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anomaliex · 1 month ago

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Bad Kids (partially shameless projection) queer identity headcanons be upon ye

Notable that I think culturally literally anything that is not human has different ideas of gender than us. Some are very close to the point it hardly matters in a discussion like this (like elves and dwarves. It's mostly the same but I do think most elves are what humans consider to be feminine because they have a different idea of masculinity ((grace)). Or like, most dwarves seem masculine to humans for the simple reason that they all tend to have beards. Stuff like that.), but the further away you get from being hey pretty close to what a human is (like orcs or goblins) the further you stray from human understanding of how things work.

What if being intersex is way more common in a race of people, the concept of gender immediately becomes either way looser and less important or important with completely different values. Also I work under the assumption that whatever counts as "humanoids" (which is a very human-centric term but I like to think that's just because our POV is from a language that is inherently human) is a mammal and will generally have two sexes. But like, there's organisms with more or less than that, and in a fantasy world there's absolutely societies of intelligent species with similar characteristics. Imagine a weird hand wave, not relevant to this specific discussion as the bad kids are all human-shaped but it's something I find interesting. What would gender be like in that society if they had it at all? Living somewhere where that concept isn't really a thing (or at least not a thing in the way we understand it to be) sounds kinda awesome.

That said. Solace is a society mostly shaped by human standards and everyone who lives there somewhat conforms to them; and anyone who grows up there is probably socialised accordingly. Also Gorgug is adopted and doesn't seem all that connected to his roots and Riz is a third gen immigrant who doesn't get to see his extended family all that much. What I'm saying is everything I just said hardly matters in the context of the Bad Kids. Yeah. I just wanted to say it. I'm. I'm autistic. Thanks for reading my word vomit you're a real one for sticking through this far here's what I actually wanted to say.

Kristen. Obviously a lesbian. she/her and calls herself a woman but ultimately doesn't really. Care that much? About gender? And would not mind being referred to with masculine terms, it's more a matter of being afab so that's what she's going with.

Adaine I think has experimented with she/they pronouns. Often times she feels like her perception of life goes far beyond whatever societal constructs influence the present and she does not feel particularly attached to the idea of womanhood. I think she's aro spec but probably allosexual? Develops interest in all that a bit later than her friends and even then it's not. The same. She thinks guys are attractive, maybe girls sometimes, but doesn't actually feel inclined to do anything about that? Isn't looking to get into relationships or anything but yeah.

Riz is aroace because yeah. Personally I think oriented aroace because Baron being masc-ish does mean something to me, so he doesn't necessarily say it / find it relevant for other people to know but Riz personally IDs as gay + aroace. He does think some guys are attractive he's just sex repulsed lmao. I think he's the flavour of aroace where he'd happily engage in deep emotional bonds he just really doesn't understand what the fuck romantic feelings are supposed to be and how it'd be different than just loving his best friend(s) truly so much and is discomforted by the societal expectations and restrictions around the concept of "dating". ALSO about gender he's a he and its whatever. Does not care. Gender apathetic in the way Kristen is.

Gorgug isn't particularly attached to any labels, I think. He just likes who he likes, which is several people sometimes because he's also polyam. I think his lax view of his own inherent queerness has a lot to do with how open (and also inherently queer) his parents are. He just never really thought about it. Hit puberty and started thinking guys are hot and went okay this is not in any way special I'm way more worried about my favourite emo band breaking up rn. The only reason he ever came out to his friends was because he asked them for advice on how to bring up that he's polyam with Zelda (who I think was super cool with that and honestly from what we know that might be culturally normal to her), he does not consider it to be particularly noteworthy. Gorgug is similarly not particularly concerned about gender. I think he goes by any pronouns but also doesn't bring that up unless someone asks because he truly does not care or think it's a big deal.

Fabian's entire general person-ness feels queer to me idk. Bisexual and polyamorous. Probably aro-spec but he needs more time to figure that one out. Exclusively finds himself interested in women who are taller than him, this has nothing to do with being queer I just wanted to note that. He's the only one of the Bad Kids where I want to confidently say yeah this is a he/him man and he feels both comfortable in and connected to his masculinity. He ventures into gender nonconformity (starts with painting his nails, then make up, maybe a skirt when he's chilling at mordred manor) more and more as he gets older and more comfortable, I think, but that kind of only reaffirms to him that he's a man and loves being a man? Idk lol. Also for the record this is nonconformity in the context of Solace. For (high-)elven standards he's not like hypermasc dude bro but he's a pretty "manly" guy. Fallinel is like twink nation idk what to tell you. Now whether he's cis or not is a different question, while I personally think he is I do make a little mental cheer every time someone makes him trans.

Fig. They/she/it. She struggles with the disconnect she feels between her and the girl she thought she was a lot and it sucks, but eventually it does lead them to reexamine how they see themself and their identity and stuff. I think she eventually comes to the conclusion that yeah she has some attachment to femininity but ultimately exists in a space beyond the binary. Which is cool. Idk what label Fig would use, if any at all, but maybe something loose like genderqueer.

I know it's very commonly accepted that she's bisexual but like. Honestly. I think that was comphet. I think Fig is a lesbian who had some of the most horrendous comphet imaginable. None of their interest in those (concerningly) older men was genuine and it was all pretending to be someone else to get something and she isn't even sure why she wants that something that she can't quite place. And even though it longs so badly for the validation and confirmation that it's fitting into whatever role it is Fig is trying to emulate, she doesn't ever actually dare to get "serious". That's not actually what she wants. Uncomfortable and deeply concerning desperation for sexuality from a teenage girl who probably isn't a girl and certainly isn't actually interested in any of the men she's pursuing, and is so scared of just having to exist as herself deep down is such a real experience and if d20 wasn't a comedy show this could be the most visceral arc.

#huge thing that was in my drafts that I completely forgot about but now it's here #This is like three separate posts I wanted to make but I made them all one post for some reason that's insane #I have more thoughts about this actually but if I try to add to this I'll get a headache #maybe some other time #rambling into the void #dimension 20 #fantasy high #headcanons #bad kids #fabian aramais seacaster #riz gukgak #fig faeth #figueroth faeth #gorgug thistlespring #adaine abernant #kristen applebees #queeries #the bad kids

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bleue-flora · 13 hours ago

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Brilliant point moot. I hate how a lot men treated women on the dsmp, you had sapnap and jack making your mom jokes and constantly going on about being a man and saying 'man up' especially in the petwars, all of jacks misogyny in general, tommys misogyny being excused because he was a kid especially how he treated alyssa and niki. I saw someone other day complaining that more men should treat women like men more often as in its unfair that women are excluded from a lot of the shipping jokes and roasting jokes but I mean there's a reason why they avoid it now because it often falls into misogynistic territory. If a man insults another man for being bad at pvp and calls him a bitch, its fine but if he does that to a woman, due to the history of how women are treated it then it is sexist. Same goes for if a man jokingly flirted with a woman on an smp the same joke way men do gay rp with each other. Women do get excluded from a lot of jokes but it can't be fixed until men change this. Until then, many women ccs are going to feel uncomfortable being who they are. I know that's was one of the reasons why I transitioned, just so i could be respected.

-date: Nov 25, 2024-

[context]

Yeah… there is a lot of misogyny in the gaming community and the dsmp is no different. And while I would agree to some extent that being more inclusive does involve treating people like everyone else. (Like I think you can write a superhero and their personality doesn’t have to be so focused on being a woman. You can take Tony Stark’s character and make it a girl, like stop making all the girl characters so freaking dull, why can’t they be quippy too :/…)

However, I will also say, that being inclusive means treating people differently too. Because we are different both physically but also historically and societally. A male gamer doesn’t need to be good looking to be successful and yet, there is definitely a standard of beauty for woman. The expectations from society are different and that’s just how it is, a reality that I hope in the future can change but we aren’t there yet. And historically women have been excluded from video games, dnd, Lego, and STEM fields... etc. (when I was growing up they didn’t even have pink Lego) In media, even if we are included it’s like we are either girly or nerdy, girly or more sporty and masculine, as if a woman can’t be feminine and those other things. Ridiculous. All that to say, unfortunately there is a difference and so you can’t treat a woman like a boy and vice versa because of history, because of society, but also because we are literally different.

So, there are jokes and roasts that are not okay and comments made between men that are not okay to say to women. And part of this is the history involved. Making fun of a guy’s skill might be funny but it’s less funny for a girl as we’ve been historically made fun of for that and seen as inferior. But then again, there are probably boys who feel insecure about those comments too, perhaps because they’ve been made fun of in the past. That’s just how it is. Not all jokes are funny or okay in different settings or to different people. Clearly, Dream and his friends have fun making gay jokes and such, but there are plenty of guys that would not be okay with that. It’s not only a gender thing that make things appropriate or not. And I’d say, that if you are making jokes that could be seen as sexist if said to a woman then maybe you shouldn’t be saying those jokes. If you’re making penis jokes, sex jokes, roasts or your mommas jokes that’s aren’t appropriate in front of or with women, maybe you shouldn’t be saying them at all…

Humor doesn’t have to be exclusive. I think Techno is a good example of this, I don’t particularly remember him making any jokes that weren’t inclusive, or made me uncomfortable like some of the other dsmp members. And even if he called a girl a “nerd” in skybattle or something as she fell to her death, I don’t think people would see it as sexist because the way he says it, what is said, and the context is important.

Furthermore, I don’t think the problem is men not including women in jokes because they are afraid they’ll be seen as sexist or would by nature be sexist, the problem is the lack of respect. It’s the talking over women, not including them in lore, not listening to them, being demeaning or pushing stereotypes onto them. That’s what needs to change. That in addition to the weird remarks about women was the problem. Tommy not caring or listening to Alyssa as she tried to call out how Tommy stole her diamonds, instead calling her the “ghost in his head”. Tommy joining Sapnap’s side just to kill a woman. Like over and over women are used as like a bit - “who is your favorite woman” - is seen as funny and yet if someone asked- “who’s your favorite man?” It’d just be dumb… the way being a woman or highlighting women even if not in a negative is still kinda sexist. It’s the highlight of the gender that makes it weird, not - “just killed Dream, feelin’ good” but “just killed a woman, feelin’ good.” If it was “just killed Puffy, feelin’ good” it’d be fine but that’s not what’s said. You don’t have to not do jokes because of someone being a woman but them being a woman should not be the joke.

Then there’s like the fact that it was noticeable to many people how Techno would always make space and be quiet when Niki talked, so she was heard. That shouldn’t be a big deal or noticeable and yet, it was because so many other server members would just talk over her. A lot of people didn’t notice or make a big deal that Niki burned down the L’mantree. Her very important lore was glossed over. Niki despite being a member of the Syndicate and the bad ass she is in her netherite armor and stuff is often reduced to the cute little baker who brings over cookies and is just so sweet. And Puffy despite her gear and importance in taking down the Egg is reduced to Tommy’s motherly figure and Dream’s ex-mom. Like are we forgetting these girls also fought in wars? And yet, their characters are reduced so far to such female stereotypes…

Anyways…. I could probably ramble about this for awhile so I’ll leave it there for now before I get fully derailed lol. And if this sounded agressive it was not intentional and not toward you, but just my frustration with this in general…

#Shoutout to all my women <3 you’re doing great… I like to say as a female engineer my job is to knock male ego down a notch lol #dsmp #dream smp #hello there #sexism #dsmpblr #like okay imagine Puffy sided with Dream or something after prison and you get the like trio of revive books or something….#like I don’t know having a female bad guy would have been awesome… if I was there I would have been filling the dispensers in the grid with #tnt that’s all I’m saying…. also please make the females more appropriately bad ass and cool. thank you like with some cool armor and stuff #did someone order an essay?

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armandyke · 2 months ago

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I was clickbaited by a book, and other reviews

56) Bored Gay Werewolf by Tony Santorella (DNF)

I was lied to and deceived by this book. I know they say don’t judge a book by its cover, but I don’t think I can be blamed for seeing THIS and expecting there to be some kind of gay romance in here. And after reading the synopsis I was even more hyped because I thought it would be a toxic gay romance. Uh. Spoiler alert. There is no gay romance in this gay werewolf book. And what was there wasn’t good enough for me to see it through.

The book is actually more about toxic masculinity, and honestly I probably would have enjoyed and finished reading had I not been CLICKBAITED BY THE TITLE AND COVER.

57) Out There Screaming curated by Jordan Peele (3.5⭐)

You know the drill by this point. This was another short story collection, some I really enjoyed, some were just okay. As far as short story collections go this was definitely a good one, there were no absolute stinkers in there and the good ones were really good.

I particularly enjoyed The Other One by Violet Allen, and A Bird Sings by the Etching Tree by Nicole D. Sconiers.

58) The Watchers by A.M Shine (4.5⭐)

I see a creepy forest setting in Ireland and I simply say yippee!

This one is about a woman who gets lost in a forest and finds herself holed up with a group of strangers in a strange bunker, surrounded by invisible creatures that torment them as soon as the sun goes down. I absolutely loved this. It was creative, it was tense and creepy, and I didn’t predict the twists.

The only reason this book fell short of 5 stars for me was because I found out at the end of the book that there was a sequel, and I wish there wasn’t. The ending and the entire book would have been a lot more impactful for me if it had been kept as one stand alone. Maybe I’ll read the follow up at some point but despite how good this was I won’t be rushing out to buy it because I fear that we could just be beating what would have been a perfectly wonderful dead horse.

