-accepting. If no one’s judging him, does he need to judge himself so harshly? And also more confident. Because some of those things that he’s always felt different about and in the past has probably been ridiculed about in the past (even if he’s in denial about being gay, he and quite a few other people had to at the very least note that he’s not particularly interested in women), are, apparently just fine now. So he’s a bit more just fine now himself. And that weight of always trying to be someone else, someone who’s just right, can lift and he can relax a bit more. And that would probably help him a lot, too. I see it as a slow sort of thawing process. No matter what way he comes out, I still see Alison as very helpfully providing a variety of LGBT media to help this process along. And maybe he’d eventually get to the point where he processed enough and warmed up enough to be able to talk more in depth, at least with his friends, about what it was like being him in repressed pre-war Britain, and what sort of men he’s attracted to (I enjoy the idea of him and Fanny- gradually overcoming her own repression- scoping out hot men together). Maybe he’ll even luck out one of his male housemates will decide (or has already decided) that bisexuality is a valid option and he’ll get a date (insert whichever ghost y’all ship him with here). I bet Alison would totally help him set up a nice date, too, with her convenient still-functional-in-the-mortal-realm hands. And it would be nice to maybe see him get a taste of actual happiness.    

[inmyarmswrappedin]

DRUCK reactions - s4 ep1

Ages ago I said I wanted to write meta about Cris’ and Matteo’s seasons, so of course, when I finally sit down to write reactions to a Skam remake, it’s about Amira instead.

A few weeks back I was composing tumblr posts in bed before falling asleep (my number 1 hobby lol) when it struck me that the writing for Amira’s season was really… indefensibly bad. So let’s stroll down through memory lane and revisit Druck s4, or how to throw away your potential because you have to put out this season before summer is over!

CLIP 1: Dark clouds over Winterberg

Obviously I’m writing these with the benefit of hindsight, but I will try and incorporate what my initial reaction to a clip was whenever I can remember.

Sometime between the Abiball episode and episode 32, I argued (on twitter) that the Abiball special was the Abiball episode instead, the first episode of Amira’s season. It would thus introduce us to the conflicts and characters that would take place during Amira’s season. I thought that in addition to the obvious Amira/Mohammed, Carlos/Kiki/Essam would be important, Kiki’s family life would be important, Stefan would be important, and David/Matteo would probably not be important as they seemed to be doing just fine in their scenes.

I didn’t think Mia/Alex would be important because I didn’t actually watch their clip lol. The Winterberg stans on my twitter orbit thought the clip was cute and nothing to worry about. That should’ve been my first clue that the (twitter) stan habit of repeating the “we never lose” mantra doesn’t make for great viewing comprehension, because watching the clip, it’s so obvious that shit is gonna go down lol.

Mia moves from one of the flat share’s bathrooms to the other because they never really recreated Mia’s room in the s3 flat share.

I still haven’t watched Mia’s episode, so I don’t know how all this stuff is going to get resolved, but it seems like Mia doesn’t think they can handle a LDR, and Alex is picking up on those vibes hard. I guess I don’t really get why Mia is so pessimistic about it because at that age I kinda thought a few months break weren’t really an obstacle. (Not sure if it would help me to watch Mia’s season, because this seems like a wholly new conflict.)

Anyway, Alex acts sweet/reassuring (I really like how soft spoken everyone is in this episode), so Mia puts it out of her mind for now. But Idk, they haven’t really spoken about the elephant in the room.

CLIP 2: Don’t call them the chastest evak ever again

Tbh this clip comes across as a direct rebuttal to all the s3 commentary about David and Matteo seeming like they’re not into each other, or like they aren’t ~passionate~ like the other evaks.

It’s like, “these gremlins are horny on main, now shut up.”

But I like that they’re fully dressed, like yes, you can show physical intimacy without undressing your teen actors (shade fully intended).

I love Lukas von Horbatschewsky’s hair and I’m very jealous of Matteo in this sequence, lmao.

Luis Sepúlveda died of coronavirus this year, in Spain. You’re welcome for that bit of 2020 misery dripping onto this cute clip.

I do think David feels guilty that he may have caused Matteo to fail his Spanish exam because of David’s own issues, which I think is very on brand for David. Obviously it wasn’t his fault.

I really like how soft spoken everyone is in this episode, 2X.

And this has been said a million times by now, but David and Matteo are the one evak version where they’re the same age (Joana is in the same year as Cris, but is a year older, so she must’ve gotten held back at some point). So it’s funny, and possibly a reference to Isak and Even, to see David talking about what it’d be like if they had that age difference. Like, maybe David would be more like Even in behavior! And, going by Matteo’s reaction, he wouldn’t be into that.

This clip really feels like the ending to Matteo and David. They’ll go on a road trip, they’ll work on David’s movie, they’ll be around, but this clip is their conclusion. They both feel secure and content in their relationship, and ready for everything that’s to come.

Like I said on the post about Cris and Joana, I like that David and Matteo don’t have further issues. And while I have tons of issues with Druck s4, which I will be talking about forever in the following posts, I never had an issue with how they deployed Matteo or David. (Okay, self. Now say that again without crying about David’s season that should have been.)

Fucking David cutting their make out short only to then say such a highkey flirty, romantic thing to Matteo though. No wonder Matteo’s like, “STOP, I’M SUPPOSED TO STUDY.”

CLIP 3: A challenger appears!

I like the fanon that David is a healthy eater (or at least in comparison to Matteo), because all we ever see David eat of his own volition (i.e. not food that was made for him) is candy.

God, I love Kiki snatching David’s fruity gummies out of his hands. It makes me laugh every time, particularly how she demands to know if the candy is vegan.  

Hanna looks beautiful. ;_;

There’s a split second when Jonas is about to give Hanna that box where David looks alarmed in the background. In my mind he’s all, “Bro, no. Not a public proposal. Reel it back in, bro!”

And then, to the surprise of Jonas and all the viewers, we find out that not only are Jonas and Hanna not together, but Hanna is dating German Arthur. Again, in “fandom refuses to acknowledge storyline conflict until it’s staring right at them” news, Stefan had actually been introduced via an audio to Hanna the day before, but people were convinced it was Hanna’s dad. Whose actor they called just to record an audio. Clearly.

My belief at this point was that Stefan would be relevant to Amira’s storyline, but instead it was just a way to give Hanna her own episode. 🤡

Matteo’s transformation into Michi is complete by donning his grandpa hat.

He also makes to trip David for no real reason. Throwback to Unter Wasser.

Matteo saying Inshallalalah in a sing song voice is cute, but so annoying.

Matteo Florenzi: He’s a pain in the ass, but we love him.

CLIP 4: I guess Abdi and Axel picked up his grades at another point

I love the way Matteo grabs David’s head to pull him along. They’re so cute and I’m gonna enjoy every second.

Jonas also grabs Hanna along, because fans needed to be further confused as to what was happening with Hanna and Stefan and Jonas.

Thank you, Druck, for telling me Kiki’s and Amira’s grades, but as you can understand, that’s nowhere near enough to satisfy my curiosity and I will be needing to know everyone’s GPA because that is the kind of thing that’s important to me. What about it!!!

I think, going by how impressed Mia is, that Mia’s grade isn’t as good as Amira’s. Which I think is a neat detail, since the Nooras are kind of supposed to be the perfect girls. I like that Amira is even better than Mia at school.

I thought the concept of Carlos failing his final exam and maybe realizing school wasn’t his thing would’ve been an interesting storyline to explore, but I’m not mad that it didn’t happen. Hopefully Druck will touch on it with the next kids.

And we’re now treated to three reveals about Kiki. Kiki has a sister (now she has two), she likes the idea of moving out and living with Carlos, and her mom isn’t doing well.

The remakes trying to develop their Vildes past s4 make sense to me. By the end of Skam, Vilde clearly was the character who’d been the most robbed of a season, there were several potential storylines to do with her. Financial instability, alcoholic mom, eating disorders, plus it seemed obvious that any season taking place during the girls’ russetide should go to her. And that’s without getting into Vilde’s strong denial that she was a lesbian.

So the remakes are sitting on all these potential storylines, but as we now know, they can’t make their own Vilde season.

And from a European TV exec’s point of view, Vilde (who in every version is a white, skinny, ostensibly straight girl) is a very safe main after the gay and Muslim seasons.

Cue the LITTLE SISTER.  

I get why people are fed up with the Vildes’ prominence in the remakes that are in their latter stages, but at the same time we got 8 versions of Noora’s season, most of which are a limpdicked enemies to lovers story with a misguided sexual assault storyline tacked at the end. (And I say misguided because after a strong start, it’s mostly about what William will think, how William will react, I can’t tell William about this, etc.) So in my case, I’ve had quite enough Noora to last me a lifetime, but my Vilde thirst has only begun to be quenched.

Tangent over, Kiki lies that she’s not going to the lake because she’s going to check on Carlos. Bad form, Kiki.

CLIP 5: Graduation (Friends Forever).mp3

In clown news, I predicted there’d be a clip between the Kiki stuff and the actual dance (maybe a Sam clip), as it seemed to me there wasn’t much of a connection between Kiki looking sad on that ping pong table and PARTY TIME. Lol at me.

And speaking of clowning, while I thought the Abiball episode was part of s4, I also thought that was fine because it was just doing the multi POV episode in the beginning of the season rather than at the end, right? Wrong.

As much as it would’ve been great if Sam and Abdi had storylines pertaining to racism and islamophobia (whether Abdi is or isn’t a Muslim, people would probably assume he is), I also have to admit… This conversation is hilarious.

