#they're gay but like i didn't write that outright

[aurantiumred]

jason grabbing one of those shock bubblegum things that leo offers him and leo being so confused when it doesn't work

[genderqueerdykes]

thank you both for this, i was literally in the process of writing a post about this as i saw these.

i came out as bisexual when i was about 19 or 20 years old, in 2011 - 2012. this was such a difficult thing because everyone around me suddenly had very pointed opinions on me. suddenly i wasn't queer anymore, i was a straight person. i asked people why and they said well bisexual people are half straight, which makes you straight, which means gay people don't want to be around you. i was told nobody likes bisexuals because they're too straight to be gay and too gay to be straight

i had a literal personal dilemma because i didn't feel like that at all. when i was realizing i was bisexual i was realizing i was attracted to all genders in a queer way. i did NOT feel like my attraction to men, women or genderqueer people was straight in any way, shape or form. i've always fit in much better in both gay and lesbian circles. those have always been my home, and my community

in the early days of my transition, when "genderqueer" wasn't even remotely heard of, i had to try to transition into being a man to be seen as trans at all. i went from being forced into lesbian spaces to being forced into gay male spaces. nobody let me pick where i was existing. i was being pushed around. i liked both lesbian and gay male spaces, but i was being told when i could and couldn't occupy the spaces. and then when it came out i was bi everyone called me a traitor and said i was a straight person

my best friend at the time came with me to pride meetings and when her mom found out about that, and that i was bi, she told my friend she couldn't come to those pride meetings anymore, and that i was turning her daughter into a lesbian. her mother would not stop calling me a lesbian all throughout my life. from early childhood, she thought me and her daughter were dating because i was butch and she was femme and we were very close. her mom carried this belief into adulthood, asking her outright if we were lovers. her brother thought we were, too, and taunted us about it.

my own mom weaponized lesbianism against me. she hated how butch i was. she hated that i "looked and acted like a lesbian". she called me a butch and a bulldyke hatefully. she told me not to dress or look certain ways or else people would assume i, and her by some proxy, were lesbians. my mom was insanely butch so i don't really know why this was being leveraged against me but either way when i became a young adult and my mom was trying to force me to learn to drive (something i am terrified of doing due to having 2 dissociative disorders), she asked what kind of car i would ideally like. i said a truck. i was standing there in a purple plaid shirt and she just sighed and went "I knew you were a lesbian." she pointed out my shirt. she was weaponizing lesbophobic and butchphobic stereotypes against me, but either way, reinforcing that i was a lesbian in one capacity or another

i got so tired of my friends harassing me for saying that if i was bi that meant i was straight and i needed to stop calling myself gay because i wasn't, and that it was an "insult" to the gay community. note that nobody gave a singular flying fuck about the bisexual community at all. i was literally bullied out of identifying as bi, because my straight cishet male friends hated it, and my lesbian identifying GF was uncomfortable with it because it made me sound too straight.

the thing is, none of these people asked what being bisexual meant to me.

i actually liked the lesbian community a lot. i really love other lesbians. i have always been attracted to lesbian and butch identifying people for as long as i could remember. i loved seeing strong butch women on TV, even if there were rude jokes. i loved the idea of being a masculine person who is sometimes a queer masculine woman. i loved the idea of being with femmes, i loved queer women and people who took femininity to the next level. i also loved seeing gay men when and wherever they existed. i always felt like i fit right in, and like i was seeing a reflection of a part of myself i needed help discovering.

i have almost always, as long as i can remember, identified as a gay man, and a lesbian, at the same time. my attraction to men, women, and people of all genders is queer no matter what gender of mine is involved. it doesn't matter. i have never felt "half gay half straight" which is why people weaponizing heterosexuality against me as a bisexual forced me to strictly identify as a gay man for almost a decade. it was painful to ignore my butch lesbian side, and to stop identifying as gay, because people would criticize how attractive i found women, and other people

if people had let me exist and explain what bisexuality means to me, they could've understood that bisexual is an inherently deeply queer attraction no matter what genders are involved, but NOBODY cares to listen to the bisexual. everyone LOVES to speak for us because we're just "straight people invading the queer community."

we've had it. bisexuals are queer. even if they DO identify as "half straight" they're STILL queer. let bisexuals define bisexuality. there is no one size fits all form of bisexuality. every single bisexual defines it differently and that's the point. it's a very complex identity with many layers that often relate to gender and presentation as well as attraction.

let bisexuals define bisexuality.

