#it's also straight people i see saying it can be perceived as homophobic too lol | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

inchidentally · 11 months

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please tell me your parasocial theory about the lando effect on his teammates i'll shrivel up like a raisin without it actually

god. I'm gonna try and keep this coherent and not TOO weird. obv this is completely without knowing any of these people personally and it's just me theorizing for fun without any actual private knowledge etc etc !

(I've had to edit the hell out of this bc I don't want to like outright offend anyone since this isn't meant to be super serious at all but I'm mortified at how long it is anyway lol)

so we all know that Lando has always had the whole main character fairytale prince/princess quality that started from taking so incredibly long to finally grow up right up to his version of grown up vacillating between devastating fuckboy to coquette fetish sweetheart. and we all know that Lando is fully aware of how he looks and how he's perceived bc of visible social media presence and interactions and also just being around mirrors. he's stunning and charismatic because he makes no effort to be and there is an aura of destiny and magic around him with whatever he does. but he's always seemed like someone who needs to know what exactly he means to his close friends, mainly guys. in a way that's almost like 'yeah you have a girlfriend but does she accept that I'm ✧Me✧ and not just a Normal Blokey Friend?' or 'will your friends accept that I'm ✧Me✧ or will I have to put up a front?'

the reason Lando's so magnetic to people is because he's a ✧Me✧ but also because he's a ✧Me✧ while being a guy which guys aren't usually secure enough to be ✧Me✧. a lot of guys dress up or play up acting like one but Lando's authentically a ✧Me✧ and not to be classed with guys who are Normal Bloke or Normal Friend. they are very very rare.

to expand on this further and because I have insomnia let's take a walk through our perceptions and occasional facts of fandom observation over the years...

I feel like somewhere in the process of his first few years of F1 Lando went from awkward paddock baby who was probably a fall risk to realizing how incredibly adorable he still was even as a pro racing driver. he was literally everybody's baby (and honestly still kinda is). he was thrown into F1 so young it's not surprising.

I am a diehard carlando fan here so please understand that I'm switching to speaking in real life and not fandom terms (and I prefer fandom terms lol) real life Carlos is 100% hetero to me. my family and friend group are sort of UN levels of diverse and what seems like fruityness in non-American or sometimes non-British men is completely standard for straight dudes outside those countries. straight euro guys in particular flirt and get physical with their bros one way and then have an entirely different type of flirting and physicality with women they're attracted to. I don't think this is the case with Carlos at all but a LOT of these euro dudes can even compartmentalize so well that they're actually homophobic while fully kissing and cuddling with their friends. like I say Carlos doesn't seem at all homophobic but there have definitely been tiny, subtle moments with other drivers or during social media challenges where he's been like 'okay that's far enough for me'. which imo is him drawing boundaries and is totally fair.

AND YET WITH LANDO? Carlos has had a verrrrry hard time classifying Lando up until recently I think. for a while after signing to McLaren it was clear he viewed himself as protector and big brother/uncle to a very skittish and weird child/toddler/pet. then when Lando started to build his F1 personality around Carlos and was able to do some give and take with him, Carlos started to see Lando as a fun little satellite buddy and we got some of their silliest most adorable moments (the squawk laughing and the horseplay etc). but Carlos very much still viewed himself as the superior and Lando was just happy to have someone patient and considerate of him rather than a serious competitor.

to me Carlos and everyone else in F1 shifted how he saw Lando around the time of Daniel showing up on the scene (and Carlos' shock at how upset Lando was when he went to Ferrari). Lando got a LOT more confidence on and off the track from here on and he absolutely saw Daniel as a competitor and gave as good as he got off track too (in a fun way). he was never a satellite of Daniel's like he was with Carlos. he also physically started to grow and appreciate his own beauty and sexuality (not as in his identity but his effect on others sexually). he started dressing more consciously and mixing flirting with cuteness to win people over and play the media. youtuber/streamer Lando began to merge with F1 paddock darling Lando into something new between having Carlos and Daniel as teammates.

I can just tell you right now that a dude like Carlos would have ABsolutely no idea how to classify what Lando was becoming at that point in terms of their friendship. Lando was too pretty and still too small to be considered a Dude and apart from on the race track Lando doesn't have the natural douche-ness of Dudes. but Lando also had an active sex life and women were already crazy for him so he wasn't a child anymore either. since F1 drivers literally for bodily safety reasons can only identify as straight Carlos couldn't even class Lando as a rainbow guy.

personally I think that's when Carlos elevated Lando to Hot Bitch/Great Dude status. Lando can still take roughhousing and stupid jokes but he's also got this intense genderfluid glow that poor straight man brain have a tough time with. so Lando's this still confusing hybrid but one that Carlos accepts and loves.

in such a short time Lando went from notice me senpai over Carlos as a teenager on twitter to showing off how they exclusively hang out outside race weekends and he can breeze into the Ferrari garage like he owns the place. one teammate down :)

obv this whole time Lando has had Max F in his life and I think they've known for a long time that they're the sort of best friends who are also common law married. their gfs have always seemed really good natured about it. (**this will be relevant when Oscar comes up later) before Carlos, Max was very clearly the stronger public personality Lando had latched onto as a kid and stayed that way until about 2020/2021. since then I feel like Max is watching Lando in a kind of proud wiping away a tear and claiming that it's raining way. he was down before he probably knew it :)

honestly I'm not a big fan of Daniel Ricciardo for specific reasons and I've chosen to just edit out what I'd written about him and Lando since I truly don't want to piss anyone off over this pointless post lol. it's enough to say that for all Daniel's cockiness making gay jokes etc I get a lot of joy from the fact that Lando has ended up combining Lewis Hamilton-gender norms are for losers attitude with his own genuine rising stature as a future WDC and basically blew Daniel out of the water in every way. they're absolutely still good buddies but damn, Hot Bitch Lando had Daniel stuttering and staring with how little effort it took for Lando to outshine him, on and off the track. Daniel is usually the one in charge of his F1 relationships but Lando got him fucked. up. and begging.

another teammate down :)

do I even need to go into detail about Oscar . we know so incredibly little about Oscar's real personality yet we fully know that he's been replying to Lando's tweets and watching Lando's content since boarding school in the UK. you can take a tour of just the McLaren youtube content from the 2023 unboxing onward and watch Oscar go from dazed and stumbling over himself to not look a tool in front of Lando to Prema-era humor Oscar being able to banter with Lando.

here's what's different with the Lando/Oscar friendship tho. Oscar came in weirdly grown up for his age bc he'd left home so young and went from boarding school to being set up in his own flat by Mahk Wibbah. he already had a long term girlfriend and after waiting a year for his driver's seat he'd made the extremely ballsy move to publicly decide his own fate in F1. Lando was probably expecting to have a typical rookie on his hands but instead he got someone who's already more emotionally mature and responsible than Lando's other two teammates combined. then Oscar is so incredibly talented that he's pushed Lando to such a massive new level that P3 and P2 and (currently) 4th in the WDC are already losing a bit of their shine. Lando wants the whole thing and in a way he never has up til now. Oscar is a not insignificant part of that.

Lando suddenly has an equal! their age difference is negligible and their competitive level is the same. the fact that Oscar's racing mentality is so vastly different to Lando's is perfect because there'll never be a Lewis/Nico situation. Lando needs to stay within his own head to a certain degree for race weekends and Oscar looks forward to his next opportunity as soon as he's done with one. Oscar even has a much more laid back Max F style sense of humor which means Lando doesn't have to play up and perform as much as he used to for social media shit.

then there was the awful start to the season followed by Lando definitely being shook up by how hot Oscar came in as a rookie. AND YET Oscar has always gone out of his way to celebrate Lando's successes literally no matter how his own performance went. he's never once opted to peace out until needed for media or pictures (or straight up left) after a DNF or finishing poorly. there's this moment from the Dutch GP that breaks my idiot fandom brain bc Lando had just qualified second and Oscar (Q8) is shaking his hand and congratulating him and. idk it feels like one of those 'oh!' moments where Lando realizes Oscar is rooting for him even when they're competing and it's not a one-off nice gesture or bare minimum effort

(which honestly that bare minimum is totally fair in racing and I don't judge drivers who need to lick their wounds, it can take a lot to come out of that adrenaline mindset and be happy for your teammate who is also your competitor).

and that's the thing, Oscar came in already won over by Lando. he simply expects them both to do their jobs well and whatever Lando has to offer outside that is cool with him because Lando is ✧Lando✧. if Lando wants to bring him more into his non-F1 life at some point that would probably be great but Oscar's also got his own stable non-F1 life so it's fine either way! if Lando has other commitments and Oscar needs to step up more with the team then that's fine! I know I've been superlative with this post but like, Lando never needed/needs to do anything at all for Oscar to like him and accept him and root for him. Oscar clearly doesn't feel the need to prove anything to Lando or force the relationship. everyone else is dazzled by Lando or watched him/helped him grow up but Oscar just really Finds Lando Neat and Wants to Be Around Him. he seems to like being bossed around by Lando but he also likes when Lando is being really cool and when Lando is quiet and moody he just waits until Lando wants to be around people again. he's like a cat that proves their devotion to you by remaining in proximity rather than meowing or shoving their face in yours.

so like, part of me feels like Lando saw his new teammate having this whole life(**girlfriend?? but does she accept me as ✧Me✧?) already before even meeting Lando and had no idea how they'd develop a relationship. both Carlos and Daniel had (and still have) very bachelor style lives where a relationship with the current teammate is top priority and everyone else in their life has to deal. work comes first, then work friends, then everything else until the babies are made.

but then Oscar just shows up all content with his grown up life and smiles at Lando all the time and doesn't take anything for granted and respects Lando's space within F1 and McLaren and never complains even about doing things he doesn't like and Lando's like oh! I've already got this one down for the count and I didn't even do anything! nice :)

anyway thank you for asking and I hope this was remotely worth reading aakfgsjgfjgafagla

#crafoiv #this is insane but I hope it partly makes sense #mine #ln lore #inchreplies #inchidentallyanessay #for reference #inchgetsweird

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hijinks-n-lowjinks · 6 days

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for the choose violence ask game:

how about 1, 6, 7, 8, 10, 18, 21 annndddddd 22

that was a lot lmao so feel free to skip/ignore some of these if u want

Yes yes yes thank you for giving me so many!!!! I love giving my opinion!!!! And I saw your second ask about how you meant to add that this is for jjk, not to worry lol

1. The character everyone gets wrong

My first instinct is to always say Gojo, but I also think Megumi is pretty misunderstood. It’s pretty rare that I find a fic where I think the author gets his personality down without digging too deep into one stereotypical archetype. That’s why I don’t read but jjk fanfiction :////

6. Which ship fans are most annoying?

Oof that’s a tough one. I mostly stay out of shipping discourse and I tend to like the most popular ships so I don’t get irritated by a lot. But it’s the straight shippers who insist that a character isn’t gay because of convoluted reasons or because they said a girl was pretty one time. Like that doesn’t mean they aren’t queer lol. Just say you’re homophobic and move on.

7. What character did you begin to hate not because of canon but of how the fandom acts about them?

None. I’m pretty unaffected by fandom interpretations of character tbh. I know the true, real gospel of jjk so other interpretations are just false prophets spreading heretical nonsense. Like the fandom can get annoying af about Gojo but that doesn’t make me like him any less. I know his purpose and personality as a character so that’s all that matters to me.

Oh but it does annoy me how some people think Mai’s actions are excusable because of her backstory. Nah, she’s a bitch, but thats okay that she’s a bitch!!!! Her and Maki had the same background and yet she’s the worst!!!! I’m okay with her sucking, her backstory makes her more interesting, but like. Acknowledge that she’s also out of line a lot of the time (I don’t hate her though. I just don’t like her).

8. Common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

Idk if this is exactly common, but I’ll see a lot of skits on tiktok where someone like Gojo or Nobara will tease Megumi about his feelings for Yuuji and he just…. acts so weird and obvious about it. Or he overreacts and is super dramatic. That’s not my boy. He would act is ASS off to be perceived as unaffected by the teasing and to try and play off his feelings as not a big deal. He’s a tsundere but like a laid back casual tsundere.

