#it’s my token cishet man trait

[kyngsnake]

what’s the point of a muscle car if not to sit pretty on the hood

[georgieluz]

6, 10 and 13! 💚

hiiiii 💚

i answered 6 over here just a second ago, but i haven't done 10 or 13 yet so let me do those

10. worst part of fanon

i generally enjoy most parts of fanon but there are a few things that i sometimes don't particularly agree with, or see, myself? harry welsh being constantly described as the token straight is one of them. i know that most of the time this is a lighthearted joke/meme type of thing, but i do think the fandom actually thinks it too. i mostly find this kinda weird bc the only reason people give is that he talks about his wife a lot and is super super into her. bi and pan men can also love their wives to that degree and be "dedicated wife men". it just feels kinda exclusionary that people just naturally assume that a man who loves his wife in a wholesome way can't be bi or pan. especially bc it never applies to any of the other easy men who canonically had wives. and honestly, take it from me, an actual queer man: in comparison to most of the men in easy company, harry actually has queer vibes in abundance. he's definitely not giving cishet man the way people headcanon him. it's not really that deep, but yeah, i will 100% die on this hill. harry welsh is pan and kitty grogan is bi!! harry just doesn't feel like he'd give a fuck about the gender of the person he's into. i feel like he just wouldn't think about it in that kinda way, he'd be like "well, i'm into this person and that's that" and would just be down bad for them regardless of what they identify as.

so yeah, fuck the token straight harry headcanons!! if anything, [redacted] is actually the token straight :)

13. worst blorbofication

ok this is actually a bit of a tough one bc blorbofication is different to uwufication in my mind. like it's a whole separate thing to me. uwufication is more about taking away all the sharp messy edges of a character, whereas blorbofication is more about "oh this character lives in my chest now. i live and breathe their essence" kinda thing. so i don't think blorbofying characters is necessarily something i would see as having a 'worst', especially in our fandom, where side characters with little screen time are often fan favourites. in fact, i'd encourage the blorbofication of all hbo war characters!!! uwuifying some of them in writing does really put me off a fic or headcanon though, especially if it's very ooc. i don't mean the fics where you go deeper into their emotions and explore their inner feelings, or where there is a gradual evolution of their character, that's just good writing, but the ones where all their rough traits and flaws are filed down and polished away, just so the author can write the perfect little fluff fic with innocent flaw-free canvases instead of characters. people do it with speirton all the time, less so with webgott but you do still see it. i'd say winnix fall somewhere in the middle, but closer to speirton than webgott, on the scale. messy winnix is actually way way way more interesting than the flat boring married side couple that most fics position them as. i've gone off-track but still!

for the choose violence ask game!

[sunflowersolace]

fuck it ducktales headcanons because none of these fuckin birds (alien in penumbras case) are cishet and neurotypical like disney wants us to believe!!!

ms beakley: bi | cis | adhd | she/they

boyd: pan | cis???? he’s a robot | again he’s a robot so? is he technically nt? idk but he has autistic traits | he/him

della: bi | cis | adhd | she/her

donald: pan | trans man | adhd, speech impediment | he/him

daisy: bi | trans woman | autism | she/they

dewey: bi | genderfluid | adhd | he/they

drake: pan | trans man | adhd, chronic migraines | he/him

fenton: bi and polyam | cis | dyslexia, adhd | he/him

gyro: gay | trans man | autism, chronic pain | he/him

gosalyn: lesbian | cis | adhd | she/her

goldie: bi | cis | dyslexia | she/they

gandra: het | trans woman | adhd | she/her

huey: pan | trans girl | autism, adhd | she/her

june: aroace | cis | autism | she/they

josé: pan | cis | adhd | he/him

lena: lesbian | cis | token nt | she/her

launchpad: bi | cis | dyspraxia | he/him

louie: gay | nonbinary | adhd | they/them

may: lesbian | cis | autism | she/her

penumbra: lesbian | cis | token nt | she/her

panchito: bi | trans man | autism | he/him

scrooge: het | trans man | autism | he/him

violet: pan | cis | dyslexia | she/they

webby: lesbian | cis | autism | she/her

-

ships!

boyd and huey

della and penumbra

donald and daisy

drake and launchpad

fenton and gyro

i’m neutral on fenton and gandra. i don’t ship it per say but i don’t hate it. i like the idea of fenton dating both gyro and gandra though

gosalyn and violet

goldie and scrooge

josé and panchito and donald

lena and webby

-

other various headcanons

-gandra is part goose

-launchpad is part pelican

-gyro and scrooge could tell that huey was an egg (the trans kind not the bird kind) from very early on and when she cracked they were like “finally lmao”

-gyro has accidentally called scrooge dad multiple times

- the first time gosalyn called drake dad was also an accident. he was watching her hockey game and cheering embarrassingly loud and she yelled “oh my god DAD STOPPP” and he almost lost it. she didn’t even realise what she had said until after the game

-the first time she called launchpad dad was intentional though. she had always referred to him by name or as “my dad’s boyfriend”. one day after a particularly nasty brawl with some villains, which left dw scratched up and lp concussed, she got very worried. after lp told her not to worry, she said “of course i’m worried, you’re my dads!”

