#queer people have always existed but not always in the same way
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wow, okay, transphobia isn't fucking welcome on this blog! and if you have a problem with that i'll block you, bitch!
#i got a horrible ask from someone clearly going through a lot in their life because it was just cruel and disgusting.#i encourage ALL the cis queer women following me to take a second to remember that the only reason we have gay rights and pride in the usa#is because of two trans women.#trans women have always existed#and in today's society they're one of the most unprotected minorities in the world.#it's insane to me that you as a queer person can know first hand how heartbreaking it is to be discriminated against#for something you literally cannot control#only to turn around and discriminate against trans people because you think sexuality is diverse and expansive but somehow gender isnt?!!?#the cognitive dissonance in terf spaces is fucking insane.#i could write a sociological essay on how terf-ism preys on young queer women who feel powerless.#because it's so freeing to let your frustrations with the way the world treats you out through hatred of those you don't understand!#but what terfs don't understand that attitude and behavior is the same attitude and behavior that allows patriarchy and colonialism 2 thriv#sorry for the essay. it's pride month please take the time to educate yourself on transmisogyny and transmisogynoir.
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in my perfect world everyone makes so many lesbian muses the men then have to deal with the exact same behavior when every single post ever written isn’t about dick.
#CLAWS RETRACTED.#[real talk: I’m a lesbian transmasc little enby guy. but my gender? is lesbian. it’s how I explain it. my attraction to women is a part of#my innate gender. that’s just how it is and the two things inform one another. heteronormativity is still so alive and now everyone can put#it under progressive little labels where the character is bisexual but everything that’s focused on for miles is the hetcoded shit. it’s a#cool little thing people do now. it went from when I was a kid and ‘there’s no such thing as bi you’re just confused’ to ‘everyone is bi#because it gives me points but I will never meaningfully observe the queer aspect of that identity and it can make me seem comfortable with#queer identities’. it’s lip service so much of the time. and I never ever ever say you’re only valid if you write bi characters in a#queercoded relationship. bisexuality is forever valid always even if you’ve NEVER been in a queer relationship. but this is writing and#real bisexual people (I’m not even bi I’m literally a lesbian) have experiences irl that make them feel shitty#when they see them boiled down to shallow. a lot in the same way I get upset when I see lesbian relationships brushed off or ignored in#spite of my own excitement toward the ship. MY POINT IS that lesbians are completely ignored by this point and I can say this both irl and#on here because when you live a life that excludes men from your romantic space you’re basically illegal. it drives me fucking insane. the#way anyone can make a fucking whitebread ass man on this site and their inbox will be exploding but you make a lesbian and you have to pad#quietly around because from jump you’re already worried about how people will perceive you and you KNOW they won’t be immediately welcoming.#this is an irl thing in such a big way and I’m a NEW YORKER. but the fact that this exists in the rpc? truly I miss when we just wrote and#enjoyed things and this wasn’t a cesspit of discourse instead of an actual creative community. like. I went to college to study boring#theses that couldn’t keep my attention. I slogged through litcrit theory. do I love it? yes. but some of yall really just wanna be on#debatebro YouTube and not in the actual rpc. it’s wild. everyone’s a philosopher but no one wants to meaningfully engage. and if they do#they want to in either bad faith or basically hardheaded ignorance about an issue. someone’s 2 seconds from rping destiny.#swear to fucking god if I see one person make an asm.ngold joke I will cry.]
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Everytime someone hc the stardew valley bachelors and bachlerottes as monosexual or uses the word "playersexual" a fairy dies
#biphobia#and yeah there is a discussion about how that's mostly done out of convenience and not bi rep#or that it would be interesting and good to have monosexual characters in dating sims that only date one gender#but the point here is that people love to take evey opportunity to not have characters be bi and that for some reason#a cast full of bi characters doesn't sit right with people and they always have to make some of the characters monosexual#even if most people would not do that with a cast of characters that had no confirmed sexuality but have only shown interest#in the same gender as they are#conveniently its also mostly the more gnc characters that get hc as monosexual#or characters that are made more masculine or feminine in fanon and then get hc as monosexual#like you people know gnc bisexuals exist right ???#it's just how unfair and biased bisexuality in fandom is always treated that bothers me#people genuinely think of us as not queer enough or that it's not as harmful to erase potential bisexuality#a character can always be monosexual and their past interests do not matter but a character can only be a valid bisexual#when their label was confirmed in some way or they fit bisexual stereotypes like being promiscuous#shit like that always reminds me how a lot of queer people think about bisexuality#and that there are a lot of people that just don't see it as valid sexuality or it's own thing opposed to half straight half gay
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I actually have thoughts about this! I think Ford is a specific type of character.
First of all: Let's talk about fanon!
Something I think that a lot of us forget when we're doing fan analysis is just how caricaturized all blorbos are in canon. This is true of any work of media: the characters aren't real people, they're figments who only exist as we see them on-screen.
Fanon is kind of like those AI image sharpeners that take a blurred photo and make it look like a person's face: yeah, technically that is an accurate way you can interpret the blur, but there are hundreds of faces that would be just as accurate, and not only are they all very different from each other, they don't even agree on the most basic and obvious traits. The same blurry headshot could be a scowling white woman with a square jaw or a smiling black man with sharp features. In a similar way, when we see a character become stressed because they just saw a mouse in a cage, we could say they're scared of mice, or morally opposed to pets, or that they have cage-based trauma - any option that works is plausible.
I think that there are characters who are good characters, characters who are uniquely good subjects for fanon, and a ven diagram between the two. For example, a lot of kids' shows from the nineties are bad, but they managed to produce a really fun and rich fandom. Meanwhile, some really beautiful and culturally important stories don't leave a lot of room for fan works because they've already said what they need to say. I think the absolute best works for fandom are the ones that are objectively good stories, but have really simplified characters: Undertale might be the best example of this, because every single character suggests a rich and beautiful personality while only being on screen for a relatively short time.
So that leads me to part two: Ford!
I think Ford fills a particular fandom niche that was empty for a lot of us.
He's extremely traumatized, and the more we learn about him, the more traumatized he is. He's kind of pushing the limits of what's acceptable from a kids' show, to be honest.
He canonically has a lot of difficulty making friends; this is partly because he's quirky and seemingly neurodivergent, but partly because he has poor social skills. He's not a cartoony, Eeyore-style "has trouble making friends but we love him anyway" character, either; there are tangible, in-story examples of him failing to make friends.
He behaves badly sometimes. This is actually my favorite trait of his - anyone who reads my fanfiction knows how much I love giving people with real flaws a chance to find love and be treated with respect. Most characters have a flaw to overcome, but in his worst moments, Ford actually lashes out and hurts others in a tangible way and not just a child-friendly way. Showrunners don't always like to show that sort of thing.