59) Whalefall by Daniel Kraus (4.5⭐)

This was a bit of serendipity for me, because this is absolutely not something I would have found in my usual sections of the bookshop. It just happened that I was stuck at an airport with two hours to kill and had finished the book I brought with me, so I hit the tiny bookshop with no horror section, and picked up the book with the creepiest looking cover.

And what do you know? It turned out to be pretty great.

Pretty simple premise: guy gets swallowed by an entire fucking whale and has to escape, all the while trying to untangle his incredibly complicated feelings towards his recently deceased father. I had a fun time. The whale insides were gross and claustrophobic, and it was a genuinely tense read. Bit out of left field for me but yeah, loved it.

60) My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones (3.5⭐)

This book was a weird one. I think I liked it in the end but it took a while to get there.

The writing style was a bit strange, it felt a lot like stream of consciousness… but in third person? I don’t know. It made it a bit hard to read for me, and kind of slowed the whole story down a bit. I stuck with it because I wanted to know what happened, and I was really invested at certain points, but it felt like a long read. I don’t know. Anyway, let me tell you what the story is about.

It follows Jade, a Native American girl obsessed with slasher movies who suddenly finds herself at the center of one when people start turning up dead. If I’m being so real, so much happens and I can’t really remember any of it.

All that being said, I bought another book by this author so we’ll see how that one goes.

#bored gay werewolf #out there screaming #the watchers #whalefall #my heart is a chainsaw #river reads

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my-castles-crumbling · 1 year ago

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Dancer anon advice

Hi all! Someone wrote me about some advice, I'm just copy and pasting it here so I can add a 'read more' line and format it a bit differently than usual so I can keep my thoughts in order!

Italics is their writing

Bold is mine

i noticed ppl were using this blog to ask about stuff, so here goes ig?

(also im sorry this was going to be me asking about gender stuff but now its just kinda my life story 😭 if you dont want to answer this, you can just write a post saying like. dancer anon i dont feel comfortable answering this or whatever)

Ahhhh, you all need to stop apologizing! I never mind helping!

im afab, and i feel like i never really fit in with gender? like, i would always be so jealous of my feminine friends but i didnt feel good when dressing feminine myself

i also take dance classes (i started at around 6/7) and i felt like i had to wear all the skirts and shit because i wanted to be pretty like the other dancers, and i felt really terrible after a few years of that, because i hated how i looked in them and how i looked when i danced

(i also used to have a dance teacher whos hands were always cold and thats all i can remember about him but i really hated dancing with him and would get relieved when classes were over. ive hated dancing with boys/men ever since)

and it got like. really bad. i believe? (my memory is actually terrible. i cant remember anything for the life of me, so it could be my mind overexaggerating, but anyways.)

i would always ask for me and my teacher to just do stretching because i hated how i looked when i danced because i hated the skirts and everything because i hate my legs and how they look when bare. i hated attending dance classes because people would see me and see my legs and see how i looked and i felt terrible all the time (i think i was around 9 or 10 at this age?)

so one day i had a whole crying fit and my dance teacher told me that i dont have to wear skirts or whatever, i can wear pants and shit (i was so fucking relieved. istg. i now wear skirts to dance only like. couple times a year maybe)

and then soon enough covid happened! (also keep in mind that i grew up like. really sheltered. i did not know what gay people/transgender people were until i read fanfiction about warrior cats 😭)

and i was so delighted! because on distance learning, no one would see me and be able to judge me for how i dress or whatever

at around this time, my fear of everyone masculine really grew. its still there. im fucking terrified of all men. i cant help it. like every boy man masculine person. i get so scared. i hate it. i hate it so much

but then covid came to a halt, yk, school started again .-. i felt like shit, honestly. i didnt have ANY clothes i felt comfortable in. my hair felt too long and "feminine" and i wanted to cut it for the longest time. my clothes made me feel terrible. i hated how the leggings would wear on my legs and how my sweaters would show my body shape and how my butt looked (i still really hate how it looks. why is it big. i dont want it to be i hate it so much)

yeah so there i am, feeling dysphoric as shit (i did not know what that was, back then, by the way, but i believe thats what i was feeling)

didnt help that my only friend was a toxic, lying, manipulating bitch who led people on for fun and always expected everyone to worship at her feet

after a while, i discovered different labels! (bisexual was the first label i had for myself. i felt good with it, ig?)

and then i got to the gender situation. i used so many girl alligned terms because i was so scared of being percieved as the very thing i am terrified of (masculine ppl). i went through demigirl, girlflux, genderfae, genderfluid, i beleive, maybe somethign else too, because i wanted to stay connected to being a girl.

Okay so here, I want to ask, what's the reason to wanting to say connected with being a girl? Is it feeling like you are partially a girl? Not wanting to be connected to masculinity? Not wanting to let go of the 'girlhood' that you grew up with? None of these reasons are bad but I think thinking about this more might help you figure out your gender.

around this time i started doing leader steps for dance. the euphoria i felt. please.

ahhhhh wait! I do ballroom, too! I'm a follower, though. what's your favorite? I LOVE tango. Okay, sorry, I got distracted.

found out i was a lesbian, used nonbinary but with she/they pronouns and felt like shit whenever anyone called me she but didnt want to make a big deal about using they

ooo, okay here- asking for your correct pronouns isn't 'making a big deal.' it's asking for what you need and asking for respect.

found out i was aroace because "people actually find video game characters attractive?" 😭

thought i might feel better as a boy? cut my hair. i loved it so much (i still do) (that was may of last year) got baggy clothes. covered up my figure. did leader steps for dance.

over the summer i started using labels such as agender? which i feel like fits me?

anyway, thats the life story part, now for the part about what the fuck am i

i feel like shit whenever im called a girl or refered to with feminine terms. im not sure if it would classify as dysphoria or not, becuase i dont feel /that/ bad about it, but it still ruins my mood and kinda makes me want to cry.

okay so here's the thing. not 'feeling THAT bad' doesn't mean anything. Dysphoria is dysphoria. and this is dysphoria. Just because you're not throwing up in a corner doesn't mean your feelings aren't valid.

if my grandma calles me granddaughter, girl, whatever in russian, it automatically ruins my mood. makes me feel terrible. i hate it.

i dont feel as bad when my sister calls me her sister, though, for some reason.

Okay! So for me, I hate being called a lady, but I don't mind my wife calling me her wife. Again, this is all completely valid <3

when i get called by she/her i hate it so much. i dont want to make a big deal about asking for they/them - sometimes my friends remeber, sometimes they dont.

ive never tried he pronouns, dont think i want to.

they/them pronouns dont give me that much euphoria either, its just like. ok

Okay! Have you tried neopronouns? If you're not interesting in those, it could just be that they/them is what feels best. And that's okay, too!

another thing. my friend has another nonbinary friend. she always genders them correctly, but almost never me. it makes me feel like shit, like she cares more about getting their pronouns than mine, even though i know that thats not a good mindset and shit.

*loud buzzer sound* wrong. Your friend should be gendering everyone correctly, not just some people. Good friends care about making their friends feel comfortable, and this friend is making you uncomfortable. Would you feel comfortable talking to them about it?

also, heres some more on my fear of men because who doesnt love being scared out of their wits irrationally :D

my dance teacher had to leave to go back to where she lives, so they gave me a male teacher (i tend to only have female ones.)

i would be in tears every lesson. i felt like shit. (also i hate the sound of peoples voices and he would always be talking and i hate it so much because his voice, amongst others, is one of the ones that hurts my ears the most.) i even went to my mom to ask her for a change which helped ig? my new teacher is really nice and i love her so,,, yeah

Okay, I want to stop here to say- a lot of this has to do with gender, right? But this particular response seems to be rooted in trauma. Without prying too much, I am wondering if there is something that happened with a man or masculine-presenting person or people? You do NOT have to share with me, but this might be something to explore with a trusted person in your life. I mean, there is a chance it's gender-related, but in the most loving way, there seems to be something deeper going on here.

anyway, you dont have to answer this, i was going to just ask for help with labels and feeling like theres no correct label for me (i use agender now, for simplicity, because i dont feel connected to having a gender at all)

So I guess my question is, how do you feel about the agender label? When I looked up the definition, it seems to be defined as exactly what you described- someone not having a gender at all.

Also, remember that your gender identity and expression are two different things! You can identify as agender (or any of the other things you mentioned) and still choose to dress however feels most comfortable and use whatever pronouns feel most comfortable. There are no set rules except: do what feels most genuine and comfortable!

if you do want to answer this but dont want to use this large of an ask on your blog, just call me dancer anon, i will see and understand 👍

again, sorry for dumping all of this on you

ahhhhhhh don't be sorry, you are a wonderful human!

have a wonderful day

you, too! please message me if you want to talk more! <3

#ask #asks #ask cas

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ooglywooglies · 5 months ago

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so yesterday i had a fucking epiphany when i was talking about how transmascs dont have eggs as much as transfems do and so transfems adopt male characters as transfem all the time and i was like hmm i wonder if i have any male ocs that are kinda eggy/i could see transitioning later in life (it helps that the majority of my ocs are in high school bc these projects started when i was a teenager and are frozen in time)

thank god i recently made portraits for all of them too

first one i immediately thought of was michaels:

a lot of the plot of tww revolves around him developing a crush on a new male teacher (its more of a plot device than anything theres no shippy stuff involved with that at all dw) and it kicking off some other social conflicts with the other kids around him because hes going through like a sexual discovery phase and all his friends are trying to be supportive in the most pushy/invasive way possible

and his background is hes very much The Good One out of this entire group of friends. he comes from a well off family with big expectations for him hes an honor student and hes the one that usually talks them out of trouble, hes obviously DEEPLY insecure as a result.

people do question his masculinity a lot, not in a way that usually bothers him, mostly the fact that hes kind of a later bloomer and short (canonically he gets a lot taller basically right after all this -- hes currently in tww barely just turned 16) but he does care about coming off as "the right kind of person" rejecting his attraction to men and keeping his gay best friend at a distance around other people, ive actually been really unsure about what his real sexuality is supposed to be

i originally made him as my own personal whitewashed self insert when i was 13, he was kind of a spinoff of an "alter ego" i had on deviantart where i "lied" about being a boy, ive since disconnected from him A LOT and i think when you reevaluate him as his own person he doesnt really have a lot of transmasc vibes left over

i feel like itd make a lot of sense for him to finally have his first puberty come and hit him like a fucking truck and yknow, its the exact opposite of a relief. i can imagine his family being excited that hes growing into a man and stuff and, honestly anything that makes his family proud has got to feel like getting shot in a way.

kitkat i feel like could also easily be transfem but i dont know that its because he comes off as someone who has a lot of insecurity to grapple with

kitkat is michaels' extremely social neighbor and childhood friend, hes friends with everyone, he loves to be involved in everyones drama but its because he wants to be supportive and help everyone live their best lives. kitkat finds out michaels has a crush on someone as soon as he enters the story and makes it his lifes mission to help, but michaels wont tell him who his crush is on so he goes from thinking its a girl called maddie (because michaels lies about it), pestering her about it so bad that michaels has to admit he lied but then refuses to say who the real person is, to i think he either figures it must be either him or loren (i forget, it may very well be both at different points) and switching full gear into helping him accept his sexuality (he finds out the truth near the end and i forget how he responds to that ill have to read the script again)

meanwhile the entire time its painfully obvious that kitkat is so obsessed with this because he definitely has feelings for michaels himself

and i think i have it as basically canon that once michaels moves on from his teacher crush and settles he realizes he has feelings for kitkat as well and they reunite after a couple years after michaels' family moves him to italy or something for boarding school + maybe uni idk (this is mostly for semi plot reasons in a different story but its also definitely a punishment for spending too much time with the local out and proud gay troublemaker loren)

anyway i think it could easily be that they meet again as women, or one is already transitioned and influences the other to or whatever

i think honestly they could be EITHER bi or lesbians like i think when i look back on it their confused feelings about liking each other/liking unobtainable men isnt specifically about liking MEN its about being queer in general so theres no real conflict there

something i went through as well where i had a big phase of everyone thinking im a lesbian and trying to be like "its okay if you are", just for me to turn out to be trans and gay (for men only)

winter is kind of a weird story, one that ive played with a bit before and i bring her up because i think she can be kind of a counter to my "theres no telltale signs of a transmasc egg" thing and it illustrates that transmasc eggs are harder to predict rather than theres just no signs

winter is the fujo queen, her main thing in the story is being a stalker fujoshi who harasses the boys specifically because theyre gay and even makes them kiss for her blog at one point she was originally a hateful caricature of a fandom girl back when she was created in like 2010 but now shes good and we like her okay, i know from what i just said it seems like a stretch but she is

her heart is basically never in the right place but i think winter has a lot of value as a representative of this kind of person, on some level i WAS her when i was younger, yknow shes 15, and she is weird because this kind of character could really go ANYWHERE as an adult, where we currently have her she is one of those fujoshi girls that is 100% using yaoi as an exploration of her own queerness. as the story progresses she starts hanging out with a girl i mentioned earlier named maddie and this part is not super developed but theyre supposed to team up while having completely different motivations and struggling to understand where the other is coming from, thus gaining an interest in each other through mutual curiosity and eventually dating

maddie is already an out lesbian, shes actually mostly present in the story as lukas' (lorens love interest) best friend and they bonded through both being out of state queer kids

i lost the picture but ive already drawn a more progressed winter where she started dropping a lot of her femininity but i dont know if she was going to become more just butch or nonbinary or actually transition but theres SOMETHING going on with her, i think it depends on how much she relates to the yaoi stuff that shes so obsessed with, is it all just about the idealized freedom of sexuality? does she want to BE the yaoi? i dont know, im not sure which one i like best

all i know is that if she DID transition maddie would not transition with her like michaels and kitkat they would probably just be friends

edit: forgot to say what i said on discord which is that i thought id be hesitant to have winter transition because then wed have no fujoshi representation but i realized kitkat could 100% take over as fujo queen

#oogly projects #there may even be more to it than this #these are just the first things i thought of #i think i have actually a lot of nonbinary characters floating around that just dont know what the hell nonbinary is #tbh i think if kitkat was transfem hed bc nb for sure

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aemiron-main-backup · 2 years ago

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(gay Mike rambling time bc I want to work on the analysis but also I’m in bed and tired soooo.)

no bc why set it up so that El was repeatedly paralleled to Will in season 1 to the point of looking so much like him that she was mistaken for him if not because Mike’s always been in love with Will + was projecting his feelings for Will onto El?? Like as a character, El in s1 works perfectly for the setup of “mike is gay and is (not intentionally/consciously) projecting his feelings for Will onto El and trying to deal with heteronormative pressure” because El in s1 has lived in a lab her whole life AND hasn’t gotten a chance to figure out who she is as an individual, which makes her easier for Mike to project onto.