-she just doesn’t wanna lose another parental figure.

- violet used to be a big fan of fantasy/magic books but after the events of friendship is witchcraft she decided to stick to mystery and other fiction. it just wasn’t accurate to real magic.

[capricornsicle]

I have a feeling your ask box and I are going to be familiar. You might be hot-taked out after that killer Satomi discourse. But whenever you’ve got it in you, I’d sure love to hear what you think about Kira and her Jeff-deemed-absolutely-necessary departure.

Oh, definitely. And I do love content, so...

Kira Yukimura was done so dirty by the writers and Jeffrey “I’m not racist I’ll prove it by arguing to poc calling me out for it on twitter” Davis. Her treatment was racist, tokenizing, and it wasn’t even high-brow racism. It was sloppy and lazy. If you’re gonna write all your characters of color off the show, commit to it. She went to the desert like 5 times before she stayed. Cowards.

Kira was only meant to be on the show for the Nogitsune storyline in 3b. However, fans liked her so much that, as with Theo in season 6, she was brought back for more episodes. The difference is that Cody Christian is white-passing and male and Arden Cho is not. Female characters don’t exist on Teen Wolf without a relationship to a male character. Hayden existed for Liam. Tracy existed for Theo. Melissa existed for Scott and Argent. Allison existed for Scott. Lydia, the female character with the most screentime of all of them, spent a lot of her time existing in relationship to Jackson, Stiles, Parrish (shudder), and other male main characters. Women on the show were reduced to love interests and mothers more often than not, and Kira was the same.

I loved her character. I loved her arc. I loved Arden Cho, who in real life is as sweet and kind as her character. I enjoyed her parents, both Noshiko, who’s surprisingly funny and a total badass, and Ken, who’s the most wholesome man in the universe. The only straight man we stan. I love him.

Anyways, Kira was getting a fun arc outside of being Scott’s girlfriend, with her parents and her powers and all, and then wham, white-passing boy shows up and no more main character status for Kira. Guess there wasn’t enough room to keep the only interesting plot line of all the ones happening in s5. Personally, I would have chosen Kira over the Marrish garbage fire of underage relationships, but that’s just me.

Then. The Skinwalkers. I could write a whole essay about them, but this is a Kira post, so I’ll limit it to her. At least Luther got sent to the moon for a reason. Kira got sent to the desert for “rEaSoNs”. There was no indication that her power was out of control, but every indication it wasn’t. She was growing and learning. Then, suddenly, she was “too powerful” so she had to go to the desert and disappear for a few episodes and then go back and forth for a while before they wrapped up sending Theo to the upside down or wherever he went and she could finally go... hang out with the people who we were told could help her control her power but who only threw spears at her and gave her a season finale ex machina. Then back to the desert with you!

You can tell something was going on backstage in her treatment. Arden Cho wasn’t informed she was being cut, she had to be told by fans. Her departure was carried out as swiftly as possible, and not for any real reason. Kira would have been tremendously helpful against the hunters and in a lot of later scenes, against the Ghost Riders (and let me remind everyone that KIRA WAS THE ONE WHO TOLD LYDIA ABOUT THE WILD HUNT), against pretty much anything. Immune to electrocution? Don’t help with the hunters who love electrocuting people. Sloppy writing through and through.

And what’s more is that Kira was cut just in time for the Scalia thing, which was so fucking rushed oh my GOD nothing has ever been less natural- this is a Kira post, calm down capsicle. Anyways, Kira got replaced as Scott’s love interest and not much else by a white girl, no hate on Malia or Shelley but much on the writers. I loved Malia and Kira’s friendship, and if anyone should have gotten with Malia, it should have been Kira. (The first time I saw Malia I wondered if we were getting another ambiguously brown character, actually, but no, just Georgian and well-tanned. But I bet not all my followers knew Tracy was played by a Chinese and Cherokee actor. Or that Nolan was played by a Mexican and Caxcan actor. Or that Theo was played by a Penobscot Native actor. The list goes on of white-passing POC who got to stay marginally longer than Black or brown characters.) The “Scott ends up with a white girl he has no chemistry with” threw me for many loops, especially after I was surprised to find myself liking Scira, even though I’m usually bored by straight relationships because of their one-sided focus and nonexistent chemistry. Kira got to be a character outside of Scott, and I liked their romance better for it, and then desert for a thousand years!

TLDR on the canon end of things is that Kira and Arden were done dirty by a group of powerful white men who wanted to tell a cishet white story.