It is very, very easy to read some severe mental health symptoms into his behavior. Bill is a literal character, but he's also a pretty good metaphor: you can use him to explain hallucinations, dissociative fugues, sudden mood swings, manic episodes, severe depression, paranoia - the list goes on and on.
(That last one is really important. There's a pretty damn big difference between a good metaphor for mental illness and a thoughtful portrayal of that mental illness in a story. It's kind of like how many of us were so starved for queer representation growing up that we read queer metaphors into everything. Well, there still isn't good mental illness representation in most media, so we'll take the metaphors we can get. Ford is a really good metaphor even as he's presented, and there are a lot of holes in his narrative where personality disorder symptoms, manic episodes, delusions, etc. can slot in easily.)
None of those traits make a good Disney character. They only really work because he spends so little time on-screen; the books were only possible because of Gravity Falls's massive commercial success. So, he's a very rare example of a character who's from a light-hearted, positive, optimistic show aimed at children, but who has all of the template features necessary for us to read him as deeply broken in some ways that aren't sanitized or socially acceptable.
So, there are dozens and dozens of Ford AUs in which we project very specific experiences, traumas, and symptom sets into this one man.
How many Ford AUs out there are reflections of our own insecurities, traumas, and just general unresolved issues? Is that, like, his whole purpose in the wider multiverse of alternate Gravity Falls characters? 'Cause I KNOW it isn't just me
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"normal" meaning "unquestionable" & the embrace of that cropping up anywhere such as an aim to be on the unquestionable side of a Normal / Weird binary, thus surely being a comfortable effortless indelible version of Good that stems from "just be normal"
ppl out here like freud 2.0 where well they had the sufficiently normal Nuclear Household family(tm) experience so they're sufficiently normal for it, versus the weirdos who had the Questionable family times so as to end up with Issues, surely unlike all those who are Family Issue free, i.e. normal, no question. like how also Going To School is Normal, so of course there's that idea that anyone who didn't go to school normal style or did but Did That Wrong are the people made Weirder with Issues. & when what's Normal is what's Good is what's Unquestionable it's like why would i need to question it when it's so normal? why wouldn't some rando asshole nepo man be Meritous & Good at business when he's so Successful at it. speaks for itself, same as Your role of being treated entirely differently does, this can't be questioned, blame it on your own failures; again how the supposedly "questionable" experiences (unlike other ones, which need no Legitimate questioning) are pathologized like. people talking about disabled ppl's lacking "social skills" being this meaningful Driver of ableism just like poor people's lacking "financial literacy" being that darn cause of classism & resource extraction, the already Questioned vulnerable [you're just doing it wrong / failing] people are the cause of their own mistreatment, Normal people who are so socially & financially successful are helpless, this victim blaming (can't question it. Normal) sure totally doesn't speak to abuse being "normal" as well
which, good thing abuse totally isn't Normal i.e. in the territory of unquestionable things (with, obviously, the idea that Abuse (Real abuse, if you like) must be Exceptional in addition to, if not to Really be, "obviously" questionable) since if something can't be questioned then surely it's also How Things Were In The Beginning, Are Now, & Ever Shall Be (catholic prayer paraphasing re: god, for referential context) & there's just nothing to do but invest in & play into it For Success & resent / punish / try to eliminate disruption, like people just existing but doing it Weird, c'mon, be a better person please, obviously....meanwhile people out here approaching queerness in a way that accepts & acts according to the unquestionable normal of abuse of queerness, such that oh the "abnormality" of being queer (that is, "normal" people's abuse in the face of awareness of queerness) is unquestionable, such that Oh No, investment in that abuse now & forever world without end amen, & now punching down on the people who are just Being Weird & Disrupting this embrace of the norm: radfems invested in "all bodies will be classed as men & women & the former abuse the latter" & hate women who already disrupt this premise; pointing out ace exclusionism as terf logic just applied in the different context where queer vs nonqueer binary is neatly detected just as the gender binary is & people who already prove that & the way it's defined is not the case are the real problems, infiltrating Unquestionable (Normal) Queerness & delegitimizing it i.e. being The Cause of e.g. homophobic abuse, which will also unquestionably exist, so if we're gonna blame someone as Needing To Change it'll have to be uhhh already also affected Weird people who are ruining things, they're the Real causes of this abuse, so they're basically men, basically cis, basically straight. boooo to trans ace bi pan aro nonbinary gnc people....hardest to be binary gender "same sex" "romantic" "visible" Truly Queer couple currently holding hands in public or in front of family, & it's You Mfs who make it harder, not, yknow, the people who were already always embracing & perpetuating the abuse bolstering Normal(tm) Cishet Just Being Normal. and of course don't forget going after poly people & others disrupting / not accepting premises about Unquestionable Relationship Structures/Requirements. so not just being normal
also the beloved concept broken out that, of course, Being Normal = Being Good, b/c hello, unquestionable?? where it's like meaningless ideas that abuse is Abnormal like ":( hurt people hurt people" (inherently a framing to counter any response to [person is hurting me] that's not silent secret sympathy forever i guess. nobody's using this catchphrase to argue for Hey Quick let's all intervene to stop someone being hurt, lest they go on to hurt anyone themselves) like & yet everyone is hurt, yet not everyone is doing shit where these arguments are broken out after they're already getting away with nonsense & we're telling others to just stop complaining, while also not everyone isn't getting shit on for being "disruptive" & perchance the real hurtful problems for trying to Stop being shitted on, or just have a little more breathing room to day to day live while it happens. everyone's hurt bitch let's get you some "what's the actual patterns & context of supported power imbalance made emergently evident by whose choices & life are constrained & undermined & made smaller" like. or the expanded idea as that well all abuse comes from Being abused, i.e. the Cycle, never mind that abuse is everywhere as per its being Normal, & nobody's intervening every time it manifests despite its supposed exceptionality thus rareness & supposed indication that someone's Being abused to cause it. just gotta roll with it, wow. & pathologize being victim to it, abuser in the making, Vulnerable People are dangerous, those insulated & given more access to systemically backed power in an oh so Normal way are surely oh so Safe as well. the very rich families are all lovely havens. the abused people are treated so well & embraced & supported by all the more Normal people they encounter, certainly not Also isolated, bullied, victim blamed by these Normal friends family coworkers new partners randos in public randos who are "professionals"
but yknow uh literally just be normal lol. aaand post. and like "lol being Anti Being Normal? just like a weirdo" like yeah of course. and what, i'm gonna try to win the heart & mind of someone like "of course you have blue hair & pronouns" & convert them, as would definitely happen if only all transgenderists were Normal about it? and the perspective of "what Unquestionable Good is ever actually coming from striving to get to point at Others as Weird" involves going like "nooo i wanna see myself & be seen as Just Being Normal" instead of like having ideas / arguments about how to be considerate towards people which can be articulated in any other way & involve effort & said consideration (ft. anything able to be questioned)