“I want to have intercourse with you.” [glass breaks in the background]

Abdi closing his speech with a wide smile gvvhvh.

The first hundred times I watched this scene, I thought Alex seemed a bit alarmed at the conversation taking place, but really… We’re back to stone-faced Alex lol.

Don’t kill me, but I feel a little bad for Abdi in this moment. He really put himself out there and Sam just leaves without giving him an answer, yikes. I actually got tired of Abdi’s sad sackiness during the season, but right now I feel for him. L

There’s this smile Jonas sometimes directs at dudes (like Alex here) that makes me think… Bi. He also directs it at Matteo in s3.

Ugh.

There’s a parallel universe where Stefan was the villain of Amira’s season, and it would’ve been a much more interesting season than the one we got.

Because Stefan is a bit of a Darth Jonas. He works for Greenpeace, but, at least in this scene, seems a bit full of himself, and like… twisting the knife in a way that feels like it has to be intentional. And it would’ve been so interesting if Druck had tackled the white dudes who seem like they’re not going to be assholes about Muslims, but then turn around and say some shocking garbage. I’m sure we’ve all met a guy like that before.

In my mind, Stefan would’ve driven a wedge between Hanna and Amira, which would’ve been way more compelling than what we got, but on the other hand, it probably would’ve made fandom people hate Hanna, and people outside of fandom hate Amira.

Anyway, tag teaming gays! I love how David and Matteo share a look and immediately take care of both Jonas and Stefan.

I also love it when David looks murderous. It looks good on him.

But I feel like this didn’t go anywhere? Like, Matteo always hated Stefan and continued hating Stefan until the finale. In this scene, David seems to dislike Stefan just as much, but it’s not a thread they bother following. It’s too bad because I think Matteo and David together sabotaging Stefan is a lot funnier than just Matteo doing it.

I love how soft spoken Amira is when telling Essam not to show up at her graduation party. I would’ve been a lot less polite lmao.

You know, I actually thought Kiki was genuine here when she said she wasn’t a fan of competitions. Obviously that’s not the Kiki we’ve known until this point, but like, I thought it was meant to show character development on her part, But we’ll talk about THAT more in the following episodes.

Matteo fully blames their win on David being so hot, mysterious and new, and it’s hilarious because that’s also what initially drew him to David. Like, “fuck you for being so hot!”

I thought it was such a nice detail that they brought back the girl from the refugee classes in s1. We’re saying goodbye to all these school people who are going on their own post high school journeys without us!

In my mind, Abdi and Alex are talking about something completely serious, like, I don’t know, Abdi’s dad wanting him to study business and Alex advising Abdi on the best business schools in Berlin or something.

I feel like Hanna is the one girl in the squad who really doesn’t feel ready for post high school life and I HATE the writers so much for how they wrapped her character up, but we’ll save that for later.

I could watch Matteo passing the tiara (=the main) to Amira forever. The way he tips his hat and looks like even he’s a little surprised that he (a character like him!) was ever the lead on a teen show, David’s voice asking Matteo if he’s coming, Matteo leaving with David to live happily ever after, the initial notes of Just Got Paid as Amira looks at nighttime Berlin. This meme is overdone by now, but THE POETIC CINEMA.

Jonas glaring at romantic rivals at end of year dances is iconic at this point.

Amira being tagteamed by an annoying little brother AND a well-meaning, embarrasing older brother. Choose your own nightmare.

I really love the set up for the Essam/Kiki/Carlos conflict. The emotional potential is SO good because on one hand you have Kiki, who wants to have a good time for once instead of parenting her own parent, then Carlos whose self-esteem is on the floor after having failed his final exam, and Essam, whose own sense of self-worth hinges upon whether white German girls find him attractive. Like, obviously Essam is never going to come between Kiki and Carlos who have been through some shit together, but with Carlos out of commission and Essam eager to please, you can see how the situation could so easily turn into a mess.

Amira and Mohammed have the most sexual tension out of any Yousana pair, period. They literally just said hi to each other and I already feel like I’m intruding gvhvhv.      

Social media

David saying of Matteo: “Er bekommt Auslauf.” (Something like, “he gets walkies” because he’s been good with revising) is the cutest shit ever.

Remember when Stefan sent Jonas a whole ass message and signed it “with sunny greetings”? Stefan was much more fun when we were supposed to find him unbearable.

Kiki creating a new Whatsapp group for every single thing is so true to life.

I’d forgotten that Amira also hated Stefan almost right away. The season that could’ve been, I tell you.

All the Abi Chaker Clan content reminds me of how I thought Jonas looked like, well, such a child, compared to Stefan, and I thought that was intentional. Like, here is Stefan with a Greenpeace job whereas Jonas doesn’t know what to do with his life, and he’s like, spray-painting abi chaker clan onto walls and posting pics to the abi chaker clan account. It’s not that I thought Jonas should’ve acted like a whole ass adult, of course he’s having fun with his high school friends, but I thought Jonas might feel inadequate in comparison to where Stefan is at this point of his life.

I can’t remember who revealed it, but Sara was supposed to end up with Toilet Sam and that was supposed to come out during the s3 finale (on that week, Sara posted a story with a guy whose face was obscured iirc). Since that was part of the clip where Hanna and Jonas also got back together, which they cut to make way for Hanna/Jonas/Stefan drama, Sara takes some other dude to the Abiball. And I think we’re supposed to think that’s the same dude she went on that date with.

[nerdygaymormon]

I desperately need advice about my 16 yo daughter who has stopped "believing in the Church" because she has "decided to be lesbian".

It’s unlikely your daughter “decided to be lesbian” but instead she’s describing her feelings and how the world works for her. There’s not a “fix” for this because she is not broken.

Maybe she stopped “believing in the Church” because she doesn’t see a future for her there or because of the way people in her situation are spoken about.

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My advice is first to read these 10 tips for parents on the church’s website. Tip #1 is “You will never regret saying ‘I love you.’“

Your job is to be the parent your child needs and to love them and prepare them for the world.

Your daughter experiences the world in wonderful ways. Studies show that LGBT people tend to be more creative, have higher IQ’s, higher emotional intelligence, have more compassion, are more cooperative and have less hostility. Does any of that sound like your daughter?

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Now that she’s out, you’ll think of past conversations or comments you made and realize how those could have hurt her. It’s not too late to apologize. You’ll probably think of different things she’s said and done and understand them in a whole new way. You’ll see her orientation has always been there.

You’re going to have to change your hopes and expectations for her future. I know parents have dreams and putting them away can invoke feelings of loss. That’s okay. Spend time listening to her hopes for the future, where she wants to go and what she feels is her path and help her find ways to achieve those dreams. 

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An important role for parents is being your child’s advocate and protector. Speak up when you hear homophobic things. Even if it’s “Hey, these are real people you’re talking about and that was unkind.”

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For gay Mormons, the normal path is to come out and then quickly leave the Church, and there’s good reason for that. A recent study showed the more religious and involved in church a teen is, the likelihood of their attempting suicide drops significantly UNLESS they’re LGBT, in which case increased church involvement has the opposite effect.

You should familiarize yourself with the warning signs of suicide. In the United States nearly 1/3 of gay teens have attempted suicide. Also know that LGBT individuals are more likely to be the victims of bullying and violence than any other minority group in the United States.

Studies show that for gay members, being active in the LDS Church results in a lower quality of life and lower self-esteem, higher rates of depression, sexual identity crisis, internalized homophobia and 70% of these members have symptoms of PTSD. Finding an LGBTQ-positive therapist, counselor or psychologist can help in dealing with these things.

I know it’s hard to hear that the church you love and believe in can be harmful to your daughter. Try imagining the experience of church from her perspective. Take away all the blessings and happiness related to romance and families since the church says they’re forbidden for her. Add in the many negative messages that she’s received over the years.

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If you require your daughter to attend church, talk with her about how the other youth will treat her when they learn she’s a lesbian and ways she could respond. Does your congregation seem like it would be welcoming and affirming when they find out? At a minimum, consider letting her take a pass when the lesson or activity deals with dating, marriage, eternal family or the Family Proclamation.

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Church can be a stressful place, but home should be a safe space. Your daughter should know you love her and always will. Know that you will support her as she seeks for happiness and peace.

If/when your daughter stops attending church, you’re going to feel a little lost. What values and rules still apply, what things will you let slide? Do the Church rules about modesty, Word of Wisdom, or dating & relationships still apply? There’s more than one way to live a value, be willing to negotiate and give her more control of her life as she continues to mature.

My observation is that strict parents who always enforce LDS rules in the home have a worse relationship with their LGBT child than those who are more lenient. The goal is for her to grow up healthy & whole and for your relationship to stay intact.

You still have an important role as a mentor and advisor and can let her know your views and share your perspective. She will hear you, she will also make choices you may not agree with.I know it’ll be an adjustment for you giving her some autonomy to make choices you don’t want her making.

————————————————————-

If she does leave the church, continue to invite her to important family events, let her decide whether she wants to attend the ones of a religious nature. Baptisms, mission farewells and weddings are important milestones in a person’s life, and she may want to be present to celebrate with those who are experiencing these moments.

Be supportive and encouraging of the important moments in her life, even if they’re at odds with what our church teaches. Please don’t wonder if this will show you’re “endorsing” things you don’t believe in, once you pull out that sword of righteousness it can be used to sever and kill relationships. I know that change is uncomfortable and will be tough, but it’s necessary.