Now, on the fandom end of things, I’m stepping into the real hot water. It’s safe to say that Kira’s story was sloppy and Arden didn’t deserve that ending, but it’s less safe to say that this fandom doesn’t treat her that well either. Here’s the most popular x Scott ships on Ao3, under the Teen Wolf tag with no other filters.

Scott and Allison. Scott and Stiles. Scott and Isaac. Then Scott and Kira, in dead last. Scott and Malia don’t even make the top ships list, probably because of how rushed and sloppy it was, but I digress.

People love Scott and Allison a lot, and I get that. I liked her too. I was also sad when she died. But, unlike a lot of sentiment I see in this fandom, I don’t think she should have been brought back to fight the beast in season 5 and get back with Scott. Not only do I think bringing characters back to life without very good reason and explanation (which they wouldn’t have, come on) cheapens their death, and that bringing characters back to life is weak storytelling in general, but let’s recall that Scira is still a thing in season 5. They’re still madly in love when Kira leaves. Allison should not have come back and love-triangled so Kira could be written off for a different white girl or so the massive amount of young white girls in the fandom who love Allison would be angry at Kira for breaking up their OTP. That would have been the one thing that could have made season 5 worse. (Well, they could have made Marrish a thing or killed Mason, but Jeff Davis thought about it and a shiver went down his spine because the ghost of Christmas future hears my name in its nightmares.)

Even if people aren’t “bring Allison back” campers, they largely ignore Kira’s entire existence. People who post gifsets and posts about Allison or Lydia don’t give anywhere near the same amount of attention to Kira. I see more Malia posts, actually. And while all of them had more runtime than Kira, none of them paired with Scott quite as perfectly, or had such strong independent storylines. Lydia almost did, but it kept petering out and she kept going back to main plot only. I see lots of appreciation posts for Allison and Lydia and Malia and the men, obviously, but NOTHING for Kira or Arden Cho. We all know what happened backstage because we read the same post in 2016 or whenever and then we all stopped talking about it.

Even the racism in this fandom skips Kira. Scott antis, I’m looking (controversially) at you. I’m glad Kira isn’t the subject of a bunch of obvious racism (as much as “bring Allison back!” makes it subtle), but not because she’s a forgotten side character. Kira made the main credit sequence! She has a sword! What else could you all POSSIBLY want?

And here’s where I burn at the stake: Kira was written off her own damn “look Fun Japanese mythology” storyline half the time so it could center around Stiles. A white boy. There were numerous issues with the mythology before that — “Oni” means demon, not “firefly samurai ninja”, and it refers to a similar mythology as the western “fae”, a large collection of creatures benevolent, malevolent, and in between, with different traits and origins. Kitsunes are meant to be red or white, not gold, and they’re foxes, not cats, animation team. “Nogitsune” refers to the malevolent class of “low” Kitsune, or “wild” Kitsune, who didn’t align themselves with the goddess Inari and do divine and pious work. There are many of them and the most they really do is harass people at shrines, not murder indiscriminately for funsies. They’re only malevolent in that they like doing bad deeds, not that they’re serial killers. And they’re not one of the usual 13 low Kitsune, two of which are bad of their own accord! (Spirit and Air. Google it!) They are meant to be dealt with by Inari-aligned high Kitsune, not your average tricky fox. Among other things.

So Stiles. Outside of the Kira storyline, he’s used in a lot of fandom discourse about racism and sexism. And queerbaiting. Y’all love a scrawny white boy. Anyways, Stiles gets possessed by the Nogitsune (that’s NOT how that works but okay Jeffrey) and suddenly s3 is about him. Kira’s not evil, now let’s look at Stiles being tired and messy and killing people. Dylan #1 did a great job playing that part, no hate on him, but the fact that a white boy became the main character in a Japanese (or Korean, if you’re Jeff, same thing) girl’s storyline is. Hmm. How do you call it? Blatant racism. And erasure. Which is racism. YIKES, Jeff. There is so much wrong with Stiles being the Nogitsune and controlling the Oni and his whole story (and oh my god the other guy who got possessed was also a white boy instead of a Japanese character played by the same actress Jesus fucking Christ). I’m not going into that, because that’s its own essay.

Anyways, because of how much this fandom loves Stiles, it’s easy to ignore how Kira and Japanese characters were treated. People project onto Stiles with glee. He’s white. He’s awkward. He’s (supposedly) not super attractive. (Yikes.) He’s ditzy and bouncy and all that fun stuff, but he also always saves the day. He got written off for most of 6b and he still saved the stupid day. And hey, dark!Stiles (let’s not get into calling him dark instead of Nogitsune that’s just too much wine we’d have to crack open to say it) is a fun trope and people like posting and creating about him. Except that he’s the white boy who took Kira’s storyline. Her independent story about Kitsune and the like was all given over to him, not just by the show, but by the fandom. So now every post about Kitsune is a Stiles post, even if it started with Kira. And because it’s Stiles, and this fandom loves him, and is easily offended by people leaning too hard on the glass house around them and him, Kira gets forgotten and swept aside. Everyone would rather talk about Stiles. Who is incapable of bad. Or cultural appropriation. But if you attack him you’re being ableist because he has ADHD. This is why I relate to Nolan for anxiety feels instead.

