#reading queer stories written by queer people

[thriveonanonymity]

um is that okay to read harry potter fanfiction about how much jkr is a bitch and how much cooler the world might have been if the worldbuulding and story were better and everyone was queer as a treat

asking for a friend

but fr i, um, disagree? i think i have the expertise to say that, being a trans little baby and all. i do think a lot in the books is shit, but a fandom is bigger than the thing it's based on? it is also not written solely by rowling, i should add, enev in cases of canon media. and beside that there is a lot of stuff made about and around canon garry potter, that is actually, like, good? fanworks that do a better job storytelling, wordbuilding and doing representation, and, as a treat, aren't written by a rich mysoginistic utterly culturally insensitive bigoted bitch who can't even fucking comprehend the concept of how racism functions? i feel like thats fine, actually? i like the world where the ip is stolen from her by the fans who disagree with her bullshit via making fanfiction with actual queer representation, or actually making your villains interesting, etc, etc - i like that world a lot more than the one where people just abandon their passion and move on. that feels, i guess, kind of sad to me? passive. a lot of potential energy left to rot. i also think it would infuriate her significantly more to see someone draw fanart of, like, trans dumbledore or hermione, and anything that might piss off jkr pleases me.

then again, i'm not that qualified, even though i am of the correctish brand of genderfuckery and am infuriated by that bitch ass existing im not and never really was a big fan of harry potter. dont really have nostalgia for it, really. i read weird books as a kid yall.

remember when jkr went full mask off and started acting evil and hp fans were like "ok we need to think carefully about the stuff we consume, how can we justify enjoying this series, how can we love it without supporting the author? should we try to separate art from artist or should we leave it be? isn't showing solidarity to trans folks more important? if we remain openly fans of this series will it show trans people we aren't safe or trustworthy?"

and then they decided that none of those questions really mattered and they continued to uncritically consume their stupid badly written children's books, and jkr has only gotten more nasty and hateful, and people only hate trans folks more, and now the answer to the last question is invariably YES. I don't trust any goddamn person who still loves Harry Potter in 2024 bc you've decided your nostalgia about a mediocre story written by a bigot is more valuable than the safety and wellbeing of trans people 🫶🖕

[anodizedblack]

I almost never make posts in here, but I’ve gotta get this out of my chest at last.

• Discovering My Hero Academia at 15.

• Seeing similarities between Izuku and myself : an emotional teen with a wish to help others, whose poor self-estime makes him try to befriend his bully.

• Enjoy the series for a while, but starts getting disturbed by Katsuki showing violent sadism while personally escaping any consequences.

• Find out a lot of fans not only like Bakugo for his toxic traits (although the author specified he was trying to make him unlikeable), but they also shipped the two together since day one.

• I’m seeing people glamorise a victim wanting the attention of his bully. I’m seeing people glamorise what broke my self-worth in my most vulnerable phase. It hurts.

• I try to not pay attention to it, but it just takes so much space in the fandom : shippers talking about a victim dating his active bully as « so romantic », people obnoxiously insisting how the manga WANTS YOU to see them romantically, even people drawing Bakugo… raping Izuku. I’m feeling sick to my soul, this is agonising.

• The pairing takes so much space its shippers impose themselves as THE queer ship, declaring anyone disliking it either can’t read or is homophobic, even though tons of same-sex ships from the manga have little to no backlash about them, because they’re simply not toxic.

• One Tumblr user even calls me homophobe for not seeing them romantically, something I have never been and never will be. And it happened at a time I was questioning my own sexuality.

• Fine, I won’t try to engage too much with this fandom and focus on the manga. But even without all this, it’s getting harder to enjoy : some characters with an interesting premise get eclipsed in favor of others chosen for their popularity in polls, many relationships are barely written and explored, others behave in a way that undo their character growth, the manga tries to introduce themes poorly, and I’m struggling to feel genuine sympathy for most of the villains.

• I just don’t enjoy this manga anymore, better just stop engaging with it.

• Time passes and I only occasionally see online stuff associated with it. Some plot points being discussed, but mostly shipping discourse again. With « bkdk » fans who seemingly dedicate their every online actions and life to that. Whose hostility and obnoxious behaviour has been immensely detrimental to the public image of the fandom, if not of the manga. They are still hellbent on insisting the entire story is about Bakugo and Izuku’s relationship, actually. Anyone believing otherwise, and pointing out parts of the story showing Izuku having feelings for another character is « delulu » of course.

• Bakugo finally makes his apology, 90% through the series. It’s laughable, and sounds like he doesn’t even know the amount of harm he’s done. Shippers use this as an opportunity to make themselves seem regular healthy fans, as if they haven’t been salivating at him verbally and physically abusing Izuku this whole time. The hypocrisy.