You shouldn’t assume your daughter will live a life without relationships. Frankly, that’s not healthy. Parents should want their children to grow up having positive attitude towards sex and relationships, for your daughter that will be different from your experience.

She knows church is part of your life and it’s fine to talk about it a bit, but if she’s stopped going to church, don’t go on for hours about random happenings in your ward. 

————————————————————-

Perhaps you wrote me because you know I’ve done my best to live the church standards, but it has come at a high price. It’s nearly killed me, literally. I hope parents & leaders don’t point at me and tell other gay members they can be like me. People who say this don’t know what sort of misery they’re wishing on their loved one. If an LGBT member chooses to walk a path inside the church, then I’d be happy to talk with them about ways of trying to make it work.

————————————————————-

Often it feels like the church doesn’t know what to do with people like me and your daughter. God has a plan for her life. We weren’t sent here to suffer for no reason. This life isn’t meant to be meaningless as we wait for the next life to obtain the blessings that all the straight people are allowed to access now.

The more I learn, the more I’m convinced that we’re all going to be taken care of. We’re going to be surprised how many people make it to the Celestial Kingdom. Our Heavenly Parents are more liberal and loving than we imagine. God intends for us to fully live life with these orientations, for this to be a blessing and not a curse or burden.

————————————————————- 

When you hear something at church that troubles you, ask these three questions:

     1)  Does that sound like your daughter, does she resemble that remark?

     2)  Is this consistent with the God you know?

     3)  Does this fit with the great commandment to love one another?

I bet most of the things which trouble you will fail these questions, it’s a way to gain greater understanding and hope.

————————————————————-

I know this is already a very lengthy reply, but I’m going to make it even longer by listing some resources I hope you find helpful

1)  I already referenced the Ten Tips for Parents on the church’s site

2)  Richard Ostler is a former bishop and a current temple worker. He strives to increase understanding among members about LGBTQ topics. I recommend his Facebook posts which can be found on his Listen, Learn & Love website

3)  I think the Family Acceptance Project’s pamphlet for LDS families is excellent

4)  The Human Rights Campaign has an online booklet for LGBT Mormons 

5)  This TedTalk speaks about some of the reasons why Nature creates homosexuals, and some of the differences in people who are LGBT compared to the rest of the population. It references numerous scientific studies but explains them in layman’s terms

6)  Dr. Bill Bradshaw is a BYU researcher/professor and former mission president. He put together a document that summarizes a lot of research that shows LGBTQ orientations are biologic, not a choice or caused by parenting or cultural influences

7)  Bryce Cook put together the BEST write up I’ve seen about the LDS church’s history on homosexuality while explaining what this is like for gay Mormons

8)  Taylor Petrey is a professor who in this article gives many things to think about regarding gays & lesbians and Mormonism. He writes like an academic, but is so thought provoking

9)  Greg Prince has a book coming out next year, until then this address he gave at an Affirmation Conference will have to suffice, I find it very insightful

10)  This is an easy-to-follow explanation of why temple sealings for gay couples makes sense

11)   Josh & Lolly Weed are the most famous example of a gay Mormon man and a straight Mormon woman in a mixed-orientation marriage. They have been very open about their experiences. This post in which they announced their divorce is very illuminating

12)  This is a listing of all sorts of queer people and relationships in Church history (we’ve been a part of the Church since the beginning)

13)  Gay Mormon History is a site that lets people explore the history of LGBT issues in the LDS Church

14)  Carol Lynn Pearson is a Mormon who was married to a gay man. You may be familiar with some of her work like My Turn On Earth. She has written several books I recommend: Goodbye, I Love You; No More Goodbyes; and The Hero’s Journey of Gay and Lesbian Mormons

15)  Tom Christofferson, brother of the apostle D Todd Christofferson, is a gay man who came back to church and wrote a book titled That We May Be One: A Gay Mormon’s Perspective on Faith and Family 

16)  Mama Dragons is for moms of LGBTQIA kids, their purpose is to support healthy lives

17)  Affirmation is the oldest organization for LDS & post-LDS LGBTQ+ individuals, their family and allies. Affirmation has multiple Facebook pages for different situations. The one that’s probably best for you at this moment is Affirmation Living Waters. It’s for active LDS LGBT people, parents, family & friends

18)  People are always going to bring up the scriptures as a way to condemn homosexuality. You should spend time investigating those verses (there’s relatively few of them). If you want, you can see some summaries I’ve posted by searching #queer people in the Bible on Tumblr (this link seems to pull up all my related posts on the phone and just a few of them on my computer)

[elvesofnoldor]

im losing my entire fucking mind and i dont know anything abt myself anymore and why? why? all cause one day in undergrad, out of nowhere, i went “hey am i a woman?” like i was asking myself what flavour of cheesecake i wanted for dessert. That was like, right after i felt comfortable with the fact that im a lesbian. And the answer should have been simple and short: “yeah duh you dumb fucking bitch, why did you ask? why do you think asking this is fucking productive? forget about it!” But no, i decided to engage with the question and it opened a fucking pandora’s box, and this question latched onto me like a fucking parasite, because this question allows me to think about another crucial question im always afraid to ask myself: am i truly attracted to men? With lesbianism, i can answer this question with ease by saying, no, these flimsy “crushes” i have on like two or three boys when i was a child/teen were result of compulsory heterosexuality, boom, that’s it. simple! not to mention, i know that lesbians can experience attraction to men in the past and even had past relationship with men and still be lesbians, sometimes sexuality isn’t solid as a brick, and none of that should have mattered! 

 so yeah, lesbianism is the answer i LIKE, yet part of me is not satisfied with this answer! of course! why not! since when am i ever satisfied with anything EVER?  over time, i started to want a “man’s body” when i see a cis dude with bare chest in picture, and it seems like i started to identify more and more with...masculinity and manhood...in general? even fictional men? at times? i dont fucking know! its a huge mess! and confusing! and my memories are all blurry and false and twisted by my current perception. sure i think i always kind of aspire to “androgynous looks”, but i like being a lesbian! At first, i was like, maybe im a non binary lesbian cause oh baby i know im not bisexual-- i dont want to be with men, but i want to be with women and that’s a certainty. And i know i had one real crush in life--sure it brought me nothing but misery but i know i had one true crush and it was a girl, a friend, from my high school-- whereas my possible feelings abt real boys or fictional men are very flimsy in comparison. still, part of me started to think that perhaps i can only process these feelings i might have for other men/boys in the past if i can...idk see myself as another man? i dont fucking know! Literally, it’s the most unproductive thing to think about! More importantly, i did not fall in love with any real man nor do i want to fall in love with any man! but i still kept questioning myself about this, cause i kept having these strong feelings abt,  FICTIONAL MALE CHARACTERS. And idk, part of me was like, “maybe you’d be comfortable with your attraction to men if you...are a man?”, and yeah i actually engage with this line of fucking thinking. its so fucking embarrassing that MEN THAT ARE NOT REAL can have such ridiculous heavy impact on me, it’s fucking ridiculous and i hate it!!! Every time i started to get invested in some stupid story that doesn’t matter cause it’s a fucking fictional story, there is like, this ONE MAN, one fucking bitch, that i felt very strongly about and it didn’t feel entirely platonic. i knew i was not straight since a teen and it took me FOREVER to even seriously consider that im a lesbian even though i dread the thought of being with men for the longest time, precisely because i keep having these weird strong feelings about fictional men every once a while!!!! 

makes no mistake i explored more rational options. during this time i made a rant abt it on here--i didnt want to! i tried not to make personal posts cause i dont want to bother strangers! but idk i guess my attention seeking whore ass just have to put my personal feelings out there eventually or i will die? anyways, a very nice mutual talked to me abt it, he was a trans man and as it turns out we shared a lot of similar experiences in regards to gender, and you’d think--hey maybe that helped? but no it fucking didn’t. it was nobody’s fault but it didn’t help, cause i clung on my womanhood for no apparent productive reason. i was still confused and, well, like a normal person i was like, let’s have human interaction! let’s actually explore my attraction to women! you don’t want to be with men so forget about them! forget what you might feel abt them! explore what you KNOW! explore certainty! so i did and ofc it ended up in shit, cause a girl who has a girlfriend (it was a closed relationship btw) asked me if i wanted to “hang out” on a dating app for wlws called HER and i genuinely thought it was a date? didnt know she has a girlfriend until AFTER we met. i wasn’t actually even surprised that she didn’t actually want to date me, because im ugly! im not attractive! im not even attracted to myself lol! plus she was very nice and cool and i was just happy that i made a friend with a fellow lesbian. but after that, i lost motivation to use that dating app, because one minor set-up and failure is all it takes for me to give up, its always like that with me. because im weak and pathetic, its always been like this. 

yeah at one point i basically said im non binary on my bio, but  i rather tell ppl im a lesbian and be done with it since im not entirely sure abt being non binary. Also, I know that non gender-conforming lesbians are everywhere, cis lesbians who are uncomfortable with gender identity exist! butches exist! they are here and they deal with it and they find community. but i don’t identify with...being butch? it was very nice to see gender non conforming, tom-boyish or butchy women out there, they  gave me hope, they are my heroes but i just dont feel like...they are me? i dont feel like feminine women either, im attracted to feminine women but i dont identify with their look and their femininity. like i said, this is a huge fucking mess. 