#but i think we all agree that ppl pointing & going ''ugh poly shit ruining everything'' or ''aplatonic?? lmfao'' are heroes AND le epic#always feel free to circle around too to bi ppl who are Totally Basically Cishet AND Worse Enemies Really Than. Anyone Cishet#and i'm sure the ace exclusionism never ends for plenty of ppl. keep the logic but go ''oh well it's just still not That big a deal''#the experiences of being more vulnerable & exposed to exploitation of that? are the drivers of Deviation. your weird issues#MY blessed normativity. had enough of Family Friendship Romance that was all surely pleasant enough#popular enough / not bullied enough at school. i am now a good person based on vibes b/c to be Hurting anyone? well i would Know#why not go talk to the rando who was like ''racism is over b/c i have never invoked like Hey. White Person To White Person. give me#preferential treatment >;) & in fact now white people are Dispreferred etc etc'' ohh all the Special Treatment(tm) for Others....#again like the idea Abuse happens in some ''abnormal'' situation & simply being in ''normal'' ones will show victims the light#(already with the logic that ppl are in abusive situations b/c the victims need to Know Better & Take The Correct Actions finally)#(i.e. victim blaming / pathologize the individuals) like yeah the guarantee ppl don't just keep getting shat on is not there lol#the blessed normal ppl who are i guess natural healers i presume? Totally never ostracizing bullying & further treating as ''''weird''''#like the idea ohh autistic ppl are Bad At Interactions. oh shit interactions b/w autistic ppl go great? well uhh#then It's A Two Way Street except also being nt is Normal so autistic ppl need to ''learn social skills'' so Ableism Ends. their fault#same deal like sympathy & support from the supposed Primed To Harm fellow abused ppl?? while others are undermining & ostracizing? nahh#even getting to be ''alone'' i.e. either existing amid others but not there ''with'' anyone; or certainly Left Alone; way more Validating#and just more pleasant too like. even the abstract concept of [do xyz: with a friend group] :((( vs do it by yourself :)#''oh ppl don't want to have the Social Skills & exert the Effort to have a friend group?? that's that on Moral Failure'' Lol. truly.#good people are popular & bad people are ostracized in recognition of their unquestionably Questionable Weirdo Vibe. got their ass#if you can't / won't break something down beyond Normal/Weird. why. i'm questioninnnng....And queer.#like ''sounds just like something a Weird Ruinerrr (Disruptor) would say'' uh yeah i sure hope it does &c
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for months now i have had this little story idea bouncing around in my head for an AU of Jetpack Joyride where Barry is stuck inside a big expermental time loop conducted by Legitimate Research to create an army of randomly selected time-travelling soldiers. the idea is very much still rough and i dunno if and when i'll develop it into a bigger thing, but it's a pretty cool idea and it's a twist on the JJ game that i've never really seen much exploration on.
basically, it focuses on Barry, who is the sort of Patient Zero of an experimental concentrated time-fuckery technology LR is working on. every single day, at exactly the same time, Barry goes out to work his salesman job, discovers the jetpack, breaks into the laboratory, takes it for a joyride, eventually gets hit by an obstacle and dies. the next day, Barry goes out to work his salesman job, discovers the jetpack, breaks into the lab, takes it for a joyride and dies. and he does the same exact thing the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day... he's pretty much stuck in a loop of the exact same events happening repeatedly every single day, and he has absolutely no idea about it. that is, until there's a glitch in the system, and Barry progressively becomes a lot more suspicious and paranoid about the situation he's in. the rest of this post is gonna be REALLY spoilery (like i literally just explain big important chunks of the story for several paragraphs) if i ever make this into a full-fledged fanfic, so i'm gonna put it under a keep reading thingy. also it is... quite long and convoluted lol.
as the story goes on, it focuses more on the mental degredation of Barry as he starts uncovering all these weird clues, slowly trying to piece together what's going on and driving himself insane, because every time a reset occurs, his memory of the previous loop ever happening is completely wiped and everything he did that day goes all the way back to square one. since the malfunctioning of LR's technology though, Barry has been getting little nuggets of deja vu and half-remembered fragments of dying before a reset. this eventually becomes him repeating things to himself, little phrases and codes over and over and over in hopes that it will persist into the next reset. this eventually becomes symbols stuck up on the walls of his room and then progresses to entire rituals to help him remember and little behaviourisms like tics and stims to let him know he's in another loop. he becomes more and more panicked and unsettled, paranoid that someone - or something - is watching him closely. additionally, he keeps having disturbing dreams in the early hours of the morning before he gets up to go to work, ones that are symbolic and prophetic, as if they're trying to warn him about something. i've had concepts of him waking up on top of a pile of millions of mangled carcasses that all look exactly like Barry, and having on them them forcefully grab onto his leg and pull him down with the rest of them. it's kinda like the nightmare Woody has in Toy Story 2, but like, dead guys everywhere, lol.
the backstory of this whole thing is kinda insane. basically, Legitimate Research is a sketchy government funded facility that's doing secret time experiments to create the strongest beings for a purpose that's somewhat similar to Brains' Zomb Bomb plan from AOZ (i haven't fully decided yet). Barry is someone who has been randomly selected for their newest version of the concentrated time loop experiment, where patients will be put under looping tests to extract data about their strength, agility and performance and decide what they need to supplement them with in order to create the perfect soldier.
Barry was 22 years old when he was selected. he was actually a relatively normal local Fish N' Chips vendor living in New South Wales, but one day, when he recieved an exciting letter in the mail about a new ambitious job opportunity, he completely disappeared without a trace and seemed to have been entirely erased from the minds of everyone he had ever known. Barry had actually been kidnapped and ensnared into a mind-experiments facility of the laboratory, where they proceeded to wipe his mind, proof of his existence and his entire personhood up to this point, and replaced all of it with fake memories to fill in the gaps. he was then placed in stasis and to be injected with high doses of strength drugs as they crafted a new life for him behind the scenes. a new house, in a new state, all with new stories and memorabilia meant to be lived out by new person. now, he was Barry Steakfries in Queensland, a rough-around-the-edges guy with a passion for action movies and destruction. he was a revel with a thirst for chaos and freedom, but he just didn't have the means to achieve it yet. it was all according to plan.
a big part of the story i want to tell that involves him is that at some point, Barry tries to break free from the time loop by doing something different. this takes a lot of pre-planning, memory rituals and repeating details to himself, but after he wakes up from a reset and gets out of bed, he hesitates, choosing to go to a different place to sell his gramophones that day. he deliberately tries his best to avoid Legitimate Research's headquarters as much as he can, and while he doesn't completely remember why he's doing it, he has a deep gut feeling that he should stay away from them at all costs. so he does. and at first, it goes well. the day is different, his choices seem to actually matter and for once, the feeling of deja vu isn't tearing him apart... until a crazy freak accident happens that forces Barry to die and reset the time loop again, wiping away everything he had done that day. Legitimate Research is now forcefully trying to stop him from knowing what the hell is going on by forcing him to die with each now discovery he makes, and Barry has to figure out more and more creative solutions to averting their surveillance and trying to get the hell out of the loop.