• The « first » ending of the manga comes out, and I find it disappointing. This suit should’ve been given to him by the government right after he recovered from his injuries, he saved the goddamn world. But instead he had to wait for years for his friends to spare money for it. Ugh. Anyways.

• The second and last ending, chapter 431 came out ? Izuku kindly declines an offer from Bakugo to work with him ? And it gives a conclusion to Ochako and Izuku’s relationship, showing them sharing feelings for one another ? So they did end up together… and the bkdk shippers are realising that. After all these years of being horrible, all this confidence and entitlement is simply breaking into a million pieces. And I’m loving every second of it. It absolutely brightens my day, my whole fucking weekend, that all those horrible people who fantasised over a ship born from a toxic idea of a relationship, from something that ruines lives, that broke me and countless others… are feeling disappointed, confused, stupid and miserable. Some say they don’t care, that they can seek refuge in their fanfictions written with « their » version of the characters, but the majority are visibly distraught and showing it. We told you guys, and you deserve every second of misery you’re going through.

It’s a low blow, I know. But you brought us this low.

You’re hurting, and we’re having the last laugh

[novelconcepts]

As gently and politely as I can put this: that post I made about outliving him is meant to be an anti-suicide affirmation. It is not meant to be a blinders-on assessment of reality, of the future boiling down to whether one man lives or dies. It is meant to reassure myself and everyone else that the horrors come, and the horrors go, that nothing is permanent, that hope persists with split knuckles and blood on its teeth. Things are rough. Things will likely get rougher. My eyes are open to that, but in the end, the first thing they want from us is to roll over, surrender, die. And I will not be granting that wish. I deserve to be here. You deserve to be here. We deserve to see the sun rise. And it will. I promise.

[gnomebinary]

I've known about the omegaverse for as long as I can remember, but I first read it as written for The Magnus Archives I think. It being written for tma speaks to me especially because it frequently features an asexual character. I'm asexual, I don't have a sex drive (which I think would surprise the majority of the beta public) and the way that writers in the fandom deal so delicately with being asexual but having a body that is capable of being horny quite without your mind's involvement really speaks to my experience. It can be happy and wholesome or it can be super gross and make you feel like your body isn't your.

I also really enjoy super mundane world building. Honestly the sex is my least favourite part, I think it's the part that varies least between works. Here are some of my favourite worldbuilding moments:

"[Name] is an adult. He's called a heatproof taxi before."

Being late because you were stuck in a queue at the pharmacy waiting for your heat suppressants

A millenial alpha character trying to build a nest for his omega partner who is unable to (omegas usually build the nest and are led by instinct), looking up tutorials on youtube and being intimidated by all the gen-z nest tutorials. Gen-z aesthetic wellness culture is perfectly encapsulated in an omega sitting in front of their perfect nest in shades of periwinkle saying "Remenber, there's no shame in nesting, above all it's about honouring your natural cycles!"

I avoid works that make the characters' personalities change drastically as a result of their hormones because that defeats the whole purpose for me, and works that make the omega excessively feminine without engaging with the expansiveness of gender in an interesting way.

I think I was originally intrigued by grim curiosity. I'm ashamed to say I thought it would be weird but funny. I don't enjoy any similar tropes, I don't even like AUs beside fix-its, and I don't gravitate towards fantasy or sci-fi in original fiction. I do, however, enjoy queer media (consider me holding space for mpreg rn) and I think at its best, the omegaverse is some of the queerest media out there.

I think a major change in omegaverse works has been a tendency in some fandoms away from angst stemming from a state that's oppressive to omegas. Honestly I don't think I'd enjoy those stories because the government is bad enough, but that hardly explains the change bc it's not like the general feeling around politics was any more optimistic ten years ago. In fact, I recently read something where an alpha had time off work no questions asked, as heat leave for his partner's heat, just so he could look after him. That got me thinking, if we had people with heat cycles in our society, would we do that too? But then I realised that we DO have people with bodily cycles that affect them quite significantly, and my boss would laugh in my face if I asked for time off for my period. Capitalism can't even prioritise my wellbeing over my work, while the omegaverse is out here recognising by default that a person's partner comes before work. In some ways, these days the omegaverse is the dirty fantasy of a caring state.

I spent much of my undergrad writing about how supernatural bodies can create space for expansive sexualities, both pleasurable and uneasy, and am currently in the early stages of an essay collection about the omegaverse. I've never seen an omegaverse summary that's sufficiently nuanced, but if anyone can do it it's you. Let me know if I can help further in any way. Please censor my url lol

Omegaverse readers & writers!! I want to hear from you!!!