This is part of why we see more tension between mike and El as the seasons go on: mike can’t project his feelings for Will onto her anymore because a.) she’s grown into her own unique individual, b.) mike is becoming more aware of his own feelings, his own sexuality, the implications of those feelings, and what he does/doesn’t like or is/isn’t attracted to, making it difficult for him to subconsciously project onto El even if she didn’t develop more of her own identity and c.) El becomes more and more stereotypically feminine looking as the seasons go on and it’s not a coincidence/accident that as El becomes more stereotypically feminine looking, Mike has more difficulty being romantically affectionate with her (things like kissing).

We see Mike initiate the kiss in s1, because a.) heteronormative pressure and that’s the typical “role” of a man in a heteronormative relationship, being expected to “take charge,”/lead something that Mike is already expected to do in his daily life (@/madwheelerz made a great post about Mike and independence recently) and b.) El has less of her own identity, making her easier to project onto, AND she looks more stereotypically masculine.

Like even at the snow ball or during the s3 makeout scenes, El is the one initiating the kisses. El is the one leaning in while mike stays mostly in his own space. Mike takes her hands off of him. During the second s3 kissing scene, El is the one holding Mike’s face in her hands while mike literally just sits there. Even though he’s still BEING affectionate with El as time goes on + as she develops her own identity + looks more stereotypically feminine, we literally see him become more and more uncomfortable with it, especially during that last s3 kiss scene.

And I know this is from the s3 script so I’m not relying on it bc I’m going to focus on what’s in the *show* as the main parts of my gay Mike analysis, but the fact that in the script, mike thinks “what’s wrong with me?” after El kisses him is very interesting to me.

It’s not his first kiss! Its not even his first kiss with El! It’s not that he’s not used to kissing! And like I’m gonna talk about, it’s not because a.) he’s fully realized that he’s into men or b.) just realized he isn’t into El specifically anymore: imo it only makes sense if Mike has realized throughout the course of s3 that he isn’t into girls at all. He’s not thinking “oh gee i don’t like kissing” or “oh wow i wish I was kissing men” or “i don’t like kissing El” or “Why did El do that? That was gross” or “what’s wrong with El, that was so weird”

He’s thinking “what’s wrong with me?“ because it’s NOT ABOUT EL!!!! Like I’ve said in other posts, the big thing for me abt gay Mike is that it removes El from the equation in a good way because Mike’s behaviour isn’t ABOUT HER, it’s not about who she is as a person or what she does or how she looks as a girl. It’s about him being gay and not being attracted to her because of that. Like i just don’t buy that Mike just fell out of love with El/is choosing Will over her, because a.) they’ve incorporated so many fundamental cracks into the foundations of this relationship from the beginning, b.) it doesn’t align with a satisfying arc for el’s character, somebody who has consistently felt unloveable and would then be learning that Mike fell out of love with her because of who she is or what she looks like or just anything about HER, and pits Will and El against eachother, and c.) mike has TRIED to love her. He does love her platonically. He does care about her!! He’s just not attracted to her romantically.

Like, if mike isn’t gay, and just isn’t in love with El anymore because there’s something that he doesn’t like about her looks or where personality (and if he “just likes Will better,” that STILL means that there’s something about El that he seems to be ‘worse’ when compared to Will’s qualities, not that it’s wrong or bad for him to think that, it’s totally fair to not like aspects of people, but again, these are characters with arcs and themes and imo it doesn’t align with el’s arcs and themes or Mike’s or the way that the willel dynamic has been setup), then what girl IS he going to be in love with.

Seriously, if mike isn’t gay, and if Will isn’t an option, but he’s just seemingly fallen out of love with El/there’s something about her that he doesn’t like, then what girl would he like? What would he possibly change about El, somebody that he already CLEARLY cares about deeply and doesn’t want to hurt and has tried to love?? What girl could possibly fit what he’s looking for?? None of them! Because he’s not looking for a girl at all.

It’s not about falling out of love with El. It’s not even about his love for Will. It’s about how over the course of the seasons, especially in s3, mike has been becoming aware of his lack of attraction to women, and also learning what attraction is/what it’s supposed to be like, and what he does and doesn’t like (I’m gonna talk about his in the analysis, but the s3 max and El “How do i know what I like” scene also applies to mike!! Because right before that scene, mike says that he ‘doesn’t know what he’s looking for/asks what they’re even looking for’ in regards to shopping in the mall. But just like how El’s scene isn’t just about knowing what clothes she likes, but rather about what she likes as a whole and who she is and her identity, Mike is also trying to figure out what he likes/what he’s looking for, beyond the scope of looking for a gift in the mall and instead in terms of what he likes/what he’s looking for in regards to his sexuality/romance/relationships.)

And the big thing that makes this point towards gay Mike for me is that it’d be one thing if we saw Mike having more active romantic inclinations towards guys in s3. But we don’t, not in the same way that we see his realization of his lack of attraction to girls develop. And so, if Mike’s spent all of this time kissing El, and trying to figure out what he likes, then that doesn’t add up to just “mike figured out that he likes men,” because I think that’s more of what’s happening in s4,is mike coming to terms with his attraction to men, like even though we do get bits of him moving towards attraction to men in s3, the main thing in s3 is mike realizing his lack of attraction to women.

That’s the thing, too, part of what interests me about the sauna scene: is that the old dudes are portrayed as “gross,” because to be fair, a bunch of old half naked dudes is gonna be gross to any 14 year old kid, but also, it’s not a direct parallel to the lingerie scene, because the lingerie scene is something that’s typically intended to be attractive, it’s framed in that way. So, they don’t give us a “mens underwear” scene to parallel the women’s underwear scene and show that Mike’s “figuring out what he likes” is just him figuring out that he also likes men. Instead, they give us that womens’ underwear scene to demonstrate that he’s realizing his lack of attraction to women, even when the women/the underwear are presented in a “pretty,” meant-to-be-attractive way, and then give us the sauna scene, which like i said is not a direct equivalent to the womens’ underwear scene, even though the scenes are PARALLELED, they are not EQUAL. Because the sauna scene is framed as being “gross” regardless of sexuality, just like how Will is also freaked out by it, it’s not framed in an “attractive” way in the same way that the womens’ underwear scene is, and part of that is due to how the scene works to tie into Mike’s internalized homophobia and bits of disgust with himself in s3, and part of it is also because Mike’s whole ‘figuring out what I like’ journey in the mall and in s3 in general isn’t about him realizing that he’s into men: it’s about him realizing that he’s not into women.

And I have a lot more to say abt the sauna scene and the fact that mikes the one holding rhe door open and some really interesting facial expression choices that Finn makes even after the door is closed, but I’ll save that for the analysis!

(gay Mike rambling time bc I want to work on the analysis but also I’m in bed and tired soooo.)

#milkvan #byler analysis #st analysis #gay Mike wheeler #mike wheeler analysis #stranger things

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thebisexualdogdad · 2 years ago

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Have you ever met a masculine gay man? I’m a gay man and most gay men that I’ve met are more feminine than me and don’t exactly believe me when I say I’m gay. I don’t think there is a lot of masculine gay men or we just don’t see them because they don’t exactly fit the gay stereotype of being flamboyant, or brightly colored, feminine etc. I just wanted an opinion if you think all or most gay men are feminine and if you’ve ever met a masculine or not exactly feminine gay man?

Well in my personal life I'm not exactly in a position where I'm able to be out (while i know am a masculine queer man i am perceived by the people around me as just a masculine woman) and can't freely go to queer spaces and meet people so tumblr is really the extent of interaction I have with the community but yeah masculine gay men absolutely exist?

The biggest issue is media heavily prefers to highlight feminine gay men which obviously there's nothing wrong with being feminine but when gay men are portrayed on TV they are almost always more on the feminine side because of decades long stereotypes along with the fact that they are the most enjoyable part of the community for cis straight people to consume (I mean just look at the way straight women are absolutely obsessed with the idea of having flamboyant GBF's and pay very little mind to any other part of the community) and feminine gay male celebrities are also usually the ones more talked about and celebrated in the news.

Because of the stereotypes that gay men have to be feminine to be gay and gay women have to be masculine to be gay its no shocker that masculine queer men and feminine queer women often aren't seen as being "gay enough" even within the community.

The same goes for the trans community, I have seen lots of people online discussing how if they are a trans woman who isn't hyper feminine they aren't seen as being "trans enough" or how trans men are expected to fall into the more androgynous area of the gender spectrum because if they are too masculine they are suddenly no better than a cis het man and full of toxic masculinity.

You don't have to justify your sexuality to anyone, if they don't believe you are gay purely because you are more masculine it just means they are shitty people who only validate members of the community that they see as being gay enough.

#ask

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drivingsideways · 4 years ago

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Melo is My Nature Review

Well, as usual, I’m late to the party! I picked up 2019′s Melo is my Nature/ Be Melodramatic with some trepidation since I was (am!) still smarting a bit from the disappointment that’s Hospital Playlist S2, and I wasn’t quite ready for another.

I’m so glad I gave it a chance! While it isn’t a “perfect” series- in the nature of the world *sigh*- its combination of quirky, clever, self-aware humour and heartfelt performances won me over from the first episode.

More thoughts under the cut (along with some spoilers)

I’m very fond of ensemble dramas that love their characters, and “Melo is my Nature” does that very well. Perhaps a little too well, to the point that you feel the writers letting themselves be more than a little indulgent during the middle stretch of the episodes. But I can’t complain too much, because yes, I know the feeling! “Side characters” that refuse to stay in the lane and take over the narrative are also my favourites, as a writer and a viewer. I loved, loved, loved Lee Joo-bin as the flighty-but-amazingly-smart Lee So-min; that felt like such a delightful clap-back against the prevailing sentiment that often goes against young, successful women and the ridiculous levels of expectations of them, in how they need to perform gender and femininity and smartness. I loved that (like Emma! There’s a lot of Jane in this series!) the writers managed to make her likeable even though they never disregard her flaws or its consequences.

Another performance/ character that I totally adored was Baek Ji-won as Jeong Hye-jeong, the industry maven who may be (?) a nod to Kim Eun-sook, I suppose! I was afraid at some point that they’d just trash her character, by making her a little too ridiculous in an unkind way, but I found some of the loveliest scenes involved her- like the one where she tells Jin-joo to do the work, but not be too successful. In the end, there was a love and fondness for her, a genuine empathy, that really was core to what made this show so successful.

Shout out also to two of the weirdest characters I’ve watched, but thoroughly loved- Heo Joon-seok as Director Dong-gi & Lee Ji-min as Nutritionist (?) Da-mi. I absolutely adored that the only wedding in this series is between these two, and they do it in a completely predictably-unusual way.

Re: the “main” characters, I loved all of them without exception, though some more than the others :) One of the things I love about the show is how real and present the three female leads feel; they feel like whole, entire people rather than caricatures of them, even when the show reaches almost unusual levels of quirky. I love that a through-line of the narrative is how important women’s labour is- to themselves. The work they do, which is acknowledged as a part of their identity rather than just something they do to pay bills (though of course there’s acknowledgement of that aspect too!), their hunger to do it well and for it to matter- all of that is portrayed in a way that’s charming but still taken very seriously. And the way you know that its taken seriously is in the things they focus on- how Oh Jin-joo struggles to write alone, and how Han-joo’s learning to be someone’s mentor while struggling with her own insecurities, and how lost Eun-jung feels, when work which was supposed to give her purpose fails her in a time of crisis, and how unmoored she feels without it.