And now i have finally fucking done it, huh, dorian fucking p*vus, a gay male character. The clownery of it all! how the fuck, do i explain to ANYONE that i, a lesbian, have feeling that isn’t entirely platonic about a fictional gay man? yeah thats right thats why i romance him! i lied! ok! i fucking lied, it was cause i want to fuck him! ok! yeah, i know, ridiculous. i feel like im disrespecting him, that im , idk, fetishizing him, but i am not! i can’t be! i love him so much it hurts? it shouldnt be like that. i really shouldn’t. i cant make sense of this, its driving me nuts. still, this whole ordeal eventually got me thinking abt my gender, yet again, and it pushed me over the edge and i even told my dad that i want to transition this summer, that i am a man because i thought maybe i’d be much happier and less repressed if i can just accept that i like men-- if i can explore this possibility. i know i will NEVER accept liking man as a woman, and i know i already kinda have some sort of identification with manhood and masculinity, so why not! i was coming up with solutions! but i didnt even fall in love with a real man, and i was considering this serious level of transition in my life that requires time, money, and the process concerns health risk??? for what??? i was looking up all these info about transition, for WHAT? i gotta be out of my fucking mind! the most ridiculous thing is that while i always like a number of female characters, i would never feel as strongly about any of them in particular as i would, for that one fucking man. Even merrill, like, i love her and i genuinely feel like i want to be with a girl like her int he future but i dont feel as strongly about her as i would for dorian, for some, fucking, reason. 

i headcanon the lavellan i used to romance dorian as a trans man, cause i was thinking, perhaps this would put things into perspective. and yeah, i wanna fuck dorian, but also i want to envision what my future CAN be using my lavellan as a proxy. things were simpler with my lavellan. he was handsome and had no body image issue, he was fit, transition was easy for him cause magic and he virtually spent no money on it, he was passing, his family and community fully supported him, he had a lovely girlfriend before he knew he was trans. sure, he has problems and issues to deal with but none are the ones i gotta deal with. he is not me, but he has what i wanted and what i wish i had: beauty, confidence, a girlfriend, easy FTM transition, and he is a man so he’s legally allowed to fuck dorian. but i did not transition, and im still a cis woman with long hair, and ppl looks at me and they probably still thinks im straight, im not straight but i AM a ugly cis woman and i dont think transition’d help cause i might just become a even uglier man lol. And if i dont become a beautiful, stunning man, then i dont want to become a man at all cause if things dont turn out perfectly for me, i dont want to do them and its always like that for me and its why im a fucking failure on everything right now. so many trans people are not passing, but they deal with it, not me tho! i can’t, cause im a pathetic baby!!!  i cant deal with any minor inconvenience in my fucking life i guess!!!! And i cant help but to feel weird about having a trans man as one of my ocs. maybe i should make him cis instead? im so exhausted,  i cant help but to feel that my trans mutuals want to just pull the trigger on me and unfollow me cause you all are silently judging me for having a trans oc when im still technically, cis. well judge me in my fucking face you fucking cowardly fucks! Am i cis? well idk, probably, maybe im just a hysterical crazy bitch of a cisgender^tm woman who is constantly uncomfortable with her gender, maybe thats all there is. who knows, all i know is that im burnt out, that i don’t know anything anymore and it was all a huge fucking mess that things dont matter. this is causing me nothing but pain and confusion and i dont want to be wrong myself. ftm transition is not, “oh geez lets just explore a option” kind of deal, its kinda fucking serious  and its stressing me out. i dont know what i want, who i am, anything and i can’t afford to be wrong so i dont know!!!!! i just dont know!!!!!!!! i talked abt with a therapist actually but all therapist do is to LIE lie AND LIE and tell me things i already know, “you need to be careful with about transitioning! it’s a big decision” who pays you to say this garbage to me? “you are capable and beautiful and you can do this! believe in yourself!” as if ppl saying this shit is enough???? as if i still need to go see a fucking therapist if i am magically ok after i talk to somebody and they tell me lies that sound validating????i know they dont believe in what they said anyways. “you are ok! you are fine, you have no problem” BITCH I WISH I AM OK, BUT AM I OK? IM FUCKING NOT AND YOU ARE $60 RICHER THAN AN YOU ARE AN HOUR AGO! FUK YOU! LIES LIES LIES!!!!! men lie too, i put on some bad eyeliner and some random creepy dude came and told me im beautiful! beautiful my ass! im fucking ugly and i know it, you really think im fucking stupid you fuck? am i just being a special snowflake? are the things that i know for certainty actually certainty??? nothing about me feels real anymore, and maybe im just being dramatic but  my self perception is non existent and i feel like im just lying to myself even though i thought i was being truthful and ppl keep telling me lies and nothing helps. im living on lies and it is festering 

[caladblog]

okay here we go

if i had to succinctly* describe what i like about Archive 81, i’d say two things:

*lmao

1) eldritch! but, y’know, if the Fathomless Horror wasn’t rooted directly in violent hatred of everyone who’s not a WASP.

2) so you think it’s not possible to portray quality gore and body horror in a strictly audio format? hey. hey. buddy. guess what. feast yr ears

this podcast has, hands down, the absolute best sound design of anything i’ve ever heard.

my warnings for the show come from those two points. reality gets bent, minds get fucked, terrible things happen to (mostly) undeserving people and you get to hear every bit of it in stereo. if that’s not a good time for you, you might have to skip over this one. (i can give more specific warnings to anyone who asks!)

okay now on to the actual review! as usual, it’s fucking long as hell, and there’s only light spoilers under the cut.

i’m gonna start off by elaborating on point #2 because it is my favoritest thing ever oh my god. the only thing that sort of comes close to the quality of its immersion is Lif-e.af/ter, which, aside from being a fucking pain in the ass to type out and impossible to search for, isn’t trying to portray anything half so ambitious as a dude’s spine being ripped from his body in order to house an otherworldly messenger and fuel a lesbian’s apotheosis. i mean to be fair i never finished watching L-i.give/up, but it’s mostly just like some guy in an office. idk man. reach for the stars & keep going til you land in the abyss.

immersion. i want to repeat that. i had no idea how good a podcast’s acting and sound design could be until i clicked on Archive 81 at random. it is honestly amazing and ridiculous and amazing how immersive this is. even the ads are done in character my god take some fuckin notes, TBT

will i ever stop throwing shade at TBT? details at eleven.

and then there’s the body horror. delicious, delicious body horror. where do you even find that many different meaty crunching noises? i thought it was good in the first season but then the second season took it up about fifty notches right away and it’s just sooooo. (◡‿◡)

...what was i talking about? anyway. elaboration on point #1.

i really like this stuff, y’know? mindfucks, and creases in the fabric of spacetime, and unreality, and how characters then have to fumble around in a frantic attempt to figure out the logic of the situation, if there even is a logic, and it is just

so

fucking

impossible

to find a story about all of this that doesn’t either ignore people like me or treat us with outright contempt. and i try but it is so tiring to interact with things made by people who find it easier and more rewarding to write about non-Euclidean geometry than queers.

which is why, when i do find a story like this that acknowledges and includes me, i have to actively restrain myself from going door to door** all like hello friend have you heard the creepy word :) :)

**i totally would, but i live in the deep south. i’d get my tires slashed in the name of the Lord.

i am a jehovah’s witness of weird shit and by clicking on this post you have made the ultimate mistake of answering your door, and now i won’t stop telling you about gay-ass unknowable beings even though you’ve already promised me like eight fucking times that you will be at snake church*** next wednesday. you will not be at snake church. we both know this, and that is why i am still talking.

***this is in fact an actual thing. there’s one just off a highway around here, its sign is written in black sharpie and tacked to a telephone pole. bless

i mean, did you see that bit about a lesbian’s apotheosis up there??? MY GOD i wish i didn’t have a self-imposed spoiler policy because these were some of my favorite scenes! actually, you know what, i’m gently breaking the spoiler policy to tell you that they get to be happy. they get to be happy AND TOGETHER!! for a crash course in why this is significant i would like to direct you to autostraddle’s ongoing list of 181+ dead canonically wlw characters, just pulling from television, not even including movies or books or anything else. (for obvious reasons that link contains huge spoilers, and for equally obvious reasons it’s fucking depressing.)

and, to be frank, if the phrase “lesbian apotheosis” doesn’t sell you on this podcast i don’t know what the hell you’re doing on this blog. the main character is a cis dude, but queer people and women also exist in a major way, and they’re allowed to have their own unique and complete personalities outside of Delicate Victim, or Vile Corrupter Of All That Is Good And Human, or Either Of The Above But Sexy(TM) This Time.

it’s stupid as fuck that this is notable, but hey that’s the state of the genre.

speaking of the state of the genre, Archive 81 also stands out for being fucking funny at parts. i for real have not yet gotten over that time they lampshaded The Black Tapes (Stamp Dot Com. For when you only need one stamp.) or basically every thing ever said by cynthia or that one conversation with clara you know the one.