Craig will also be involved with the story too!! i'm not exactly sure what exactly the events leading up to Barry discovering and meeting him would be, but it'd be kinda halfway-late-ish into the story where Barry manages to cut off LR's surveillance of him, breaks into the laboratory and searches through its archives for anything relating to time. during this raid, he accidentally discovers the true Patient Zero to this time experiment: a broken, decrepit shell of a man who has been hooked up to a set of wires and locked away deep into the laboratory, never meant to be discovered by anyone, only known simply as #000 'Craig'. Craig was the very first human they used to run an early prototype of these experiments, but through malfunctions in the threads of LR's technology, he ended up knowing too much and tried to break free from his time loop, which resulted in him being dragged out of reality and becoming completely detached from his own time, stopping his aging process completely and practically allowing him to exist forever and persistently through every reset unaffected. LR relocated him and considered him a catastrophic failure, locking him away in a cell deep in the bowels of the laboratory before destroying and erasing every archive of him ever having existed in any point in time. and now, the same thing is about to happen to Barry if he doesn't figure out a way to stop what's happening quickly. Barry, outisde of LR, is the only one who is aware of Craig's existence in this timeline. Barry makes a vow to make sure that he will never ever forget Craig, no matter what happens to him, no matter how many times his timeline gets reset, because he is the only other person on the whole world who truly understands what he's going through.
at the very end of the story, when Barry finally escapes the time loop and is about to enter into a new reality where none of this ever happened, he reaches out a hand to Craig and offers he come with him to live. Craig, however, rejects the offer, sadly confessing to Barry that because of his disconect from the threads of time progression itself, Craig must stay behind and be erased along with everything inside this one and let Barry live his life. Barry protests, insisting that his life wouldn't be complete without him and that they've already gone through so much together, but Craig assures him that this is the best for the both of them, and that Barry must leave him soon before the window to escape closes. Barry gives Craig once last goodbye, holding him close and basking in his presence for the final time. he closes his eyes, presses his head against Craig's and whispers "I promise I'll never forget you." before he slowly lets him go, not breaking their locked gaze on each other for even a second as he steps into the portal and ventures into an entirely new reality, never to return.
i want there to be an epilogue part where Barry starts his new life and goes looking for a place to stay, and he comes across the place where LR used to be, which is instead occupied with a big square fence plot and a sign that says "UNDER CONSTRUCTION: NEW RESTAURANT TO BE BUILT". Barry stares at it for a moment and reflects on everything that has happened. all the hellish experiments that were once held inside this very plot of land, all the trauma he went through to get to this point, Craig's sacrifice, everything has lead up to him standing here, in the right place, at the right time, to finally live the life he should've had to begin with. eventually, he turns away, continuing to walk down the street. he should go check that place out sometime.
(insert "what a fucked up dream for a baby to have" ending from 'then what' here)
#barry steakfries#jetpack joyride#fanfic idea#alternate universe#this is really just an idea dump post. y'know just throwing eggs everywhere and hoping one sticks to something#also i like how every au idea i've had for jetpack joyride always involves a deep queer-coded relationship between barry and craig#the aoz total apocalypse au has them go through hell together and become closer bfs who would die for each other as a result#the timeloop au has barry and craig destined to find each other but are separated from each others' timelines and must eventually let go-#-of their bond with each other and have barry sacrifice the existence of craig so he can go on and live a normal life without him#the toni/revenge au is literally just barry and craig/toni having a messy breakup ffs lmaooo#every au i'm making for this game is so unequivocally gay and i love that#we got the 'i'd kill for u' gay. we got the tragic destiny love story gay. we got the bad blood by taylor swift gay. it's all here#now that i think about it the relationship that barry and craig have in timeloop kinda reminds me of kirk and spock always being destined-#-to find each other across space and time.....#i will make sure every au i make deliberately goes out of its way to have something so very gay in it and you can trust my word on that#i wanna draw all three of my au barrys at group therapy with each other sharing their traumas#and canon barry is just there looking at them like ''what the fuck happened to you people....'' lmaoo#toni/revenge au barry: my bf turned evil and broke up with me...#timeloop barry: my bf literally got erased from existence for me...#total apocalypse barry: .... my bf is a hardened professional zombie hunter. wtf is happening in your universes???#canon barry: *taking a slow sip of coffee with an extremely concerned look on his face*#anyway yeah. barry is stuck inside a timeloop and that's why jj always starts the same way after you die#not even kidding this whole au was spawned from me playing the game again in late 2022 and thinking ''hey isn't it interesting-#-how barry always dies at the end but then bursts through the wall again just fine when you start again? like a loop? hmmm''#i'm gonna sleep now. it is. 11 pm and i have been writing this for god knows how long. good night snoorrrkk mimimimj
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[ID: a screenshot of a reply by yuri-alexseygaybitch that reads, "Can you explain?" End ID.]