TLDR on the fandom end, y’all don’t treat Kira better than the show did. I see a few posts here and there from some dedicated users — typically the same people posting about Boyd, Deaton, Morrell, yeah that’s it I’m the only one posting about Kali. (Un-fun fact: Kali was not played by an Indian actor, but by a half-Black actor. Jeff Davis, when called out on twitter, said “wow ok idiots we tried to find an Indian actress but it was hard actually SUPER hard so shut up and stop telling me how to write MY show”, which is paraphrasing with intent to make fun, but exactly what he said.) Y’all who know about Arden and Kira should diversify your blogs to include more POC, especially ones where the actor AND character were rudely sidelined for vague white people reasons. Post gifs of Kira along with Allison, Lydia, and Malia. Post ship stuff of Scira too. Post about kitsunes, the origin story of the Nogitsune, when you post about the white boy who became the main character of that arc. Call the show out. Call the fandom out. Stop making every bit and piece of her story about Czechoslovakia White Boy. Demand Kira in any future runs of the show, if season 7 or whatever does happen. Include her in your fanfictions, in your headcanons, in your art. You don’t have to love her, but you have to remember that she’s as there as any of the white characters are.

This take is very hot. If I receive racist asks and/or messages about this, I’m going to make fun of each and every sender.

[thecorteztwins]