[pictured above: the entire fandom after s2e5]

so much of the genre--horror, sf/f horror in specific, lovecraftian horror in even more specific--takes itself so god damn seriously. everything must be an unrelenting cavalcade of madness and misery. if there is a joke, it’s only there to be juxtaposed against the naked agony of everything else. and that’s just not realistic? in a human reaction way, i mean. no matter what sort of incomprehensible hellscape you’re trapped in, people are always going to be sarcastic little shits to each other.

and the fact that i was laughing at dan’s hipster-ass ~oh, so we’re archiving MFA projects now, great~ comment two minutes ago doesn’t mean i can’t feel a bit of trepidation at lou’s attitude now, or interest in what lies beyond the river, or fear for how it’s all going to be fucked up and awful. there’s a whole spectrum of emotion beyond ‘cynicism’ and ‘terror’, horror writers! paint with all the colors of the goddamn wind, please!!

ugh.

anyway, so season 1 was really good, and then season 2 took a HARD left turn that was a bit jarring at first, but in doing this it tremendously expanded the world and the cast, and i’m glad i hung on for the rest of the ride because there are so many amazing questions now. i wrote out a whole list of them and then deleted it because it super violated my spoiler policy! just trust me that they give you enough information for you to keep up, but if you sit down for a second you start to wonder about one thing which leads you to another two things and then you realize you don’t know the whole deal about this fourth thing either and before you know it you’re lost down a rabbit hole of just what the fuck has happened here! and is happening here! and could/might/will happen here! not necessarily in that order! time is weird, okay, be cool

jesus h. fuck, this is over a thousand words long so i will speak only in pairs for the rest of the review. QUICK RECAP: excellent sound, corporate exploitation, dreaming Things, important stories, musical leviathans, go listen.

[whittlebaggett8]

19 people share their ‘coming out’ stories, Defence Online

caption

Coming out is a personal experience.

source

Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

caption

Coming out is a personal experience.

source

Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

Coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or gender non-binary is a personal experience.

Not everyone is in a position where they can be certain they will receive support.

INSIDER highlighted different personal accounts from self-identified LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, in transition, intersex, and asexual) Reddit users below.

Every individual story is unique, and there is no right or wrong way or time to come out.

Editor’s note: some of the content in these stories may be triggering for some individuals who have experienced discrimination or violence because of their sexuality or gender identity.

Visit INSIDER’s homepage for more stories.

Coming out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community is a deeply personal and often life-altering process. Regardless of the individual circumstances, there is no right or wrong way to come out.

Of course, some people who identify as members of the LGBT community may choose to come out in a public way, others will not feel safe to do so, while others never will “officially” come out and simply live their lives. It’s important to remember that an individual’s decision to come out is their own personal choice. Regardless, reading these stories can be comforting and informative for many.

Online spaces such as the Reddit communities r/Comingout and /r/lgbt, can give people a platform to open up about their experiences and connect with others who can relate.

The following coming out stories from these Reddit users illustrate just how unique those experiences can be. Of course, INSIDER cannot independently authenticate these stories, but they perhaps they can serve as a reminder that no matter what a person’s coming out story is, everyone’s journey deserves to be heard.

Just a note, we’ve chosen to leave off names to protect the identities of those who have shared their stories.

‘My fam was playing a game where we had to tell a huge secret about ourselves’

“Well my fam was playing a game where we had to tell a huge secret about ourselves and I was about to make a joke and say, ‘I started my period’ but I only said the ‘I’ part so my mom was like, ‘Are you gay?’ So I was like, ‘Uhh yesssss’ like freakishly loudly. My mom said she already knew probs because she stole my phone and checked my search history a while back because she’s also a helicopter parent.”

‘I didn’t really come out of the closet, my mom opened the door and said, ‘Hey, you in there?”

“I joined my high school’s GSA freshman year. On a car ride to Target, my mom asked as casually as she could muster if there was any reason for that. I said I’m bisexual, she said ‘cool,’ and I assume she told my dad because basically, the whole family knew before I even said anything.

“So I didn’t really come out of the closet, my mom opened the door and said ‘hey, you in there?’”

caption

An unidentified woman wearing a bisexual pride flag as a cape watches an approaching group during the Pride parade in Sacramento.

source

Chris Allan/Shutterstock

‘Came out to my brother, his girlfriend, and my dad by baking cupcakes’

“First came out to my mom as trans and then months later, came out to my brother, his girlfriend, and my dad by baking cupcakes in the colors of the trans pride flag. It was really hard because I had it in my head that I was gonna get kicked out, turns out my dad is the most supportive person in my life.”

‘They didn’t believe I was gay and had normal parent reactions and to this day ignore the subject’

“Looking back at it I knew I was gay for a while. I just never had emotional or sexual attraction towards any guys until I went on an internship and pulled the old classic of falling for my roommate. I thought the feeling was mutual but obviously, I was blinded or didn’t want to believe he was straight. I never told him my feelings for him but it was pretty obvious. I did some things that made it clear such as looking at his text and basically acting like a jealous lover. I suspect he figured it out.

“Anyway … I flipped when he got a girlfriend and I couldn’t contain my feelings anymore so I came out to my social worker. I also got the courage to come out to my friend and brother which went great and they were very supportive.

“When I told my parents after they came to visit it went downhill. They didn’t believe I was gay and had normal parent reactions and just to this day ignore the subject and my sexuality which bothers me a lot because I feel like I can’t move forward ’til they accept me for who I am.”

‘I had to ask my friend to look at the comments the next day since I was too afraid to look’

“I spent most of the night before my 25th birthday writing and rewriting a long drawn out post about how I felt. I planned on posting the status on my birthday, near the time I was born, and I pretty much said that I was born as myself and that my life has a funny way of telling me I’m a little different from who I thought I was. I had to ask my friend to look at the comments the next day since I was too afraid to look, but it turns out everyone who saw it was very accepting and warm so I was very lucky.”

They told people, ‘I look a little different’

“I met people in person, with a, ‘I look a little different.’ text sent out shortly before.”

‘My mom read my paper and then sat me down to have a talk about it, I panicked and told her I was a lesbian’

“7th grade we had to describe ourselves in a song and I chose ‘Misery’ by Maroon 5 for some reason. My mom read my paper and then sat me down to have a talk about it, I panicked and told her I was a lesbian. She was just hugging me and telling me that she would love me no matter what my preferences are. Then she told my dad and he was chill about it.”

‘I broke their heart by telling them, but their heart was broken because they realized they had a child who was hurting deeply for all of these years without them knowing or being able to help’

“I had resolved that I would never tell my family how I felt unless I absolutely had to. Eventually, I had some life experiences that were just too rich and wonderful and showed me how beautiful our world is and how my concern of being rejected for how I choose to express my feelings was just of little significance.

“I told my sister who was supportive and un-surprised. Finally, and very recently, I told my very conservative parents. I was only able to justify telling them by acknowledging that I was only telling them how I felt, not what I planned to do, and that they couldn’t really reject my feelings even if they didn’t like my feelings. They could only reject decisions. But ultimately I was met with nothing but love and support.

“I broke their heart by telling them, but their heart was broken because they realized they had a child who was hurting deeply for all of these years without them knowing or being able to help. They want to know how they can best support me, and for the first time in my life, I think that I can be best supported by them and my other loved ones by acknowledging my feelings and my journey on the path to transitioning.”

‘I responded with, ‘I’m gay and hate children’ I’ve never seen a salesman look so ashamed of himself and I also came out to my dad at the same time’

“I was buying a car. My dad was with me and we were at our 4th (and final) dealership of the day. I flat out told the salesman that I wanted to be sold the smallest sedan they had on the lot unless they had a coupe [ … ] First thing out of the salesman’s mouth after that was, ‘You really should get an SUV in case you accidentally get pregnant.’ Me being the jerk I am, I instantly responded with ‘I’m gay and hate children. Any kids I have will be extremely well planned and extremely unwanted.’ I’ve never seen a salesman look so ashamed of himself and I also came out to my dad at the same time. Neither guy spoke unless I asked a question after that.”

‘And I just came dressed as a girl’

“Came out on Black Friday […] And I just came dressed as a girl. And then I stayed like that. And a week passed and I was brought into HR and asked if this was permanent, I said yes. And went back to work.”

‘Showed up at my mother’s house with my boyfriend and told her. She didn’t like it at first until the day she noticed me being happy …’

“Showed up at my mother’s house with my boyfriend and told her. She didn’t like it at first until the day she noticed me being happy and proactive with my life. She started finding room in her heart to be on board with it. Now we visit her house once a month for dinner with the whole family. Today I’m in a happy relationship and am two months into my MTF HRT [male to female hormone replacement therapy], so the thing to remember is to give your friends and family time to adjust and gently show them that this is what makes you happy and fingers crossed they accept you for you. “

‘I said, ‘It’s National Coming Out Day”

caption

Participants take part in the annual NYC Pride parade.

source

REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

“I came out a few months ago, on National Coming Out Day. I said ‘It’s National Coming Out Day’ and my mom said ‘You have something to come out to me about?’ (Jokingly) [I said], ‘Yeah, I am gay.’”

‘Told two other friends through the topic of crushes, giving them a ‘guess my crush’ puzzle and plot twist at the end, it’s a guy!’

“Told my first friend through text after commenting on how a male anime character was kinda hot … Told two other friends through the topic of crushes, giving them a ‘guess my crush’ puzzle and then boom, plot twist at the end, it’s a guy!”

‘My dad unlocks the door and in comes both my grandmothers. They both just hug me and tell me they love me just the way I am’

“One of my friends got the idea to be my ‘date’ to Thanksgiving dinner, so that my family wouldn’t bug me so much about finding a girlfriend. She knew I was gay, and knew I hadn’t told them.

“We go. She’s my ‘date,’ gives me hugs. A little cheek smooch. Sold. Then I see this … look in my grandmother’s face at dinner. It hurt. It hurt to see her beaming over something that was a lie.

“I felt hoooooriiible. Like I just wanted to go crawl into the oven and die next to the turkey. It comes as a surprise to many people, but I practicality NEVER lie to my family.