10. Worst part of fanon

People having different opinions than me hahdjsnhajs I’m right all the time and anyone who disagrees with me is just not as enlightened as I am.

18. It’s absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on….

Yukiiiiiii. She’s my girlfriend and I love her. We need more content of her. Like everyone knows she’s hot (obviously) but we need more discussions and fics and fanlore about her past and her personality. Also more chosoyuki please.

21. Part of canon you think is overhyped

Junpei’s death. To be fair, I was spoiled for it so I knew he was going to die from the beginning, but I didn’t have much of an attachment to him other than that I liked Yuuji’s friendship with him. I felt really bad for him, but I was more upset with how Yuuji was going to take his death/transfiguration than the actual event itself.

22. Your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

That jjk is an enjoyable story lol.

#thank you for the askkkkkkkkk these were fun #I’m a pretty chill consumer so I’m not as uptight about things as other fans but I still have opinions #jjk #jinx answers #jinx talks

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bottombaron · 3 years

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spoilers for what if...?

some quick thoughts on the first Marvel What If...? episode that are almost all Bucky related big surprise:

i froth at the mouth at any small moment of pre-ws!Bucky like a stranded survivor of a shipwreck. yes pls all of it, i need more. my desire to know who traumatized characters were pre-trauma is like an un-quenchable thirst.

that being said, i'm loving the idea the Bucky was just...a big fucking himbo. a nerdy silly himbo. there's nothing more satisfying than a super pretty competent person wowing you with some big time dork energy.

his lines were so groan worthy which is why i loved them. looking back it's a pretty obvious choice to make Bucky Barnes pre-Winter Soldier just Bucky Barnes from the comic books. he tells bad jokes, he's a damsel in distress, he's there for a reaction shot or two, and best of all he's got the worst one-liners.

my kingdom for Bucky of today going back to his bad one liners, honestly i would pay marvel to have Bucky throw a knife in someone's face, blood is everywhere, and he just goes, "knife to meet you." (Sam is floored. he goes through the 5 stages of grief in ten seconds and ends up laughing so hard his lungs hurt. redwing has it recorded and sam revisits it when he needs to)

the part where Steve gets back into the Hydra Smasher and falls on his face is peak stevebucky tho. Bucky is unconcerned, makes light of it, and there's even some light teasing. i have to highlight this for the purpose of Bucky's characterization in fanfic in terms of how he treats Steve, especially pre-serum Steve: he doesn't baby him. he doesn't mother-hen or overprotect Steve. he knows Steve is tough, he's spent years picking him up off of alleyway pavements, he's not going to act like a helicopter mom.

which i really appreciate because i'm tired of the treatment of Bucky as not also being a reckless kid in this war. Steve and Bucky don't have the dynamic of the Reasonable Adult and their Troublesome Kid i've seen sometimes in fic. they're both hooligans. Bucky comes off as the more cautious one sure, but it's just slightly. and that very slight difference gets overblown sometimes which feels disingenuous to a character that's in his 20s (like do you know bros in their 20s,,,do you?? they're still trying to run up walls and do backflips. they still think they're invincible. 20 year old men are the stupidest people on the planet. and i can say that as a man almost 30) and, by all accounts, ran mayhem in Brooklyn right next to his best friend.

just. don't forget Bucky Barnes is a young stupid pretty himbo okay?

speaking of disingenuous characterizations: what was that hetero bullshit with Peggy being more distraught over Steve's 'death' than Bucky????

are.you.kidding.me.

i feel this righteous anger burning over this, which i'm sure will come to a bigger rant at some point but really? fucking really?

this is it. this is what straight people do. this is the straight agenda.

this isn't even just about Steve and Bucky they do this kind of bullshit all the time in media: character 1 has a long-lasting deep friendship with character 2. character 1 has a romantic subplot with character 3. character 1 and 3 barely know each other. character 1 dies and character 3 is somehow more distraught about this than character 2.

i fully expected Bucky to start trying to climb down the mountain to find Steve but nope!

he's just 'oh nooo~ he ded. whelp lets go hoes'

while the woman who knew Steve for maybe a few months is doing the Darth Vader 'noooo' moment

this does not make any character, story, or emotional logical sense. there's no fucking reason for this bullshit than blatant homophobia.

like fucking fine, lets not see Steve and Bucky interact in any way because I WONDER WHY

but even better

lets have Bucky not really emote over Steve's death, because a. that's gay, we don't want people to think we write gay characters (don't worry marvel we don't) so two men can't care or mourn for each other onscreen. and b. we've got our hetero romance to sell

Peggy Carter is a professional military woman. with experience.

Bucky Barnes is some kid from Brooklyn whose been fighting in a war he's been drafted in for maybe some handful of months.

but sure. yeah. his childhood best friend dying. he's the one whose going to have the professional cool head in this moment.

and it's the PROFESSIONAL MILITARY WOMAN whose going to forget her job and training and need to be pulled from grieving BY THE MAN WHO'S BEST FRIEND JUST 'DIED'

SURE JAN SURE

it's the homophobia that betrays the logic of the characters that really fucks me up y'know?

if you're betraying the honest emotional reactions of story and character because you're afraid of those things being perceived as gay: you're homophobic.

it's really that simple.

'i'm in. for Steve' lol. like god. i'm as tired as seb sounds i swear

and i know Sebastian '~the truth of the character~' Stan probably felt like his teeth were being pulled out with hot pliers reading these. how many times did the voice director have to say, 'ok. can we try it like you're not slowly decaying from the inside, hunny?'

barely any howling commandos and none of them had any lines other than Dum Dum. ok. yeah. ok.

so some high notes:

return of my favorite Stark: 1940's Howard!

i would die twenty times just to be able to see more of Dominic Cooper's Howard Stark. he's just the fucking best. earnest and cute and a bit of a mad scientist and i fucking adore him

i need the Howard Stark + Bucky Barnes sitcom now. pls and thank you.

i'll even take 5 minute vinaigrettes of the antics they'd be up to. two playboy nerds together is just a magical event, don't waste it! i can't believe i've been sleeping on this dynamic it's too good.

"BARNES STOLE A CAR"

i will be replaying this single moment for years. the serotonin it gives me.

stark is just. the most excited man ever to have seen someone hotwire a car??? how did this scene go i need to knoooooowwww

all frustrations aside, it was really cool to see Peggy Carter as Captain Britain. she's a great character and i love her so much. every moment she was legit thrashing n*zis with her big butch arms was thrilling and satisfying.

that truck shield flip is still doing things to me...

honestly upset that the sword Peggy was wielding wasn't a Zemo easter egg like i was hoping it was 😩

#marvel what if #what if...?#what if...? spoilers #stucky #mcu #bucky barnes #stevebucky

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nightswithkookmin · 3 years

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chile i'm so glad i came across your blog, the amount of "i'm not going to assume they're dating" or "we can only draw certain conclusions but i can't say for sure" "we don't know their sexuality, BUT" type blogs i follow is getting kinda wack lmao. while i appreciate their perspective and nuanced takes i need to strike a balance. like let's get a lil delulu every once in a while. 💀

lol the im-not-a-shipper-but-call-jikook-boyfriends-every-other-post blogs are the funniest to me. the shipping hierarchy, so to speak is so weird. maybe just because im not a "shipping real people is bad" person i don't see the big deal. gonna get called delulu anyway, might as well go full out. they is gay/queer and they're fucking. i'm so sorry.

*also can we touch on the fact that shipping in this type of fandom (kpop) is kind of inevitable and unavoidable??! these boys are the other people we see them with day in and day out, interacting with each other and no one else. i feel like it's natural to ship when there's no other people around to break up everything, idk maybe someone can articulate this better than me. and people who are made to feel stupid for thinking that 2 members could actually be dating is so dumb. like is it really out of the realm of possibility that two people (jikook, cause all them other ships are....😬) who spent almost every waking minute together for like 8 years could fall in love. really?

/rant

It's the delulu hat for me

Lmho.

I guess for me being queer, I feel it's gaslighting for these people to be saying things like that. As silly as it is, it inadvertently deny and invalidate the existence and queerness of gay individuals and so I struggle with it.

This is the consequences of straight people in gay people business. They like defining gay parameters for us and it's like who asked you?? I feel people who say things like that are just plain ignorant or tone deaf or willfully homophobic.

I don't think everyone in BTS is gay but it makes me feel safe to see half the community assume them to be and celebrate them in that way. They are not cussing at them and threatening to leave the fandom or cancel them for this assumption and that is huge inspiration to me.

Those parts of the fandom are a safe space to be in as a queer army.

When people assume a person's queer sexuality they are simply admitting to themselves at the very least that LGBTQ EXISTS. This is important to me because I grew up in a community where LGBTQ didn't even exist in the collective consciousness of the people and EVERYONE IS AUTOMATICALLY ASSUMED TO BE STRAIGHT AND EXPECTED TO BE.

People read people's sexuality all the time and have done so since time immemorial and a lot of the time when they have had a sexuality read it's in the lines of straight, cis, rich, poor, superior or inferior. And that is a problem for some of us too because that discrepancy in the assumptions is as a result of homophobia and heteronormativity.

That whole don't assume a person's queer sexuality debacle sounds to me like a boujee way of denormalizing and preventing the normalization of queerness disguised under care, disguised under intelligence and disguised under wokeness. Especially when straightness is the default setting in this giant blue bulb.

We need to radicalize that. We need to change the cis straight default setting and if you are perpetuating this narrative you really aren't helping the situation. SIT DOWN.

I'm rarely assumed to be queer in certain circles and while that makes me feel comfortable within those circles it often times make it hard for me to admit my queerness openly in those circles too because I fear I will lose that comfort and respect and love and privileges that comes with being percieved straight in those spaces.

When I started my blog, I noticed some people assumed I was white and would use certain black descriptors as slurs when describing other people to me. I quickly had to switch the formal way in which I wrote to a much casual tone so my blackness would show through. Don't get it twisted. She black. She blackidy black black.

Then on the other hand, I was hesitant to let my queerness be known too because being black, I was marginalized as it is- you is black, or sound black💀 you know how it is- it's that intersectionality of oppression at play. Double double homicide.

When certain people realized I was black POC minority, their attitude towards me changed. I had those who didn't so much understand what black language is or perhaps wasn't used to being in black spaces and were uncomfortable with my blackness- these would take offense at me saying certain things in certain ways. Like chilee relax Karen, all I said was these motherfukkers gay as shit and they gay. Why you acting like I called them twinks or sommin. Right there, I'm cancelled for calling Jikook motherfuckers. They get sirens and everything😭😭😭😭😭😭

Same vein, I struggle destraightening myself or correcting people who assume I'm straight because I fear they will treat me differently if they knew I wasn't.

Straight privilege exists in the same way as white or even pretty privilege may exist and because these exist there's that automatic conception of queer, poc, ugly, fat disemfranschismet to run along side it.

People treat you differently based on how they perceive you. That's a fact. And for queer people, perceiving us as straight is the only way we get to be treated as human by the masses. And a lot of us embrace that- straight until proven gay am I right 🤣🤣🤣🤣

It's the duper's delight for me. Untill you catch me with a 5'8 melanin skinned silk pressed auntie on my left nipple good luck proving I'm gay.

It can be fun, I akekeke when some people around me are totally oblivious to the fact and even sometimes defend my straightness with their dying breath when nasty friends throw them shades or try to out me unprovoked.

A lot of us don't want to admit we are gay because we don't want to be disenfranchised.

I speak for myself when I say this.

But 'Don't assume someone's sexuality' is a double edged censorship used for and against queer people. It seemly offers protection on the surface of it for queer people but underneath it promotes heteronormativity and standardizes straightness and it is also used to promote closet culture, under the disguise of care and concern for the autonomy of queer people but that is a fallacy because our autonomy has never mattered to anyone since the dawn of homophobia.

And I don't know where this interpretation comes from. Why do people not want to assume queer people's sexuality but it's ok to assume straight people's???

It feels like a hijacked movement to me.

THIS IS THE ACCURATE MOVEMENT AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED.