[bromcommie]

case of attachment

seventy years of silence v1.2 alt

I would love to hear about BOTH of these, but if you'd rather pick one, go ahead!!! <3

Hiya, thanks for the ask! I'm nothing if not yappy, so you get both <3 1. case of attachment — this is one of the AO3 Tag Bingo ones I started a month ago but never ended up submitting, and now I'm kind of glad I didn't 'cause I want to work on it more. The prompt was Ghosts, which is nothing if not rife with potential considering who I'm writing about. Because I seem incapable of writing full-scale AUs, though, I didn't take it literally, but the fic's also not...completely devoid of supernatural elements, I guess? I'd call it bordering on magical realism, maybe. It follows a couple of episodes throughout Steve and Bucky's lives through the lens of spirits and the various mythologies surrounding them (as well as the individual and collective fears/hopes they're usually inspired by), because that's a 3 am rabbithole I tend to fall down frequently. There's also something fascinating to the idea that the fear of possession is a fear of loss of identity or personhood or control, but also that possession has historically been used as an explanation for aspects of an identity that are unacceptable being actualized or apparent (mental health issues, behavior not correlated to someone's place in society, sexual desire, etc.) I’m not summarizing this very well, but there’s a hell of a lot of fun to be had with the meaning of ghosts and spirits, is what I’m trying to say.

The name itself sort of comes from the word dybbuk, which from what I understand is just a noun derived from the Hebrew word for 'to cling', but was translated specifically as 'state of attachment' on Wikipedia, and I just found that to be a somewhat strange and clunky but really interesting phrase. Not to mention fitting. Every love story is a ghost story and all that, and every ghost story is about the inability to let go.

In any case I feel like I'm on a roll with this one, so I might even publish it soon!

2. seventy years of silence v1.2 alt — Okay, this is the first script the mockup posters series spawned, so pardon the incoming word vomit as it is my baby—and it kind of ties into the previous one in the sense that it's supposed to be not entirely linear nor lucid in segments (hm, it's almost like there is a pattern starting to emerge here...). Anyway: (more or less) solo Winter Soldier movie, here goes.

I just couldn't stop thinking about how there's a whole goddamned movie missing between Winter Soldier and Civil War in more ways than one, and also about just how great it would've been to see Bucky as the WS (but tbh also just as Bucky) explored more as both the vessel for American Cold War anxieties and the ghost—ha—of their horrific consequences, as well as a storytelling conduit for observing several periods of 20th century history, cosidering he's supposed to be a key player in much of it yet is essentially a complete outsider to the world as a whole and (superficially) to the human experience of it all. I just think it'd work well as a lead up to the politics-adjacent events of CW, too. So on a background level I guess that's what I'm trying to do here via flashbacks that piece together the long road so far, as well as what continuity there is to Bucky pre + post-fall.

On a primary level, it's more or less a classic post-CATWS fic in content, if not form: Bucky post-DC trying to stay out of shit but caught between unwillingly retracing his history when Plot Events keep happening, figuring out how to both get the government off his ass and make sure his captors don't get to him without it becoming an outright revenge spree, figuring out who this Steve character is and if he even wants him to find Bucky (although for the time being I'd say present day Steve features less heavily than usual and is not necessarily the explicit focus, which is not to say that he doesn't play a role and that it's still not gay as all hell), and just figuring out what the fuck is going on in general and how to survive. I also loosely borrow from a couple of the comics runs both with the Department X/Red Room stuff and in order to set up an intro to the Superhuman Registration Act/Sokovia Accords, because I fucking hate how CW handled all that. (Surprise, surprise.)