the historical source we have for understanding much of the early roman empire are so fucking bad. like whenever you hear any insane story about tiberius/caligula/nero/commodus/elagabalus imagine trying to put together an account of any modern figure if your only avaiable sources were tucker carlson archives and the daily mail
#THIS EXACTLY#like i get the desire to look for people who share our identities in history and queer people have always existed#but also. when queer historians say stuff like “we cant apply modern identities to the past'' what they MEAN is#that what we think of as “gay'' hasnt always meant the same thing throughout time#queer people have Always existed but not always in the same exact way and its#even as recently as in the early 20th century! like sure maybe a lot of drag queens at stonewall would call themselves trans women Now#but theres no real way to know that! and it gets worse into antiquity#we talked about this in my queer biblical studies class a Lot and one of the things i took away from that class#was theres nothing wrong with saying “this person seems to have an identity that i connect to and i see myself in them''#but you cant always definitively say “this person was gay/trans/bi/queer''#and for me thats the fun part about queer historical work :)#queer people have always existed but not always in the same way#and its our job as historical interpreters to figure out the contexts they lived in and its Fun to do that
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Girl help I keep thinking about freaking persona 4
#i have banned myself from engaging with any persona 4 related content (except for memes my sister sends me)#because yeah its genuinely deeply upsetting for me and i always feel like absolute shit#but aghhh for some reason my brain has been fixated on it this week thinking about all the offensive garbage it is#and i keep thinking of all the evidence i can gather definitively proving that the writing is sooooo homophobic/transphobic#which is a very easy thing to gather up and prove since its all over the damn place lol#but like im just so fixated on how awful the game is and how the fans are even worse and i have this urge to argue forever#something im sure a lot of yall can relate to#cuz god it hurts to be screaming at people that theyre hurting you and for them to just say no to you as if its up for debate#if this sounds dramatic cuz its Juat A Game liiiike no its not Just A Game this is about#my daily life requires me to argue my existence constantly and its the same for every other damn marginalized person out there#and idk if youre still gonna either ignore or deny that persona 4 isnt batshit insanely offensive then youre stupid#i dont have the patience to argue shit like this anymore because theres no way someone with a brain can deny shit like that#and quite frankly even well intentioned queer fans who try to make headcanons that either say fuck you to the game#or hcs that do nothing at all to challenge the bigotry in p4 are kinda annoying to me#cuz it hurts too much to play along like yeah id LOVE to just slap a rainbow on kanji and a trans guy badge on naoto#and call it a day and enjoy the game outside of it all but thats kinda impossible#when these two characters entire existence revolves around the bigotry and its done in a way that hurts like hell to see#its too real for me to enjoy even if i make positive ‘fuck you atlus’ fan art#yeah ughhhh whatever its just annoying cuz I’ve been doing a good job at blocking this game away from my life#cuz it brought nothing but anger to me but its just been something thats been stuck on me lately#and im really not sure what triggered this or why its been lingering so long like please stoppp#its really embarrassing to be having bad mental illness over a shitty bibleo game 🙄
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this was a comment on one of my post from a recent live event. it was photos of joyful queer buckaroos celebrating together and proving love is real through creation, community, and a trot of love. most important I AM LITERALLY IN PHOTO AS A REAL FLESH AND BLOOD HUMAN
it got me thinking about how DEEP AND VICIOUS the irony poisoning of these early internet communities goes. the way buds like this cannot fathom someone just being a sincere person unrelated to their OWN old days of cynical posting. it is fascinating, and i will admit, sad too
despite a DECADE of work, countless live events, 350 tinglers written well before large language models were a thing, there are still people who cannot imagine someone like me could exist. it is a strange place to be. not just part of me, but my entire EXISTENCE is often gatekept
it is easy to say ‘well chuck your art IS strange’ but honestly i think it is more than that. magical realism is common. there are stories about dinosaurs and bigfeet and unicorns. this scoundrel reaction is about two unspoken things: my art is neurodivergent, and my art is queer
heres the thing: I WILL BE FINE. what concerns me is not an issue of MYSELF, it is a concern for the other young outsider buckaroos who see comments like this one and think ‘is that what they will say if i express MY unique way? will i be dehumanized like this at every turn?'
i will be honest, i cannot say that WONT happen, but i CAN say this: for as deep as this irony poisoning goes, it is slowly dying. the way i was treated at the start of my career is LIGHTYEARS DIFFERENT from the way i am treated now. there is a massive shift towards sincerity
BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY. to young artists trotting up, the things that i am harassed over and doubted for and made fun of for are NOT tangental to what has made me successful, THEY ARE LITERALLY THE SAME THINGS THAT HAVE MADE ME SUCCESSFUL. YES I AM STRANGE, WHAT OF IT?
the things that you tuck away for fear of a review that says ‘there is a PROBLEM with this art because it has always been done another way’ THOSE ARE YOUR SUPERPOWERS. the gatekeepers want you to tuck those parts of yourself away because THEY TUCKED AWAY THOSE PART OF THEMSELVES
never forget that your unique way is PURE UNFILTERED 100 PERCENT ROCKET FUEL. it will stick out (maybe, if you are lucky, scoundrels will even say that someone like you could never actually be real), but sticking out isnt so bad when you are waving the flag of love.
in fact, when youre waving the flag of love, sticking out is pretty dang cool. what are flags for, after all? LOVE IS REAL BUCKAROOS. thank you for reading, and if you enjoyed this long post then please consider preordering BURY YOUR GAYS.
LETS TROT
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The Importance of Studying Queerness in Context.
When studying queer history, one always has to keep in mind two seemingly contradictory things: firstly, that queerness and queer people have always existed, but at the same time, that queerness and queer identities have not always existed the way they exist today.
Modern queer terms and identities did not exist to queer people in the past. They would not have thought of themselves as "gay" or "trans" or even "queer." While these modern terms may seem to fit certain historic individuals, these individuals would not have thought of themselves as such, and it would not be a part of their lived experience. To apply the modern identities of queerness to history is to erase the lives and experiences of queer people in history, and care must always be taken to understand queer history within the context of its time.
When looking at queer history online, there is a *lot* of misinformation and misidentification out there simply because people are eager to apply modern queerness to history, often in places where it doesn't belong.
A lot of old photos get misidentified as gay because they show two people of the same sex showing some level of physical affection towards each other. Okay, I'll admit that the open-mouth kissing photobooth pictures are probably actually gay, but an old picture of two men or two women holding hands or with their arms around each other, or even kissing on the cheek, were common shows of platonic affection.
I hate to break everyone's gay little hearts, but without explicit documentation saying so, assuming that these couples are all gay is putting modern queer identity in places where it simply didn't exist. The women in the final picture are sisters. The "not married" boys are bachelors interested in marrying women.
In the silent film Wings, the emotional climax of the film comes in the form of a kiss exchanged between the characters played by Jack Powell and David Armstrong. It often gets attributed as the first gay kiss in cinema history, even on the fucking YouTube clip I found:
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Except it isn't gay. The two men spend the whole film fighting over who gets to be Clara Bow's boyfriend. When Richard Arlen's character is fatally wounded, his dear friend rushes to his side and kisses him goodbye, because in the 1920s, that was considered the ultimate show of friendship. The movie ends with Jack Powell falling in love with Clara Bow.
Similarly, a kiss shared between Lillian and Dorothy Gish in the 1921 movie Orphans of the Storm often gets attributed as being queer, but it wasn't.
They were sisters playing sisters. None of this was considered unusual.
Pooh-poohing on all of these images that so many people on the internet breathlessly and joyously laud as proud gay history isn't fun. It makes me feel like I'm fucking Ben Shapiro. But if misinformation is allowed to flourish, it allows people like Ben Shapiro to come in and make the argument that queerness is a modern invention and queer people didn't exist in the past.
Everyone loves to see queerness represented in history, but the fact is that none of the stuff in this post would have been seen as explicitly gay and thus shouldn't be called gay today. If we are to understand queer history in its fullness and richness, it is absolutely crucial that we get it right. We owe it to our queer ancestors to recognize, honor, and not embellish the actual lives they lived.