Don't assume all people are straight. It's ok to assume some people are queer because queer people exists too.

It is wrong however to assume queerness based on how a person talks, walks, dresses or even on their body type. That is stereotyping. And stereotyping is wrong.

When it comes to Jikook, Jimin is often stereotyped as gay more so than Jungkook because they have different body structures. Jungkook is stereotyped too solely because of the way his wrists hang, or based on moments he's femininity shines through.

But I don't think shippers stereotype Jikook in that way at all. I dont think shippers believe Jikook are dating eachother simply because Jungkook applied setting powder to his face that one time. They assume they are gay only because they believe those two to be dating eachother. That is not stereotyping. If those two were heterosexuals I don't think people will accuse their shippers of stereotyping.

It's one thing to assume Kai is gay because he looks skinny and dances well. It's another to assume he is gay because in a relationship with Gdragon. And if people can't tell the difference between the two, they should get some education and stop talking about things they know nothing about or only know because they stumbled across user69 on Twitter. They are not helping.

Untill people get offended when people assume others are straight, that rhetoric doesn't matter in its inequality. If you ask me, everyone is gay until proven straight.

Yet how many people will take offense at that?

Assuming people can be gay is not delulu.

It's ok to assume people can be gay. It's wrong to stereotype them as gay. If you can't assume they are gay, don't assume they are straight and don't assume at all. Run with this sis.

Wait, they don't ship Jikook but they call Jikook boyfriends???????👀👀👀👀👀

The fake woke syndrome will kill people in this fandom with these mentally confused thought crisis bunch💀💀💀💀

Jikook themselves are shippers💀

Smh

GOLDY

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theghostofashton · 3 years

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hi!! i was wondering what are your headcanons and thoughts on blaine’s family? feel free to ramble :))

hi! thank you so much for this! i am always down to talk about this type of thing! :)

i talked a little about them here, so i'll try not to repeat myself too much lol

like i said in that post, i def think blaine was an accident or unplanned. the age gap between him and cooper indicates to me that his parents are a little older by the time he's born, maybe a little less interested in being active and involved in his life. i mean, we didn't even see his mom until his wedding lmfao

i feel like cooper left home at 18. i don't know if that means for college or to pursue acting, but i feel like so much of blaine's emotion in 3x15 was coming from feeling abandoned by his brother. especially during somebody that i used to know, there's this element of blaine feeling like he had to heal from something cooper didn't know about and cooper being shocked and concerned about blaine. (this also fits in with blaine's fear of being abandoned)

i feel like blaine is way closer to his mom. i definitely don't think his parents were evil or abusive. i feel like they were kind of absent, but not in the 'they're always on some trip and leave him alone with money' kind of way? i feel like his mom is just a little more patient and understanding than his dad. she loves her boy and wants him to be happy, and i think blaine is very aware of that.

as for his dad, i feel like the interpretations in this fandom are pretty overblown? i don't think he's abusive. i don't even think he's as homophobic as people make him out to be. blaine definitely has some serious daddy issues, but i think it's complicated.

people use the line from 2x15 as proof that blaine's dad is a bad person, but i think it's important to remember that blaine is an unreliable narrator and we can't be certain of his dad's intentions based on how he perceived them. for all we know, his dad could've been trying to bond with him, but blaine assumed it was a ploy to "make him straight", and internalized that.

now, that's not to say that mr. anderson is some kind of saint, because being at that point with your kid, where they assume the worst because they can't trust you may have good intentions is....bad. there's definitely a severe lack of communication. it goes back to his parents being kind of absent. his father wasn't present enough (physically and/or emotionally) for him to interpret his actions as well-intentioned.

i also think we need to remember that blaine was gaybashed right after he came out. any parent would be shaken after something like that. i said this in the post i linked, but i can absolutely understand his dad feeling like it was the fault of blaine's sexuality and pushing the idea that being straight would make his life easier. not at all the right way to go about it, but i can understand the thought process.

and again with the abandonment issues, because blaine did perceive building the car as his dad trying to make him straight, that is a kind of emotional abandonment. to him, his dad isn't supporting who he truly is, he doesn't like/want that version of blaine, so blaine feels abandoned.

i don't think the andersons are a super close knit family at all. i don't think kurt and blaine see blaine's family that much. i feel like they spend most holidays with kurt's family, because blaine is more comfortable there.

i also feel like there was possibly a lack of consistency in the house? that's a strong statement to make, but i feel like a lot of blaine's issues come from clinging too hard, putting too much of himself into other people, and that kind of clinginess and fear of abandonment indicates that there wasn't consistent love and warmth directed at him as a child. (anxious attachment, if you will). he clings tightly to his friends because his family wasn't always consistent. i do not think for a second that this means they didn't love him, just that they weren't the best at showing it.

gonna stop there, i feel like i've gotten to the point where i've gone on too long and am annoying so.....yeah. i hope this was what you were looking for! :)

#thank u sm for the ask!! <3 #and thank u for giving me permission to ramble i am so sorry i can't shut up #blaine anderson #glee #neha rambles #glee headcanons

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homosociallyyours · 3 years

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Your last post about the ideal stunt girlfriend! I have some thoughts on this as well. I think first of all as you said the preference is that they just do not exist that is essentially why anything and everything they do seems to be picked apart. I am not sure what it is that someone can do then if their existence is the problem. (This is only in context of the 1D fandom because I have no idea how stunt girlfriend might be treated elsewhere). The blame for the closeting is placed entirely on the shoulders of the stunt girlfriend as if she is the one forcing a closeting whereas we do not know anything going on behind the scenes. (Just want to add that there is nothing wrong with someone choosing to be closeted in order to navigate a homophobic industry and world and to protect oneself.) I know the common story told about larry is that external people are forcing things upon them or are sabotaging them and there may well have been times where they were advised strongly (or manipulated and mistreated when they were younger by those who should have tried to help them in the industry) to stay in the closet but that does not mean that they do not have any agency at all for anything especially not in the present day. Perhaps in an ideal world they may choose to disclose their sexuality and their relationship (but even if they did not they do not owe that to anyone. Anyways the problem is heteronormativity and assuming people are straight by default). I do personally believe that both Louis and Harry want to at least be recognized as part of the LBTQA community for as long as they do not state things publicly (and also show that they are together to those that recognize it. I am a larrie so that is my belief lol) and possibly do want to come out at some point (both about their individual sexualities and their relationship) but until then they do have to perform heterosexuality for many numbers of reasons. And while they do that there is a need for a stunt girlfriend whether as PR or just for the purpose of appearing straight depending on their career needs. I know people who will speak out against attacks on Olivia might still have issues with Eleanor because one is PR and one is not (this is a simplified version of the reasons and I don't want to go into comparisons or reasonings people have for anything. At the end of the day neither attacks is justified to me.)

Okay this is already quite long and I haven't yet got to the point sorry about that. I think at the end of the day the purpose of the stunt girlfriend (when there is no PR involved) is to help maintain the closet until the closet is required. It doesn't matter who the person is tbh. If it were not Eleanor it would have been someone else so people who say things about Eleanor's personality, looks, character, mistakes she may have made do not make sense to me. None of these people know her yet they have made their own head canon version of her which is always a negative version. It would be the same no matter who was in her place. I think Louis' purpose for Eleanor specifically has to do with the story he wants to tell with his music and in interviews (a story that could possibly be most similar to his actual relationship perhaps even if not entirely the same) and I do believe Eleanor specifically helps tell it (as his longest public relationship). It allows him to mention a girlfriend that has "helped him" through tough times and give anecdotes about his "girlfriend". I think Eleanor probably does other things behind the scenes like a personal assistant as well we just do not see it. But the Eleanor we do see is the image that we are shown, the image that tells the story that Louis wants told. And that story in itself is so interesting and to me just confirms things that I believe about his actual relationship. So its more intriguing to me than something to stress over or look at negatively. I don't know Eleanor but what I know is this is her job and she will do it. It is work and I don't know why it has been villainized. I understand being frustrated by the situation and feeling like Louis (and Harry) may have not been happy through stunts in the past (potentially) but that does not translate to hating the stunt girlfriend. Disliking a situation you are in does not mean you dislike everyone who is part of it. But yeah anyways the end point is I do not see any situation in which people would be happy with a stunt girlfriend.

It doesn't matter which song she posts there will always be some criticism over it. It doesn't matter if she just posts herself with dogs or doing influencing there will be a problem. It doesn't matter whether she posts about Louis or not there will be criticism in either case. Lastly it doesn't matter if she talks with Louis' sisters or not either way there will be arguments that they are not on good terms. So I am not quite sure what it is that an ideal stunt girlfriend can do for fans. I don't see any situation where people who have already decided to have a problem just based on the concept of her being a stunt girlfriend will suddenly stop. But talking about these things might help at least some people understand the bias? I just think the best approach is that she keep doing what she feels is best according to the story that she has to tell and ignore the criticism (which can be tough I know because of the immense amount of hate you can get for it). I think if I were to find and guide someone my focus would be on guiding them on how to navigate the hate and I guess general tips based on the story that needs telling. And I think when it comes to finding someone it is probably a mix of finding someone who would look like what the ideal image of a girlfriend to a popstar should look like (which has its own problems and really we need to reevaluate standards of deciding these things) and also someone who can do the other behind the scenes work too?

Idk I have done a lot of rambling (and still probably haven't got all my thoughts down lol) but it was definitely an interesting post that led to some thoughts I felt like discussing. I hope you do not mind my sending an anon with all these thoughts. You do not have to post it if you are afraid of the reaction and can instead reply in tags?

I just want to end with agreeing with what you said about considering bearding to be like sex work. And also thankyou for your post.

hi nonny! thank you for your long and thoughtful response :) i hope you don't mind that i'm publishing it-- i think you made some good points and i appreciate that you really tried to answer the question of who to pick and what to guide them to do. image would definitely be key, as would an internet presence of some kind. i imagine celeb pairings would mean more frequent but less involved appearances while a famous/not famous pair would be able to get away with fewer public spottings but maybe more in depth/intimate scenarios.

and i really think there's just no way to please everyone, but you're right that the blame for closeting seems to fall on the shoulders of the woman who's bearding. :/// that often goes hand in hand with the narrative that they're (still) being forcibly closeted instead of looking at the very real history of ex-boybanders and performers who came out, which is relatively bleak/unsuccessful and making a decision to try to gain more credibility as solo artists.

meanwhile i share your perception that they want to be seen/read as LGBTQ+ by those of us who are part of that community. signalling is real, and it's not based on stereotypes like "oh he wore makeup! he has a limp wrist!" i mean as a queer femme from the south, when i go home i tone myself down quite a lot, but i still wear/use symbols that other queer people are more likely to notice, tell stories about myself that indirectly mention my gender and sexuality, and engage with queer history when possible in ways that straight people just. wouldn't perceive.

but of course you can do all of that and STILL want or need to be in the closet!

i really appreciate you responding to my question, even though i think you're right that there's no answer that would make the hatred these women get any less virulent. i do hope that, like you said, talking about it is at least useful in getting more people to realize that maybe it's undeserved? beards don't build the closets, they just stand there to make sure nobody walks in on the person they're working with while they're half naked, basically.

#long post #closeting #stunt mention #1d #if i get anyone trying to say HL don't signal queerness you're getting blocked #as i hopefully made it clear this is simply how i (and the anon) view the situation #other people can post their perceptions on their own blogs-- that's what they're for :)

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afinepricklypear · 4 years

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**Update: The works mentioned in this post have since been taken down. The “message” was removed by AO3 because it was a violation of their TOS and it seems the author chose to remove their “opinions” piece.**

Despite the ongoing world crisis, I hope everyone is doing great as the year comes to a close and prepping for a safe holiday season.

I don’t really post here a lot, but I just wanted to talk about a problem that exists in every fandom and has recently come up for me in the BSD fandom. This problem is typically referred to as: toxic behavior, however, I sort of hate that term because it’s an umbrella term that encapsulates a wide array of behaviors that is purposefully vague so as to imply everything can be toxic, which means the definition changes depending upon the person, and ends up getting thrown around to describe any behavior that a person dislikes. That said, most people can agree that the term ‘toxic behavior’ includes “shipper wars” and harassing people because of their “ship”.