Firstly — Yes — I have already done a lot of research. I don’t need the basics explained to me or the fact that it is an incredibly diverse genre with examples good writing, bad writing, good social commentary, bad social commentary, expansive thoughtful worldbulding, raunchy porn without plot, and everything in between.

What I’m looking for with this post is personal experiences and opinions from people who read/ write this content since I am not one. Feel free to link any fics that exemplify what you’re talking about.

you can write as much or as little as you like, answer as many or as few of the questions as you like:

What fandom introduced you to omegaverse?

What trends and developments have you noticed as the genre has grown over the past 14-ish years?

what initially intrigued you about it?

Are there similar genres, tropes, etc, that you also enjoy? (ie. werewolf or other supernatural romance, science fiction which explores alternative biology) basically, how does omegaverse fit into your wider literary tastes?

what do enjoy most about it?

what are some elements you avoid or are critical of?

Any specifics or nuances you want the non-omegaverse reading public to know about

In case anyone is coming across this post without knowing who i am — Hi! I’m a youtuber and I make videos about online subculture, fandom, and such.

Your comment on this post may be read aloud in an upcoming video!! Please specify if you would like me to censor your url or leave it visible.

[aromanticannibal]

ppl really b acting as if there's only one specific ship that has weird shippers that will complain about ppl not shipping their otp. it's literally always the case you either get fucked over for liking a gay ship or for liking a straight ship or for liking a toxic ship or people just start going "oh there's nothing wrong with the ship but the shippers💀" and you don't fucking know what they're talking about. like can we all just chill. the weird shippers r everywhere it's called some ppl are assholes sometimes. it's not fandom specific

[shmowder]

just need to vent about the Olympics

[rebelwriter99]

Guilt is hard in this fandom.

What’s weird for me is it’s not my first rodeo with fandom guilt. It’s just personal now.

When JKR made her views barn door obvious, I couldn’t stand anything to do with her in my space. I got rid of loads of HP stuff I had, took down all the decorations I had in my room, and donated my copies of the books. I’d had them since I was 10yrs old. They were a gift from my aunt. I couldn’t look at them without feeling sick. This woman wanted my best friends to stop existing-how could I ever have loved those books? For years I had nothing to do with it.

I’m a more than one fandom human, to some extent. I hop between them. My second love was Star Wars. Now owned by Disney. Fandom populated by…well everyone knows enough about what Star Wars fans are like I think. It got to the point every time a new show was being released I’d hold my breath for the wave of hate. I felt guilty for being a Star Wars fan, I didn’t want to be associated with those people. I didn’t want to give money to a faceless multinational company that doesn’t treat humans very well by and large, unless it’s profitable. It was making me hate being in the fandom, and I don’t engage with it as much anymore. I’m happier for it.

The marauders, as a fandom, feels different.

I fell into it in a very difficult period of my life, I did not start with ATYD, and I still haven’t read a lot of the ‘big fics’ I see mentioned frequently. But it is the fandom I have most consistently and enthusiastically engaged with for a long time. I have actually joined discords and left messages in them. I do not feel scared that someone might communicate with me/recognise I exist if I reblog a post with 4 notes. I am not shy about the fact that this fandom saved my life and to some extent keeps me alive. It’s also how I figured out I’m non-binary (irony of ironies). I could name the stories that help me realise that about myself. It is the first time I have ever shared fics with in real life human friends, and been recommended some back.

But oh gods the guilt is different. If someone asked if I liked Harry Potter now I would wince. I have. It’s sometimes a bit like a dual reality. Where I love the thing that I’m supposed to be driven to rage about. No no, I don’t like her. I like the really queer stories about the characters she invented. How tf am I supposed to explain that? To articulate it? Even to myself. Is it possible to overthink this or am I not thinking enough?

The conclusion I eventually came to was this. Our very existence can’t be protest. But I think our community might be?

The writer and creators and actual queer humans in this fandom (of which there are soooo many), have made me impossibly brave. I’m out. Not to everyone in my life. But mostly. I went to York recently. And yes I did absolutely walk down the shambles smiling in the pouring rain because it was a bit like walking down Diagon alley. But then I got really stupidly brave and visited a queer bookshop for the first time. Those books I bought are sat on my shelf now. It took me a second attempt 15mins after I left the bookshop to go to the cafe upstairs. It was tiny. I’m autistic as all hell and strangers are terrifying. But not there. I spoke to people I’ve never met. Largely about my assistance dog. There were a number of disabled people in there who wanted to know how to get one-but didn’t know. And I got to tell them. Because I could think to myself “for goodness sake these humans aren’t scary! You talk to them on tumblr and discord and watch their tik toks all the time!”. Me of a couple of years ago would never ever have been brave enough to do that.

So I got to help some people that day. Because people I’ve come across in this fandom helped me realise I am very definitely queer, and made me feel safe talking to people as my actual self.