Re: the romance- I’m someone predisposed to dislike heterosexual romance, especially at the present moment, so it’s always with a great deal of hesitation that I start watching shows that I know have a large romance component. It’s always a bit of a coin toss for me whether the show will end up making me hate the romance or just about tolerate it. I rarely expect to *like * it. So “Melo is my Nature” was a pleasant surprise! This is one of the few series where I felt the writers put in the work to sell the “main romance” of the show. You get to know the Oh Jin-joo and Beom-soo in sharply etched sketches before they move into the romance part (with a lot of tongue-in-cheek meta humour about the formulaic nature of tv romances). I genuinely felt that thrill of “oh this could go platonic or romantic and I would like either” slowly ease into “oh my god these two are MEANT TO BE”, because the Romance is clearly in the all the ways they are NOT meant to be, but also, very, very definitely are. DELICIOUS. Just my cup of Jane Austen in a different context/ time.

Through most of the show though, my heart was divided between two characters- Jeon Yeo-bin’s stellar Eun-jung and Han Ji-eun’s pitch perfect Han-joo. Jeon Yeo-bin brought edginess, dark humour and a deep, almost- inconsolable grief to Eun-jung. Some of the stand out scenes of the entire series are hers: the moment where she watches herself on video talking to an imaginary person, and the moment she breaks down in front of the psych after talking about her mother. Watching this show, it really felt like- oh, she’s a star. Consider me sold on her for life (though, no, I will not watch Vincenzo unless there’s a Hong Cha-young supercut out there, in which case, please put it in my eyeballs now)

Han Ji-eun, imho, actually pulled off the toughest performance, because I think Han-joo’s strength of character is so often concealed by her “silliness” (in a similar vein to So-min’s), and that often makes her someone you’d overlook or not take seriously. But god, she broke my heart, from the scene in the first episode where she’s sitting alone at a table after a rough day and watching her horrible ex live his best life to the hilarious and excruciating “Oppa” scene, to the one where her kid is quite unconsciously cruel to her in the way kids can be. I was disappointed in the way they dropped the “reveal” about whom she’s dating in the last episode- not that I wanted her to be in an romance with Jae-hoon, god, NO- but it felt quite clunky. This is one of the two complaints I have with the show.

The second one is that starting from the middle, episodes began to noticeably feel like scenes/ sketches spliced together. Each scene is, within itself, perfectly written and performed, but the seams between the stories began to show. I felt one of the main reasons was that Eun-jung’s trauma tonally felt like it belonged in another show, but instead it had to get stitched into the mostly happy/ frothy storylines of the other characters. Sure, we had Hae-joon and his girlfriend’s terrible relationship, but the show had an easier time integrating that by way of Han-joo.

That said, I love how clever this show is! I love that it loves its own cleverness and can’t resist the urge to show it off- from all the meta references, in-universe jokes, and oh, that entire episode devoted to farting, complete with a song about it, which I think maybe my fave episode of the series. A great look at the place of performance in intimate relationships (and how the women bear the burden of it more than the men), but coming at it from a place of compassion and humour rather than anger. Love that choice, for the show and us!

I think @rain-hat mentioned in a comment here or twitter that Melo feels like a part of a triangle of shows along with Run On and Search : WWW. I’m inclined to swap out Run On for Rookie Historian, or huh, maybe change the triangle for a quadrangle? Rookie Historian dares to imagine a past where our protagonist is (mostly) unshackled by the patriarchy and in the “modern” ending to its main heterosexual romance, reminds us that people have always found ways to find joy and thrive outside the rigid bounds of society. Search: WWW goes about it in the opposite direction- placing us in a present/future where the patriarchy doesn’t and hasn’t ever mattered. Melo, I think, doesn’t quite do that, but in common with both these shows, it refuses to focus on the trauma of living under such structural violence, and instead talks about how we all (irrespective of gender) can find a way to remain unbroken by it. And while both Search:WWW and Melo do well at queer-platonic relationships as an alternate to the heterosexual project, it’s Run On, I think, which goes furthest there- firstly because though ostensibly structured around a het romance, that romance turns out to be falling in love with yourself/ loving yourself; secondly because it’s most explicitly queer in the choices that the characters make and the lives that they choose for themselves- Min-joo & May are each others darlings and will be for life, Yeong-hwa and Ki Seon-gyeom are allowed a tenderness in their friendship that feels like an explicit repudiation of toxic masculinity, and of course, you have May being asexual, but not aromantic, and Goh Ye-jun’s whole arc of accepting himself as a gay man, and finding acceptance of that identity from others.

Anyway! tl;dr would recommend (and have recommended!) Melo is my Nature to anyone fond of women, clever story telling and also ridiculously happy songs.

#kdrama #melo is my nature #be melodramatic #i gotta build a master list of my reviews #if only to save myself from tag and search misery #i'm a queue for you

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eisforeidolon · 1 year ago

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Better and far more legitimate question: why are so many destiel shippers so toxic and entitled that they think not telling them their ship is totes canon is both a personal attack and a hate crime?

Jensen doesn't hate destiel. He just has no particular interest in discussing fans' non-canon shipping and he's made that clear several times. He goes to conventions to talk about his perspective on the show he actually made ... Then gets fans demanding to know why destiel isn't canon because if Dean can fanboy Dr Sexy he must want to fuck him. Then gets fans shoving straight up porn in his face. Then gets fans yelling over him trying to get him to bring up Cass. Then gets fans trying to get him to read essays about how Dean is bisexual to "educate" him about how wrong he is about his own acting and character. Then gets fans wearing T-shirts telling him he's wrong about his own show. Then gets fans stating point blank that goodbye scene was romantic and trying to get him to expound upon that interpretation. And so on.

The vast majority of the time when someone brings the ship up to him? It's belligerently leading questions, trying to talk over him, or creepy invasive sexual shit - that all turns into online slander when he says no, says ship what you want, says nobody at the helm was writing the show that way and he wasn't playing the character that way. Gosh, I can't imagine why he'd be immediately uncomfortable and defensive as soon as the topic comes up given that context! Or why he's overly concerned with the presentation of the character when fans insist Dean literally just making eye contact with another man while talking to him, being a fan of something, or not reacting angrily to another man flirting with him is proof of how "gay" he is. Sure Jensen has said some less than PC things I'd expect of a 30-40 year old dude raised in Texas over the years, but if you really want to talk about who has shitloads of issues with queerness, unfortunate stereotypes, and toxic masculinity they aren't trying to work through? Let's start with all the destiel meta that begins with "lol no straight guy would ever ..." and insisting a guy who *gasp* dares to say he didn't play his character as attracted to men must be a homophobe in denial because he obviously did. 🙄

As to that confession, present an actual source of anybody but Misha and Berens saying any such thing about its intention - I won't hold my breath. At the same convention (Denver 2021) that Jared got so much shit for saying there were all kinds of love and all interpretations were valid and Jensen agreed with him, Misha in his panel with Alex said basically the same thing Jensen reportedly said in a previous M&G about an artist not telling people what to interpret out of an artwork and how he didn't want his interpretation to be the definitive word. But somehow that gets forgotten in all the other more leading, more bait-y shit he's said elsewhere.

Which brings me to my final point. Jensen says ship and headcanon what you want, but sorry, that's not what I intended or what the writers put into the text, it's just fan fantasies - and you lot insist he's a homophobe for not telling you what you want to hear and being uncomfortable when you keep ignoring what he's said and trying to make him give you a different answer. Misha lies to you, makes sly implications, changes his story back and forth constantly, was involved in at least one of those answers agreeing with Jensen about certain dialogue and actions being questionable for the male characters they were playing, all but admits he was falsely leading you on for years when he said he was sure going into season 15 the writers would never go even as far as they did, preps merch to release through his company to capitalize on that scene, and even queerbaits so hard he has to come out as straight - and you live up his ass praising him as some kind of amazing ally.

Well gosh, I wonder if maybe just maybe it's not about understanding or giving a shit about LGBT+ issues and toxic masculinity at all, only feeling entitled to being told your personal interpretations about this one single specific ship are The Real Story of SPN! Actually that's a lie, I don't wonder.

why is jensen ackles so toxic?

i have been a supernatural fan for over ten years and i have known for a while that jensen has never been a fan of destiel, which would be completely fine if he didn't always react uncomfortable and downright disgusted every time someone mentions it and / or the possibility of dean being queer. i have seen him become very defensive and even hostile when asked questions about these things at conventions. to this day jensen (& jared) STILL vehemently call castiel's confession "platonic" and "brotherly" while the writers, showrunners and misha explicitly called it a romantic confession of love.

my problem with jensen's behaviour is that it seems to be rooted in very toxic masculinity and the fragility of it. he has called emotional writing "unmanly" and "effeminate" and "something dean would never say to another man"; he was glad that dean didn't share many scenes with castiel in season 9; he desperately wanted destiel "to go away" and something else that really irks me: so many times when destiel was talked about, he brought up wincest, as if that is in any way the same. he seems to associate queerness with unmanliness, weakness and something to be uncomfortable about.

i can understand that destiel extremists have insulted his wife, insinuated ridiculous things happened between actors etc but this is no excuse for his downright homophobic comments and behaviour. he can also imagine dean however he wants and i know he thinks he understands dean better than anyone but it's so sad to me how much he seems to limit dean in who he could be TO OTHER PEOPLE. who does it harm if a bunch of bi people see themselves in him and his behaviour? i thought jensen understood just how much dean hid from everyone. it makes me sad that he seems to want to forbid other people from interpreting dean differently than he does.

he should really take some time to reflect if dean winchester's non-canon sexuality is really worth coming across homophobic for.

#destiehellers #transparent as fuck #anti misha

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thoughts-on-bangtan · 4 years ago

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lately i feel taehyung is a straight man and his vibez is much more masculinity i mean not to mention taehyung straightly said to jimin he like him most and no offense for me it's just assurance about something etc and i don't feel like in romantic way but much more because he is best friend for life. i mean before you can assume he is kind of gay but lately i feel like he's more focus on masculine way and much more straight man.

Admin 1: Let’s do a little exercise which I think will help us answer this question, as well as showcase why reading it annoyed me so much, especially as queer person myself. Okay, here are nine different men, all of them athletes (why did I pick them? Because idols are basically just as athletic as them and chances of you knowing all nine are low), and now please try to guess which of them (if any) are gay/queer:

…

Do you have your guesses?

…

Okay, as example, if you guessed only the one first row second from the left then, well, you are partially correct. That man is Johnny Weir, former American figure skater, who is, in fact, gay, yes. But you are wrong in saying that out of all the men in those pictures he’s the only one who is queer. Because all of them are. You can read more about them here if you’re interested.

What does this tell us? Easy. The manner in which someone presents themselves (or the vibe, whatever that’s even supposed to mean, that they give off/give you), traditionally masculine, feminine, more androgynous, or anywhere else on the spectrum, has no correlation whatsoever with their sexuality. A gay man can dress in a way that is traditionally seen as more feminine and that’s fine. He can dress and look more typically masculine, and that is fine as well. He can dress and look however he likes and that doesn’t make him any less or more gay, or any less or more valid.

The main thing I would like for you to take away from this answer is this: please do not buy into stereotypical, basically fetishizing, portrayals and assumptions of what constitutes a “gay man” visually and behavior wise. There is no checklist full of boxes a queer man, or any queer person for that matter, needs to fulfil in order to be queer and valid in their queerness. There is no unified look a gay man has to showcase in order to be gay. It’s the 21st century, the year 2021, can we leave finally lay these things to rest?

As for Tae, if you want to know my thoughts about BTS and the LGBT community, I have an entire post about it which you can read here if that’s something that interests you. If we look at how Tae currently looks like, which you’ve defined as more “masculine” (and therefore straight), I will agree that he has gained muscles, if that is what you think is a necessary checkbox for masculinity, but really, all that really tells us is that Tae is healthy, that he looks great, handsome as ever, and that he is an idol of whom it is expected and required to be in a good physical shape, especially with comeback being quite literally just three days away which means a lot of performances, dancing, and hard Bangtan choreographies.

Your taste in fashion and how you feel most comfortable with your body looking like has no direct correlation with your sexuality, and neither does it with Tae’s.

Lastly, how is Tae saying he likes Jimin most on national TV somehow proof of him being straight? What else was he supposed to say? What would he have to say for you to not question his bond with Jimin? Is there a possibility we’re wrong and they’re just platonic, of course, but at the same time, looking at how Jimin said that Tae is a honest person, how Tae basically wears his heart on his sleeve, and how he’s written a song all about falling in love with his best friend, whom we know is Jimin, and we know Tae writes songs based on his own feelings and experiences, I do have a hard time believing that we are wrong. But, of course, we won’t know for sure until Tae or Jimin, or both, tell us themselves.

You are free to believe whatever you like but at least don’t project gender and LGBT stereotypes (most of which have been created and are perpetuated by straight people) onto Tae, and the other members for that matter. Or any queer person really.

Admin 2: I admit that after what I’ve recently observed on various sns platforms, no question will surprise me anymore. In fact, I'm sure I know where this question came from.

The most annoying thing is that despite so many "steps and demonstrations" on BTS' part, there is still an army trying to put people into individual boxes and number those boxes and give them names.

Do any of us have our sexualities written out on our foreheads? Can you see if we are sexually interested in women, men, or anyone else? And how can you know that?

I think a lot of people know Adam Rippon, for example, who is a former American figure skater and Olympic team bronze medalist. Yes, Adam is gay and has a very handsome partner, fiancé actually, who looks like a young god. He's fit, look at his photos on Instagram, Jussi goes to the gym, runs and is even in the process of builds a house himself, like a "real man", a "typical" man ... but he's gay!