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hey i have a fucking bone to pick with sapphic fandoms
like, i get it okay. i've been on tumblr since 2011, i was in the trenches during the bury your gays nightmare, i grew up on buffy, i watched the 100, i've been through the furious and devastating queerbaits, and i've watched helplessly as the boom of proper progress with sapphic rep has burned and disappeared with the faults of the industry as it is rn and the resurgence of bury your gays in the form of tv cancellations
i even did a fucking guest lecture for a film & tv university course a couple years ago on all of this
we joke about the fact that queer (specifically sapphic) fans flock to any show with the barest hint of rep in it because we're so starved for it, and we talk about the fact that if nothing else, that proves that there's a market and an audience and it usually creates a huge wave of viewership and attention for the show
but i need to fucking point out: acting as though a show exists for the sole purpose of the sapphic relationship you've started watching it for is fucking detrimental to how you'll perceive the show, how it'll get talked about in fandom spaces and then beyond that (bc the line between fandom spaces and wider online discussion of media is a lot thinner than it was ten years ago) and isn't actually going to do any good for sapphic rep! like, at all! because guess what! unless you're watching a show where the entire storyline revolves around romance, this couple you're watching for ISN'T going to be the centre of the story! it's a part of it! and there's such a weird fucking entitled toxicity to how fans act around brilliant storytelling and worldbuilding and writing and characters throwing tantrums about not getting more screentime for the relationship they like because they don't actually care about any other part of the story. and the thing about people who watch something solely for a ship rather than the wider story it exists in, is that a lot of the time, you'll fundamentally misinterpret the characters and their dynamic because you're not taking any of the wider context of the world and story into account at all.
and yes, of course i'm talking about agatha all along in the immediacy. because we knew a long, long time ago that billy maximoff was gonna be an integral part of this story, long before we knew anything about what the vibe of this show was gonna be, long before anyone even had the tiniest whisper of rio's existence. the same way wandavision was monica rambeau's origin story even though the show was wanda's, we suspected that agatha all along would be billy's/wiccan's origin story even if the show focused on agatha. and you know fucking what. that's good fucking storytelling. this show is smart, it's funny, it's curious, it's campy, it's queer, and it's ensemble. that's always been the point. agatha and rio were a delightfully unexpected part of it that added such delicious tension and phenomenal sapphic rep, but you know what else! the point of that dynamic is to flesh out agatha's character! this show isn't about agatha and rio! it's about agatha and billy, who they are, how their pasts and their magic are connected, their traumas and their power and how the road shapes their futures! rio is a part of exploring agatha's past, and it's phenomenal, but i am so fucking bewildered by the ridiculousness of people's reactions to billy now having a bigger part in the story and there being less focus on agatha and rio. you do know that you write scenes and characters and stories in a way that makes sense right? that because of the nature of this show, even if we don't get more than a handful agatha and rio scenes for the rest of the episodes, they're both still sapphic characters, this is still wonderful sapphic rep, and this show is still very, very queer?
like, it's obviously not fair that we have to beg for scraps to have queer shows to watch. but that doesn't mean that any of us get to do such a fucking disservice to the people who make amazing shows and fight to put sapphic rep in them within the contexts of the stories they're telling by whining that it's not enough. what we're getting with agatha all along, what kathryn han and aubrey plaza and jac schaeffer have said with such grace and nuance and intrigue and depth about agatha and rio's relationship, is so fucking rare! and it's nestled within a story that's got so much other intricate storytelling that makes agatha and rio richer characters when you actually pay some fucking attention and care about who they are outside of their sexual tension!
and i'm saying this because this is an issue i see with So many other shows, where the worth of a show gets boiled down to fandoms wanting content of their ship and nothing else and then poisoning the conversation and reception around what else it is that show is doing with its story. idk get some fucking media literacy, grow up and respect artists and creatives.
#anyway#haven't had a rant on tumblr in a hot minute#agatha all along#agathario#billy maximoff#agatha harkness#rio vidal#queer tv
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A significant amount of my opinions about modern queer television are influenced by researching older queer media.
I see a lot of the same vitriol in modern queer fandom discourse that has been playing out in queer spaces since film and television were invented. Shows in the 70s started making steps toward sensitivity consulting in queer media, even as the networks fought them on it. Imperfect but earnest queer representation was met with aggressive protests by homophobes and queer people who thought it wasn't good enough. The argument over good representation vs no representation has been happening for decades and decades.
You spend enough time immersed in old queer media and you really start to vibe with Harvey Fierstein's words in The Celluloid Closet documentary. Or at least, I do.
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Harvey Fierstein: "I liked the sissy. Is it used in negative ways? Yeah, but, my view has always been visibility at any cost."
The way I see it, the way to genuine, loving queer representation that showcases a vast array of experiences is to stop demanding perfection. The fewer queer stories that are allowed to exist, the more of the heavy lifting those stories have to do in the representation department.
When we have numerous queer stories, it's suddenly much less important to argue over whether the queer characters in question are "good" or "positive." They can just be queer characters who exist in the same infinite variety as straight characters. They can be messy, they can be flawed, they can be honest portrayals of the complexity of human existence.
Queer representation will never be perfect, and striving for perfection is how we shoot ourselves in the foot.
Some starter reading for those interested:
Alternate Channels: Queer Images on 20th-Century TV (revised edition) - Steven Capsuto
Hi Honey, I'm Homo!: Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture - Matt Baume
The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies - Vito Russo
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something fascinating to me about egg discourse is how often tme people Also joke about or question their friends potential to be trans, and it's literally never talked about like this.
my cis and tme nb friends routinely joke about celebrities or characters that have big "nonbinary energy" or who otherwise exhibit behavior we would associate with ourselves. i have tme friends and acquaintances who have approached me or my wife and straightforwardly said "something seems trans about you, have I asked for your pronouns recently?"
similar friends have even talked about other still-cis friends in our circle this way, or joked about "when are you going to transition like the rest of us?" or "yeah cis people are a minority in this group, just give it time" or "no wonder you have queer friends with how comfortable with being gnc you are" or etc etc examples like that
even the actual examples of people in my life that I can think of as being the most "invasive" or presumptive about gender have been tme people:
it was my cishet friends who outed me and my wife as trans to everyone at their wedding, including their boomer parents and hundreds of strangers, and called it "the most queer wedding party ever"
it was my tme nb friend who kept saying they could "always tell" her transfem cousin was trans before she came out, and then proceeded to randomly give us extremely personal details about her bottom surgery
it was my transmasc friend who refused to call me and my wife anything other than "little enby beans" after we met and introduced us with our full genders+sexuality labels to every single person one by one at a party
it was my transmasc nb friend who kept insisting my wife could "still be nonbinary" when she was first considering identifying as a trans woman instead, and it was THAT idea that actually slowed her down from making changes to her life that she wanted
it was my cis friends who approached me arm and arm and cornered my outside of a bathroom at a party right after I took a piss to suddenly ask me what my pronouns were because they "heard something" at the party
like, transfems deserve robust support against this trash so a lot of our defensive discourse has ofc been about how it IS okay for transfems to talk about eggs and be jokey about it and non-invasively approach others about being trans
but i swear to god none of these weird people have even stopped to make their discourse ABOUT anyone BUT transfems. it's so clearly targeted!!