So yes. I feel guilty about being in the marauders fandom. Quite a bit sometimes. But most of the time I have to believe that, as a community, as a fandom, we do more good than a lot of us might think. How many small business are owned and operated by queer people that sell marauders things because we absolutely refuse to give JKR money? Because I know of a few and I definitely don’t know them all. How many people in this community have fundraised for important things? The marauders with Palestine project is a thing. (It also seems a tad weird having typed that-does a fandom have to be morally in credit to be allowed to exist and bring joy? Do the people in it? This seems like an impossible threshold and a very philosophical question)

None of us as human beings are going to have a faultless perfect existence. And I feel queasy about a lot of things I see in the world. Including the fact JKR still makes money off of Harry Potter. But I think I can let the marauders fandom be, in my mind, more than I used to be able to, because of how much goodness and joy it brought to and still brings to my life. And that often doesn’t seem like anything to do with her at all.

something i don't talk enough about as a trans person in this fandom is the guilt.

because i feel so fucking guilty all the time. for,,, doing something i enjoy? which is fitting, i guess, that i hate myself for the very thing transphobes hate me for - living happily.

and i don't talk about it because,,, well. i don't know how to.

it's all very disconnected, isn't it? you will open fics to the disclaimer "i do not support jkr", you engage in queer stories etc etc but,,, you don't really think about it?

until you're picking up your hrt prescription and the price has gone up by a third without warning. until you're booking an "assessment" with the clinic you pay nearly £200 a month to because the government's decided that you need to regularly prove that you're trans enough. until you're having your fifth heart attack and instead of finding answers, you're told it must be the hrt even though you weren't taking it for any of the other times. until you're sitting in an ed clinic and you're told that clearly it's all rooted in being trans, even if you've been here for years before. until you're searching for emergency accommodation because you're homeless and you're rejected by the first six that you try because you "aren't a right fit". until you're buying fucking milk and have your hair pulled and shirt lifted. until you're walking 'home' alone.

and then you get 'home', and you think "what a rough day, i'll do something i enjoy now"

and you speak about a headcanon that people dislike and your face ends up on reddit pages with random strangers dissecting your identity. you talk about a ship people dislike and you're called slurs. you scroll through comments of people whining about a male fictional character in makeup, and suddenly it's not so disconnected anymore.

and you have to come to terms with the fact you are taking joy from something created by a person who wants you gone, and that you actually can't disconnect the two.

and i think i've become too comfortable. which is a wild sentence, but i have.

i think i've become complacent in this idea that my existence in this fandom is a form of protest, but it isn't. my existence is not a form of protest and i guess, it sucks. sometimes.

coming to terms with being in a fandom based on the works of a woman who actively fights for me to not have rights. it sucks.

and it feels like screaming into a void sometimes where no one can hear you because for some reason, being trans is a form of protest, and that alleviates any guilt.

and well, yeah. i guess that's right. i guess there's a point there.

but my existence isn't a form of protest, and i feel guilty for being here. even though i only engage in fanbased work, even if i don't directly profit her, even if i make sure that i make it clear that i do not engage with her in any way. even though i read fics that deconstrust her views, or headcanons that go against her etc etc.

i feel guilty, and i don't really know how to amend that.

but i can recognise that now, and that's something.

[basil-enthusiast]

unpopular opinion but i kind of hated the song of achilles. i thought the prose itself was gorgeous (although it was a bit tiring to read a whole book that was trying to make every line have poetic impact---that made it sort of a slog to get through), but my main complaint is that the romance was written so insincerely. that was NOT gay men that was a straight woman and straight man. why the fuck was patroclus written like that.

[libraryleopard]

Contemporary coming-of-age lit fic novel

When eighteen-year-old Lou is scouted to be a model, she initially has no interest in being the subject of photos when she could take them herself

After a tragic accident, though, Lou flees across the country to New York City and enters the dizzying world of fashion shows, haute couture, and editorial shoots

While Lou finds professional success and fame as a model, she finds herself still grappling with grief and the people she left behind

Character-focused story exploring grief, art, healing, self-acceptance, and queerness

Lesbian main character; broad cast of queer characters

[autistichalsin]

In retrospect, four years later, I feel like the Isabel Fall incident was just the biggest ignored cautionary tale modern fandom spaces have ever had. Yes, it wasn't limited to fandom, it was also a professional author/booktok type argument, but it had a lot of crossover.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a writer, whether fan or pro, publishes a work. If one were to judge a book by its cover, something we are all taught in Kindergarten shouldn't happen but has a way of occurring regardless, one might find that there was something that seemed deeply problematic about this work. Maybe the title or summary alluded to something Wrong happening, or maybe the tags indicated there was problematic kinks or relationships. And that meant the story was Bad. So, a group of people takes to the Twittersphere to inform everyone who will listen why the work, and therefore the author, are Bad. The author, receiving an avalanche of abuse and harassment, deactivates their account, and checks into a mental health facility for monitoring for suicidal ideation. They never return to their writing space, and the harassers get a slap on the wrist (if that- usually they get praise and high-fives all around) and start waiting for their next victim to transgress.