If you look at this example, you can clearly see that there are no stereotypes that would indisputably define the appearance of an LGBTQ+ person! Indeed, in the last century, attempts have been made to give "gay" people the weird appearance of only ever being feminized man who are always sassy and the side kick in movies/shows, the stereotypical "gay best friend". It the past century it was designed as such to portray queer people, and especially gay men, in undesirable ways, as jokes and as something "bad", but I thought we grew out of it a long time ago as modern and tolerant people.

Kim Taehyung has to practice and exercise as a member of BTS. That’s a fact. To meet the requirements of their choreographies, whether you like it or not, you must be in an Olympic physical form. Not just him, the entire team must basically be at a near peak physical condition and health. Tae has to exercise, he has to take care of himself, and he has to look great. I have to admit, I've noticed that "gay" men pay more attention to their looks than a normal, unshaven straight guy! (I'm basing this on a joke Adam Rippon once made where he apologized to his followers for looking like an "unshaved straight guy" after he'd just woken up)

What do I mean by that? I want to express the fact that the way you look and take care of your appearance and physical condition are not an indicator of sexuality!

As for the "I like you the most" statement, I'll admit that I've observed many people in many ways trying to use this statement to twist it into whatever those people wanted it to be, instead of taking it for what it actually was, especially since it appears to be something like a thorn in the sides of those who ship other ML pairings.

I'll be rather blunt here now, instead of beating around the bush.

I think this whole question is another attempt at ripping down the Vmin sails and belittling their bond and its possible implications once again.

If we remember how the scene played out, remember Jimin's reactions, his nervousness, how flustered he was, said that things are getting dangerous, and the fact that Taehyung's letter was only for Jimin's eyes. Is that really how "bros" behave? Just a couples of besties?

I doubt that normal best buddies on national TV would feel the need to write mystery letters just for a friend's eyes and tell each other that they like him the most? I'll say more, "boyfriends" don't force their lover to admit that he is copying him in his dance style, only friends do.

It is strange that this "copy" situation was "perceived" as highly romantic, and yet Taehyung's words to Jimin were relegated to "best friends only, nothing else".

However, it doesn't change the fact that Taehyung said what he said, he wrote 95z is love and Jimin confessed that he would love to spend his life with his lovely Taehyungie. Do "only best friends" (best friends that are straight) behave like this?

#answered ask

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greenbriar-j · 4 years ago

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5 times the prince crashed the bookstore

and the 1 time the owner(’s grandson) broke into the palace

One.

The first time was an accident. Sort of. Not really.

Prince Gabriel did need to buy new ink and maybe a new journal to replace the one Gunther accidentally threw into the fountain the last time Gabe escaped the palace. If he was so pressed, though, he could’ve asked one of his attendants to buy it for him.

So, yeah, it was kind of an accident. Gabriel donned his “commoner” attire, hiding his immediately recognizable curls under a cap. The clothes he wore were bland, but he had the kind of figure that made every outfit stand out. He snuck out through the window, running to the bookstore to get as much time away from his princely duties as possible.

It was so boring, all of it. The paperwork, the meetings, the girls.

Full confession: Prince Gabriel loved girls. Adored them. Thought they were the neatest thing to be placed on the planet. He loved the neighboring princesses, their mother queens, the female attendants – he loved women. He could not for a second imagine kissing any of them.

Kissing Gunther? That, he’d imagined several times before the guard had caught on and assigned him even more paperwork. Fucking Gunther.

Not, Gabe grimaced, pushing open the door to the bookstore, fucking Gunther. Stop thinking about fucking Gunther. About fucking. In general. … You’re a disgrace of a prince. At least you’re not responsible for producing an heir.

Because he was the second prince. Because he was responsible for many things, actually, while also not being responsible for a thing at all.

“Welcome to Vanilla Pages, how can I help you today?”

The prince’s head whipped to the sound of the voice. It was not the voice he expected to hear, the almost frail, ever-loving voice of the old Asian lady who’d always been here the last few times he came. This voice was rich, masculine, deep – and, oh, the prince was very, very gay for it.

“Uh,” he said intelligently. “You’re new.”

The man smiled at him. “I’m not. I’ve worked here every summer since I was ten. Granny gets a little faint in the summer. The heat and all.” A beautiful hand waved in a beautiful, dismissive gesture.

Gabe had one thought, and it was this: He himself was feeling a little faint this summer. Somehow, behind the broad shoulders filling out the loose shirt, the scruffy ponytail, the calm yet twinkling eyes, the man was undoubtedly a big teddy bear. “Ah,” he said, again the pinnacle of intelligence towering over his whole kingdom. “What’s your name?”

“It’s impolite to ask for someone’s name without giving yours first,” the man prompts. “Your Highness.”

Your-? “The disguise is that bad?”

“If I say so, will it end in a death sentence?”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. That smile is unfair. What the fuck. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t.”

“Then yes, it sucks. The name’s Phuong.”

“Oh, word? Good name.” I did not just say that. Who responds to introductions with oh, word?

Gabe could not stand to make any more of a scene. This was fun. It was also very embarrassing. He grabbed a journal without really examining it, checking out and running across the street to the bakery.

Gunther picked him up there after his own round of flirting with the baker’s daughter. There would probably be a wedding soon. Depending. The guard seemed surprised that the prince turned up on his own, but the prince thought nothing of it. He thought nothing at all.

Not about the name Phuong.

Not about those broad shoulders and muscular arms left on full display. The wide, toothy grin.

Not anything at all.

Two.

The second time was a detour.

“Gabe, I mean this in the most respectful way, but if you do not finish writing a birthday card to the prince of [other kingdom, idk], we will be having a war council within the month.”

“Gunther, he can’t even read. Why does it matter?” Tossing his head back and stretching his legs out, he acted like the brat he only was for Gunther.

The guard delivered a withering glare without adjusting his rigid stance. Even the prince has to admit that Gunther seemed to be experiencing physical repercussions for his job. In just a month, the prince had aged his friend by a year, or so it seemed.

Reluctantly, Gabe held in every protest dangling on the edge of his tongue and penned a birthday note to the two year old prince. “We have to deliver this in person?”

“Yes.”

Gabe groaned. He could not think of a prospect he hated more. In a month, he had not managed to gather enough poise to revisit his beloved Phuong at the bookstore. He merely whimpered the name in his sleep, according to an unusually smug Gunter. And now, to be separated by this meaningless trek?

“To the post, Gabe. Not to [neighboring kingdom].”

Ever the model prince, Gabriel drew himself upright immediately. “The post, you say,” he repeated regally. “The one three streets away from the bookstore.”

“That’s the one.” His guard, his best friend, smiled tightly. “I intend to propose along the way, and your stringing this out is not helping my nerves.”

His royal eyes wider than saucers, Gabe ruffled all of his curls in distress and excitement. “Propose! Why didn’t you say so, you big baboon?”

“You were sulking, Highness.” Gunther’s smile is wry, only a little amused.

“I most certainly was not. Agh, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”

In his rush, he sustained more injury to his hands that day than he had in the past year.

“So…” Phuong glanced at Gabe’s hands, a quick flicker of dark brown eyes. “What happened to your hands?”

Prince Gabriel hid the offending bandaged digits behind his back. “A mishap while writing the world’s most useless letter.”

“Oh?”

“Its recipient can’t even read. OH!” Without thinking, Gabe grabbed at Phuong’s shirt, tugging in his hasty excitement. “He’s doing it, he’s-!”

He turned, only to find his face alarmingly close to Phuong’s. Why was the other man looking at him anyway? Did it matter?

The moment was broken too soon by a holler across the street. “GABE! SHE SAID YES!”

“OF COURSE SHE DID, YOU BABOON!” He fired back, pretending not to feel the heat rising inside him from the sudden close proximity. “He’s going to look so hot at his wedding,” Gabe muttered dreamily, still clinging with bandaged fingertips to Phuong’s shirt.

“I have something for you,” Phuong said suddenly. “I wasn’t sure when you would come back, but I have something.”

It was the best news the prince had heard all day. Seeing Phuong while getting his work done and receiving a gift? Only the gods could provide such a setup.

He was right, for once, that it was too good to be true. Phuong deposited a box of fanmail in the prince’s arms and turned away without a word.

Three.

The third time was a disaster.

“Did you read them?” Phuong asked after the initial pleasantries had been exchanged.

“The letters?” Gabe leaned on the counter. “Burned them.” He grinned, but back-pedaled when the joke falls flat.

Phuong swallowed, then busied himself wiping down the counter. “You burned them?”

“If I read every piece of fanmail I ever got, I wouldn’t survive, Phuong.”

“I see. I suppose- No, never mind.”

While he hadn’t burned them, Gabe hadn’t read them either. He had no reason to read confessions of love from women who didn’t stand a chance with him because 1) he didn’t like women like that and 2) he only had a certain pool of suitors to choose from. This thing he was perpetuating with Phuong… It would burn him eventually. But Phuong was still very, very hot, and Gabe was still very, very gay.

There was no promise of reciprocated anything from the clerk. He was simply doing his job, and Gabe was just a guy that came in a little too often for a little too long. That was all.

“What’s this about, then? Was there one I should have read? Is it from your sister?”

“I don’t have a sister.”

“Your cousin?”

“Your Highness,” Phuong looks at him, finally. Gabe doesn’t enjoy it, though. Not the way the address comes out so clinical, so distant. “All the letters had the same handwriting. My handwriting.”

The prince’s throat goes dry. “What?” He whispers.

“I’m closing the shop early today,” the other man responds in that same distant voice. “You’ll need to leave, Your Highness.”

Stunned, Gabe returns to the palace.

Each of the letters is one sentence long.

I hope this finds you well, Your Highness.

The stars in your eyes shine brighter than mine, yet belong to the same single sky.

You’re a brat.

Gunther came to the bakery today; I’m strangely disappointed by your absence.

A heartless one, you turned out to be.

The stars in your eyes shine on different continents than mine, it seems.

Foolish of me to write letters to someone I’ve only met once.

Why do I think of you so often, my most hated daydream?

There’s one for every day of the month Gabe avoided Vanilla Pages.

“Gunther?” He calls into the air. A maid scurries in instead, apologizing for the absence of his guard, a different guard trailing in behind her. “It’s fine. Will you bring me some alcohol?”

Four.

The fourth time was a mistake.

The very same night, a very drunk Gabe stumbled through the streets. It would be a prime night for assassination, if anyone wanted to put him out of his misery. A shame that no one did.

Mindless feet guided him back to the bookstore. Fruitlessly, he banged on the shut and bolted door.

An angry Gunther dragged him home, and Phuong was never the wiser.

Five.

The fifth time was purposeful.

“Your engagement was decided today.”

Hollow-eyed, Prince Gabriel blinked at the captain of his guard – a married man now. The wedding had been beautiful. As expected. “My what?”

“Your engagement, Highness. She’s a very pretty woman, if it’s any consolation.”

“It’s not.”

“Phuong is also in very bad shape, if it’s any consolation. Rea said so.”

“It’s not.” The words came muffled by the pair of hands covering the prince’s face. It was enough that he felt bad about everything. There was really no reason both of them should feel awful. “Gunther, clear my schedule for the next hour. I’m going to the bookstore.”

“You’re engaged now.”

“I’m aware. Betrothed men ought to tell other suitors when they’re off the market.”

The intention is clear, and Gunther seems upset. Unreasonably so. “Your Highness-”

“I have to, Gunther. I’m going to make him hate me so he can move on faster.”

“But you-”

“I always knew how this would end. It’s okay. I’m okay.”

He was anything but okay. He was gay and in love and engaged to a beautiful woman who deserved the kind of love he could never give her because he was gay and desperately in love with someone else.

Each solemn step of the way, he bid farewell to each part of the man he had inexplicably grown to love. Goodbye, beautiful hair. Goodbye, kind heart. Goodbye, brown eyes. Goodbye, biceps; goodbye, thighs. Goodbye, hands. Goodbye, stupid love letters.

He walked in, announced his engagement to the ground, and fled before he could see the other man’s reaction.

One.

Phuong considered his life in chapters.

They were typically large, vague categories of his life that were boring and tedious to live through. Childhood. Teenage years. Adulthood. Gabe. It was only this latest chapter that made any difference in anything he thought.

Before Gabe, life was dull. Every day, the same. After him, every day was painful – but the good kind of painful that perhaps would lead to something. The second prince bore the name of the messenger of the lord, and that had to count for something, didn’t it?

Apparently not. For Gabe to cut him off so quickly… If he had hoped to give Phuong any kind of conclusion about what they were and what they meant to each other, he failed spectacularly.

After milling around Rea’s bakery for half the day, he finally called in his favor. “Rea, can I… Uhm…”

“If you wait until sundown, Gunther will come home for dinner, and he can take you straight to the brat himself,” she replied before he finished the thought. “Just tell him how you feel, and if it goes bad, you can have free cakes for a week.”

“I’ll get fat and unattractive.”

“Honey,” she said in that pitying tone he’d so hoped to avoid.

“Can I… Have a free cake now?”

Prince Gabriel and Gabe were very different people, and while Phuong had known this, it didn’t really dawn on him until he saw it with his own two eyes.

Gabe – his Gabe – smiled and laughed at everything, had horrible posture because he was always trying to get that tiny bit closer to Phuong, and dressed horribly because he thought it’d work as a disguise.

Prince Gabriel wore tailored clothes that made Phuong a little dizzy because of how they accentuated a man who didn’t need accentuating at all. Prince Gabriel spoke with authority and walked with it, too. He oozed it.