So basically there is...definitely too much going on there. I've put it on hold a little these days until I figure out what exactly I want to do with it and because it keeps breaking my brain, but I still work on it here and there, so there's still hope.

I've already written way too much, but here's a snippet for the hell of it since I was actually just editing this yesterday:

[bijoumikhawal]

honestly RE: censorship has produced some very appealing queer coded relationships, I think part of the problem is that like. Straight relationships often don't compel me, yeah? And part of it is that I frankly, don't believe a fair amount of these characters are in love. The art contains social conventions so you'll assume they're in love. And if you're unaware of it and buy into those conventions, you never notice a problem (unless they're using the conventions that give female characters no depth. People today are somewhat more aware of that). There's a level of laziness to the way so many straight relationships are written.

Many queer censored relationships can't engage those assumptions because straight people don't understand something is gay until it's bedazzled in rainbow rhinestones, and even then some of them have doubts, so (usually) an artist must put effort in to make you think there's something there. There (usually) must be legitimate connection. And because they're censored, they continually cannot rely on anything too lazy to keep interest. They also can't try to deliver payoff that isn't ready (because they're rarely allowed to deliver payoff, if ever). They can't squash the appeal of a relationship by not knowing how to write these characters in a steady relationship to the point where you hate it.

You basically end up getting a (sometimes years long) build of potential and genuine connections, without a satisfying resolution- which sucks, but it also can be very compelling. The inability to say I love you outright means the characters must say it in other ways that tend to be more emotionally impactful- such as holding out a human heart to each other, selfless and hopeless sacrifices, pulling you out of hell, etc. You could argue these moments are an example of "showing not telling" even.

But as we move into more mainstream queer art I feel like some people are starting to use the same conventions I find so lazy and boring in depicting straight relationships. Because it's a Gay Piece of Media you know there will probably be a gay relationship, so you do come in with assumptions that the creators can play off of more efficiently than otherwise. You can miss at establishing the connection. You can rush the payoff. You can write the chase well but fail in writing the domestic. You can tell me these characters are in love without me buying in and believing it because you didn't really give me much to believe in.

[hungry-skeleton]

Now that I've had time to process the game properly I've got some Thoughts™ about Into The Hive.. Spoilers under cut for the 2 people on tumblr that play Chicken Police

First things first, I cannot say with a sound mind that this was a bad game because it wasn't. Into The Hive was a fucking blast up until the final act. The gameplay itself was very fun and the visuals were a huge upgrade from Paint It Red. To get it out of the way, yes I understand that it had a rough development due to covid and publisher changes so I can't be too mad about some jank details. However, some of the writing choices were just. Baffling honestly.

For the Hive itself, I was so hyped to finally see it from all the buildup it had in the first game. Unfortunately I don't think this game really delivered? It wasn't an outright disappointment it was just... Eh? The original game made it seem like a lawless wasteland with corpses and cannibals everywhere but all it really turned out to be was a dirtier city with even more depressed people. I was expecting to walk into a purge movie honestly, but maybe that's my fault. For the Hive being the name of the game we barely did any exploring, I feel like we only scratched the surface of the place and didn't even get to see the worst of it.

The exploration of this game in general just felt less in depth than the first. There's no real optional characters to speak to unlike the first game (which makes the Talkative Breed achievement kinda pointless) and it overall felt more cramped and railroaded. There wasn't any limited time events for special dialogue like in the first game unless you count like.. The Bloodboyle birthday thing that's super easy to miss.