Sounds awful familiar, doesn't it?

Isabel Fall's case, though, was even more extreme for many reasons. See, she made the terrible mistake of using a transphobic meme as the genesis to actually explore issues of gender identity.

More specifically, she used the phrase "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" to examine how marginalized identities, when they become more accepted, become nothing more than a tool for the military-industrial complex to rebrand itself as a more personable and inclusive atrocity; a chance to pursue praise for bombing brown children while being progressive, because queer people, too, can help blow up brown children now! It also contained an examination of identity and how queerness is intrinsic to a person, etc.

But... well, if harassers ever bothered to read the things they critique, we wouldn't be here, would we? So instead, they called Isabel a transphobic monster for the title alone, even starting a misinformation campaign to claim she was, in fact, a cis male nazi using a fake identity to psyop the queer community.

A few days later, after days of horrific abuse and harassment, Isabel requested that Clarkesworld magazine pull the story. She checked in to a psych ward with suicidal thoughts. That wasn't all, though; the harassment was so bad that she was forced to out herself as trans to defend against the claims.

Only... we know this type of person, the fandom harassers, don't we? You know where this is going. Outing herself did nothing to stop the harassment. No one was willing to read the book, much less examine how her sexuality and gender might have influenced her when writing it.

So some time later, Isabel deleted her social media. She is still alive, but "Isabel Fall" is not- because the harassment was so bad that Isabel detransitioned/closeted herself, too traumatized to continue living her authentic life.

Supposed trans allies were so outraged at a fictional portrayal of transness, written by a trans woman, that they harassed a real life trans woman into detransitioning.

It's heartbreakingly familiar, isn't it? Many of us in fandom communities have been in Isabel's shoes, even if the outcome wasn't so extreme (or in some cases, when it truly was). Most especially, many of us, as marginalized writers speaking from our own experiences in some way, have found that others did not enjoy our framework for examining these things, and hurt us, members of those identities, in defense of "the community" as a nebulous undefined entity.

There's a quote that was posted in a news writeup about the whole saga that was published a year after the fact. The quote is:

The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader. This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings. “[You might tweet], ‘Well, they didn’t discuss X, Y, or Z, so that’s bad!’ Or, ‘They didn’t’ — in this case — ‘discuss transness in a way that felt like what I feel about transness, therefore it is bad.’ That flattens everything into this very individual, very hostile way of reading,” Mandelo says. “Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”

A paranoid reading describes perfectly what fandom culture has become in the modern times. It is why "proship", once simply a word for common sense "don't engage with what you don't like, and don't harass people who create it either" philosophies, has become the boogeyman of fandom, a bad and dangerous word. The days of reparative readings, where you would look for things you enjoyed, are all but dead. Fiction is rarely a chance to feel joy; it's an excuse to get angry, to vitriolically attack those different from oneself while surrounded with those who are the same as oneself. It's an excuse to form in-groups and out-groups that must necessarily be in a constant state of conflict, lest it come across like This side is accepting That side's faults. In other words, fandom has become the exact sort of space as the nonfandom spaces it used to seek to define itself against.

It's not about joy. It's not about resonance with plot or characters. It's about hate. It's about finding fault. If they can't find any in the story, they will, rest assured, create it by instigating fan wars- dividing fandom into factions and mercilessly attacking the other.

And that's if they even went so far as to read the work they're critiquing. The ones they don't bother to read, as you saw above, fare even worse. If an AO3 writer tagged an abuser/victim ship, it's bad, it's fetishism, even if the story is about how the victim escapes. If a trans writer uses the title "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" to find a framework to dissect rainbow-washing the military-industrial complex, it's unforgivable. It's a cesspool of kneejerk reactions, moralizing discomfort, treating good/evil as dichotomous categories that can never be escaped, and using that complex as an excuse to heap harassment on people who "deserve it." Because once you are Bad, there is no action against you that is too Bad for you to deserve.

Isabel Fall's story follows this so step-by-step that it's like a textbook case study on modern fandom behavior.