Phuong didn’t know if this made his job any easier.

The moment the door shut behind him, the prince groaned and stretched and stripped off his clothes from the day. He flopped face-first on the bed like a child and immediately called for the captain of his guard.

“Is it okay that I’m here instead?” Phuong said softly.

Unexpectedly, the prince jumped ten feet in the air. “Phuong?”

A complicated series of expressions crossed the prince’s face. He looked like he wanted to be upset, but couldn’t, and in the end, he started to cry, reaching for Phuong with grabby hands and a bleeding heart. What a foolish prince, to wound himself like this, when he really didn’t need to be wounded at all.

“Your eyes shine with stars that are different from mine, but they share the same sky,” Phuong murmured, climbing into the prince’s bed and pulling him into a clumsy embrace. “If you had read that, I thought you’d have understood.”

“It’s not the same as telling me upfront. I can’t bank my decisions on I think.”

“I know.”

And the prince only cried more. This was all his heart had ever wanted, but it still didn’t tell his mind what to do. Could he afford to forfeit his engagement? Would he have to forfeit Phuong again, knowing what he knew now?

He didn’t know. He didn’t care yet. It was hard to care with Phuong’s finger sliding through his curls, with feathery touches of lips to his forehead.

“Gabe.”

“Hm?”

“I really, really like you. But I get it if you still have to let me go.”

Gabe tightened his arms around Phuong. “I won’t. I don’t want to.”

“Okay.”

Spoiler alert: I have no idea how to actually end this but I believe they figure out their way to get together and live happily ever after bc that was the whole point of this but I really can’t be bothered to write it out whoops

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welcome-to-the-gay-bar · 4 years ago

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So I we started to watch Attack on Titan again after many years and I’ve just finished season two and before starting season three I wanted to take a trip down memory lane and look at all my old favourite AOT fan fictions from 2014 (and see what’s popular nowadays that I may have missed, since wow, a lot has changed since I was last present in this fandom and compared to what’s happening in the current episodes season one was tame).

I’ve noticed a huge divide between fanon and canon and I kinda wanted to ruminate on this a bit.

Eren’s character in the show isn’t my favourite. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still fond of this brash idiot, but he’ll never be my favourite. He falls into this shonen protagonist trope of being hot headed and ill tempered. He doesn’t take advice, he’s not going to listen to plans or authority, he always thinks he’s right and only follows his moral compass, and to tie it all up he’s not even that strong. He can’t back up the threats that he’s laying down and yet he always rushes into situations with fists flying and never thanks or appreciates the characters (Mikasa) that get him out of those tricky situations. The only way to get through to him is to physically beat him down and even then it may not work if he hadn’t already somewhat respected you (Mikasa again). This character type is seen so often in shonen and I’m really not a fan, I like the cool and calculating protagonist better. Someone who has the power behind their threats and doesn’t rush into situations. Again, I like Eren, but I think it’s the other characters in the show that balance him out and the plot itself that makes me like Attack on Titan.

Compare this to fanon where his default character is happy ray of sunshine who’s a little bit naive. It’s a rather jarring comparison but I also don’t necessarily dislike it either. To me canon and fanon characteristics are almost completely seperate. If I had to always think a d compare fan fiction to canon I probably couldn’t read it. I read about happy fanon Eren and see canon angry Eren and to me they are two completely different characters - two completely different people even. If I had to read fan fiction about canon Eren I can 1000000% say that I just wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I’d be totally bored. As I said before, I like Eren but it’s the people around him and the plot itself that makes him bearable. I can watch a show about him because it takes less time and emotional energy, but I couldn’t invest in reading a book about him (which is why I haven’t read the manga either).

This isn’t even exclusively towards Attack on Titan. Back in my Teen Wolf phase I noticed how different canon and fanon characters were. Small secret - I was knee deep in the Teen Wolf fandom before I realised that I hadn’t actually watched an episode of Teen Wolf. One of my mutual’s reblogged TW artwork that was linked to a story and from that I never looked back. When I actually did get around to watching TW I can honestly say I was more than a wee bit disillusioned. Derek and Stiles are obviously not the main characters and I was prepared for that, but then they barely interacted, and when they did interact it was nothing like what I had read about - nothing like what their fanon characters or interactions were like. I can honestly say that I never made it past the first season - the show just wasn’t for me - but I was still thoroughly invested in the fandom for another year or two.

Something about fanon Sterek dynamics just did it for me, their characters and relationship was just so on point for what I wanted, and this is kind of when I came to accept that canon and fanon can be so different that it almost feels as if it’s two pieces of completely different media. I mean, fanon has its own set of rules, it’s own character tropes and story arcs that even completely different authors with completely different stories somewhat instinctively know to follow. I think that’s amazing, but it’s also a double edged sword. See these first two examples were of shows that I A) never watched/finished before reading fan fiction, B) don’t necessarily love love the characters in canon. That means that fanon is more appealing because it takes something I don’t care too strongly for and changes it to something more appealing. But what about when fanon takes something I love and cherish and remoulds it?

I want to briefly take this time to talk about something I’ve dubbed “the twink affect”. When you take a character that’s originally strong willed, self sufficient, and somewhat masculine and you pair the, up with someone EVEN MORE strong willed, self sufficient, and masculine - the “Alpha male” of characters if you will. I find that fanon is incapable of seeing two strong men together in a relationship and will eventually slowly twinkify one of them. Make them smaller, softer, lonelier, less self sufficient and more reliant on others, they need to be taken care of, they’re now a ball of sunshine that’s radiant and joyful, they’re cotton candy that melts on your tongue. You put them next to the pairing you ship them with and instead of seeing two strong men you see a bear and a twink. That’s definitely what’s happened to the two characters/pairings mentioned before and I honestly didn’t mind because I wasn’t protective of the source material, but when it does happen to a character I love it’s the most frustrating thing in the world, and I can’t even complain because I’ve already reaped the benefits from other fandoms. (I am going to complain though, this is my blog and I can do what I want mum.)

I’m going to talk about Mo Dao Zu Shi. Beautiful story that I love in (almost) all its various adaptations, but I’ve noticed the ever slow changing of fanon’s Wei Wuxian. For anyone reading this that hasn’t read MDZS (or if anyone’s reading this at all, I am expecting to just be shouting into the void at this point) Wei Wuxian dies - not a spoiler, it happens at the very beginning of the story - and comes back to life in the body of Mo Xuanyu. Mo Xuanyu is small malnourished and twinky - he even canonically wears makeup (or at least has it in his possession, I’m getting the various adaptations confused and I can’t remember if in canon Wei Wuxian woke up in Mo Xuanyu’s body already wearing the makeup or if he just finds the tin of makeup in Mo Xuanyu’s possessions). Wei Wuxian’s character is also a bit of a tease, and now he’s alive and unburdened by the past he’s much freer now than he was in the past, couple that with the fact that he’s pretending to be Mo Xuanyu (a character who is rumoured to be gay and also a bit insane) he goes all out in pretending to be a shameless flirt, and it’s honestly hilarious, I love his character. So in a sense he has all the makings of a canon twink and I’m really not here to shame on those who portray him that way while he’s in Mo Xuanyu’s body.

My personal issue is with the same extreme twink portrayal while he’s in his original body. In his original body Wei Wuxian is BUFF. He’s hunky, he’s in the top five most eligible bachelors, he’s *car honks* woof woof bark bark *whistles* puurrrr, he’s one of the most powerful cultivators of his generation, he’s a genius too. He’s hunky. He still has the cheeky shameless character, but when you compare him to the male lead Lan Wangji, they’re about the same size and strength. My favourite type of fan fiction in MDZS is fix it/everybody lives nobody dies/no war/etc etc. Basically stories where Wei Wuxian keeps his original body. The fanon twink portrayal of him being so small and soft and weak while in canon he’s one of the strongest and smartest urks me in ways I can’t explain. It’s not what I want, not what I��m looking for. I love him for who he is in canon and to see his character so distorted by fans of the original work is frustrating. I just want to read about Wei Wuxian as a jock with his equally buff and tall nerd boyfriend.

I want to pause here and say that I have nothing against authors that write him in a twinky way, I respect your work and your characters (and as I said before I’ve reaped the benefits of other fandoms twinky character portrayals numerous times), if I read a fic that I’m not happy with the characterisation I just close the tab and move on so absolutely no hate to anyone who enjoys this character type. I’m just ruminating on the fact that I’ve been seeing it happen more and more often lately to the point where I’ve kind of bounced the fandom and am sticking to other works like Scum Villain that haven’t yet twinkified too much (there will always be one or two stories in every fandom that twinkify and honestly? I respect that. Authors said twink rights ONLY, good for them).

Mo Dao Zu Shi isn’t the only fandom I’ve been in that I’ve negatively reacted to fanon. Another one would be Batman (I love Tim with all my heart and I love him getting treated nicely but damn I sometimes wish people would remember how freaking strong and amazing he is too), 2Ha is another I’ve started to see “twinkified” (although I don’t mind seeing Chu Wanning being soft and taken care of, he is canonically called handsome and masculine and he’s quite tall too), I’ve even seen the canonically “top” character (and that seems so weird to write oml) be twinkified by fandom because they want to see him get bottomed for ~equal rights~ because apparently bottoming is seen as a “woman’s position” to them and they’re trying to be woke by switching the sexual positions up but failing to see how misogynistic and homophobic that take is (imma stop myself here because that a WHOLE ‘nother can or worms to be opened right there).

What I’m trying to say is fanon is a double edged sword and I’ve definitely enjoyed some and hated some. I think it’s important to seperate the two. I do think it’s annoying for fandoms to be flooded with mischaracterisation when you actually do like the original characters and I wish there was some way to seperate fandom into “actual canon fans” and “fans of fanon”, but I don’t have a solution and I’ve definitely contributed to the problem in the past so for that I’m sorry.

I don’t know how to end this long ass rant, I don’t know what the goal was in writing this, but taadaa ~ here’s my exceptionally long take on fanon.

#rant #I don’t know if I should tag the fandoms mentioned in case I wake a sleeping bear #but I’m going to do it anyway in case someone has the tags muted #mdzs #aot fanfiction #AOT #mo dao zu shi #fanon #ao3 #attack on titan #ereri #wei wuxian

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ardenttheories · 5 years ago

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Homestuck's always been antagonistic and insensitive, but I don't recall seeing any of you try to dox Hussie? But please, continue to rationalise how cyberbullying lgbt people for not being nice enough and having opinions about a fictional character you disagree with puts you in the right. A story doesn't go the way you'd like and this is how you respond? You COULD have just not bothered reading it instead of CHOOSING to make your online life about something you hate like a toxic weirdo.

Hi, Kate. I’m so glad you could find my blog. (Edit: that was a joke. Apparently, some anons find it impossible to tell that I don’t actually think you’re Kate). It’s clear to me that you didn’t take the time to read through any of the content that’s actually on here, since you’re throwing around rather wild accusations, so let me take this down step by step.

Homestuck has only rarely been antagonistic and insensitive. Things like the Alpha Trolls - which were clear criticisms of fandom culture - were relatively few and far between, and when we complained about them, they actually stopped. Remind me, for instance, how relevant the Alpha Trolls were to the plot? How long they stayed as mockeries towards the fandom? Yeah, not long. I actually have talked about this before on the blog - alongside other things I thought were negative towards the fandom from the original comic - but the difference here is that... in the entirety of Homestuck, these things were outliers and inconsistencies. They stuck out because they were in stark contrast to the otherwise wonderfully handled content Homestuck went over.

For instance, Homesuck is critical of abuse - especially in terms of relationships. We see through a critical lense the shit normalisation of parental abuse can do to a child - with actual talk of triggers and of the mental and emotional scarring left behind, and the complexities of the child’s feelings towards the parent’s death through Dave - and we see how self destructive relationships can be, how harmful they are, and how hard it can be to leave them - such as Terezi’s very toxic blackrom with Gamzee, which was always portrayed as something negative and harmful especially with how worried Karkat was for her and how withdrawn she became during its run, and Dirk’s relationship with Jake, which goes very much over how communication can cause a deterioration in romantic relationships especially when the two participants have conflicting mental illnesses.

It also goes over how men, though they can be mired in toxic masculinity, can choose to be good. How sometimes we’re not born as good people, but we can become good people through the love we have for the people around us, through frequent attempts to check what we’re doing, through the sheer willpower to be good. Dirk’s entire arc, knowing that he could very easily become Bro but deciding he doesn’t want to be, that it’s something he wants to work on, is so important and incredibly powerful. Mental illness in men is often just given as an excuse to make them violent with no attempts at betterment - so Dirk actually existed as proof that you don’t have to be that stereotype.

In contrast, Homestuck^2 completely uncritically gave Jade, who was cis, a dog dick, made her, a bisexual woman, a sex maniac and the yaoi “woman who gets in the way of the gays” trope, made her a cheater and someone who forced her partner into the relationship to begin with, and made her a neglectful mother after having cheated with her best lesbian friend in something that has incredible recall to just about every futanari video ever - and they tried to claim that this was good representation of trans women, actually, and that the only reason we didn’t like it is that Jade is “a woman” who “has sex”.