no one has EVER approached *me* as a tme nb person and suggested i was pressuring gnc people with my egg jokes. never. nothing even remotely similar. i joke about other people being trans all the time and no one has ever treated me the way you all are treating transfems over this issue.
important note: my examples are all things I recall as being invasive and awkward, and I'm sharing them to make a point about how often rude behavior comes from the same tme people pointing fingers over this. but I still don't think any of them are worth the crucifixion people are treating transfem egg discourse with.
even when my friends were weird to me in the above examples, my reaction was either to confront them about it as friends who I trust to be able to communicate with, or to cut those individuals off after they proved not worth a relationship in the long run. at no time did I desire to make a call-out post or spread rumors about them or publicly declare all of their gender as a screeching menace to society.
my point here is that even when I do think about moments where others crossed a line, acting like this is a "issue trans women have" is blatantly transmisogynistic garbage that only exists to serve the woman-hating machine at the heart of our society. fucking cut it out
#to be clear: i have tons of transfem friends too#and im not friends with all of these people anymore#but thats not the point of this post at all#also obligatory im tme tag#but i think thats also clear in the post
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I've been griping about the normalization of identity outing via social media for a while now. To put it simply, it's become almost some weird societal requirement that if you don't have every detail listed about yourself in your Twitter/FB/etc. bio, then it means you have "something to hide" or that you're not as "verifiable" because your account looks indistinct from that of a bot.
But that societal norm has really only benefited the people who profit off of that information in some way, whether it's through selling user data or through weaponizing details about a person against them.
I know that a lot of us love to use the fun little labels and acronyms in our bio that help others like us identify us as a 'safe person' or as someone who's in the same social/racial/identity groups as them. We're humans, we love to categorize things, it's in our nature (and it's fun!)
But if there's any time to start regulating that habit and challenging the norm that you're obligated to include all your personal info online - it's now.
There was a time when sock puppet accounts were expected and typical, not "suspicious".
There was a time when even age-sex-location was considered "too much information", but once it became the norm, we only EVER gave our personal information beyond generic ASL to people who we knew both online and in real life, or at the very least, people who we had known online for a significant enough amount of time that they had proved to be trustworthy (and even then, we didn't owe that information to anyone, ever; there are forum friends who I made online 10+ years ago and still talk to who do not know my personal information beyond broad strokes).
There was a time when simply being an avatar with a funny username was enough. And it still is enough, but massive platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been brainwashing us for years to believe that's not the case, under the guise of, "You wouldn't want to be dishonest, would you?" Through these same norms, we were led to believe that anime profile pictures are cringe, that having a fake online name is stupid, that the photos of you having fun at social events have to be taken JUST right otherwise you might imply to others that you're not actually having fun.
And considering how long these platforms have been around now, we have entire generations of children now who have been born and raised on that version of the ZuckMusk web, who have been taught that it "protects them" to express to everyone publicly their age, their school, their workplace, their family members, everything about themselves, because to not do so would be disingenuous.
None of this is to imply that the Internet was "safer" back in the day. I definitely should not have been on the Internet as much as I was when I was 13 in the late 2000's, it definitely did not benefit my brain development or my social skills. But the version of the Internet we currently exist in now is one that's been predicated on the false sense of security - the belief that if you're honest, everyone else has to be, too.
We've always had ways of identifying our safe people - by participating in the communities that we know are designed around our hobbies, our interests, our people. They might be small, they might not be as "cool" as the idea of netting yourself a big following of thousands of people, but they're also a lot safer and more genuine than that idealized following ever could be.
Don't feel pressured to include every bit of information about yourself in your bio. Even on Facebook, there's no rule that says you have to list your workplace, your school, your family members. There's no rule that says you have to list your personality type, queer labels, and neurodivergent disorders in your Twitter bio. There's no rule that you have to "prove" your life is real and fulfilled through the verification of photos, location tagging, and open-book sharing. If you share those photos, it should be because you genuinely want to share them, not because you feel some societal pressure to live up to others' expectations.
And I guarantee you, even your local mutuals on Facebook - your former classmates, family friends, distant relatives, coworkers, etc. - do not actually give that much of a damn about your personal life that they should be owed that much of a look into it on a daily basis. They've got their own shit going on, they literally do not need to know every detail about you.
I know it sounds scary. It also sounds kind of boring, when we've been used to a certain "way" of browsing and participating for years, that if we don't do so, it feels like being in the "out group" and that we're "breaking the rules". But I promise you, after spending over half my life online, those rules do not exist or benefit anyone who wouldn't profit off that information.
If you're wanting to learn how to branch off from major platforms like Facebook and Twitter and/or become more self-sufficient online, here are some guides to navigating the Internet like an old schooler that may help you!
FREE SITE BUILDER:
DIGITAL PIRACY 101:
(also in addition to everything mentioned here ^^^ they neglect to also mention Tor Browser which is a light and free-to-use browser software that allows you to browse anonymously; note that it's similar to a VPN in that it helps hide your identity online, HOWEVER it won't mask you from your ISP quite as effectively as a VPN, and if you sign into personal accounts with Tor, that's still going to obviously out you online lmao but I love using Tor for the odd time when I need to make a sock puppet for something and don't want it linked to my IP! and unlike a VPN, it's free to use!)
LEARN HOW TO USE RSS FEEDS:
People still use these! They're especially helpful for getting updates from your favorite pages and sites directly to your browser WITHOUT having to worry about stupid algorithm bullshit picking and choosing what you see. And many sites DO have RSS support once you know how to find it! (like adding in /rss at the end of a URL! Like this!)
FAKE EMAIL SERVICES:
LEARN HOW TO CODE IN HTML/CSS/JAVASCRIPT (AND MORE!):
DECENTRALIZED SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS:
I hope this helps arm you with some new knowledge in how to navigate the Internet like a Certified Old Person™️(like meeee!) Make your secret alt blogs for besties! Make your formal Facebook accounts that are clean of personal information and present the most neutral, safe-for-work version of yourself and keep the fun stuff to the secret profiles and chat groups that are just for you and friends/family/etc!! It might be "inconvenient" to have multiple accounts for the same purpose, but it's also INCREDIBLY freeing and can make your online experience both safer and more enjoyable.