Isabel Fall wrote a short story with an inflammatory title, with a genesis in transphobic mockery, in the hopes of turning it into a genuine treatise on the intersection of gender and sexuality and the military-industrial complex. But because audiences are unprepared for the idea of inflammatory rhetoric as a tool to force discomfort to then force deeper introspection... they zeroed in on the discomfort. "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"- the title phrase, not the work- made them uncomfortable. We no longer teach people how to handle discomfort; we live in a world of euphemism and glossing over, a world where people can't even type out the words "kill" and rape", instead substituting "unalive" and "grape." We don't deal with uncomfortable feelings anymore; we censor them, we transform them, we sanitize them. When you are unable to process discomfort, when you are never given self-soothing tools, your only possible conclusion is that anything Uncomfortable must be Bad, and the creator must either be censored too, or attacked into conformity so that you never again experience the horrors of being Uncomfortable.

So the masses took to Twitter, outraged. They were Uncomfortable, and that de facto meant that they had been Wronged. Because the content was related to trans identity issues, that became the accusation; it was transphobic, inherently. It couldn't be a critique of bigger and more fluid systems than gender identity alone; it was a slight against trans people. And no amount of explanations would change their minds now, because they had already been aggrieved and made to feel Uncomfortable.

Isabel Fall was now a Bad Person, and we all know what fandom spaces do to Bad People. Bad People, because they are Bad, will always be deserving of suicide bait and namecalling and threatening. Once a person is Bad, there is no way to ever become Good again. Not by refuting the accusations (because the accusations are now self-evident facts; "there is a callout thread against them" is its own tautological proof that wrongdoing has happened regardless of the veracity of the claims in the callout) and not by apologizing and changing, because if you apologize and admit you did the Bad thing, you are still Bad, and no matter what you do in future, you were once Bad and that needs to be brought up every time you are mentioned. If you are bad, you can NEVER be more than what you were at your worst (in their definition) moment. Your are now ontologically evil, and there is no action taken against you that can be immoral.

So Isabel was doomed, naturally. It didn't matter that she outed herself to explain that she personally had lived the experience of a trans woman and could speak with authority on the atrocity of rainbow-washing the military industrial complex as a proaganda tool to capture progressives. None of it mattered. She had written a work with an Uncomfortable phrase for a title, the readers were Uncomfortable, and someone had to pay for it.

And that's the key; pay for it. Punishment. Revenge. It's never about correcting behavior. Restorative justice is not in this group's vocabulary. You will, incidentally, never find one of these folks have a stance against the death penalty; if you did Bad as a verb, you are Bad as an intrinsic, inescapable adjective, and what can you do to incorrigible people but kill them to save the Normal people? This is the same principle, on a smaller scale, that underscores their fandom activities; if a Bad fan writes Bad fiction, they are a Bad person, and their fandom persona needs to die to save Normal fans the pain of feeling Uncomfortable.

And that's what happened to Isabel Fall. The person who wrote the short story is very much alive, but the pseudonym of Isabel Fall, the identity, the lived experiences coming together in concert with imagination to form a speculative work to critique deeply problematic sociopolitical structures? That is dead. Isabel Fall will never write again, even if by some miracle the person who once used the name does. Even if she ever decides to restart her transition, she will be permanently scarred by this experience, and will never again be able to share her experience with us as a way to grow our own empathy and challenge our understanding of the world. In spirit, but not body, fandom spaces murdered Isabel Fall.

And that's... fandom, anymore. That's just what is done, routinely and without question, to Bad people. Good people are Good, so they don't make mistakes, and they never go too far when dealing with Bad people. And Bad people, well, they should have thought before they did something Bad which made them Bad people.

Isabel Fall's harassment happened in early 2020, before quarantine started, but it was in so many ways a final chance for fandom to hit the breaks. A chance for fandom to think collectively about what it wanted to be, who it wanted to be for and how it wanted to do it. And fandom looked at this and said, "more, please." It continues to harass marginalized people, especially fans of color and queen fans, into suffering mental breakdowns. With gusto.

Any ideas of reparative reading is dead. Fandom runs solely on paranoid readings. And so too is restorative justice gone for fandom transgressions, real or imagined. It is now solely about punitive, vigilante justice. It's a concerted campaign to make sure oddballs conform or die (in spirit, but sometimes even physically given how often mentally ill individuals are pushed into committing suicide).

It's a deeply toxic environment and I'm sad to say that Isabel Fall's story was, in retrospect, a sort of event horizon for the fandom. The gravitational pull of these harassment campaigns is entirely too strong now and there is no escaping it. I'm sorry, I hate to say something so bleak, but thinking the last few days about the state of fandom (not just my current one but also others I watch from the outside), I just don't think we can ever go back to peaceful "for joy" engagement, not when so many people are determined to use it as an outlet for lateral aggression against other people.

[esperderek]

Hbomberguy did a pretty good job pointing out how Somerton has tried to take up the air of modern queer creators, stealing the works they made to little or no money or exposure, and using them to bolster his own fame. It's a truly reprehensible act.