Likewise completely uncritically, they made Gamzee, an anti-black stereotype, enter a relationship with Jane, a fascist, and then made the entire thing into a cuck joke wherein Jake being frequently drunk and sexually assaulted was funny because he wasn’t “man enough”. They then forced him to go back to his abuser after he left her in a scene that read very much like, “ridiculous man thinks woman is abusing him, go back and do your manly job”.

This, of course, doesn’t even go into the travesty that is any form of trans representation in the comic. Roxy, a trans man, is barely even focused on as trans; they make no attempt to enforce in the fandom that he’s a trans man the way they do that June is a trans woman, and even then, they seem to think that just saying someone is a trans woman is actually good representation. Not, like, bringing it into the comic - just saying that it’s a thing. And of course, that’s not even going into the completely uncritical lense they have of Vriska, wherein her being a trans woman completely frees her of any and all blame for the past abuses she has comitted, and once again she becomes an amazing character to save the day without a single flaw - which in turn inherently associates trans women with abuse apologism, abusers, and the ideology that just because we’re trans we can get away with anything scott free.

I honestly cannot think of one instance of good and genuine representation in Homesuck^2, nor can I think of any scene where negative content was actually treated as the negative thing it actually is. There’s no critical lense at all, not like we have in Homestuck; there’s just no fucking comparison. And this isn’t a one-off situation, either. Whereas Homestuck does do fuck ups - isn’t perfect - in between the otherwise brilliant content, Homestuck^2 is just founded upon these horrific takes. There’s almost no good content in between, and what is left is a slog to get through when surrounded by the thick slurry of shit that compromises futa Jade, abuse apologism Vriska, and victim blaming Jake.

Of course, we didn’t “doxx” Hussie. Hussie actually listened to our complaints, for the most part, and worked with us to create something that worked well. The way Homestuck^2 was touted to work. You know, since it was meant to be written with the fandom in mind, influenced by the things we suggest and react to. We went into Homestuck^2 with the explicit idea that we were going to be listened to and taken into consideration when it was being written - the way we were with old Homestuck. I’m very sorry to say that, when you make these expectations, people are going to be a titchy bit upset when you then commandeer the entire thing and exclude the fandom from any of the process that you said they were going to be part of.

Additionally, it’s rather funny, isn’t it, that what you call doxxing is actually just people upset with how triggering content is being handled, and going to the people who actually wrote the content in order to voice their complaints? It’s almost as if social media exists to allow this communication between reader and author, which is a fundamental thing you’ll learn in any creative writing course, such as the one I’m on currently, wherein you’re actually taught how to respond to social media and to build up your image with your fans.

Homestuck^2 is an ongoing piece of media. We’re well aware that we have a potential to change these uncritical takes and the horrific way they’re being handled if the writers will just listen to genuine criticism. This is, frankly, no different to the people who go to J. K. Rowling’s Twitter to tell her how harmful her transphobic comments are; because if she believes these things, they will work their way into her texts and will perpetuate harmful ideologies.

The literal same thing is happening in Homestuck^2 - again, such as futa Jade, which normalises the point of view that bisexuals are cheaters and completely trivialises what it means to be trans, or Gamzee, which perpetuates just about every anti-black stereotype possible. Media does have a very powerful impact on what people see in the real world. This is why, for instance, positive black characters are so important in media; if they’re always portrayed as villains, then people will see real world black people as villains as the ideology is perpetuated to the point of fact. This is especially true if the people already believe in the ideology.

Fiction is one of the best ways that we can counteract this cycle. If you make a character that they like, and they happen to be positive representation, and then they watch more media that is likewise positive representation, it’s more likely to stick that these positive representations are the actual experiences of minority groups. Also? It’s important TO those minority groups. A black person, especially right now, doesn’t want to see an anti-black stereotype fuck a fascist, engage in sexual assult, and then enact pedophilia - only to die at the hands of a hero and be laughed at for the death. Surprisingly, shit like this is why we need to tell the writers that what they’re doing is harmful, that they’re perpetuating phobic ideologies, and that we need better representation - especially in a comic that is this widely read, and also has a very large minor fanbase.

I shouldn’t need to explain why exposing minors to anti-black stereotypes, transphobic, homophobic, biphobic, abuse apologism, victim blaming, and the trivialisation of rape and sexual assault (especially towards men), might be a federal fucking issue.

So, no, we’re not actually cyberbullying LGBT+ people. We’re trying to hold shitty writers accountable for the incredibly toxic and harmful ideologies they’re forcing into a text that has always been written with critical thought in mind.

I should also point out how funny it is that you’re focusing on how some of the writers are LGBT+ - as if we’re not? I’m trans, I’m gay, and I’m ace. Yes, I can actually be these things and absolutely furious that a trans women is writing some of the most transphobic shit I’ve seen in a while into characters she then claims to be completely free of blame. We can be furious that people within our own community are enforcing negative stereotypes.

Being LGBT+ does not make them free from blame. We cannot give them a free pass to be racist, to be transphobic, to be homophobic, biphobic, to be abuse apologists, just because they’re LGBT+. Not only because that’s just a terrible fucking idea to begin with, but because it also reflects so, so badly on the community as a whole. As if being part of the community instantly means that you can do no wrong? As if there can be no toxicity within our own community, despite the fact that there very much is and it is still an issue to this day?

That is such an issue, one of the biggest issues even shown just in Vriska and the way Kate handles her as a whole - and, once again, is WHY we need to get them looking at this shit more critically. This view that LGBT+ people can do no wrong and cannot be criticised is shoved into Homestuck^2 and, once again, perpetuates the ideology. This isn’t something to be proud of. This isn’t something that’s actually okay.

Also, your point that the writers aren’t nice enough and that we disagree on fictional characters - well, I’ve already been over the second part. But for the first part, I would like to remind you that they aren’t just random LGBT+ people on the internet that we’re going to because we think their takes are a little shitty. They’re actual writers working on a piece of media. They are official content creators.

Again, one of the first things you learn on any creative writing course is that when you become a writer, you gain a significant amount of responsibility for your interactions with the fandom. This is something that you genuinely have to expect, and if you don’t, then, unfortunately you just don’t know what it means to write something that thousands of people have a potential to read. As a writer, it is your responsibility to portray your image online; it is your responsibility to engage with the fans in a meaningful way; it is your responsibility to not cause drama and to listen when criticism is brought up, to have genuine discussion and not to perpetuate hatred - especially towards your own fanbase.

Consider, for instance, the way I’m talking to you right now. This is the sort of tone that someone should take when talking to a fan about genuine criticism. When things are brought up, you go over them step by step, you listen, you write back - you don’t go on a flurry of “fuck yous” to a minor who asked you why your team didn’t post anything about the BLM movement on the official Twitter, and you definitely don’t respond to every comment with genuine criticism with the word “pigshit”. You almost definitely don’t tell your trans masculine and masculine-aligned nonbinary fans that their opinions don’t matter.

As a writer, Kate and the rest of the team have a responsibility with their interactions with their fans. They aren’t just normal fandom voices anymore; they’re official fandom voices, voices that have more weight behind them than anyone else. They’re who people are going to turn to when it comes to anything regarding Homestuck^2. Their words now reflect literally everything about Homestuck^2, the future of Homestuck as an expanded universe, and the opinions of the group as a whole. They have to be careful with what they say. They have to be held to the same standards as industry voices because that’s essentially what they are - especially now that Homestuck is something you pay for.

Also, this isn’t a point of the story not going the way I want. This is a point of many of people in the fandom being upset with how content is being handled, upset that their voices are being shut down, upset that triggering content is being laughed at or used flippantly and without care or respect. This is people being upset that trigger warnings were removed specifically to make the comic unsafe for them as a punishment for daring to say that something was wrong. This is people being upset that a piece of media that used to be so fucking good at portraying sensitive content in a critical light, that used to be so good at normalising LGBT+ identities and healthy representations of those identities, has suddenly turned to this.

The story can go whatever way it wants - and frankly, that’s fine be my. What isn’t fine is that content is being used specifically to hurt and to incite.

And, of course, that final piece; nothing will improve if we don’t say that it’s wrong to begin with. Someone needs to voice the complaints of the fanbase, othrewise these toxic ideologies are going to go unchecked. One of the biggest things I’ve come to understand while making these posts is that a significant portion of the fandom feels isolated in their hurt; they don’t think other people feel the same way they do, and several people have mentioned feeling like they were going crazy because they were upset with things that the text and writers are normalising. It’s so important to make sure that these people know they’re not alone. It’s so important to make sure that our voices are heard. It’s so important to try and create critical discussion and debate over something that so many people still fucking love.

The thing is, I don’t hate Homestuck^2. I actually really, desperately wish I could enjoy it. I wish I could read through it and theorise, could go in depth about how amazing the characters are, could write long and extensive posts on how creative and engaging it is - could even just go on about how interesting the Meat-Candy divide is, and all the points they’re trying to make about canonicity. But I genuinely fucking can’t. There is just so, so much wrong in the text that is completely unrelated to plot and to the overarching Point that makes it impossible for me to read, to want to read, to try to encourage other people to read. They’re things that literally don’t need to be in there, either; stereotypes and toxic ideologies and uncritical or badly handled sensitive topics that could be rectified so, so easily.

Homestuck^2 could be amazing for a lot of the fandom. It could be something that we all rally around the same way we did for the original comic. For for a lot of people, it has ruined their fandom experience, has ruined their desire to want to read anything more to do with Homestuck, and has caused a significant portion of the fandom to just drop out entirely. That in and of itself should be a sign that this isn’t just a little fandom drama. That this is something much bigger and much more serious that, just maybe, needs to be looked into, talked about, understood - and, potentially, changed.

#homestuck^2 #homestuck^2 critical #long post//#ardenttheories #Apologies for how long this is. I wasn't going to finish it until I got every point across #And that ended up being... uh. Several thousand words I suspect #Anonymous

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softestsaddestbitch · 4 years ago

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December TC Challenge

stole this from @elder-edda (sorry for creeping! just, given the usual demographic of the tc community I was excited to find another 20-smthg)

1) what color is your tc’s hair?

He has just, simple brown hair but he’s starting to go grey which, no lie, is 100% doing it for me.

2) is your tc married?

Yes? He doesn’t wear a ring and I believe she kept her last name which makes me think it’s more of a civil partnership since they’ve been together since the early 2000s at least. But he also will refer to her as “my wife” and was telling me once that they waited until “after they got married” before moving in together.

3) if yes, do you care? would you do something with them regardless of their marriage?

I know these questions are general but I do take offense at the idea of being a homewrecker/other woman. I’ve met his wife, she’s really nice.

4) what’s your worst memory with your tc?

I put my foot in my mouth SO OFTEN. Good lord. Especially my last semester at that school? He was acting weird and I had just realized after fucking ... four years?? that I romantically liked him. So I kept bringing up my weird age fixation and other bs bc I have adhd and am possibly autistic?? and can’t read a room to save my life.

5) what’s your best memory with your tc?

One year we had a really bad snowstorm, so bad in fact that I had my first-ever snow day. The college that I used to go to has four campuses across as many cities, and C has to drive in twice a week to my (old) town from his. Now, morning classes had been canceled but afternoon classes had been given the go-ahead. C, who does not check his emails until he arrives at campus, evidently did not get this message until he was already in town and therefore didn’t have a morning class, but did have an afternoon class. On this day I had a late morning class that had been reinstated, but my prof didn’t get that memo so I also was on campus but didn’t have a class. So I went to visit his office, which I had been doing throughout the semester (I didn’t have a class with him at the time) and we just ... hung out for like 2 hours. It was so nice and one of the anecdotes he told me still haunts me lol.

sidenote: at the time, I hadn’t yet realized that I liked him, but I still went out of my way to visit him. Damn I was a dumbass.

6) does anyone in your school know how you feel?

ish? I told a classmate but in a “haha joking” kinda way. And a friend who went to that school knows. No one at my current school knows.

7) does your tc know how you feel?

I think he might? might have a lil inkling which would explain why he started acting so weird my last semester. Or at the very least was told/realized how bad it could look that he was getting so chummy w/ a student.

8) do you think there’s any chance your tc reciprocates your feelings?

He and his wife have been together for around 20 years now. No. No, I don’t think so. Maybe in an alternate universe.

9) are you getting your tc a christmas present? if so, what is it?

I have in the past! Specifically like, a tin of cookies lol. I’ve also given him an actual present when I left. I do intend to send him a Christmas card every year but not this year because ... you know ... the apocalypse.

10) have you ever flirted with your tc?

Flirtation inherently has intent. So, no. How he interpreted our interactions I don’t know.

11) how long have you had a crush on them? what began it all?

SO! TIMELINE!

I was at my old school from September 2014-April 2019, I had C for the first time in September 2015. Like I mentioned above, I did not realize I had a crush on him until literally the middle of my final exam of my class with him December 2018, so I’ve only consciously had a crush for about two years now. However, as I also mentioned, I went out of my way to stop by his office, even when I didn’t have a class with him. And my relationship with/feelings towards him are complicated so I’m not going to say I did so solely because I like him, but I would put it maybe closer to somewhere in 2017. You don’t plan your schedule around someone you don’t feel strong feelings for.

12) do you believe you’ll get over them shortly after you stop taking their class/have the chance to spend time with them?

As of today, it has been been exactly a year and a half since I last him in person. In the time since, I have cried over missing him, routinely gone back to keep up with his current research projects, and made his picture a part of my home screen. I almost exclusively listen to the playlist I made for him - so much so my Spotify Wrapped is pretty much that playlist with a few extras.