A Primer for Intersex Characters

I hesitated on writing this, since I am not intersex. But I’ve seen a lot of intersex characters around, a lot of common tropes and mistakes, and not any guides on how to write them accurately or respectfully. I cannot claim to have any experience relevant to being intersex, so I’ve simply tried my best to read the words and voices of many intersex people and relay them here. I welcome correction if something is wrong, since my goal here is to help stop misinformation and misunderstanding, not spread it further. Okay, let’s begin with the physical/medical stuff. - There are multiple terms for people who are NOT intersex, including perisex, endosex, jutasex, and dyadic. Please use any of these rather than “normal”. Cisgender is also not an acceptable substitution, as it conflates intersex with being trans (and some intersex people *are* cisgender) The term “hermaphrodite” is offensive and inaccurate; it is to be used for animals for whom true hermaphrodism (being fully reproductive as both sexes) is the norm, not for people. That said, I have encountered intersex people who use it as a reclaimed term. But if you are not intersex, you should not be using it for your character. - Intersex people are not a third sex category unto themselves ,nor are they both sexes at once. Intersex conditions are variations on male or female, and many intersex conditions are in fact sex-specific. - Intersex is not one thing. There is no single condition called “intersex”. It’s like “mentally ill”  or “disabled” it’s a category containing many different conditions, each with different symptoms and presentations. If you are going to have your character be intersex, please have them have a specific condition (even if they don’t know it/have not been diagnosed/etc) and research that condition thoroughly. Being intersex is always attached to a condition, and there are a limited number of said conditions in existence, and, again, each has specific symptoms and presentations, it’s not just a random mix-and-match. - Most of these conditions are not just cosmetic, there are often MEDICAL PROBLEMS. Most of the time it’s bone and/or heart problems and a need for more screening for reproductive/gonadal health issues, but some have more specific issues. For instance, CAH comes with excessive hairiness and ambiguous genitalia in females, but also something called excess natriuresis, also known as salt-wasting, which can lead to death, and a lower level of cortisol in the blood that puts them at a constant risk of adrenal crisis. So it’s not just about how the body LOOKS, or just about reproductive/sexual function, the entire system is often affected by too much or too little sex hormones. Sometimes there are even cognitive effects; Turner’s Syndrome can cause nonverbal learning disorders, difficulty in perceiving spatial relationships, and issues with motor control, while Klinefelter’s Syndrome can cause learning delays in general. Again, please research if your character is going to have this, and consider the effects. - Not all intersex conditions affect the genital configuration at all. For instance, in Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome, someone who looks externally like a completely normal cis man will have parts of the female reproductive system internally; many of these men never know this til they’re adults and it’s discovered in a medical examination for some other issue and it gets discovered by accident. Likewise, someone with AIS is often going to look totally cis female and be raised as such, and only find it out when she sees a medical specialist because her parents wonder why she isn’t getting her period yet. Ultrasounds, blood tests, and genetics tests are all much better indications of an intersex condition than a mere visual examination of the genitals, as well as kinder and less invasive. - Some conditions that DO affect the genitals still don’t make them ambiguous in any way, just not configured in the usual way. For instance, in Mullerian agenesis, a woman is just missing the uterus and thus infertile, but doesn’t have any “male” traits. Nor does having XXX chromosomes masculinize a woman at all, but it is an abnormality of sex chromosomes and thus classed as intersex. Sometimes it’s not about the sex being ambiguous, but about something that’s missing or not arranged as it should be. Again, it’s not a sexy disorder, and can result in a lot of unpleasant medical and mental effects depending just what’s going on. - Most intersex conditions result in infertility. Depending on their particular condition and its severity, someone may be fertile, but they are NEVER going to be fertile BOTH WAYS. There is no such thing as someone who can both impregnate another person and be impregnated themselves, not unless they’re some kind of mutant, alien, etc., and that’s obviously not what’s being discussed here. - Intersex people should not be used as an excuse to make fetish fantasy fuel. If you want to make a beautifully androgynous boy who can get pregnant or an Amazonian goddess with a big dick, just make that and be honest it’s your personal porn fantasy, but don’t call them intersex or claim it’s representation of any sort. Especially since there’s no condition I’m aware of that’s going to result in either of these things. Being intersex is often fetishized or treated as a freakish curiosity, sometimes both at once. If your character is extremely sexual or sexualized, and their intersex status is a large part of that, reconsider. If your character is depicted as bizarre or monstrous, and being intersex is part of why, don’t do that. - It varies with the specific condition, but most intersex people are actually not going to look androgynous like many people seem to think. Most, in fact, are going to look like perfectly ordinary men and women; you probably have met an intersex person and didn’t know it. That said, there are sometimes phenotypical symptoms. Again, this is NOT androgynous beauty or elegant gender ambiguity as I think people often hope/fantastize, but more like, say, the webbed neck of Turner’s syndrome, or the gynecomastia of Klinefelter’s (which are NOT big perky tits), etc. I am not trying to say intersex people are ugly or these features are anything to be ashamed of, but rather that if you are going to represent people with these conditions, to include the real features of their conditions, even the ones that don’t appeal to you, rather than defaulting to, again, fantasies and fetishes. Now comes the real thorny territory--- common ideas and presumptions I’ve seen around what intersex people think, identify as , etc., and addressing those. Again I am not intersex so I don’t want to speak on “what intersex people think” merely relay what I have seen, and what it comes down to is---there is no one thing all people who are intersex think! - Please be aware of the many issues intersex people face, be it medical problems stemming from their specific condition, being used as a political football by other groups, or finding doctors who will treat them respectfully and compassionately. Medical abuse of intersex people and trying to “fix” their genitals via surgery on infants and children is a rampant thing, and something that many intersex people are opposed to. It’s also worth noting that the terms “AMAB” and “AFAB” originated in the intersex community, as it CAFAB and CAMAB. I’m just trying to cover basics here but if you’re going to write a person with an intersex condition, these are all worth looking into further. - Many people with an intersex condition see it as just that, a medical condition. Many do not see themselves as something besides male or female, just as men or women who have a medical condition, and many may in fact be offended by the claim that they are a third category. It is for this reason that many dislike being used as “gotcha” to the claim there are “only two sexes” especially when it’s by people who don’t actually know or care anything about intersex people or the issues they face, and just want to win an argument, because it’s saying they’re NOT a man or NOT a woman because of their condition. - Many also do not consider being intersex to be LGBT and don’t wish to be included under the umbrella as such. - But, by the same token, some DO consider themselves a third category and DO feel that being intersex should be part of the LGBT umbrella. - I’ve noticed there seems to be an assumption that all intersex people are inherently nonbinary, genderqueer, trans, etc. Firstly, that’s not true. Many intersex people identify within the gender binary as a man or a woman, and many identify with their birth sex. I think this idea, while progressive on the surface, actually belies a very cisnormative way of thinking---the idea that the body must match the gender identity, so therefore someone with an “in-between” body must have an “in-between” gender identity! Which is really quite an offensive assumption, and no more true than the idea that everyone with a vagina identifies as a woman or that everyone with a penis identifies as a man. This is not to say that having a genderqueer/genderfluid/nonbinary/etc person with an intersex condition is automatically wrong either, there are non-binary intersex people in real life too, I’m saying that it isn’t an automatic part of being intersex. - Likewise, I see an assumption that all intersex people are going to be queer, pansexual, etc., or that their partners by definition must be pansexual, etc. But many intersex people are heterosexual. Many are also gay, or bi, or ace, and so on. And those who are monosexual are not less gay or straight for being intersex, nor are their partners. Believe it or not, there’s a ton of regular ol’ cishet people who have an intersex condition. - There’s also an assumption I’ve seen that all intersex people are all automatically going to be trans-supportive/trans-inclusive or count as trans by default. This is also not the case. There are seen intersex people who were trans/enbyphobic, just like anyone else can be. Many do not see themselves as comparable to trans people, and resent the idea they are the same or comparable. Some just don’t give a fuck either way. - Some intersex people have deep and complicated relationships with their status as intersex. Some see it as no different than just having diabetes. Some are activists and very knowledgeable about a host of intersex topics, both the physical aspects of various conditions and the political issues surrounding being intersex in general, and are very opinionated. Some people just know about their own condition and nothing more, and have no involvement in any kind of activism, no particularly strong opinions, etc. - Some people always knew they were intersex, some didn’t find out til puberty, some didn’t find out til in their adult life. It depends vastly on their condition and how it presents, as well as the access they had to medical care, whether their doctors were qualified or not, what decade they were growing up in and where, whether their families told them, etc. - There is debate on if PCOS counts as being intersex or not. I’ve seen a lot of people with PCOS argue it does, and a lot of people with other conditions say it’s in no way the same. I am not taking sides, as I don’t have either, just something to be aware of. At the moment though, no intersex rights organization or doctor classifies PCOS as intersex. So basically what it comes down to is that there’s a big diversity of conditions, and likewise a big diversity of experience, identities, and opinions. Do your research, and listen to intersex people, including the ones whose opinions you don’t like or whose opinions are contradict those of other intersex people. Find what fits your character best, think very critically on why you want an intersex character in the first place and why you chose what you did, and, above all, be respectful. 