“For some reason, at the table, my grandpa decided that I should lead grace…

“I don’t know if it was just because my head was stuck, or what … but I just went ‘I’m gay’ and a river of tears and snot came out of my face so I went and locked myself in my room.

“About an hour goes by and the house is dead quiet. My dad unlocks the door and in comes both my grandmothers. They both just hug me and tell me they love me just the way I am.

“I thought I’d died. My friend sheepishly came into the room and handed me a plate of food. She told me my parents said I can take all the time I need to calm myself, and then come back and celebrate.

“They treated it like it was the best thing since sliced bread and I nearly had p—– my pants.”

‘I was crying the whole time, but they weren’t tears of sadness. Coming out was the biggest weight that ever came off my shoulders’

“I got home from church after my conservative pastor gave his most homophobic sermon yet, and I sobbed into my pillow in my bedroom. My mom heard me and asked what I was crying about. The words were too difficult to speak. But she put things together and realized that I was upset about the sermon, and she finally asked, ‘Do you think you’re gay?’ That’s when I said yes. We spent the next hour sitting together on her bed eating In-N-Out french fries while she asked me about all of my high school crushes. I was crying the whole time, but they weren’t tears of sadness. Coming out was the biggest weight that ever came off my shoulders.”

‘It was interesting to see their faces as they processed that Logan was not a girl’s name.’

“I told my family the name of my crush after Christmas Eve dinner when I was 16. It was interesting to see their faces as they processed that Logan was not a girls name.”

‘One of my ‘best friends’ went and told EVERYONE we knew almost immediately’

“I came out to my friends at 15 – only my two closest [friends] as we’re in a fairly rural place and I was worried about it. One of my ‘best friends’ went and told EVERYONE we knew almost immediately, and when I called them out, her response was ‘But no one minds!’ I got a lot of s— about it for years after that. But the total kicker is I dumped her as a friend straight away and her brother messaged me on Facebook apologizing for what she’d done. I’ve now been dating her brother for 2 and a half years and he hates her too.”

‘I came out as a trans guy a few years ago not by choice … I was basically forced to explain’

“I came out as a trans guy a few years ago not by choice (my dad was on my computer and found my personal blog) and I was basically forced to explain. He totally flipped out on me and alternated between laughing in my face and threatening to kick me out.

“A lot of the experience I block out because it’s very traumatic. I’m okay now but I ended up living with my grandparents for a while. Coming out isn’t always, ‘It’s okay, we always knew, we’ll always love you’ and I really envy people with experiences like that.”

‘Told my stepmom […. ] they kicked me out for about a month and I lived with my grandma’

“Told my stepmom, she called me disgusting and [then] told my dad even though I asked her not to. They kicked me out for about a month and I lived with my grandma. When I went back they put me into church school, took away my phone, TV, clothes that looked too ‘Dudeish’ (legit just all my T-shirts) and they told me I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.”

‘I was internally screaming in gay of happiness’

caption

Others participate in pride parades before “formally” coming out.

source

Getty Images

“My friend and I were having a sleepover at her house and we stayed up talking for a long time, both of us telling things that we hadn’t shared with anyone before. At this point, it was 5 a.m.

“I have known that I’m gay for quite some time now. I’ve wanted to come out so badly and until yesterday, I hadn’t told anyone (apart from some internet friends). I had sort of decided that if there came an appropriate moment to tell her during that sleepover, I would.

“That moment came when she told me that she thinks she’s bi. I was internally screaming in gay of happiness. I said that that is SO COOL and then I told her that I’m gay. She was like WHAAAT THAT’S SO COOL. And then we both were like HSJSKDKDJDJ HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?? Honestly, I was kind of panicking, but it was like in a good way.

“We talked about how we knew, for how long we have known, which girls we’ve had crushes on and a lot more. It was amazing. I’m the first person she’s told as well.

“When I woke up this morning, it was the first thing I thought about. That I told someone. That I opened the door to the closet. It feels weird and almost surreal not to be alone about it anymore, but it feels so right.

“I still have a long way to go and a lot of people to come out to and I know it won’t be easy. But now I have started, and it started so epically and felt so good.”

The Trevor Project provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth. Call 1-866-488-7386 to reach the TrevorLifeline available 24/7 or text TREVOR to 1-202-304-1200 to reach TrevorText available M-F from 3 p.m. – 1 p.m.

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[qez]

Hey, @dynamicsymmetry I was the anon who told you I was “TA” but have been thinking over a lot now that I’m doing a re-watch. This is long, I’m sorry, so I’ll post more under the cut.

I’ve on-and-off following your blog since 2014?? I mostly wanted to vent to you because I’ve always enjoyed your commentary and analyses plus I find you understand Daryl really well. So, I would love to hear more from you even if you said some things a million times before. It’s always a fun read.

Anyway in my re-watch I find that I’ve gotten a better grasp of Daryl’s character and have been able to appreciate him more than in the past (most of my attention back then was focused on other faves like Glenn and Michonne for example).

Briefly and broadly, here’s some important points in Daryl’s development over the seasons:

Season 1

Gruff redneck and his brother intend to rob a camp despite the kind people and the children in it.

He is separated from his brother.

Shows outrage and distrust to Rick and the others who handcuffed Merle on the roof.

Despite his brother being gone because of these people, he sticks around.

We see glimpses of his kindness as he helps the people in this camp and stays by their side.

etc;

Season 2

Despite being the “outsider” he becomes more entwined with these people even if he doesn’t fully realize it yet.

We get more glimpses of his kindness. Ex 1: He saves T-Dog despite being the reason for Merle's disappearance. Ex 2: He doesn’t really know Carol but that doesn't stop him from doing his best to find Sofia.

We know once in his life he got lost child and no one came looking for him. He makes sure that same thing doesn’t happen to Sofia.

Chupacabra episode is just loaded with goodies. We learn of his insecurities and self-loathing and more about his relationship with his brother.

Continuously tries to lift Carol’s spirits when she's grieving. He forms a special bond with her, who is seemingly different than himself, but no so different at all.

He becomes a reliable figure that everyone depends on. (Ex: Lori goes to him when Rick/Hershel/Glenn are missing and Beth is suicidal).

Falls into the role of right-hand man when Shane goes off the deep end.

Sticks by the group and helps them throughout the winter.

etc;

Season 3

We open up and learn that the group is his family now. They rely on him, they love him, they trust him.

He’s part of Rick’s council and is relied on for his opinions.

He's still closed off and there's still a lot the audience doesn't know about him.

We see his leadership capabilities. Ex: He steps up for Rick and helps care for Judith.

We see his weaknesses Ex 1: When he thinks he loses Carol and then when he finds out she's alive. Ex 2: When Merle dies.

We learn how important his brother is to him. How important family is to him whether or not they are blood.

We see him try to console Carl when he tells him how he lost his mother.

We learn he’s a child abuse survivor.

We learn he feels that he belongs to the group and they’re his people.

etc;

After all these seasons, he still bottles everything inside. Unless he tells some things to certain people. Ex: His disbelief of Merle’s sacrifice when he’s talking to Carol.

I haven’t re-watched yet but:

Season 4 we see how he is forced to deal with everything he keeps away (I can't wait to re-watch). He learns to survive with a woman so different than he, and he even opens up his heart to her. Despite losing his family, he thinks he can make things work because of her.

Season 5 we see him try to move forward. He is more hopeful for the future and believes he can become a better person. He tells Carol they can move forward and he even gets that self-help book. He tries his hardest and doesn't give up when trying to find Beth because he has hope and she taught him that the good still exists. He tries his damnedest to find her, even when everyone else lost hope.

Then things come crashing down mid-season 5 and for the most part has stayed there.

We saw this tremendous development for him in seasons 1-5A, only for him to be pretty much at a stand still from 5B-7. Why? I’m not at all saying he hasn’t undergone any development, he has. However, we’ve been watching Daryl misery porn for years now. I can’t understand why. What is the point of taking one of the most beloved characters and not utilizing them or developing them if he is intended to remain central to the cast.

Why have other characters  (Carol, Maggie). who also have had crises been able to pull themselves up from it but not him? Will he ever be able to? How?

I know for many, the “end all” for his pain is a relationship with another character(s). I can’t rule that out (I’ve seen it happen before in other media) I just can’t see it happening to this character without it being too sudden, out of character, or ignoring the months/years of suffering he’s undergone. Maybe I’m wrong and it could be done well. I just can’t really see it as of my S3 re-watch and from what I remember from other seasons.

It just makes me wonder, why, after several seasons of steadily developing him, do they kick him down and keep him there? The audience and critics have all noticed also. So what gives?

This is basically why I’ve been re-considering a lot lately. It may be useless and wishful thinking, but I just don’t see any other point to it all. It would have been so easy to give him a reason to be hopeful again after he learned of Carol’s survival and recovery. That didn’t happen. So what else is there? I don’t think winning a war with a villain will quite do that either. It has to be something central and important to his character to change him in that way.

Beth was part of his growth. She helped him see good in the world and in people and made him believe he can be like that too. Then she was taken from him. Her teachings eventually too as Dwight ruins that all.

I’m just trying to figure out why others can move toward a positive direction when Daryl can’t? What else would help move forward unless against all odds, she survived? It’s not about romance or shipping at all. For me and for many, it’s about this story and its ability to remind us that even at the worst of times, hope still exists. It just doesn’t make sense to keep him down and keep kicking him with no solution. Unless it’s just poorly executed and a time skip or something magically erases it all. Or a romance helps him out of his despair but I don’t see that happening. Romance should never be about saving anyone. For me, Beth’s survival wouldn’t be romantic. Any romantic aspect of their relationship would be on hold for a long time if she did survive.