13) what kind of grades do you get in their class?

Haaaaaa pre-supension I was failing his classes. My first semester back I got .... a mid/high 70? and I finished my last class with him with an A+ and the essay I had written for his class had the highest grade between the two classes so..

14) does your tc ever do any tiny, little things that you adore?

When he puts a hand in his pocket and leans against the wall. When he tucks his hair behind his ear because he keeps falling in his face (he has long hair, a little past his shoulders). When he can’t stop himself from googling something even if its in the middle of class. How you can ask him anything at any time. The way he would chuckle at my jokes. How his handwriting hasn’t improved in decades. How easily he brushes off toxic masculinity. His candidness and willingness to share little anecdotes. The way he used to always smile whenever he saw me. That he goes home everyday to have lunch with his wife.

15) are you their favorite student?

I was! And it was obvious to other students that we had a friendly, casual relationship too. For a time, if his other students had questions about him they would ask me, and I usually had the answer. I didn’t matter in the long run, but I was.

16) do you two share any tastes? movies, books, music, etc.

He’s a legal historian, I’m a baby legal/political historian. We also like the same historical cooking youtube channel.

17) is your teacher religious?

I doubt he would say he’s religious, but I feel like we have a similar relationship to religion which is to say no formal association, but had profound effects on our childhoods and subsequently, presumably, how we view things as adults.

18) do you masturbate to them?

Yes.

19) do you communicate with them outside of school?

I sent him a meme once. And asked about the socialist uprising scandal he was apart of. I also almost emailed him while at a museum exhibition with my history friend. These are all through email.

20) do you have any tc songs or songs you relate to your tc? what are they?

SO my number one song this year was “You are the Reason” by Calum Scott because, you guessed it, of him. But also:

I Lost a Friend - Finneas When You’re Ready - Shawn Mendes You Are in Love - Taylor Swift Break My Heart Right - James

& given the season, especially w/ what transpired last year, Last Christmas by Wham!

21) what’s your favorite thing your tc has said/memory you have with them?

One time he kinda trailed off in the middle of lecture after stating that he thought of xyz a particular way which contrasted one of the popular schools of thought, and the way he plainly said, “well, yeah, which I guess ... is I’m arguing it” almost like he was semi-surprised with himself has always stuck with me.

But also, in addition the memory I shared earlier, we spent an hour and a half talking about grad school and what to expect and how to get there.

22) do you plan to continue a relationship with them after you leave school?

I trid, I really did. But he doesn’t “socialize with students part or present” so I can’t exactly see him. But I did get some academic-related from him at the beginning of the year.

23) how will you deal during the summer? will you see him/her?

He’s a hermit who used my last vacation before I moved to go on all the vacations he had to postpone because he was working on his last book. And this past summer ... Covid. This question is obviously directed at high school students, but in general, he lives in the back of head always, and when I’m in my hometown for the summer my heart aches because theres a none-zero chance I’ll see him, but I know I won’t.

24) does your tc support gay rights?

Yes. He’s never been put in a position that I know of where he had to outright condemn homophobia, but in one of his classes, he actively made the choice to make the very first reading of the semester about how women in ancient times had more agency than assumed, and also how the woman in the case study was a lesbian.

25) what class do you have with them? And what period? Do you have them every day?

History classes. I won’t get into specifics because it’s kind of an eclectic mix and I’m paranoid someone from the area could come across this. But I had him twice a week every semester that I had him. Again this kind of question is more so applicable to high school students, not so much university students.

26) have you ever drifted out during a lecture thinking about them and missed information?

No. In his classes he is too enthralling, and I’m a good student otherwise.

27) have you stalked them online? what did you find out?

In theory. He’s a fifty-year-old history professor whose reaction to a description of the big lipped/tiny face filter on snapchat was “that sounds disgusting.” The man doesn’t have social media, and if he does those privacy settings are on so students can’t find him he thinks he’s very professional. I do visit his mini-bio section on the college website fairly often tho.

28) have you ever run into them outside of schools? what happened?

I did once. He introduced me to his wife, who said “oh you’re E! C has talked about you” and it apparently he had done so positively, and blew my mind because this was back when I was failing classes and also, as a person, I don’t believe that people think about me when I’m not there. They gave me a restaurant recommendation and afterwards his wife surprised me a they were leaving the restaurant because ... we had listened to them, and they also went there for lunch that day.

29) has your tc ever spoken of teacher-student relationships? what did they say?

It had recently come out that it had been found out that another professor had been in a relationship with a student and he’s the one that brought it up before class one day (with all of us not just me). He didn’t say anything for or against it, just that it was generally discouraged, but that most schools did have policies in place to handle the situation.

30) do you regret telling anyone about your tc? if you’ve kept it a secret, why have you done so?

Absolutely not. I can’t tell my best friends because they’d do nothing but give me shit for it and it would call every time I mention him into question. But the friends that I have told ... its been so freeing, and like a weight has been lifted from my heart. One friend in particular I unloaded on her all my emotional shit pertaining to him this past summer and she was so understanding it legit since then I’ve been less distraught when thinking about him. It still hurts, but it feels less like I’m suffocating now.

#personal #professor crush #professor crush community #teacher crush #monthly challenge #december

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trishyeves · 4 years ago

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Episode 4-Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Oh boy, we are back into the Ranma Rewatch and this time it’s the fourth episode, titled “Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another”. That is definitely the kind of title I remember more from this show: incredibly long and silly. I love it in any series where the titles are like half-formed sentences. As for what I’m expecting in this episode...I honestly don’t really remember. We’re already reaching the edges of my memory, so I look forward to seeing it with fresh eyes.

Yeah, I had pretty much forgotten about most of the stuff that happened in this episode, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The episode starts with Ranma having a bad dream about Kuno professing his love and asking him out. After waking up in a cold sweat, Ranma takes a bath and shenanigans happen.

There’s some cute banter between Ranma and Akane on the way to school, then a threepeat of the fight against all the guys trying to ask her out. Kuno makes an appearance at the end again, but this time he’d taken out in one combined hit from both Ranma and Akane. He’s tended to in the nurse’s office afterwards by Nabiki, who finds out from his sleep talking that he’s fallen in love with ‘the pigtailed girl’ in addition to Akane, and feels conflicted over who he should choose.

Seeing an opportunity, Nabiki abuses the fact that apparently Ranma is a heavy sleeper to activate his curse as he sleeps, takes a bunch of sexy pics, then turns him back, all without him ever waking up. Not too long later, she gets a surprise message from Kuno, asking to meet up.

He treats her to a meal, asking her the favor of delivering a cute doll he got as a present to its recipient: the pigtailed girl. Before addressing that idea, Nabiki tempts him with the sexy pictures of his new waifu, only letting him even see them if Kuno treats her to spaghetti. I thought that might be a dub change, but it’s not, either language they still go out for Italian pasta. She sells them to him for 1000 yen a pop, then asks if he’s giving up on Akane then. He clarifies that he intends to pursue them both, so Nabiki reveals there are Akane pictures available too. In exchange for free ice cream, and the same price per picture, she sells him those too.

Only with that done does she tell him how to get his present to the pigtailed girl: Ranma is the only way. She doesn’t explain why, but Kuno doesn’t dig too deeply into it. She couriers a letter to the titular protagonist, asking for a meet up, which Ranma goes to. Once it becomes clear exactly what Kuno is asking for, Ranma rebuffs him, saying he’ll never see his precious pigtailed girl ever again.

This threat becomes somewhat toothless when someone randomly dumping water out of their window activates Ranma’s curse, and Kuno quickly embraces the object of his affections. This hug becomes a little awkward when Nabiki appears and douses Ranma with hot water, and Kuno realizes who he is ‘now’ hugging. You might think this would mean he has some understanding of what’s going on, but Kuno’s immediate thought is that Ranma knows some vile sorcery.

When Nabiki realizes how dense Kuno really is, she decides to phrase it to him as Ranma ‘owning the pigtailed girl’s body and soul’, which is not technically a lie. That said, of course Kuno interprets that as meaning that somehow Ranma has the warrior woman he loves enslaved to him in some way, so a fight breaks out.

When Ranma sees the photos Kuno has on him, it distracts him enough to take a hit to the torso, just as Akane arrives. Just as Kuno starts getting serious, the air pressure from his piercing attacks alone strong enough to crack a statue apart, Ranma counteracts and wins, though it becomes clear his injury hurts like hell, even if he’s trying to ignore it.

And that’s it, no cliffhangers this time around. Now that Kuno’s love for Ranma’s alter ego has been established, the actual meat of what that means, namely how he sees them as two separate people and chases one while attacking the other, is what this episode works to make clear. It also sets up his and Nabiki’s dynamic more, but that’ll be something I talk about more in just a little bit.

There are two kind-of bigger things I want to pull out of this episode. First one being the dream sequence at the start. Now, I am fairly sure that whole bit is meant to be there for comedy, in a very ‘gay panic’ kind of way. Which honestly...does not play super well these days. Ranma’s terror at the dream, on a surface reading, has to do with him being super grossed out that some dude is in love with him.

Of course, there are other ways to read the scene as well. I’m sure some people might instead look at it as being less a nightmare and more like Ranma running away from his own possible attraction to another guy, and while that’s definitely possible, I didn’t really get that vibe at all. That said, if you did, rock on.

What I saw as more likely was a gender-based reading. Ranma is, more than anything else, freaked out by Kuno’s love declaration because it’s someone seeing him as something he’s not, a woman. Kuno isn’t interested in Ranma, he’s interested in a woman who doesn’t exist. Ranma has a lot of complicated feelings tied up in his masculinity, which his curse doesn’t exactly help with, and Kuno’s attraction to his cursed form just makes it all worse.

Speaking of attraction, let’s talk about Kuno. The fact that everyone calls his affections for two people at the same time ‘two timing’ is a bit vexing to me. As someone who has been in polyamorous relationships before, I can attest to the fact that liking more than one person at a time is totally okay, and if everyone involved is okay with it, dating multiple people is also okay.

That is kind of the problem though. Neither Akane or Ranma like Kuno, and neither is likely to want to date him, regardless of if he’s dating someone else at the time. Their problem with Kuno isn’t his dual attraction, it’s that they just plain don’t care for the guy. (And Ranma probably doesn’t swing that way, but he could be repressing it so what the hell do I know.) Even with that in mind, I still kind of roll my eyes at how Kuno ‘liking two girls’ is treated as a perversion. That just kinda sucks.

Last thing before the character spotlight I can think of is that I really liked the fight in this episode, the action was pretty good. ... Listen, I know that’s not exactly expert analysis, but it’s what I got.

I feel like covering Nabiki now is pretty much a no brainer. Of all the side characters introduced so far, she’s easily gotten the most shading, and this episode in particular develops her further for the audience. In terms of voice acting, she’s played in English by Angel Costain and in Japanese by Minami Takayama. Angela isn’t known for much else, which is quite a shame, because she’s pretty fantastic, in my personal opinion. Minami, on the other hand, has a pretty huge resume, and along with the voice actors for Akane, Ranma’s cursed form, Kasumi, and a character we haven’t met yet, was in a pop group called DoCo.

In terms of acting, they both play her fairly similarly. A normal girl at first glance, but with quite the amount of dry wit and sarcasm lying beneath that surface. The main difference I’ve seen so far is that Angela seems to have more mirth to her performance, while Minami’s is a bit more deadpan. Both are good, though I definitely prefer the english performance so far.

But what is Nabiki actually like? Well, of the three Tendo siblings, Nabiki hides who she is more than the others. For the first few episodes, she comes across as a fairly unassuming character, most known for her occasional snark. But this episode is where we get to see her primary character trait: greed. Nabiki is quite happy to take advantage of Ranma’s curse to make money, though how far she’s willing to go for the yen hasn’t really been made clear.

It is worth noting that, while her pictures of Ranma were very sexy and revealing, her pictures of Akane were just of her working out and stuff, far less of an invasion of her sister’s privacy. Does she have better respect for family than the freeloaders who live with them? That’s to be seen.

Another big character trait we’ve gotten so far is her...friendship? Sure, let’s go with that, her friendship with Kuno. Always happy to try and pop his inflated ego with her sharp wit, they have a good comedy routine going. At the same time, she does seem to legitimately be there for him, since she was taking care of him after he got knocked out. They get shipped a lot, which I definitely see the appeal of, but part of me just kind of likes the idea that they’ve just known each other for a long time, and they just kind of have a thing going. Not that any kind of friendship they may have is coming close to stopping her from bilking him from as much money and free food as she can. Of course, Kuno is quite rich, so he can afford it.

Some people have described Nabiki as a villain, but I wouldn’t really agree with that. What she is, is someone happy to create conflict. She’s a fun addition to the cast, and I can’t think of any time in my previous watch-throughs where I got tired of her being there. (Which is not something I can say about every character in this series.)

Now it’s time to rank the episodes once again. Of the four episodes so far, I can immediately say this one is in the top half. I enjoyed Nabiki’s antics and the marital arts quite a bit, but I don’t think it’s quite as strong as the second episode. So far, that means the rankings are:

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Will next week’s episode be just as entertaining? Well, I don’t know, but from what I remember about episode 5, “Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart”, I don’t think that will be the case. See you then!

#episode 4 #Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing It’s Another #ranma 1/2 #ranma saotome #akane tendo #nabiki tendo #tatewaki kuno #anime analysis #anime rewatch

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