Yesterday, a user on AO3 going by the penname E_C_arts posted a message titled “deer Soukoku fans” and giving it the not-innocuous summary “please we’re begging you, please stop”. Clicking through leads to a rather prime example of this particular flavor of toxic fandom behavior, guised as an attempt to defend those who were allegedly victims of this self-same behavior, also a lovely example of emotional manipulation.

Although what’s currently posted (and what I managed to screen shot below) may not seem terrible on first glance, if not a little cringey, and can be easy to agree with (don’t bully people that write for a ship you dislike), this was not their original message and has been edited since being posted and, and only after receiving the number of comments it did and which they’re now noting as “proving their point” – a point which they erased, thus manipulating perceptions. I wish I had gotten a screenshot of the original, but if you scroll through the comments, you can find some people that quoted it.

This person most definitely did open their “message” to Soukoku fans by literally telling them to “stop writing” for it. They claimed there was some unspecified AU (or maybe multiple unspecified AUs) that had been overwritten for, that it was overused, and not original. They went on to talk about how the abundance of soukoku content was turning off new fans to the series (don’t even know how that logics…) and bullying people from creating content for other ships, basing these irrational sentiments off some false claim that removing everything with the soukoku ship from the fandom would only leave behind a sad, inacccurate (and oddly specific) 305 posts.

Evidence of their now deleted perspective can be further seen in another post they made to AO3 a couple days before this ugly rant. Titled simply “My unpopular BSD opinions”, they didn’t manage to garner much attention and went mostly ignored because, well, it’s your opinions about the show and that’s whatever. Of course, when you click into it, the very first “opinion” shared, is that they hate Dazai x Chuuya. Okay, that’s an opinion everyone is entitled to, and that’s fine. You don’t like the popular ship, that’s…not exactly an unpopular opinion, there’s quite a number of people that don’t ship soukoku. No problem. Until, they go on to elaborate.

Despite the title of this piece being ‘their opinions’, they state as ‘fact’ that its confirmed that this is “not a thing”, so ‘please stop shipping them it doesn’t work, it’s way too overused for it to be “funny” anymore’ (I’m a little confused about this wording, because Shipping is Serious Business™, so…not sure there are too many soukoku shippers doing it because they think it’s hilarious or whatnot, in fact, most soukoku fics are tagged ‘angst’, which we all know, angst is very ‘haha, lol’…but whatevs). They then include the same sentiment they expanded on in their Dear John to soukoku fans and subsequently deleted: “Please stop, there are too many au’s with almost the exact same plot Chuuya and Dazai being together, its really difficult to find any non-Dazai x Chuuya au’s”.

On the surface, once again, there are some “truths” to this sentiment. DaiChuu is a popular ship and there is a disproportionate amount of soukoku ship fics on the fandom comparative to other ships (soukoku comes in at a whopping 10,000+ currently, with the next popular ship Aku/Atsushi sitting at a decidedly less 2500+). It’s really not that difficult to find non-DazaixChuuya fics, if you know how to use filters on AO3, but there are going to be less to read from when you filter it down, and depending on your ship, you may find yourself in a fic desert, and I can certainly understand why someone young and lacking in rational thought processes might want to blame the popular ship for this predicament.

The problem with this logic, and it permeates every fandom, not just BSD, is that the shippers sharing and loving their ship are not to blame for your lack of ship content. You just don’t have a popular ship. If all the people who love soukoku stopped creating content for it, as this person is ‘begging’ them to do, that’s not going to increase the amount of content for your ships, because the reason that content isn’t being created is because there aren’t enough shippers for it. So, the only way this person’s logic works, is if what this person is actually saying, isn’t that they want these people to stop creating content for the BSD fandom, they just want them to jump ship, stop creating content for soukoku and start creating content for their ships.

Any creator/fan is going to have a visceral reaction to that: who the fuck are you to tell me what to create? And for free, no less!

This moves us more towards a clearer definition of what is toxic fandom behavior. In short, its telling anyone how they should interact with or interpret their favorite content. I mean, even Word of God does not have this power. That’s because every single fan in a fandom is an individual human being. They are possessed of their own autonomy, and as a creator I know, that once you put something out into the world and give it over to others, you have little control over how people consume and feel about your work. You can tell them your intention, but that’s not going to sway them to interpret it that way, and that’s…just the way it works.

Now, the elephant in the room needs to be addressed. It’s easy for me to be ‘offended’ by this person’s post and not see their complaints because I am a soukoku fan. I’m also the target of this person’s rant, and one of those people this person is attempting to emotionally manipulate into writing for other ships in the fandom for which I have no preference. But I am capable of seeing the other side of this argument.

First, because I do have other fandoms in which I am part, and for which I have a rare-pair ship. For example, I am a Gundam Wing fan and a 2x5 (Duo/WuFei) shipper. I’ve posted two 2x5 fics on fanfiction.net. While 2x5 is not the rarest of rarepairs in the Gundam Wing fandom, it is significantly eclipsed (as are almost *all* ships in the fandom) by the 1x2 (Heero/Duo) ship. Do I hate 1x2 shippers for my lack of 2x5 content? No. I just appreciate what I’ve got all the more, and I’ll create content for it when I feel compelled, and I sure the fuck won’t implore 1x2 shippers to stop writing for their fave and write more for mine because I want more 2x5 – that’s sheer entitlement, right there, pure and simple. I also ship 3xD (Trowa/Dorothy) in Gundam Wing, which *is* the rarest of rarepairs – I think there’s only, like, two stories in existence that features this pair on the entirety of the internet. I’m also a RavenxMurphy (Murven) shipper in The 100 fandom and I do not hate Bellarke fans because…those people are scary and have canceled the show’s creator for not delivering on Bellarke, and in BSD, I ship Atsushi/Lucy (yes, I said it, they’re cute af and I hope Asagiri delivers on that ship). I also low-key ship Yosano/Ranpo (sorry, Ranpo/Poe shippers, I understand the appeal, I just think him and Yosano is sooo cute, please don’t kill me…), and I also ship Yosano with Kunikida – all of which are some of the rarest in the BSD fandom.

Second, because I have seen and called out shipping harassment in the BSD fandom, so I am well aware that this kind of thing exists – as it exists literally everywhere and in every flavor. Against soukoku shippers from antis and by soukoku shippers against shippers putting Dazai or Chuuya with any other characters and by soukoku shippers against other soukoku shippers that are, uh, “doing it wrong”. None of these is appropriate. You’re not fighting fire with fire if you’re an anti-attacking the popular ship, you’re just creating a bigger fire and burning the entire fandom down. You’re not defending your ship if you are a soukoku fan attacking non-soukoku fans, you’re just punching down by attacking a less popular ship. And top/bottom arguments aren’t just toxic, they’re also deeply entrenched in fetishization of same sex pairings through a forced heteronormative lens and is, kind of, sort of, actually homophobic in its basis (yes, I said it. It’s ignorant and homophobic and trying to argue with ‘personality/physical traits’ as evidence of who serves what position in the bedroom can be emotionally and mentally damaging to members of the LGBTQ community. Claiming that Chuuya should be bottom because he’s shorter/smaller, or that Dazai has ‘bottom energy’ because he’s more flamboyant and ‘feminine’ is straight up discrimination – a shorter guy can definitely be top, and a manly man can be bottom, it’s not a behavior based on perceived gendered traits, it is just a fucking preferred sexual position, and no, you are not ‘fixing it’ by purposely using positions for these characters that eschews the stereotypes either. Trying to justify positioning by personality/physical traits at all, in any way, shape, or form is just not okay – if it’s your preference, it’s your preference, no justification needed, just recognize that it is *your* preference and arguing what’s ‘right/wrong’ positioning is just plain wrong).

But this brings us to a different issue: bad actors and blaming a whole community for a ‘few rotten apples’. I could easily lump this one person in with everyone that does not ship soukoku and deem them all toxic, aggressive, entitled, bullies attempting to harass soukoku shippers off the platform. Or I could see them for what they are, individuals with individual motivations and drives and morals that also happen to share the same shipping preferences. Is it true to say that there are no soukoku fans that engage in the behaviors described by E_C_arts? No, there are definitely those that do, as there are antis that engage in that same behavior against soukoku fans. But this person also asserts that soukoku fans turning ‘every BSD post about soukoku’ is also a toxic behavior. To which I refer you back to one. This is how they engage with and interpret the work. Don’t yuck on someone else’s yum. People want to gush about how cute they thought soukoku were in an official art, or that they felt there was some hidden (or not so hidden) interaction between them that validates their ship, or their inspired to create soukoku content based on it, so what (for the record, it irks me too when people go ‘see it’s canon and Bones totally ships it’, because it’s unlikely, given BSDs genre, that any romantic relationship will be confirmed, soukoku notwithstanding). It is not, in fact, toxic to gush over it. Let them have their fun with it, let them enjoy their ship. Now, if you go and make a comment about liking the art for other reasons and they reply to you about “…but also soukoku”, then still, that’s not toxic, that’s just them enjoying the content the way that they enjoy it, so let them enjoy it, and you opened yourself to engagement without any qualifiers for the type of engagement you were soliciting, you can’t then backtrack and go ‘but I’m not a soukoku shipper, they should’ve been able to read my mind and known that, it’s totally toxic of them to share their personal reasons for loving the show in response to my sharing my love for the show’. But if you comment about another ship, and they reply to you “…ew, gross! It’s 100% soukoku” then yes, that’s toxic. A lot of people fail to make this distinction, that they are, maybe, merely being triggered and not actually harassed, by feeling like their ship isn’t being validated because they see another ship all over the place and everyone they engage with ships it.

It’s also toxic, to take an experience with one person and hold every soukoku shipper in existence responsible for that one person’s inappropriate behavior. The truth is, that bad actors amongst soukoku fans are not unique, not to the ship and not to the fandom and not even to fandom culture in general. Every group in existence everywhere has bad actors in it that, while the group disavows their behavior, they continue to be held accountable for those individuals and judged by them. For current events, look at how the BLM movement has been blamed for bad actors (many of whom were not actually BLM activists) that took advantage of the protests and started riots and chaos. A small percentage of people were involved in these behaviors, but the entire movement, despite speaking out against rioting, continues to take the blame for it. For me, that’s the root of toxicity. We need to start holding individuals accountable and stop blaming people who have no control over those individuals, because they share a few similar beliefs or interests. That’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But the shippers as a whole are not to blame for the actions of a few, and the reason that it feels that there are so many more soukoku fans that do this is because of volume, there are so many more soukoku fans. It’s basic math. If two percent of fans are these toxic kinds of shippers, then there’s going to be so many more of them in a larger population than a smaller one.

I try to call out toxic behavior, no matter if it’s my ship being lambasted or one of my fellow shippers doing the lambasting, whenever I see it, but the trouble is, I don’t typically go into fan content that isn’t for my ship and, thus, I don’t see it. The same goes for the vast majority of soukoku fans out there. We’re here for soukoku content, we’re seeking out soukoku content, and avoiding what isn’t soukoku content. But here is my offer to all of those who are outside of my ship. I like to argue. If someone is harassing you for having a non-soukoku ship, call me, let me know, I will argue with them for you. I will explain to them in no uncertain terms, and in many unpleasant ways, that they do not represent the soukoku shipping community and they are an embarrassment to us. Content for any and all ships is welcomed and encouraged within the fandom. Write, draw, contribute, be a part of the fandom and express yourself, please. If you are a soukoku shipper (or even if you’re not), and someone is harassing you about your top/bottom preference, call me, let me know, I will argue with them for you. I will explain to them why their justifications for which character should be top or bottom in a same sex pairing is grossly misrepresentative and exploitative of the LGBTQ community and rather disgusting. Do not assume that because we seem to remain silent on these types of harassment that it’s because we are in agreement with them, it is only because we haven’t seen them – why would we, we’re not going in those spaces that weren’t created for us. Ask the community for help, don’t attack the rest of us for the poor actions of a few that we were not even aware of. Let us help you in policing them, rather than assuming we don’t care. We are just too busy staying in our lanes, but if you need us, we are here. Majority of us want a clean, friendly, welcoming community for creators of all types as much as you do.