The reason why the audience loved Daryl so much to begin with is because we saw him develop as seasons progressed. We got to see him open up and grow. A lot of fans have begun to dislike him for various reasons, but one reason in particular that I noticed was resentment that his character who has been in a pit of despair and is “stagnant in development” got to remain when other characters haven’t. This is definitely more of an issue with the writers keeping him in this place. (I can’t ignore the frustration also lies within racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc when it comes to the writing. As many black characters, a lesbian, and women have unfairly been killed off without further development). These hopeful characters are killed off and we’re left with a character who is nothing but suffering. People don’t like this. People love to see hope and goodness and it’s not fun watching characters you love just bring misery to your screen.

I just hate to say, perhaps you disagree, but I can’t see his character going anywhere else from here unless something big happens to/with his character. Something that forces us to want him to get back to the days of getting that self-help book and not just expect that his character is stuck in this loop of misery.

So here I am, all these years later, kicking myself that I’m even contemplating Beth’s survival. I just can’t make any other sense of Daryl’s character and his progression or lack-there-of as of now. I haven’t even gotten into all the weird things surrounding Beth. This is just as of now, my thoughts on Daryl since I paid a lot more attention to him during this S1-3 re-watch. It has gotten me thinking about him and how strikingly different his development and focus has been in earlier seasons versus later ones. This misery porn can’t be all for nothing, right? At least I hope it can’t. Everyone wants this to end. There’s got to be something. Some little light at the end of the tunnel.

Also, off topic. I still enjoy this show despite all the fuckery that has gone on regarding many unfair deaths. I’m not putting all my money on a survival either, I just can’t make any sense of a lot of things. That’s a huge reason I’m even re-thinking everything in the first place.

[victuuri-victory]

Top 10 Yuri Manga Without A School Setting

edit: removed the “keep reading” line, because it cuts off the post when people reblog it, at least when on mobile

There’s a certain formula for producing bad yuri manga- default highschool setting (+1 if it’s all-girls and all-girls somehow equals all-gay), a unhealthy relationship dynamic, unrealistic-but-stock characters (the shy protagonist and the perfect student council president), strict gender roles of butch x femme, males are never present, you get the idea. There’s lots of great yuri out there that takes place in highschool, but I’ll admit that the saturation of bad stuff has tainted my view of the setting. 

That said, regardless of your views on yuri’s default setting, here’s the Top 10 Yuri Manga with a fresh change of scenery!

10. Gouhou Yuri Fuufu Hon

On some days, we just don’t have it in us for serious, literary stuff. I want this list to include cute and relaxing sugary stuff too, and Gouhou Yuuri Fuufu Hon fits right in. 

I might have a soft spot for moe art, but Hachishiro makes the sickest covers, I’m not even kidding. 

Set in a sort-of-fantasy world where same-sex marriage is accepted and animals ears are a thing, Haru is a shy, younger girl who is married off to Sensei, a novelist oblivious to Haru’s uncertainties on how to be Sensei’s wife. Yes the dynamic is a little stock. You might realize the part on arranged marriage is kinda problematic, but this is a not-serious moe manga that doesn’t go there. It’s nothing mindblowing, and it’s not got much of a plot, but it’s a fluffy and enjoyable slice-of-life piece on marriage and domestic stuff.

The art is cute af, and works very well to convey changes in their emotions.

9. Sweet Guilty Love Bites

Sweet Guilty Love Bites is about four cabaret hostesses who work at Club Rose. It’s separated into “Sweet Guilty” and “Guilty Love”.  In “Sweet Guilty”, Kirie returns from a bad night of hostessing, to discover Myata, a young woman sleeping in the streets near her house. In “Guilty Love”, Niina, a hostess and a single mother, has a one-night stand with Mayu, only to discover the next day that Mayu is the preschool teacher of her daughter. 

Despite the seriousness of what I just summarized, this is a light and fluffy manga with funny moments, and everything ends happily for our dear characters.Though sometimes, the manga struggles to shift from this lighthearted tone when addressing serious life issues that its characters face. 

The art is nothing stunning, but it’s decent and carries the plot just fine. 

8. Rock it, GiRL!!

Rock it, GiRL!! is about a street guitarist and vocalist, Kaname, who is approached by a talent agency to be part of a band. But Kaname is not an ambitous person and thinks little of her talents. Nevertheless, she decides to give a band a shot. She discovers, however, that a) the talent agency love her as a guitarist, but thinks lowly of her vocal ability, and b) the girl who will sing the songs in her place, is an arrogant tsundere, much in contrast to Kaname’s mopey, sappy self. Animosity develops between them, but they must rise above this personal drama as the show must go on. 

I have to say, the characters aren’t exactly sympathetic, but they’ve got real issues, they are offbeat, and are basically a fresh breath of air, away from the standard “sweet, nice, moe girls in a girl band” cliche. Plus the plot is wild, given the seemingly predictable premise. 

The art itself is simple, but in a weirdly cute and silly way. 

7. Murcielago

I would like to defend Murcielago’s presence on this list by saying that yes it is trash, HOWEVER, it is the kind of trash that nobody expects from the yuri genre.

Specifically, Murcielago is guilty-pleasure gore trash. It’s what we’ve seen played out again and again with a certain Western genre, but always with a male character depicted: violent movies centered on a loose-cannon anti-villain protagonist, who is tasked with being a criminal detective but who really does kill more people than the police are comfortable with. In the backdrop, some sort of vast conspiracy is brewing, where all the crimes that the detective solves, are actually linked together, and this whole conspiracy is somehow, quite self-aggrandizingly, all about this detective protagonist (we just don’t know how yet). 

Yes, that was weirdly specific, but we all know that’s an entire genre. 

In that sense, Murcielago is predictable, but it’s also very fun action-packed reading. Plus the gender and lesbian of its protagonist, is something quite unexpected, considering the “cute nice fluffiness” that characterizes most manga lesbians, and the male protags who dominate violent action comics for both manga and Western comics. 

You know she’s gonna be able to solve the crime, you know the Villain of the Week is gonna die, but there’s still a perverse excitement in finding out how she does it, and what ridiculous over-the-top crime features in the latest issue. 

Read beneath that surface, and Murcielago can be a little deeper than that. Our dear psycho-lesbian detective does spare people, and she justifies it by outwardly saying she spares “cute girls”, but that shallow explanation doesn’t hold water. She’s perfectly ok with mutilating and killing incompetent and immoral “cute girls”, which she has made no comment about. She’s specifically sparing a) completely moral “cute girls”, and hiring  b) dangerously competent, morally shadier “cute girls” as her proteges. In fact, when she meets a bomb prodigy, she has no qualms morally corrupting her from a) to b), because she really needs a demolitions expert. She’s secretly building a ruthless army, and we don’t yet know why.  

6. Lonely Wolf, Lonely Sheep

Lonely Wolf, Lonely Sheep involves the coincidential meeting of two girls who are coincidentially both named Imari, when their names are called in the hospital waiting room. Even more coincidentially, they are both there for left hand injuries. They declare their meeting one of Fate and the stars.

The dynamic is a little stock- we have the tall tomboyish landscaper “Big Imari”, contrasted with the petite girly artist “Little Imari”. But this short comic serves up more than just a plotless dose of sugary cute, the arc does turn serious. “Little Imari”’s injuries hide a dark secret, and the past is coming to claim her. 

5. Octave

Miyashita Yukino is a burnt-out pop idol- the industry is not what she thought it was, and she has no idea where to go with life from thereon. The people of her hometown do not welcome her, and believe she must have had to be a slut to get ahead as an idol. What really cuts deep in this manga, is the portrayal and young age of Yukino- the reality of the pop industry and the sacrifices she had make for her dream, such as dropping out of school, has aged her beyond her years. 

She then tries to make a living as a talent manager in Tokyo, but her life still seems devoid of purpose, she is drifting and still yearns for fame. During a regular trip to the nearby laundromat, she meets Setsuko, who is the sister of the laundromat’s owner. She finds some comfort in Setsuko’s company, but her problems do not disappear, and in fact the landromat is facing financial difficulties.

My main problems with Octave is that the characterization can be unsympathetic. Yukino is jaded, and certainly mature in some ways, but she is also emotionally childish- she can be exceedingly mopey, sometimes blames her problems on others, seeks external validation to an unhealthy extent, and generally creates unnecessary drama and conflict with Setsuko, who is emotionally flawed as well. Don’t get me wrong, characters should have flaws, but too much of it, and it rubs me up the wrong way and I kinda want to slap them. The plot also starts to slow rather than speed up as the manga progresses, which is just not to my taste. 

However, I would simply chalk those flaws up to the inconsistent quality of Octave, where the quality is high, the manga is amazing, the emotions, the issues and ennui from the characters and the atmosphere, can be quite intensely felt.

4. Gunjo

If you asked me what the manga embodiment of misery is, I might just point you to Gunjo. Gunjo tears your heart out, and then puts it back in for a split second, just so it can tear it out again. 