[travisphelpsofficial]

Wait what about Steve putting racist and homophobic stuff in the game? I still haven’t had a chance to watch chapter 5 yet :( what happened?

This'll spoil the plot 1000% but it was easier for me to watch after hearing about it first, because I knew what was coming.

TW: racism, homophobia, self-harm, child abuse

Travis' whole story being about how he's violent & homophobic because he's in the closet is a homophobic stereotype from the jump. Most people who make homophobic jokes are just that, homophobes. To imply otherwise makes it harder for gay men to both come out, and critique those who make homophobic comments about us.

Personally, I also feel like the joke Sally made in the bologna incident is very, very out of place ("do you kiss your dad with that tongue?") given that Travis' dad is a) obviously abusive b) known to be homophobic and c) what most cults are known for doing to children. But that's not a common complaint people have.

Travis is never allowed to be happy, as a Brown gay man, he is abused throughout his time in the game. Which is, not okay, at all.

He dies trying to kill his father. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand and wanted his dad to be killed off, but Travis didn't have to die for it to happen.

That 1/3 of the cannon gay characters dead, and one of the few Black/Brown characters dead as well.

Todd's only character traits are that he is a nerd and gay. He does not have any kind of real story to him. He's just the token gay in the main 4.

The trauma p*rn only continues when Steve decides that, Todd, again one of the few pieces of representation in the game, needs to become a demon. (Which,, one could argue has a religiously homophobic tone to it... "oh he's gay let's make him a demon!!")

That's 2/3 gay characters and he doesn't technically die, but he's tortured and only exists to be gay, smart, and become a demon.

Neil, one of the few Black characters, and the last canon gay man is killed. Violently by the cult. His dead, naked, bleeding body is shown during one of the last scenes, for quite a while.

This demonstrates the bury your gays trope and that Black and Brown people truly only exist for Steve Garbage to torture. Extremely distasteful and ignorant.

Neil's only character traits also just so happen to be: Being gay, being kind, and being Todd's boyfriend. Not a well rounded character at all.

The fact that Neil was written to be so calm in the face of death, was also very disturbing. Sal didn't really want to die, Larry only killed himself because he had to, and Todd but up enough of a fight that he didn't get eaten up by a demon, but Neil, one of the 2 Black characters just accepts that he needs to die. All the white characters put up some kind of fight, but Neil, like the kind Black man that he is, just accepts death. Weird!

He kills off Robert, too (in chapter 4) and he's like the only other Black character we see more that once.

This isn't racist or homophobic, but the fact that he makes it so Ash has to try to kill herself in order to bring Sal back, is fucking awful. It comes out of nowhere and is very triggering.

Apparently he said that their high school mascot was a "Native American". I've never seen that, but I've heard people talk about it and obviously that pretty fucking racist.

THEN he decides that he'll add this weird as Native American lore into the fucking story?? And the legend he writes for it so misguided, racist, and ignorant, it sounds like something you'd write in second grade in a southern elementary school. I feel like we probably wrote shit like that at some point, and I still knew was wrong.

There's this fucking girl in a cave and she's got tribal tattoos and is like "my ancestors made these cave paintings" !! What!!

Natives don't have a universal culture. Not all of them did cave paintings. Not all of them believed in certain kinds of deities. Not all of them had tattoos. It's a gross generalization of a hundreds of cultures. It's racist.