Being "less" of yourself online does not make you any less you. It is your identity - you do not owe any amount of it to anyone beyond yourself. And in times like these, your identity is your greatest asset. Protect it.
#how to#online safety tips#be safe on the internet y'all#oh and delete those period trackers#just get yourself an old school calendar / notebook for tracking#trust me on this one
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A thought I’ve been having: While it's important to recognize the long history of many current queer identities (and the even longer history of people who lived outside of the straight, cis, allo “norm”) I think it's also important to remember that a label or identity doesn't have to be old to be, for lack of a better word, real.
This post that i reblogged a little while ago about asexuality and its history in the LGBTQ+ rights movement and before is really good and really important. As i've thought about it more, though, it makes me wonder why we need to prove that our labels have "always existed." In the case of asexuality, that post is pushing back against exclusionists who say that asexuality was “made up on the internet” and is therefore invalid. The post proves that untrue, which is important, because it takes away a tool for exclusionists.
But aromanticism, a label & community with a lot of overlap & solidarity with asexuality, was not a label that existed during Stonewall and the subsequent movement. It was coined a couple decades ago, on internet forums. While the phrasing is dismissive, it would be technically accurate to say that it was “made up on the internet.” To be very clear, I’m not agreeing with the exclusionists here—I’m aromantic myself. What I’m asking is, why does being a relatively recently coined label make it any less real or valid for people to identify with?
I think this emphasis on historical precedent is what leads to some of the attempts to label historical figures with modern terminology. If we can say someone who lived 100 or 1000 years ago was gay, or nonbinary, or asexual, or whatever, then that grants the identity legitimacy. but that's not the terminology they would have used then, and we have no way of knowing how, or if, any historical person's experiences would fit into modern terminology.
There's an element of "the map is not the territory" here, you know? Like this really good post says, labels are social technologies. There's a tendency in the modern Western queer community to act like in the last few decades the "truth" about how genders and orientations work has become more widespread and accepted. But that leaves out all the cultures, both historical and modern, that use a model of gender and sexuality that doesn't map neatly to LGBTQ+ identities but is nonetheless far more nuanced than "there are two genders, man and woman, and everyone is allo and straight." Those systems aren’t any more or less “true” than the system of gay/bi/pan/etc and straight, cis and trans, aro/ace and allo.
I guess what I’m saying is, and please bear with me here, “gay” people have not always existed. “Nonbinary” people have not always existed. “Asexual” people have not always existed. But people who fell in love with and had sex with others of the same gender have always existed. People who would not have identified themselves as either men or women have always existed. People who didn’t prioritize sex (and/or romance) as important parts of their lives have always existed. In the grand scheme of human existence, all our labels are new, and that’s okay. In another hundred or thousand years we’ll have completely different ways of thinking about gender and sexuality, and that’ll be okay too. Our labels can still be meaningful to us and our experiences right now, and that makes them real and important no matter how new they are.
We have a history, and we should not let it be erased. But we don’t need a history for our experiences and ways of describing ourselves to be real, right now.
#stars has thoughts#i'm not letting the exclusionists have this one#'it was coined on the internet' 'it was only coined a few (read: in the case of aromanticism almost 20) years ago' true. so what?#that doesn't make it less real#i hope what i'm getting at comes across here#(and that it doesn't sound like im trying to invalidate all LGBTQ+ labels lol. i'm trying so hard to not do that)#labels are social technologies. if they are useful here and now then they are useful#we are using technologies that are new and innovative and useful to us in this time and place#in other times and places they have not always been and will not always be useful#but that's true of any technology. doesn't mean we don't get to use them now#queer#aspec stuff#aro thoughts
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I was angry. I'm still angry. But sadness and exhaustion have overtaken that anger, and I have A LOT to say about this.
Dead Boy Detectives is a very special show to me. It occupies a ridiculously large place in my heart, and it's brought me joy in a way that only a few pieces of media ever have. When I watched it for the first time, Edwin Payne had my heart within minutes. By the end of episode one, Charles Rowland did, too.
It meant a lot to me, seeing such wonderful and nuanced queer characters brought to life in the type of paranormal story I have always loved. In these past months, Edwin and Charles have felt like real friends to me, and to never see them again without a satisfying conclusion to their story is something I have not truly processed. Same for Niko and Crystal and The Cat King - they should be back. But I haven't fully processed it yet, that they're not coming back, and yet I am still aggreived.
@netflix is, at this point, so fucking gagged on capitalism's dick that they're not even pretending to care about art anymore. Dead Boy Detectives is genuinely masterfully made on just about every level. The actors did a phenomenal job and I will be following all their careers heavily. Steve, Beth, and the writing team crafted an incredible tale. The sets, the lighting, the props, the effects were all on point. This was a well-constructed program, and you could tell that everyone involved with the project gave it their all because they cared so deeply.
(Also my heart breaks for the whole cast, but it's hardcore hurting for George since this was not only his first screen role but one he clearly thought he would be keeping as of two weeks ago. He seemed so secure. I hate this for him.)
In addition to being a good show, DBDA had good reception. It's got a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, was on the Top 10 for several weeks, got 4.7 million views within week one, and was getting daily articles posted on various review sites with NOTHING but praise. The fandom is incredibly active. We trend on Tumblr like five times a week and on Twitter regularly as well.
THE. SCRIPT. FOR. SEASON. 2. WAS. WRITTEN.
What the fuck happened?
Idiot executives at @netflix, choking on the dick of capitalism, probably just thought that they wouldn't get new subscribers for a second season of an existing show that didn't rake in Bridgerton-level cash. That's how they work - people who are interested in it are already subscribers, so who the fuck cares about them? Better to make some other shit, hope new people subscribe, and maybe that'll be a Bridgerton-level hit.
But also, Netflix has fun little trends to look into. And, when you look at the lineup of shows Netflix has canceled, they are overwhelmingly queer. The homophobia of @netflix and their operatives is clearly boundless, and it hits here really badly because this show was clearly made with a queer audience in mind. It was one of the most authentic pieces of queer media I have ever experienced, if not THE most authentic pieces of queer media that I have ever experienced.
It's fucking ridiculous that Netflix canceled a show that they commissioned a completed script of months ago. It sucks that they decided that their existing subscribers, their queer subscribers, did not matter.
Edwin and Charles are ours now. Well, of course, they're George's and Jayden's respectively, but the characters are no longer Netflix's to use and throw out. They're ours now, our fandom's, and we all love them so much.
And we deserved to see more of them, and we deserved to see their love story play out onscreen, but I for one am not going anywhere. Let's give Edwin and Charles - and the rest of the gang - millions of versions of the stories and endings that Netflix deprived them of.
#dead boy detectives#dbda#im literally crying now#edwin payne#charles rowland#payneland#george rexstrew
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