But I feel like it's also important to briefly touch on what he stole from the past.

The Celluloid Closet is a backbone text on queerness and cinema. Like, if you're at all interested in the subject, please read the book, and watch the doc. Yes, the language will be outdated. It was written in 1981 and the doc published in 1995. Language evolves. I was fortunate enough to both read the book and see the documentary in the early 2000s, when I attended university.

It was written by Vito Russo, who held a Masters in film and a desire to fight for queer rights after witnessing the Stonewell riots. The Celluloid Closet was first a live lecture presentation, then a book. He would try to get the book made into a documentary in the early years, and after he died, others picked up that torch to carry on his work and to pay respect to the man.

Vito Russo was also one of the co-founders of GLAAD. He was a co-founder of ACT UP. You may have, if you've watched documentaries or seen news stories about the AIDS crisis, seen parts of his speech, Why We Fight. He protested, advocated, and educated even as people he knew and loved died, and he himself was dying.

As Hbomberguy notes in his doc, he would go on to pass in 1990. This was a man who fought his ass off, even while dying, for a better tomorrow and better representation.

The fact that Somerton stole his work is beyond insulting to the queer history, and queer film history, that he purports to give a shit about.

[drchucktingle]

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

[thelonelyjew]

Pride banned Jews?!?

So it's that time of year again that I see people circulating stuff that is completely fabricated about what they imagine happened at Chicago Dyke March in 2017.

First, Dyke March is not Pride. It is not meant to be apolitical or single-issue. It is explicitly anti-imperialist, anticapitalist, and, yes, antizionist. It's not the big mainstream pride Parade that has corporate sponsors (and ads for gay tourism in Israel), it's a small radical grassroots demonstration.

Ok now that that's out of the way, they did not "ban Jews". I was there. They did not "ban Jewish symbols". They did not ask anyone to leave because of their Jewish pride flag.

What actually happened was three women who turned out to be employed by Israeli pinkwashing operation A Wider Bridge participated in the march with a rainbow flag that featured a blue star of david in the center. I remember seeing it and disliking it bc it gave me Zionist vibes but neither I nor anyone else bothered them about it.

After the march there was a cookout in the park. The women were asked to leave by a Jewish member of the Dyke March Collective after several hours of hanging out at the cookout because they were harassing other marchgoers.

Immediately publications like Forward, Tablet, JTA, as well as more mainstream publications started running stories making wild untrue claims which you can still read if you Google it because none of these were ever corrected or retracted. It's clear that these AWB agents had press releases pre-written and ready to fire as soon as they managed to provoke any reaction that they could spin into a controversy.

The photos that ran along with these headlines were also misleading. One of them showed a photo of a rainbow flag with a white star in the center. The star on the flag I saw was blue, and the shade of the star has specific political connotations. Showing a different flag with the politically significant color removed is extremely misleading. The one that was carried in the march (and which, again, wasn't banned!) looked like this:

Another banner image, this one in a New York Times article, showed a young woman with dark curly hair holding a sign that says "this is who we are". She was clearly chosen to feature because of her stereotypically Jewish features. The article implies that she is one of the supposedly banned Jews. This is false. You know how I know? Bc that was the friend I was there with that day! She does not identify as Jewish, she looks like that bc she is Italian, and she had no idea she was being photographed!

I had a hat decorated with red and black stars of David, and the following year a bunch of us wore Workers Circle sashes with Yiddish text (which uses the Hebrew alphabet) as well. No one who wasn't employed by a Zionist organization was asked to leave or even questioned about anything related to Zionism or Jewish identity.

I'm resigning myself to the fact that this is going to get dug up and passed around every year and people will believe what they want to believe, but if you hear claims that some queer group "banned Jews" or something similar, please look at the source for the information and if possible try to talk to actual Jewish people who participate in the community events being discussed. And if you hear this about Chicago Dyke March in specific, please correct people. I feel like I'm going insane when this many people are insisting that what I saw and experienced wasn't real and pointing to the barrage of misleading articles as what I should believe over my own experiences.

[deancasforcutie]

#no srsly #Dean is not over for me #and I want to see him kissed deeply by the angel that loves him #but i would not trade a kiss for the story they did tell (via @wellofdean)

I think we can all agree at this point that The Winchesters is basically (Dean's) weekly commentary on some shit that went down on Supernatural? And that basically, the most recent episode is just, you know, reiterating that when you're locked in a room with the person you love and death is pounding on the door, and there's no escape, so this is your last chance, it's time to let that person know how you feel. And, you know, if it's romantic when John and Mary do it, which is debatable (!!!), well... ok. They kiss, so...

I think we can all do the math, here.