All of this aside, there are spaces and places for these debates and AO3 is not it. Posting this kind of message is actually a violation of AO3 TOS, constituting as harassment, which is defined on the AO3 TOS as “…any behavior that produces a generally hostile environment for its target…”( https://archiveofourown.org/tos#IV.G.). This general behavior also falls into the realm of another kind of toxic fandom behavior: hijacking a platform/tag for your own purposes that is a direct contradiction to its express usage (otherwise, known as trolling). AO3 is for posting fan-made content that contributes to a deeper understanding and expansion upon the original work. Using AO3 to attack people who are using AO3 for exactly what it is designed to be used for is an abuse of the platform. It’s not okay and invites similar content that will ultimately interfere with the original purpose of the platform. AO3 is for fan content, not for your own personal rants about other people in the community, please keep it that way

I do also want to note, that this person choosing to edit their post after receiving the justified ire from fans (notably soukoku and non-soukoku fans alike upset by the audacity of this person, who, as far as can be told, has never themselves contributed fanfiction to the community, to tell people what they can and cannot write) for their original comments, is a form of manipulative abuse called ‘gaslighting’. They are now claiming to be a victim that “never said to stop writing”, despite that having been the literal words they used in the opening of their original post. They are now pointing at these comments as “proof” of their point that soukoku fans are aggressive bullies that attack without cause when there was definitely cause from the original comments. This person clearly has bigger issues than just lacking shipper content for their personal preferences on the BSD fandom.

To all of those who are afraid to share content for your ship because you think you’ll be harassed, as evidenced by this person’s claims, that is simply not true. While there might be one or two people that say something, we all get them no matter if you have a popular ship or a rarepair ship, haters are gonna hate – I’ve gotten my share of hateful comments towards my ships too, but there are many more people that share your ship and are interested in your content, in fact, some of them are starved for it. While having a rarepair might mean you’ll garner less interactions with your content, you have a better opportunity to form a deeper bond with the people that do interact, and they may be more appreciative, because what you’re delivering to them is so much harder to come by. The existence of one ship does not affect your ship’s popularity, and if it simply went away, that doesn’t mean that your ship would receive more attention – in fact, it might mean the show itself would receive less attention.

Create and let others create and use platforms for their appropriate purposes, and most importantly, when it comes to addressing toxic behavior in a fandom, look to yourself first. Are you placing the blame where it belongs? Are you addressing the root cause of the problem or swinging blindly and attacking innocent bystanders in the process? Will what you say actually help the problem? Or will it contribute to the issue, and maybe even create an issue that didn’t exist before?

#fanfiction #fanfic #bsd #bsd fanfic #soukoku #daichuu #dazai x chuuya #shipper war #toxic fandom behavior #toxic people #toxic #AO3 #bullying #harassment

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comradeclown · 4 years

Text

OK, so in honour of my top posts now being me saying at various degrees of length that Arthur is gay (hashtag mylegacy, lmao…), I thought I should just go for it and actually dive in a bit a lot into why I read the character as gay. Now, usually all the justification I need to read a character as gay is “wouldn’t it be cool if this character I like/relate to/etc were gay like me?” and “it’s OK, officer, I do what I want”, and I’m well aware that 99% of the time it’s me using my own creativity to do a resistant reading + the film/book/whatever bumbling into subtext entirely by accident. And while I definitely don’t think there’s ever any more justification needed for any kind of LGBT reading, lol, as it comes to Arthur, obviously feel free to disagree with me, but I honestly think my read of him as a gay man is entirely textually supported, however unwitting and accidental that might have been on the part of the filmmakers (mind you, I don’t think it was Todd Phillips’ conscious intent, but I’m like… 85% sure Joaquin Phoenix knew exactly what he was doing).

(ETA that this is extremely long, so I’ve put it all under a cut.)

First of all, there’s of course… pretty much the entirety of Joaquin Phoenix’s performance (a very, very small sample can be found in my he gay son tag and just generally in my arthur fleck tag, ha), from his mannerisms to his physicality to the way he interacts with other characters. I know part of it is a function of wanting to go back to the character’s campy roots (which are themselves… you know…), and I know I’m relying on stereotypes to some extent, but first of all, you can’t divorce either camp or gender non-conformity from LGBT history and existence, and secondly this is literally how characters have been coded as gay throughout the entire history of cinema. What I’m saying here is that you can’t have a character who acts like Arthur does, literal limp wrist and all, or says “come on, Muuuurrrayyy, do I look like the kind of girl clown who could start a movement” the way he does, to pick one of many, many examples, and not evoke the long history of cinematic wink emojis at People Like Me.

That in itself would… honestly be plenty, lol, but it could be chalked up to, idk, Joaquin Phoenix doing his own thing, were it not for the fact that it’s completely reinforced at every turn by the filmmaking language, even down to his wardrobe choices, and it’s worth noting at this point that the framing is always one of empathy — albeit with nuance — and affording the character subjectivity, rather than being “ew, look at this gross [homophobic slur]”. Like, the very first time we see Arthur, literally our first impression of the character, he’s at a mirror, putting on make-up and then ruining it by crying, and while the make-up is of course part of his job, this is just not how the inner crises of straight male characters are expressed in the language of cinema. Of note too is the fact that he’s clearly visually separated from his co-workers in all the scenes at Ha-Ha’s, indicating his alienation from them, and while this could be chalked up purely to his disabilities, I don’t buy that that’s the only reason, given that Gary gets shit due to his dwarfism, sure, but at the end of the day he’s clearly “one of the boys” in a way Arthur (can’t be) isn’t.

There are honestly so many examples of the framing working to separate Arthur from conventional masculinity and heterosexuality that I’m just going to pick some highlights, such as: obviously, the way he expresses himself emotionally through dancing (to the point that one of his coworkers explicitly ribs him about it, “if your dancing doesn’t do the trick”), which again is not something that straight male characters do in the language of cinema. The fact that all the media we see him consume is musicals, classic comedies and a talk show he’s obsessively fannish about and watches with his mother — and we know he’s a fan of the show as a whole, not just Murray, hence him saying “I love Dr Sally” (and the way he says it…). Or, speaking of his media habits, when he’s dancing with the gun while watching Shall We Dance, this could have so, so easily been about him ~regaining his lost masculinity~ through, say, fantasies of revenge or badassery, but instead it’s about him being acknowledged as a great dancer and punishing bad dancers, and it all ends in slapstick anyway.

Also, while I’m on this topic, I want to address the nature of Arthur’s dissociative fantasies about Sophie. Honestly, I don’t read them as indicative of genuine romantic/sexual interest at all, because the film frames them as identical to Arthur’s more deliberate daydreams about Murray. I mean, not that I’m adverse to gay readings of that if that’s what you want to do, lmao, but to me they’re both very clearly post-traumatic fantasies of having another person look after you for once, of having someone value and cherish you and take care of you emotionally (which obviously has massive appeal if you’ve been dealing with the after-effects of catastrophic trauma all your life but nobody has given a shit about your suffering and you’ve had to be the one to look after other people to boot). Note that after the get-together with Sophie — which is clearly patterned after all those old comedies and musicals Arthur watches — the Sophie fantasies are incredibly platonic and involve things like having another person be there for you in a crisis, telling you something supportive, getting you a hot drink (in contrast with the reality of the hospital scene, in which Arthur is alone and he’s the one trying to comfort someone else, i.e., holding Penny’s hand), essentially no different from fantasy!Murray hugging Arthur and knowing exactly what to say to make him feel good about himself. Also note that both fantasies involve being the object of someone else’s affection, Murray picks Arthur out of the audience and Sophie comes to him, it’s a pillow princess Cinderella fantasy, more than someone loving you it’s about being loved. (And, once more, this could easily have all been v. v. different, the Murray fantasy could have been the much more conventionally masculine fantasy of being a famous comedian and being invited on Murray’s show, the Sophie fantasies could have had an undeniable sexual component, etc.)

Anyway, to get back to the general point of cinematic framing, again if the movie didn’t want me to read Artie as gay, it shouldn’t have had a pivotal moment in his character arc be him sitting at his mother’s vanity table, doing a new make-up look which involves using her lipstick, and then having a Moment while he’s literally holding a quasi-glamour shot of her.

And the thing is, all these reams of stuff aren’t even the key piece of the puzzle for me, which is the way in which the film as a whole can be read as a gay narrative. I’ve posted before about how part of the emotional catharsis of the film is about Arthur finally shamelessly embracing and even revelling in all his freakishness and socially-despised traits, a big one of which being what is arguably his effeminacy and… honestly I don’t need to explain how that’s a classic gay (and more generally LGBT) narrative, do I? Like, there’s a reason why a pivotal scene is Arthur having his hair-dyeing underwear rave in a flat that’s suddenly incredibly bright and sunny for the first time, it’s about reclaiming the pain and ugliness of your life and your circumstances into a space of potential liberation, which is honestly why this movie is always going to be incredibly personally meaningful to me for so many reasons, but definitely meaningful to me as a gay woman. (Again, this could so, so easily have been about him becoming some stone-cold badass or whatever, but instead the film has him dye his hair, put on a super garish new outfit and new make-up look, dance shamelessly in the street, and be incredibly campy on national television.)

More generally, there’s other aspects of the narrative arc that tie into this general theme and which also serve to continually distance Arthur from the conventional cinematic narratives of heterosexual manhood: for instance, once he starts fully embracing the Joker persona — which is… just Arthur, the crucial difference is in how others perceive him and how he perceives himself — any attraction to women, feigned or real, goes completely out the window and the only genuinely affectionate interaction he has with another human being is with Gary (I know we all love to joke about his first kiss being with Dr Sally, but it’s obviously Comedy Jokes and he doesn’t even kiss her for real, his make-up is completely intact; Arthur’s only real kiss in the movie is when he kisses Gary). Or, when Arthur’s personal narrative finally intersects completely with the larger social narrative — which is itself about upheaval, reclamation and potential liberation — the big triumphant moment is him once again dancing, this time for a cheering crowd, and using blood like lipstick to redraw his smile.

Or even, to a lesser extent, his whole sub-plot with his mother, before I watched the film I was worried that this was going to be the usual narrative about the henpecked guy who finally puts the bitch in her place as part of becoming a Real Man, and it’s not at all, quite the opposite, Arthur is not henpecked and is clearly in charge of the household, he genuinely loves Penny — and is confident she loves him back — and enjoys doing at least some things with her (them watching the Murray Franklin Show together), and up until the reveal any issues he has with her are largely the product of having to look after an ill person with zero social support and while working a physically and emotionally demanding job and dealing with his own disabilities. When he kills her, it’s a deeply sad and self-destructive scene and it’s the result of his profound anguish and sense of betrayal and he frames it as the bitter, trauma-haunted dark half of self-actualisation and self-acceptance (“that’s the real me”, “I haven’t been happy one minute of my entire fucking life”, “now I realise… it’s a fucking comedy”).

Or, at a more meta-textual level, the way the film is unabashedly both a pulpy thriller and a melodrama, just shamelessly embracing all its emotions, its pain and catharsis, without a trace of irony. Like, yeah, part of this is the immense sincerity and compassion Joaquin Phoenix brings to his performance, but it really is the movie’s approach as a whole, and when there is humour — and I do think there’s quite a lot of humour in the movie — it’s not the distancing, let’s-not-feel-anything-too-deeply-bro humour of your typical MCU movie, it’s the camp sensibility of laughing with and at your own tragedy. (Myriad examples down to the use of certain songs in the soundtrack.)

On a final note, you guys know how much I don’t care about authorial intent, but I feel compelled to point out that in his director’s commentary, Todd Phillips says, while discussing Arthur’s journey into becoming Joker, that he reads the larger pop-cultural character of the Joker as someone who doesn’t want women, and like… Again, it’s not like I think that he was deliberately making a gay narrative in any way, it’s just that if you’re creating this journey of a man who eventually becomes a character who’s not interested in women in that sense, you’ve also just ended up stumbling into a gay narrative accidentally on purpose, lmao, what’s the real difference between “at the end of the story, Arthur doesn’t want women because he’s ~da Joker now, baby, he doesn’t want anything~” and “at the end of the story, Arthur doesn’t want women because he’s gay and he’s no longer deeply repressed and closeted”?