“It begins in the moments after a horrible crime has been committed. A woman has asked someone to kill her husband for her. She has asked someone she knows she can use – another woman, a lesbian, who has been in love with her since high school. The woman who requested the death is abusive, derisive. The woman who committed the crime is passive, almost apathetic. She flinches in the face of the other’s harsh words, but doesn’t fight back.” -(Okazu)

They then go on the run, but how far can they go before they’re caught? Does it make a difference that the cunning, abusive woman who has plotted the murder of her husband, was she herself horrifically abused by this man? Can something resembling love ever develop between two people so violent and broken?

Gunjo is amazing in its fan disservice. The murder succeeds because the killer seduces the man, and kills him while naked. But even in this scene, the violence and her disgust completely detracts from any sexual appeal of her nudity. Even in a kiss between the two main characters, their pain permeates.

My problem with Gunjo however, is specifically that the darkness never lets up. Perhaps it is my own sensitivity, but I found it very hard to complete it.

3. Pulse

It’s a full-color! I love full colors. Anyway, moving on, 

Pulse tells the story of Mei, a renowned heart surgeon who is also a cold-hearted playgirl. Lynn is a college student who needs a heart transplant, but she refuses to get one (the risks are high). When they meet, Mei feels a strange kind of pull towards Lynn, almost like she’s truly attracted for once in her life. As they grow closer, Lynn strikes a deal- if she can make Mei fall in love with her, she will get the surgery, but Mei has to be the one to do the surgery. Lynn trusts her.

The premise can create all sorts of problems, but that is surprisingly averted. Mei doesn’t pressure Lynn into sex, nor does she fake romantic attraction. Lynn doesn’t sacrifice for Mei. Basically, Mei is no asshole, she’s just uninterested in people, and Lynn is no pushover. Also, the art is mighty fine. 

2. Philosophia

Philosophia is about a college romance wherein the two anti-social, apathetic main characters, Ai and Tomo, bond over smokes and coffee. But these little things are not enough to exorcise their inner demons. As Ai starts to feel for Tomo, she becomes torn up over these emotions- her existing familial relationships are far from ideal, and that has fostered her inability to really understand love. Tomo is strange and disinterested, and it doesn’t seem likely that she will return Ai’s feelings. Furthermore, Tomo wants to leave the country, and the means by which she gets the money she needs, is best kept a secret. 

Philosophia has both realistic yet unique characters (they do not fall too far into “always mopey” or “always sweet and excitable”, a common problem even in this list), and also incorporates a series of sobering twists and turns.

1. Collectors

Nito Shinobu and Kanzaki Takako both love shopping. Shinobu collects books and Takako collects clothes. But as they move together, let’s just say there are spaaaaaace constraints. 

Collector is nothing grand or wild- this is the Happily Ever After, but Collector is important specifically for showing how life goes on, that it is comedic and fun and relatable. 

Yuri tends to face the opposite problem to Western LGBT material of the past. Older Western material is melodramatic and tragic, the gay identity of the couple is frequently mentioned and becomes a source of tragedy as they face persecution, which ultimately results in their suicide or murder. In yuri, the world is often isolated down to the couple- they have feelings for each other, but other characters rarely exist and if they do, these characters do not acknowledge the romance. “Lesbian” is never said, and talks of marriage are only meant as comedy. 

There has been a lot of praise for Yuri On Ice (which actually involves a male homosexual couple despite the title) for how the other characters are fleshed out too, for how they recognize and acknowledge the relationship between Viktor and Yuuri. There is a similar kind of realism going on in Collectors. There is a feeling of the world actually existing. 

Collectors gives attention to the tender moments, the little things, that make a relationship, instead of it all being grand kisses in front of everyone or a emotionally charged graduation speech. There is no feeling of such performance. Even the fights in Collectors are realistic, not the kind formed from wacky misunderstandings, and in fact the kind with a proper resolution and not where they leave, and then kiss and make up but the problem still exists. 

[melissaspruce]

Its 2:40am and i cant stop my thoughts

The first time she cheated on me was in a nightclub toilet. Right infront of my eyes. And she denied it. I felt everything crumble id never been so destroyed. Ill never forget how broken i was when i went to my best friends house the next day and collapsed in her arms. I did a weird thing, I pretended it didnt happen. I denied it. The second time she cheated on me was when i was waiting for her at a pub and she left me there alone for 3 hours while she ignored my phone calls and would occasionally reply with petty lies as to where she was. Little did she know someone had seen her with this girl just out front of the pub i was waiting for her in. Whats worse was this girl added me on social media and smiled to my face as I waved hello as i introduced myself kindly. What a dickhead. Then months later i noticed a change in her. Like she was deleberatly trying to get me to hate her. I still stayed and loved her even then. She then broke up with me and told me it was her not me. That old chestnut. Then came back to me when she was lonely a few weeks later. I lied and told her i hacked into her messages and her whole face dropped with guilt. She eventually let out it was the same girl from the night she left me for 3 hours in town. And that she was so guilty she broke up with me so she could meet up with her. Swore she never did anything as per usual. Whats worse was i worked on forgiving her, only to be lying in bed with her at night and have this girl call over 20 times crying she was going to commit sucide. I still bared it. It changed me but i still kept loving her. Then when we would go out i would have to deal with this girl being everywhere we went staring. After that i broke up with her because i found myself becoming crazy. Always checking her posts. Her likes. It began to consume me. Then she pulled the sucide card and told me how much she hated herself. I knew that pain all too easily and my heart broke for her. And yep you guessed it. I contiuned to love her. After that i noticed whatever she had been telling her family and friends must have been horrible because their demanor was noticeably different with me. I couldnt understand why i was so hated when i did nothing wrong. She would show me text messages from her best friend telling her being with me was a bad idea. That I was no good. I would never have shown or told her the things my friends said about her, that just nasty. But still i loved her. Eventually the months rolled by and her phone for 2 years always remained face down.  She stopped posting pictures of me and would yell at me everytime i did a snap chat with her in it. Eventually i had had enough and broke up with her again. 2 days later she was back at my door step smiling and saying it didnt feel right to not be with me. And still i loved her. I noticed one night again that she was acting weird and replying at strange times. She told me she was with a friend having a quiet one at home and broke up with me the next day. A few days later i had a friend contact me and tell me she was in another lesbians snap chat having a ball all 3 in bed. How cute. For everyone to see but me to be left in the unknown like a meaningless piece of shit. Ill admit this was my final straw and although i dont feel good about it. I called her a slut and a dog and told her she was dead to me. And now i lie in my bed awake at night thinking of all the times we partied together and she would go strange and distant from me walking meters away from me acting like i wasnt there with her. She was probably entertaining someone else in the room and making it look like we werent together. Or how she would go from fine to instantly looking like i made her the most miserbale person in the world when the girl she cheated on me with was within eye sight. Dickhead Mel. And i followed her around still loving her like a fuckwit. Or the way she would drop me at the flick of a switch if her friends or family mentioned something distasteful about me. I dont know why i held on for so long through all of this. I know i loved her. I even tried to ask if she wanted a threesome from time to time. In the hopes that when she cheated next it wouldnt be so painful. But it wasnt me. I couldnt watch her enjoy herself with someone else. I never thought id ever stretch myself as far as i did to stay with someone ever. The nights i lay happily in her arms while she was probably riddled in her own guilt. It destoryed me thats for sure. My self worth took a beating. I no longer thought i was beautiful or smart or worthy for that matter. If only i could be skinner or richer or have nicer things would she love me more? Its fucking unbareable how much it changes you as a person. I for the first time in my life got bitter. I felt like i had to flaunt myself to show her maybe someone would want me. But she didnt seem to care. I would comment on other girls things and flirt in the hopes she would see and actually fucking care. Its almost like it turned into a competition. I knew it was wrong but i felt so fucking defeated. Another friend sent me screenshots of them flirting obviously she didnt think id ever clue onto that one. I tired to move on with another girl in one of our breakup spells but my heart was always stuck on her. And she kept telling me how disgusting we were and I looked desperate. Said more about her character than anything really. I took a long time to be intimate. I didnt really know how to show love. I liked that she was distant and would let me take baby steps at opening up. The problem was then once i did i had wrapped her up in my vines and held on tightly. Maybe too tightly. I cant bare to watch her move on like i know she will. Or to deal with seeing her in town. Or even to cop the judgement from thoes who are her friends. Ill never heal from her until im away from her all together. Out of sight and i pray out of mind. I feel sorry for whoevers next and i feel sorry for her for never allowing herself to heal from her own past heartbreaks. What do you expect when she cheated on her last partner to be with me. Loyalty? I remember when she was fucking me and her boyfriend was ringing her in town looking for her how she laughed at his name on her phone. Then i realised she did the same thing to me with the other girl. I pray it doesnt consume me forever. Or that i dont turn cold like her and hurt my next lover. It changes you. It really changes you. Probably the biggest lesson in love i have come to face so far. And whats sad it my story is all too familiar. The love letters i wrote when i poured my soul out to her only to find them crumpled in a shoe box. The flowers id buy her only to watch them slowly die on my bedside because she forgot to take them home. The cute posts that sat there without even a like or comment from her. The present i bought her for our one year only to recieve nothing in return. The family events I was never invited too because half her family didnt even know i existed. It made me feel less than a spec of dirt. The countless times i loved her and it was never given back and everyone could see her so carelessly leaving me out to dry. Alone. This probably even resonates within half the people that read this. Its deeply saddening that the word love is used all too easily. That it means only a season for many. I only pray everyone finds some solace within themselves before using up another pure soul to drown their own demons and miseries. And honeslty it feels good to get it out. If even on a blog. To pour my mind out and feel the pain.