He also tried to make it sound like the legend, that his dumbass wrote, was just some crazy Native jibberish. He has the legend written out, and then is like, yeah that's probably fake but they believed it any way.

All of this culminates into giving the cult part of that "oh ancient Native American demons better watch out!!" Trope. Which is, again, racist as fuck.

The end of the game leaves a lot to be desired and just fucking sucks honestly.

The game just ended up being torture p*rn made by a cishet white man, who obviously has a lot of bigoted tendencies lying beneath the surface.

* let me clarify that torture p*rn rarely conveys NSFW attributes and has a purpose of putting certain minority groups into painful/torturous situations and usually gives way to a white savior complex.

In this instance, Ash & Sal, two cishet white individuals "save" the town from a cult run & created by Brown people at the expense of the lives & souls of all of the Black, Brown and/or gay civilians (that we know of), which is a small price to pay, for them.

The fact there was never even the slightest "this game contains sensitive content, proceed with caution and care" at any point also rubs me the wrong way. Like, okay you don't want to spoil the game or lose revenue because very few people would buy a game with such fucked up views in it, but a small warning was more than necessary. Especially so considering this game ended up attracting a fan base filled with individuals that would be directly harmed by the shit.

I could go on, and on, and on about my personal grievances about how the game was written, how little research was obviously done etc., etc. but those are the main problems with it.

[mossrotts]

so blizzard’s got a shit load of problems, but i am so glad that soldier 76 is confirmed gay? like it’s just real nice that poster character tracer is lesbian and basically the most stereotypical actioniest action hero is gay.

but man i keep thinking of the forums and people asking like ‘does it even matter what sexuality the characters are?’ or ‘does it even matter if soldier 76 is gay?’. and i feel like... idk, if the asker is as neutral and “unbiased” as they think they are, then the answer is... no? cause like, idk it doesn’t affect the gameplay in any way (tracer still kicks my ass just as well as she did before we learned about her orientation), there is (UNFORTUNATELY) no mini game where you play as tracer getting past talon or something to go give her girlfriend a smooch, there’s really no story mode in the game despite all the surrounding lore and comics! so, if you’re somehow completely neutral, then no, it doesn’t really matter to the gameplay or how you interact with playing!

i think it does matter to people who are ‘unbiased’, however. unbiased in this sense meaning those who are affected by a character’s sexuality, and i think those are people who either say ‘yes it matters because it makes me uncomfortable in some type of way/makes me dislike this character/makes me dislike playing the game’ or ‘yes it matters because it’s representation/makes me more comfortable/makes me enjoy the game more’. the first rooted in or related to homophobia, the second rooted in or related to being queer/being supportive and empathetic to those whose situations are different than yours. 

and idk, if you’re asking ‘does it matter’ you should really question yourself what your own answer is! if it’s actually ‘no’, then it doesn’t matter that soldier 76 is gay or tracer lesbian (or that most of the characters are disabled with prosthetic, or that there’s nonwhite characters, or autistic characters, etc.), and it’s totally ok that those characters are in the game and affect you/your gameplay in no way! and more, you’ll probably realize that there are so many characters where the cliche hero who shares traits with soldier 76 is cishet so there is nothing lost for cishet individuals by this character being gay. and if that’s the case i hope you also realize that asking ‘does it matter’ tends to make it seem like there’s no place for diversity in games, that it’s not important for some people, and helps those for whom it does matter for  homophobic reasons delude themselves into thinking they’re less biased than they are--which all doesn’t seem very neutral of you so maybe keep ‘does it matter’ as a private thought for all of us. 

if your answer is ‘yes’ but it’s because the character having a specific orientation (color of skin, disability, etc) that’s different than you makes you uncomfortable, then that’s a type of bigotry, babe! either deal with that and become a better person, or suck my trans dick. nobody cares about your crusty opinions and as stated before, there’s a multitude of characters made for you, “losing” this one doesn’t mean you’re being attacked and doesn’t mean you have less goddamn characters to play with or whatever. 

and those out of the side, the answer can also be ‘yes’ but for reasons that are, i feel, a lot more beneficial to society and communities in general. yes, it matters, because this is a type of character that is rarely shown as gay and he is confirmed gay! it’s neat and new. yes, it matters, because of folk that say gay people have no place in fiction. yes, it matters, because of shit happening in the world today with constantly higher rates of crimes and prejudice against the lgbt community. yes, it matters, because it means that tracer isn’t the ‘token queer character’ and she isn’t the sole representation of the entire lgbt community anymore and we’re seeing someone on the same team who has a very different story and relation with his own orientation than she does with her. yes, it matters, because players are validated and are able to connect with the characters they’re playing. yes, for so many more reasons. 

anyway i can’t remember where i was going with this but i’m glad jack’s gay and i hope that more characters are confirmed with neat and wonderful things in their backstories.