The other thing? And, correct me if I'm wrong? But, Castiel, angel of the lord fallen in every way possible, lost from the moment he laid a finger on Dean in Hell, telling Dean (endless pain, endless shame) Winchester, tearfully, that he loves him without expectation or hope, and Dean swallowing hard, unable to speak, but pleading with his eyes for it to not be a goodbye, after more than a decade of pained, mutual, soulful staring, endless self-sacrifice, and love they both acted upon again and again, throughout all the slings and arrows of their outrageous fortunes? Well that is about A GAZILLION TIMES MORE ROMANTIC, even without the kissing.

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

Hey so like many of you, I saw that article about how people are going into college having read no classic books. And believe it or not, I've been pissed about this for years. Like the article revealed, a good chunk of American Schools don't require students to actually read books, rather they just give them an excerpt and tell them how to feel about it. Which is bullshit.

So like. As a positivity post, let's use this time to recommend actually good classic books that you've actually enjoyed reading! I know that Dracula Daily and Epic the Musical have wonderfully tricked y'all into reading Dracula and The Odyssey, and I've seen a resurgence of Picture of Dorian Gray readership out of spite for N-tflix, so let's keep the ball rolling!

My absolute favorite books of all time are The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Classic psychological horror books about unhinged women.

I adore The Bad Seed by William March. It's widely considered to be the first "creepy child" book in American literature, so reading it now you're like "wow that's kinda cliche- oh my god this is what started it. This was ground zero."

I remember the feelings of validation I got when people realized Dracula wasn't actually a love story. For further feelings of validation, please read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. There's a lot the more popular adaptations missed out on.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is an absolute gem of a book. It's a slow-build psychological study so it may not be for everyone, but damn do the plot twists hit. It's a really good book to go into blind, but I will say that its handling of abuse victims is actually insanely good for the time period it was written in.

Moving on from horror, you know people who say "I loved this book so much I couldn't put it down"? That was me as a kid reading A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Picked it up while bored at the library and was glued to it until I finished it.

Peter Pan and Wendy by JM Barrie was also a childhood favorite of mine. Next time someone bitches about Woke Casting, tell them that the original 1911 Peter Pan novel had canon nonbinary fairies.

Watership Down by Richard Adams is my sister Cori's favorite book period. If you were a Warrior Cats, Guardians of Ga'Hoole or Wings of Fire kid, you owe a metric fuckton to Watership Down and its "little animals on a big adventure" setup.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry was a play and not a book first, but damn if it isn't a good fucking read. It was also named after a Langston Hughes poem, who's also an absolutely incredible author.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a book I absolutely adore and will defend until the day I die. It's so friggin good, y'all, I love it more than anything. You like people breaking out of fascist brainwashing? You like reading and value knowledge? You wanna see a guy basically predict the future of television back in 1953? Read Fahrenheit.

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are considered required reading for a reason: they're both really good books about young white children unlearning the racial biases of their time. Huck Finn specifically has the main character being told that he will go to hell if he frees a slave, and deciding eternal damnation would be worth it.

As a sidenote, another Mark Twain book I was obsessed with as a kid was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Exactly what it says on the tin, incredibly insane read.

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin is a heartbreaking but powerful book and a look at the racism of the time while still centering the love the two black protagonists feel for each other. Giovanni's Room by the same author is one that focuses on a MLM man struggling with his sexuality, and it's really important to see from the perspective of a queer man living in the 50s– as well as Baldwin's autobiographical novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain.

Agatha Christie mysteries are all still absolutely iconic, but Murder on the Orient Express is such a good read whether or not you know the end twist.

Maybe-controversial-maybe-not take: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is a good book if you have reading comprehension. No, you're not supposed to like the main character. He pretty much spells that out for you at the end ffs.

Animal Farm by George Orwell was another favorite of mine; it was written as an obvious metaphor for the rise of fascism in Russia at the time and boy does it hit even now.

And finally, please read Shakespeare plays. As soon as you get used to their way of talking, they're not as hard to understand as people will lead you to believe. My absolute favorite is Twelfth Night- crossdressing, bisexual love triangles, yellow stockings... it's all a joy.

and those are just the ones i thought of off the top of my head! What're your guys' favorite classic books? Let's make everyone a reading list!

[sureuncertainty]

anyone have recommendations for good horror books/movies that are in the same vein as bly manor/hill house or magnus archives? (midnight mass is on my radar don’t worry! i avoided it for a bit bc of triggers but i think i’m gonna give it a shot) i’m specifically looking for scary stories that have a distinct human element to them, are character-focused, and aren’t horrifically ableist. preferably not the monster-hunting variety, i prefer the danger/fear to be from humanity not from monsters, and bonus points if it’s sad or tragic or will make me cry my eyes out, or horror-comedies with good character dynamics ! (not excessive gore or slasher type stuff)