While the characters were fantastic as always the only real problem with them was the seemingly shoehorned "romance" between Sonny and Monica. I know haha I'm the "sonny and marty are super gay" guy but speaking entirely about canon, this just doesn't work. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Monica. She and Sonny's one on one interactions in the later half of the game were great, but there's literally nothing about their relationship that is romantic to me. They're good friends, they have been since the first game, and literally nothing about the way they interacted changed. Yet every character was acting as if there was suddenly sparks flying and unmistakable chemistry. They acted the same towards each other as they always have?? I get that the games theme is moving on but I don't think a new relationship is necessary for Sonny to do that, especially not in the way that it was handled.

The final act is where the issues really become prevalent. This games biggest problem is how obviously rushed the conclusion is. Everything was smooth sailing and really enjoyable until the climax. We didn't get to understand the villains and their motivations the way we did Wessler in Paint It Red. In fact we barely got any time with them. Mick was there for a grand total of 2 minutes before fucking vanishing and all we really got out of him was a half baked backstory that he admitted to way too quickly. Everything culminated in the villains being 3 steps ahead of us the entire time and the grand victory just being shooting the bitch (which Sonny once again couldn't do himself). All this did was make me feel like everything I had done was for jack shit. Every clue and lead a trap that was ended with a single bullet. So unbelievably unfulfilling, even if it was still a victory.

Lastly, of course, the elephant in the room. Marty's death was stupid, plain and simple. Writing out of the way, the logistics just didn't make sense? Did Mick only have one bullet or something? Why'd he drive away after a single shot? Marty's death added literally nothing to the story. It was abrupt, thrown in at the last few minutes of the game, and almost felt sort of... passive aggressive in a way? I don't know how else to put it.. There was an air of insincerity to the entire sequence. If you're going to permanently kill a main character there had better be a good reason and there just wasn't one. I literally cannot fathom why this choice was made. So they didn't have to make anymore games? Okay then just don't? Why'd you have to do that? Marty had a family to return to and Sonny had already made up his mind on leaving Clawville, the end of the Chicken Police was already set in stone.. This just felt like an unnecessary jab at no-one in particular.

Some smaller things that bothered me, rather than answering some older questions the last game set up like the shooting incident they instead chose to not answer anything and throw in a few more questions about Sonny's past that will likely never be answered now. Unless they intend on making prequels of some kind? But even that just doesn't feel right now. You see what needlessly killing a main character does? Lmao. Also for the combining feature in the inventory being added we barely got to use it, I wish there was more use in that.

Characters and voice acting were fantastic as always. But otherwise yeah, that's what was on my mind. It's a solid 6/10. I had a great time but the final act really soils so much of the full experience. Lmk what you few other Chicken Police fans on Tumblr think

OK I'm done yapping now, I'm gonna draw Sonny and Marty kissing sloppy style

[rippleclan]

[Image ID: A pixel pride flag with the title "Clan Culture: Gender & Sexuality]

So... gay cats! I'll admit, RippleClan's Promise doesn't really focus on queer themes all that much, but there are gonna be some gay cats, and they're gonna be in realistic, well-written relationships, and I'm going to write them through the lens of a fictional culture! Yeah! I don't want the cats to see gender and sexuality just like modern humans do, so I want to give them a few quirks that you may have already seen in Moon 11.

Gender: Scent-Based Assumptions

Now I'll be honest, a lot of cats in the Clans are cis. It's just statistics, is all. However, cats don't have all the physical gender identifiers us humans do. Sure, ginger cats are more likely to be toms, and tortoiseshells are almost always born female, but there are plenty of exceptions! As such, Clan cats can't just assume they know what someone is from far away.

When meeting a new cat for the first time, when they are some distance away, a Clan cat will use they/them pronouns to define the newcomer. However, once the cat comes closer, the Clan cat then switches to he/him or she/her based on the cat's smell. This is because toms and mollies have distinct differences in their scent. The intensity of someone's hormonal scent varies throughout any given moon, but it is fairly consistent among fertile cats like those in the Clans. It's hard to translate tom-scent and molly-scent into human terminology, since a cat's sense of smell is far superior. However, based on research into actual cats, I have a few analogies.