[mild-lunacy]

The Art of Representation: normalization vs assimilation

I was thinking about representation in the Raven Cycle again 'cause I was reading a Beauty and the Beast retelling by CE Murphy, which has lots of casual queer representation for the secondary characters, that just... doesn't work for me at all. If I had to pin it down, it's that it's incidental (just like The Raven Cycle) but not... incidental *enough*. Too heavy-handed, somehow. And that's a weird reaction to explain even to myself, 'cause obviously I read tons of slash fanfic, where pretty much everyone is gay a lot of times. I've talked about why the incidental approach in The Raven Cycle works for me, though I realize that labels have value, particularly but not exclusively for queer readers. But this was different.

I think some of it's just that this is only the secondary characters, so even extensive representation feels tokenized and moralizing somehow. Like, everyone's fine with it, but it's almost a little *too* fine. There's no real sense that queer relationships are different or that this is a big deal, but nevertheless they *are* different, just in a way that's not acknowledged at all by the narrative. One of the queer characters is a queen who has a female lover who's very jealous and possessive, including being jealous of her potential need for another husband or desire for a man in general. There's these underlying conflicts based on the way a traditionally structured society functions, and it's just hand-waved away to the point where I feel this lover's motivations are muddled, even as she's clearly the villain. She's not allowed to truly suffer in a remotely sympathetic fashion from her situation as it drives her to unforgivable acts, even to the degree someone like Kavinsky is sympathetic in 'The Dream Thieves'.

That's essentially where I disagree with a lot of the well-meaning rhetoric on Tumblr and in general, currently. There's a space between the stereotyped identity politics of ticking 'the right boxes', and normalization in the sense of pretending there's no difference. There *is* a difference, and there always would be. Some conflict based on this is inevitable in any human society (fantasy world or not), which doesn't mean one has to recreate virulent homophobia or racism in one's writing if one doesn't want to. My point is that in acknowledging and humanizing a character's inevitable pain and struggles, some of the difficulties with their differences, one creates well-rounded characters without the need for always creating stories *around* these issues. Normalization or assimilation isn't an entirely uncontroversial goal, but incidental representation can work very well for me, in theory. Perhaps my point is that normalization and assimilation aren't *the same thing*.

Normalization accepts differences and pays attention to them (as any good writing would), whereas assimilation ignores that there's any meaning or context to difference. Without this created context (even in fantasy worlds), everything starts to feel bland, and representation feels heavy-handed to me. If the trait has some sort of personal effect or meaning (even individual as opposed to being about cultural censure), then I feel there's a real person there. That's how I feel about Ronan in TDT: it's not that he just *happens* to be gay. His gayness may not be explicitly labeled or subject to extensive homophobia (though there is some, because some people-- such as Kavinsky, or Adam's father-- will always suck), but it's integrated with his religious identity, his struggles over being monstrous, his fears about himself, his secrets. Ronan is a real person, who is also gay. He doesn't need to call himself gay because the identity is 'live', so to speak. It's affecting the rest of him, as well as his relationship to others around him (but not disproportionately so).

By contrast, I feel frustrated and even alienated by representation that literally means *nothing* about the characters, as in CE Murphy's book, and I feel that it's fundamentally different from Stiefvater's approach even if both are incidental. This is why I wrote that post on my thinking about race-bending Ronan vs Hermione Granger, for example. I definitely feel it's important to pay attention to (or create) the relevant context and the character's identity and relationships with other characters, which is not somehow magically independent of their gender or orientation (even in fantasy worlds). Context is key to building believable characterization, essentially, whether you're talking about fanon or canon. These things are *meaningless* without context, and therefore not so satisfying, at least to me.

I think in the end, many people in fandom are satisfied with the mere fact that 'this character is queer' or 'this character isn't white/male', and that's all that matters. And I'll admit that given the record of most writers out there, how picky can we be? Well... I'm very picky, these days, probably 'cause I've been pretty spoiled by being in slash fandom, with tons of highly contextualized, sympathetic but human queer characters in particular. I'm also aware that many (seemingly) white cishet writers may use incidental representation as a way of not really confronting homophobia 'cause it's uncomfortable, or too far out of their comfort zone and knowledge. When things are overly smooth in some stories with no homophobia, it can feel like the modern queer experience is being papered over by more or less well-meaning outsiders, like the people who say they're racially color-blind. In some ways there's simply no great solution that will make everyone happy.

Personally, I'm not so much offended as *bored* by the kind of representation that seems to tick the boxes of Otherness without dealing with the fallout. If nothing else, that's just not good writing, while I think that TDT and Ronan's and even Kavinsky's characterization demonstrates how to approach a character whose queerness is not central to them but nevertheless part of their struggles. Even hinting at inner (and outer) conflict is enough to make the character work for me, whereas treating something like race or orientation as *meaningless* can only feel like a feel-good patch, something that is in itself meaningless in the end.