Anyway, like I said, feel free to disagree, he’s a fictional character, lol, but this is where I’m coming from, and the reason why if everyone involved in the movie decided to make a statement tomorrow about how much Arthur Fleck wants to bone women I’d just say “shit, idc, I’m afraid you made a gay movie about Arthur Fleck, a gay man, it’s a little too late to retcon this bitch now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”. Also this is over 2,000 words long what the fuck I am so sorry

#long post #joker 2019 #class struggle clown movie #arthur fleck #dive down into chuckletown #he gay son #now in the form of 95 theses nailed to my tumblr #gonna make a letterboxd list called 'the author is dead this is lgbt cinema now'

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tonyglowheart · 5 years

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@imaginaryelle replied to your post:*me sipping tea* (x)

I would really enjoy seeing more of your thoughts on this, if you ever want to share them.

:’) a lot of my thoughts are salty rants and I’m TGCF on main right now so uhhh not at the moment but if you wanna hmu on like a chat thing of some sort I probably will eventually rant about my dislike of The MXTX Antis and the Problematic Culture people and the purity culture wank :’)

actually you know what, since I’m a parody of myself and I’m like always mood of "and another thing,” I’m just going to. go for it ig

so my biggest thing, is with the MXTX antis/MDZS wank/MXTX wank. is like....god it FRUSTRATES me so fckn much lmfao in so many ways and on so many levels. like listen. I’m not saying there isn’t stuff to critique in MDZS. But there’s people who are first off: critiquing the writing quality, when I’m like “there’s like a 90% chance you’re reading the EN translation, and probably from ExR, and honestly I know it’s not fandom etiquette to critique fan content bc we’re all doing this for free out of passion, BUT I do, in fact, have some major issues with ExR’s translation quality, and also I lowkey feel like they have a strong traditional yaoi bias and sometimes it leaks through in how they handle certain things.” Big mood of this twitter thread about how when you’re reading in TL you can’t be criticizing the writing bc you’re already reading it filtered and like. you gotta consider things like the TL’s own personal biases or takes, etc. Which I feel like some people don’t in their critique, or at least they don’t take the time to acknowledge it and instead start spinning off into more and more impassioned reactions to perceived slights or faults.

The other thing is like. I admit when I first read MDZS - which I did while simultaneously watching bc I was kind of using CQL as a vehicle to get into MDZS, I had the HARDEST time trying to read ExR’s translation when I was going into it cold many many many moods ago rip - I was also squicked out by the explicit scenes shown. It did remind me a lot of traditional yaoi tropes, and I wasn’t into it. HOWEVER I was also a psych major, and I want to point out that the T/N’s do read to me as having a strong yaoi bias, and also before ExR redid their site they had large “SERVING YAOI AND BL” banners on EVERY page lol. And I think that also primes people to see things a certain way. (I just. am :/ about ExR also bc like... their whole vibe as a “yaoi scanlator” and also I. can’t be sure the TL wasn’t 17 when they were tl’ing it lmfao,, and they did the whole rant - which fine they apologized for, but I think sort of reflects on a general attitude still w/ the team - about how some other TL had bad quality or something, but their existing TL has a lot of clunky English phrasing and actually a lot of editing issues, too, I was creating myself a back-up copy from their site and like google docs was already catching a bunch of typos and tense issues and such :’) and that’s beyond clunky EN translation phrasing. I just am like. they have a patreon lol, so I can’t say ExR is doing it wholly not-for-profit/dollars, and also like... it’s not like they’re licensed? I get that within scanlation circles, there’s an etiquette of “first come first serve,” but with translation, I think fans are only served with more translations? but I also care about the original work lol, I mean I get the vanity of “I want MINE to be the AUTHORITATIVE tl” bc I feel that mood too, but also I’m like. fam you didn’t bid for a license lmao.)

But yeah like. My petty gripes with ExR aside lmfao, I think when you look at WangXian, the whole “it’s yaoi tropes” gets really strawman. Like from a Watsonian perspective, I mean like... both WWX and LWJ really ARE useless virgins, lol, WWX’s first kiss was stolen by LWJ and his whole idea of sex comes from porn; LWJ is GusuLan and like. yeah. Who is teaching them about lube? certainly not porn. (but this also gets into the whole. like people saying explicit material is “problematic” because it doesn’t show “realistic” sex and I’m like. fam it’s smut, not a sex manual.) And like... they’re both kinky and WWX has a pregnancy kink, and like... good for them I guess?

From a more Doylist perspective..... I think for me, I’m like. well why not? gay media doesn’t have to be uwu to be “Valid,” and like, the people who start attacking mxtx personally because of the way she chose to write WangXian, or saying she’s homophobic because of WangXian or she doesn’t have the range... I already Know they didn’t read TGCF or SV lol. (and yeah SV is more “problematic” but I also think it’s VERY genre aware and both satirizes and also plays with and subverts some of the typical genre “problematic” things. not everything, but like. again the whole idea that non-mainstream media needs to be held to a higher standard to not be cancelled? I don’t hold by that). [But more on the Doylist thing: it’s dumb to me that people react like it’s a moral failing of non-straight works if they don’t fit EXACTLY their personal idea of what a thing should be. And this comes up EVERY time there’s some new thing. hell it’s not even just lgbt-related stuff; Hamilton, Crazy Rich Asians, etc all had nitpicking. Which again, isn’t invalid! but also like. :/ because we DON’T have enough representation right now to pick, and my take is always: the solution is to get to the point where we can pick and choose and can afford to have bad media just like the straights/whites do :’)]

The thing about WWX and LWJ is neither of them, as they’re written in canon, fit within “traditional yaoi” seme/uke stereotypes. The kiss I see people rail against as “dubcon” and also their sex scenes but I’m like. yeah I think it’s fine to say it’s not your cup of tea but to say that that makes them traditional yaoi rapey tropes I’m like. Fam that’s not it lol. LWJ is shown as being SO incredibly responsive and attentive to WWX’s wishes and desires. I mean that’s examples of his passion exploding out, but we consistently see LWJ being respectful of WWX’s wishes and autonomy even when it like. fucks him/them over :’) like when WWX was so hell-bent on hurtling down the mo’dao route :’)

plus also WWX literally fantasizes about them retiring as farmers and he’s the one out working the fields and LWJ is staying at home weaving lol, like c’mon, ya wanna talk gender roles, let’s talk about this.

the other thing is the whole mxtx anti stuff about “she’s homophobic” and “she’s a filthy fujo” and I think there’s issues that people aren’t considering, which I don’t know as much about but I feel like it informs my consideration of mxtx - such as like... not everyone’s internet is as wide open as, like, the West. I don’t know so much about Chinese censorship other than it exists, but I’m like. I think this would affect people’s access to resources which would inform them about how things work/where people are with LGBT thought? It reminds me of when young tumblr kids trash talk older queer people for using terms they see as “problematic” now, and I’m like “you really gotta pause a moment of (1) have some empathy (2) consider the person’s individual personal and cultural context.” MDZS wasn’t made for a Western audience in mind lol, it’s not going to reflect Western values! And China has a different history with its LGBT progression and it’s m/m media, which I don’t know enough about to comment specifically, but I think it’s incredibly disingenuous to judge it based on Western standards. A lot of people probably don’t realize they are! in that it doesn’t even occur to them, which is why they feel so free with their judgment! But also I’m like. lowkey THAT’s a problem for me bc of like. cultural imperialism lmfao. and also reflective of EN-language imperialism, when people are judging EN tl’s they’re seeing on face value without realizing or considering that they’re...reading... a translation... and that translations are NOT in fact direct one-for-one and that there’s a LOT of considerations that go into both translating and reading a translation of a work.

I think the points antis pull up against MXTX is like... stuff she’s said before in interviews - and I don’t know from when, but I imagine years ago at this point - where she was asked about shipping the other characters in MDZS, and she said something I think about how to her, she wants to write in a way that “preserves realism” or maybe she believes in (I only read a TL of it, so I hold the exact phrasing with a grain of salt), and for her, not everyone is gay so she doesn’t write all of her named characters gay. and I’m like. whatever that’s her prerogative as the author. And I think there’s also something that I don’t know if it’s an official “rules”/”guidelines” she wrote bc again I’ve only seen secondhand/thirdhand sources, but it’s something mxtx-antis also quote, where she said to not break up the main couples and also don’t “reverse” them. but again when we’re getting into the shou/gong dynamics, that’s where I don’t feel comfortable commenting because I don’t know enough about the sociopolitical implications of these terms and how they interact within that fandom/community subset. But I do think people need to be taking the stuff they read - ESPECIALLY if they’re only reading it in EN - with a grain of salt. or like a big ol pinch of it.

edit: I know more about this now lmao and I know exactly which question people use piecemeal of vilify her. Here’s a recent-ish translation someone did. Read it through - the WHOLE thing, and think about the wider context.

But also in general I just don’t think anyone is valid when we start getting into ad hominems lol. Especially when I feel like they’re not really taking a moment to consider what wider contexts and influences might be at play and instead are playing Tumblr telephone with outrage and virtue signalling

sidebar: I also fucking HATE CQL purists lmfao. I don’t feel like I’ve seen or encountered anyone saying CQL fans are less valid than novel fans except in the sense of CQL fans getting defensive about their dislike of the novel - which, whatever, people have opinions - or decision not to read the novel and saying anyone saying they HAVE to read the novel is gatekeeping - which I hold to less but mostly bc I think it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of fan language, some of us say you HAVE to read it not in a neckbeard way but in a I’m so desperately passionate and I want more people to know about this way, kind of like how the “I hate you” in fan language GENERALLY means “I love it so much and I can’t stand it”? - but I HAVE seen people say the novel “ruined” wangxian, or CQL people who seem to be like... purity-wanking, like idk if you were around but god after Infinity War and the number. of fckn ironstranges. posting in the tags. about “love how healthy our ship is” and I’m like. this is still anti culture/purity wank but the other side of the coin 8). I encounter sometimes this lowkey attitude of CQL (or other adaptations) “redeeming” MDZS from the author, and I’m like. y’all are wack lmfao. There’s people wiht MDZS or even TGCF main, and they hate mxtx? and they say shit like “mdzs was only good on accident”? and I’m like. can you just leave lmfao. if you hate her then why are you here. (bc they’ve mental gymnastics this into a virtue ethics thing about “o the work is good and therefore morally fine but the parts I don’t like are because mxtx is morally bad and unworthy and tainted it, and CQL with its Purity has Redeemed it” but I’m like. this is because of censorship lmao. The team did a FANTASTIC job working the character dynamics and story, but like it also is directly because of censorship.)

like I... have more thoughts than this lmfao bc ofc I do, but anyway, here’s... some of them lol

#imaginaryelle #replies #living la vida salty #*

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cockroachmotherfucker10 · 5 years

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Gonna be real with y’all, the holidays are *killer*. It’s a difficult time because it’s this season that is so often portrayed to be this time of joy, happiness, and togetherness. The holidays used to feel magical and exciting, and so often now they are so impossibly draining for so many reasons.

I’ve seen a lot of posts about this in particular. How when you get older, everything loses its magic and becomes awful. One post I say even added a “that’s adulthood, get used to it.” Now I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, the holidays are really hard. As someone who is queer, Latine, and mentally ill (I co-run an ED recovery blog- lol) I totally understand how the holidays can just be *impossible*. Even if you are none of those things, The holidays are financially and socially draining just by themselves. But this version of the world is also so unbelievably cruel, and I reject the notion that we have all been sentenced to a lifetime of increased misery.

During these holidays, relatives make claps about weight, and they always will. Relatives kindly skip around my pronouns or flat out misgender me. I get an “I love you” card from people who have not talked to me since I came out, and who kindly talk about wanting to deport people like me. Lots of smiling and nodding. Lots of being too poor to afford gifts for everyone. Lots of energy draining conversations. And you know what? This is my reality. I radically accept that this is going to be how it is during this time of year in the foreseeable future.

This I cannot change right now. And frankly, it’s hard not to drown in the negativity because the world *is* negative. The world straight up sucks. It’s homophobic, it’s racist, fatphobic, it’s busy, it’s loud, it’s abusive, it’s selfish, it’s rude, and so so much more. And you know what? This is not all the world is. It’s totally okay to aknowledge how much it all just *sucks* because it does.

But the world I described up there *will* drown you if you let it. Sometimes I find myself kicking and screaming, and I still feel like I’m drowning. But I’m swimming on. I can’t change these negatives in my immediate world, but I can change how I choose to respond to it.

I have to create my own positivity, because the world isn’t going to do that for me. The difference between child me and adult me is that now I have to create my own holiday magic. And as many very real and very valid things there are to be upset about, there are *so* many beautiful and amazing things about this season.

The snow is beautiful, the sun is starting to go down later, the day today was warm enough to sit outside and look at the city. I had some coffee today, a bit of sushi, and it’s the most recovered from my ED I have ever been. I can feel that treatment for my mental illnesses has done wonders, and it’s so good to see the hard work paying off as I reflect on this decade. Also I’m in town, and my best friend is here, and my other friends are in town here with me. Sometimes my blood family makes me feel really isolated, but my found family always makes me feel loved and secure. I’m feeling more sure of myself than I ever have- and while I am still struggling so so much- I have come so far, and there is so much to be grateful for. I could just keep going on.

I cannot change the world as a whole, but I can change the way I perceive the world. That’s why I hate that one post so much that says essentially “holidays will always suck you are an adult get over it” because that is such a cruel, hopeless, and incomplete take on the world that provides no area for personal grown and happiness.

The world is cruel and beautiful. By focusing on the cruelty I choose to let it kill me. By allowing myself to relish in what is good I am defying everything that wants to kill me. Positivity isn’t just a cool trend, it’s survival, it’s radical and it’s rebellious.

Cling to what you can this holiday season. Whatever makes it worth it to be alive. You all are powerful, and I believe I you.

#og post #mod cass #ed recovery #og post cmf

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garrettsiwicki · 6 years

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The Gandrew Conundrum

Or better named, the post where I talk out of my ass. Okay, so let me preface this by saying I am in no way claiming any of this is true. This is just a point of view my brain has created from what we’ve seen or headcanon’d about Garrett and Andrew. I don’t truly know anything about Garrett, Andrew, or anyone relating to them. This is just my opinion of where I personally see them right now. If you wanna take it seriously, okay. If you wanna take it as a headcanon and have fun with it, okay. It’s all in good fun and not meant to be taken as gospel. If anything just run with it for fanfics or something. :)    So anyway, here is my analysis/headcanon/conspiracy/whatever about Gandrew. It’s not all fluff and cuteness, so keep that in mind. I tried to write it as down to earth as possible. Enjoy. ❤️

Garrett. I think his feelings/situation is a bit more straight forward than Andrew’s. Garrett has openly said “if I was a girl, i’d put a ring on it [Andrew]” and has joked about being in love with one of his straight friends before (the friend who made him that bike). So it’s pretty likely he harbors some kind of feelings for his “dear close sweet handsome friend” Andrew, whom he appears to be closer and spend more time with. I think Garrett does have feelings for Andrew, and I think he knows he has feelings for Andrew, but of course Andrew (at least to Garrett’s knowledge) is his “straight guy” friend and obviously you can’t just announce that you, a gay person, have feelings for your “not-gay” friend. Hell, it’s difficult to announce you have feelings for your best friend when you’re in a straight relationship. Adding conflicting sexualities to that makes a whole new layer of confusion. Because of this possibility/fear I think Garrett has resigned himself to accepting that it’ll always be something fantasy, that he shouldn’t allow himself to entertain the thought because it’ll “never happen” and he’s just the “silly” gay friend who fell in love with his straight friend.  (I’m not calling Garrett silly, it’s not silly at all, but he may think that) I think if Andrew showed interest toward a relationship, if it was totally Andrew’s decision to open up about it and pursue something, then Garrett would have no problem pursuing some kind of relationship. But of course, like I said, Garrett is not ready to start this conversation himself. (Note: When I say Garrett doesn’t fully acknowledge it, i’m not saying Garrett can’t brag on or compliment Andrew. He does those things all the times and we all see how smitten he is, i’m just saying he won’t go to Andrew and verbally tell him “I LIKE YOU ROMANTICALLY” lol)   Now for Andrew.   Andrew’s feelings are a bit harder for me to pin point, largely due to the fact i’m not 100% sure how to explain what I mean, and also my opinion is known to jump back and forth, but nevertheless i’ll try to make this sensible.   (A lot of this explaining has to do with discovering yourself/being closeted/etc so keep that in mind.) I think Andrew identifies as straight, and therefor is assumed straight by those around him, but I also feel like he’s never been dead-set on it. And what I mean by that is, the average straight guy will tell you they have no intentions of ever dating a guy. They’re straight and it’s not their thing. But with Andrew I feel he’s never been super defensive of his heterosexuality. Andrew has never shown signs of hyper-masculinity or really caring about what people perceived him as. Yes, that could purely be due to the fact he’s just a decent and accepting guy, but I feel like there’s a bit more to it. I feel like he doesn’t feel the need to establish his heterosexuality because while he has only dated women, and overall assumes himself as straight, I feel like he’s one of those people who has acknowledged to themselves that they wouldn’t be closed to the idea of dating a guy if one day they had feelings for one. (Note, hypothetically being open to dating someone of the same sex is vastly different than actually dating an entire real person) Now, that being said, many people in the queer community started off with a similar woke mindset of “i’m straight, but if I liked someone of the same sex I wouldn’t be opposed to it” before realizing they were actually queer. Just like many of us were big LGBT+ Ally’s and related to/liked a lot of queer media before realizing we were queer ourselves. It’s sometimes a stepping stone to realizing you’re queer, I guess you could say.  This is where I think Andrew falls.   Andrew is obviously comfortable with the LGBT community, his current friend group appears to be very diverse and heavily queer, and he seems to not be afraid of liking things that may be perceived as feminine or “gay” by the average cishet person. Andrew is at a stage a lot of queer people have been at before, which is being a Super Cool Straight Ally until one day “Oh wait... maybe i’m not just an Ally.”. This is something that can happen when a queer person finds themselves around more queer people and more queer media than before. No, I don’t mean he’s being “turned” gay or some dumb shit like that, what I mean is if a queer person is in a more open and diverse environment (the squad, youtube, etc) that they maybe weren’t in before, that person can start to realize things about themselves they’ve never been able to really acknowledge, label, or be open about before.  (This is why I smirk at the comments saying “Andrew is getting gayer” because yeah, lol. For lack of a better term, he is. He’s not being made gay, but he is getting more comfortable in himself.) Andrew is at the stage where he knows something is different. He knows he puts Garrett in a different category than his other male friends, he knows he doesn’t /like/ seeing Garrett flirt with other guys. When Garrett hangs out with Jeffree, Andrew has to post about some other friend he’s hanged out with. If Jeffree makes a joke about sleeping with Garrett, Andrew has to mention he slept over with a friend too. He knows what he’s feeling is jealousy and he’s trying to put this new feeling in it’s place, but he’s still not ready to let himself fully admit that he’s gone and fallen for his best friend. See, Andrew has always struck me as having a shy, maybe a bit nervous, personality. I think it’s definitely possible he overthinks different situations in this life, and falling for your best friend is definitely something someone might overthink. I think it’s also very possible he’s slightly self conscious and tends to doubt himself a lot in stressful or confusing situations. So it’s not that he’s against what he’s feeling, he’s not grossed out by it or negative toward it, but it’s that he won’t let himself *believe* it’s happening. If that makes sense. I think he panics and tries to rationalize it into something else because “I don’t have feelings for Garrett… do I? No, we’re best friends. That’s all it is.”  “Garrett couldn’t possibly have feelings for me… there’s no way”   “I’m just being dramatic, Garrett doesn’t like me… ” etc.   Most everyone, including myself, has had the #gay panic when realizing they’re queer. He’s never experienced this before with a guy, definitely not with someone so close to him, and I think he’s a bit shell shocked by it. So he self doubts. He overthinks. He tries to rationalize it because there *must* be another explanation for it... there’s no WAY he’s fallen for his best friend, that only happens in movies, right? And when I say Andrew can’t admit it or is confused by his feelings, I don’t mean it in a homophobic or demeaning way. I mean coming to terms with yourself, even if it’s just the newness of everything, can be a lot to take in at first. It’s an experience with a lot of feelings and thoughts. Even if someone is open to it, it actually happening can take a minute to get used to. Hypotheticals and real life are two entirely different ball games.   Now for another big question…. do they realize each other has the same feelings, and do people around them realize it?   Like I said earlier, I think Garrett doesn’t allow himself to believe it’s there. He thinks Andrew is straight and it’s all just his silly feelings, so while he might notice hints here and there he doesn’t let himself believe it’s anything. He won’t assume anything until Andrew tells him directly to his face. (Poor Andrew, lol)   For Andrew I think he notices more than Garrett. He can see Garrett likes him a lot and it’s not that he doesn’t want that, but like with his own feelings I think he tries to rationalize it and overthink it. When Garrett compliments him and brags on him, he tries to tell himself that it’s JUST because Garrett is a nice guy. It’s JUST because Garrett is funny and extra. Garrett compliments EVERYONE, I’M not special (he is). Like with his own feelings, in the back of his head he knows what it is and he does hope for it, but it’s gonna take a bit of time for him to let himself believe fully it’s there.  (may it be due to the #gay panic or just his own self doubt) As for their friends… obviously they notice. Garrett tweeted about wanting a boyfriend once and Matt replied with a tag to Andrew, so obviously anyone could tell they’re the couple in their friend group who everyone teases about getting together. Do I think their friends realize it’s THIS serious yet? Maybe not. Teasing and genuine belief are two different things. I think their friends definitely think they’re good together, and wouldn’t be surprised if it happened, and tease them about it, but like with everything else Andrew’s alleged straightness still adds a tiny bit of hesitation to everyone’s belief. So I think they know, but maybe they don’t notice it’s quite this serious yet.   As for the actual squad (Shane, Ryland, and Morgan)… I don’t know. I’ve never been able to exactly pin point my thoughts on their POV. I think they believe more than Garrett and Andrew’s other friends, simply for the fact Shane and Ryland are both queer and could see things from a different POV than Garrett and Andrew’s other straight friends. Not to get too fanfic-y, but I think Shane would definitely be one of the first people to realize “oh shit, this is for real. It’s not just teasing anyone.” (if he hasn’t realized already).  Shane struggled a lot with his bisexuality and has been through this before, he would definitely be someone to notice the tell tale signs somebody else might not. - Anyway, there ya go. As of right now, this is my view of everything Gandrew. May it drastically change one day? Yes. Does it change a little bit everyday depending on the circumstance and new content? Yes. So again, take from this what you will. It may ring some truth, it may be entirely bs. But hopefully you all at least enjoyed reading it. :)

#gandrew #I'm only putting this in the Gandrew tag bc i'm paranoid of Andrew or Garrett seeing it #I mean they could search for Gandrew and see it but it's a bit less forward than putting it in their name tags #my analysis #personal

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necrofia · 7 years

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homosexuality is not simply the absence of heterosexuality, people with decent politics on this site can easily agree to that.

and someone talks abt people whose behavior deviates from heterosexuality only to the extent of the absence of heterosexuality, not the presence of homosexuality, and says ‘maybe they’re gay’

maybe they are! they could be!

and an ace person says ‘they could be ace too’ (keyword TOO)

because people who are not into ANY gender also exist, and it is very easy for our behavior to manifest as the absence of heterosexuality

(or honestly the absence of sexuality in any direction, but in a heteronormative world, it’s the absence of heterosexuality that has people asking questions)

but assholes come out of the woodwork yelling that we’re self-obsessed and whatnot when we want to stop being erased.

& I think ace people can be equally guilty of seeing like a historical figure who was single and erasing evidence that they were likely attracted to people of the same gender & yes it’s homophobic to do that, plz do your research on people, it’s not uncommon for things like ‘this person was writing love letters to someone of the same gender’ to be buried & straight-washed

but like

not being into men doesn’t automatically make me gay. (and actually that’s how i feel a lot of str8 ppl view gay women? they can’t conceive that women can actually genuinely love and care for each other & they’ve conceptualized lesbianism as hating men or whatever. lol everything has to be about men i guess?)

i’m ace because i’m not into men and i’m not into women and i’m not into anyone else really.

if i see a historical figure or fictional character who a) doesn’t express attraction towards different gender and also b) doesn’t express attraction towards the same gender

i’d say both ‘gay’ and ‘ace’ are fair game?

i hate talking about stuff here because i have no idea which of my followers are ace antagonistic or which ones have preconceived notions of ace people simply from observing the homophobic hellhole that is ace tumblr & i feel like i have to be careful not to reinforce a bunch of notions about All Ace People being anti-sex or hate gay people or think we have it as bad as gay people and whatever and honestly it’s an exhausting thing to deal with because I feel like I’m walking on eggshells around my friends.

like y’all don’t know my politics but i support women first and foremost & i support women who face backlash from not participating in heterosexuality and i support gnc women and i support women who face backlash for loving & partnering with other women, the latter being a struggle I don’t claim to have.

it’s 2 AM and i’m tired on many levels but quite frankly i hate the state of ace discussion bc many people will try to classify me as a straight person trying to be special, but,

my personal sexuality (not asexuality in general) is easily easily identifiable by my distaste towards men and my disgust at physical contact with men and my horror at the thought of partnership with a man and my wish to separate from men and my disgust at being perceived as desirable by men.

i don’t want men to look at me or talk to me or acknowledge my existence!!

'maybe you’re a lesbian’ maybe but unlikely. i’m ‘fine’ with women but lesbianism isn’t being ‘fine’ with women, stop watering down actual love and attraction between women because you can’t conceptualize that women can actually genuinely love each other and be primary partners for each other (better than men can be, men think that women love women the same way men ‘love’ (begrudgingly tolerate) women, it’s so transparent)

there’s no point to any of this ive just been feeling so shitty for months.

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toraonice · 8 years

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Could it be that the Japanese female audience would never blame the authors for queerbaiting or fanservice etc? More like they are grateful for it actually. Like "please give us all those hints here and there, so we could use them as a base for our own FANON fantasies". Like it's normal for them?

Yes, in Japan actually the concept of “queerbaiting” doesn’t really exist. For Japanese fangirls it’s normal that m/m couples are all fantasy and would never happen in the actual story (unless it’s a BL manga or they are clearly shown/stated to be homosexual from the start of course), therefore they would never expect the creators to confirm something like the kiss in episode 7, or whether they eventually get engaged or not. They just take the hints to create their own headcanons and fan stories (and doujinshi), but they don’t actually hope or expect a couple to become canon. Though I have the feeling (judging from all the comments I see on Twitter) that even Japanese fangirls can perceive that the “fanservice” in YOI doesn’t really fit within the boundaries of what is normally called “fanservice”, and I believe some of them are starting to think that their relationship might not be just a fantasy, lol. (I’m amused just because it’s rare for “normal” Japanese fangirls to think a couple might be real) But yeah even if they thought so they wouldn’t expect the creators to say it out loud.

More under the cut because it got somewhat long as I delved a bit deeper into the topic.

By the way, I think in YOI’s case Japanese fans are being influenced by the reactions of the overseas fandom too. With the current development of the SNS the Japanese community is finally starting to “open up”, so you can see them follow foreign artists on Twitter, and some of them even have accounts on Tumblr. I have seen fan theories originally born in the overseas fandom (like the infamous one about Yuuri only buying one ring, which was then proved wrong by various interviews) make their way into the Japanese fandom because someone translated them and spread them on Twitter.

Also, in early interviews Kubo said she only got questions about the kiss-or-not-kiss scene of episode 7 by foreign fans, but in one of the latest ones she wrote “And then I heard from Japanese people too that some had an argument with their friends over whether they kissed or not, or they just hugged.” I’m not sure whether she means that she got letters about it, or she just spotted it online, but still it’s interesting to see that this discussion spread out to the Japanese fandom too. (Side note: most Japanese people would never directly ask something like this to a creator because there’s an unspoken rule that BL shipping must be strictly done among fans and must not reach the official staff, though with people posting fanarts all over Twitter and Pixiv being an open community it’s obvious that the creators know everything of what’s going on lol).

This is not only related to YOI, but there is a tendency among Japanese fangirls to believe that all characters are straight unless proven otherwise. Therefore, in doujinshi (and BL manga too actually) you can often find classic lines such as “I love you but I’m not gay”, which always makes me feel the urge to throw the book at the wall because I find it so homophobic. As in being gay is wrong and so the character can’t possibly be gay, it’s just that the other guy is special. Nothing against them being special to each other, but is there really a need to state out loud that “they are not gay”? However this is unfortunately how the majority of Japanese fangirls perceive m/m couples, which brings back to the post I made the other day about why it would be difficult for YOI to show an explicit m/m relationship. And it’s also why I really appreciated Kubo’s tweet where she said that within the world of YOI no one is discriminated against because of what they like. Because even if they are vague about some things, it’s still cool that they are depicting a world where people can behave how they feel without being scared of “labels” or of how others will judge them.

EDIT: Just a note to be more exact. In Japan they do have the concept of "fujoshi baiting" as in "excessive m/m fanservice only put in an anime to attract yaoi fangirls", but it's used in a lighter and different way than the Western world's "queerbaiting". It has nothing to do with the correct/incorrect representation of LGBT in creative works. It's either used when the fanservice is very blatant and pointless, or by people who are not even yaoi fangirls to criticize an anime they don't like.

#YOI #Yuri on ice #japanese culture

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xirae · 7 years

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What's your type of gal

I’ll answer this in two way - first the type of girl I’d romance in a dating sim and then what I think my type of guy is. This is not at all a callout at you bc I don’t really post guys here often and neither is being gay in my blog description. Freshman year through sophomore year of high school I claimed to be bi but I was just having a hard time accepting that I wasn’t into women. I love answering questions so I’ll do this one to the best of my ability! (also sorry this took me so long I got carried away talking about myself and my life experiences...)

In dating sims first I’d look for like the goth, emo, punk rock, loner type. That’s bc my ideal me has a sort of goth-lite, emo-lite aesthetic. I don’t show it much other than small accessories like a spiked wristband and my black super skinny jeans, but it’s there and I love meeting people who get that vibe (I also genuinely like music ranging from metal to metalcore and hardcore to post-hardcore). I’m also very much a loner and have a hard time opening up about myself (excepting a few moments on here LOL), so I can identify with people like that. When characters have a deep hurt or a bit of baggage they struggle with I identify a lot with that because I’m still affected by baggage from high school and freshman year of college (my desc is a little outdated rn by about a year and a half...). ESPECIALLY when it involves not fitting in or being weird/a freak, I just relate so hard and those paths make me feel emotional. I also hopefully get to make them happy too!

If no one is goth/emo, then I just look for someone nerdy/geeky, or at least not too connected to the “popular” crowd. This is bc I know what it’s like to geek out over things, and it’d always be fun to play games and stuff with my simulator gf. It’s another way I can relate to the character in the game. I can even relate to cringy fandom stuff bc I used to be superwholock and I’m high-key really into Hatoful Boyfriend and Life is Strange.

This isn’t to say I consider the “popular” girls snobby, bratty characters. I actually LOVE finding out the true personalities behind the shallow, power-hungry, selfish exteriors these characters hide behind (see: Victoria from Life is Strange, Cheryl from Riverdale). Given their rough exteriors, though, I’m more inclined to search out the latter two personalities because I can more immediately relate to them.

As for guys, it happens a lot less fluidly. Some characters/actors I find very attractive are Perceival Graves (Collin Farel or something?), Idris Elba, Chris Evans, Jensen Ackles (but not Dean Winchester anymore bc he’s way too overwhelmingly masculine in his behavior). I low-key want Soldier 76 to be my sugar daddy, Reyes/Reaper is my assassin boyfriend, and McCree is my cowboy boyfriend. I also think Robert from Dream Daddy is very attractive. Idk what “types” I have from this list

I don’t get IRL crushes very often (I’ve had 3 from eight grade to freshman year of college). The first one was kind of homophobic and ditched me as a friend freshman year - I question past-David’s judgement but I just thought he was really cute at the time. I don’t know what I was thinking oh my God I’m screaming right now thinking that ever happened (he never knew I was gay or had a crush on him so he just ditched me bc he didn’t really like me which is ok we were fairly incompatible. I HATED him for it though).

Second guy moved to Florida - he was someone in my grade I hung out with at school a lot sophomore year. He seemed to listen to me at a time I noticed myself go unheard a lot in conversation (people in my grade just didn’t like me at the time except one other guy named Michael. It wasn’t until junior year I found others who liked me in my grade). The bad thing was I also kind of fetishized his sadness. He had family problems at the time - his mom and dad were split and he lived with his mom, and I thought he was someone who understood what it was to feel hurt; I thought I could see the “real” Steven (YIKES YIKES YIKES yeah Steven was his name lol). He moved to Florida bc his parents came back together (yay! Good for him and his mom!), and then he came back to Toledo and didn’t tell me so I hated him for that (he shouldn’t have known about me either but there was this one time I put my hand on his shoulder bc I was a creeper although I’ve read that touching people is one way to strengthen friendships so maybe not).

Third guy came way later freshman year bc while there were guys I kind of could have crushed on I made sure I didn’t. This one is probably circumstantial bc I don’t know why i liked him like that instead of just deeply appreciating his friendship. I burned a lot of bridges after hs graduation and I felt like such a loser. This dude first sits by me in my giant chem lab just like a coincidence like anyone you sit by. We talk and exchange numbers - he’s a freshman like me, we both did it just to make new contacts in a new phase in our lives. Then he somehow pops up right next to me at a football game when I was with my roommate, and then when I wanted to leave early he and his friend went with me. We stopped at the student union and they wanted Panda Express and I wanted Subway, so I thought we were just splitting there and I go eat on my own. Before I’m done he comes to my table bc he and his friend finished and I’m like “Why is this really cool guy going out of his way to sit with weird loser me?” - I think that day I became infatuated with him. Like even when I played Hatoful Boyfriend that year and started fanboying over it he never seemed to be significantly put off by it if even at all like he never seemed to ever think I was weird loser David. I think it was just the first time in more than a year someone made me feel like that and I went a little overboard in the feelings department. All that got fixed though when I became depressed, and I isolated myself from the few people I talked to and that included him so yeah fuck me LOL. I even had a chance to tell him bc something bad happened in my dorm and he found out about it and texted me if I was ok after I hadn’t texted him in forever but I feigned ignorance and was like “yeah I’m ok” (he probably knew I was lying too bc the “something bad” was a suicide). That might have even hurt his feelings too that was insensitive of me to just straight up lie like I was dropping him

Idk if I can ever become infatuated like that again although I’m fairly recovered so I’m more inclined to feel things again. I don’t really know if I can think up some magic type of guy I’d become infatuated with, but the way they treat me when I start being me affects it a lot. I still have issues with thinking I’m weird and if I think someone “gets it” or they’re just a cool person who seems to like it that probaby would still help a lot. But if someone isn’t geeky at all idk where we can connect - even the cool guy #3 (Chris) liked some games and got Fallout 4 when it came out. We took similar classes bc he’s comp eng and I’m comp sci. I read a wide range of genres, watch all sorts of TV, play a super wide variety of games - I’d like to have some common ground in what I like to think is a fairly wide range of interests. But it seems that more fratty or mainstream or just not-nerdy types don’t do any of this and idk what their interests even are (I guess football or sports which is just as good but I can’t relate). I feel like this composes most ppl (at least at my high school it did) but I’m introverted it’s not like I go out of my way to talk to people

#asks #long #Anonymous

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