Tom-scent is the stronger of the two and possesses a slight sour tint. Molly-scent, meanwhile, could best be described as both sweet and salty. Spayed/neutered cats possess either an extremely weak version of their birth-scent or none at all. In those situations, or when a cat's scent is confusing, Clan cats will check with the newcomer.

If your scent does not match up with your gender/pronouns, then you'll need to introduce yourself. This is common in Clan culture, so no one feels weird about it. It's weirder for someone whose scent matches their gender to specify pronouns, as in a Clan cat's eyes, its just restating something they already know.

Gender: Scent Affirmation

Since scent is the biggest identifier of toms and mollies, trans cats in the Clans focus less on changing stuff about their bodies and more on shifting their scents. Clerics have some treatments for this! Lemonweed is a common treatment to reduce tom-scent or molly-scent if the trans warrior eats some of it. When it comes to producing a certain scent, different cats need different herbs. Trans toms can use pine pollen, stinging nettle root, or sasparilla root. Trans mollies can add fennel to their diets instead.

If a cat is nonbinary or otherwise doesn't want their tom-scent/molly-scent, they'll focus on lemonweed. In theory, if humans kidnapped them and didn't kill them outright, they might be able to return with all that scent stripped away, but that's not really feasible.

Sexuality: We Care About One Thing and One Thing Only

Clan cats don't really care about sexual nuances. You can really date anyone (okay not really but not based on gender). They mostly look at individual relationships and ask a single questions: can they make kits?

I know, that's an icky question to us, but that's because we don't live in a society where our survival is contingent on a small population reproducing. All relationships are classified as either able or unable to have kits. Most straight relationships are in the former category. However, relationships between, say, a trans tom and cis tom might still fall into that category too (but I'm not writing that for... multiple reasons). These relationships have a cultural pressure to have at least one litter of kits that survive to adulthood. It can be hard to be in a relationship where kits are possible, but you just don't want any.

Meanwhile, if the relationship is physically unable to produce kits, there is some cultural disappointment that can linger over a relationship. However, this is resolved if the couple manage to adopt some kits (which considering how often Clangen cats just find random kits, isn't a long shot), as adoption is seen as the same as birthing kits right into the nursery.

(Up next, artisan lore!)

[kismetconstellations]

2, 3, 7, 8, and 18 for Lance or Hunk :D

Why not both?

The warning/disclaimer from the previous Q&A still applies:

I have not watched Seasons Three through Six in their entirety. I am vaguely aware of certain developments from these seasons, thanks to my interaction with fanworks incorporating them, but I cannot offer any sort of detailed analyses based on events exclusive to them.

With that out of the way, let's do this!

Lance

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

I can't remember who, but someone else said it best-- Lance is very much the average teenager who finds himself in an extraordinary situation. He's cocky, a bit vain and high-maintenance, immature, flirtatious, overconfident, and a glory hound, but, at the end of the day, he's a good kid whose heart is in the right place. He has moments of humility, vulnerability, and homesickness when the reality of his situation sinks in, yet, even when he doubts himself, he always manages to come through for the people he cares for.

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

He can be somewhat obnoxious, sometimes. It's an understandable side-effect of being a hormonal teenager whose perspective on things is a bit skewed by a self-centered worldview. Still, I could do without him sexually harassing Allura,

and aggressively getting in Shiro's face when he didn't agree with Shiro's call to have Keith accompany him to their first meeting with the Blade of Marmora. (Even though that call was necessary for the plot and the reveal that Keith is half-Galra.)

7. What’s something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

I like when he's a charming, somewhat amusingly annoying point of view character in general, non-shipping fics, and the sensible comic relief friend to Keith in Keith/Shiro fics, ready to administer a pep talk or hefty dose of common sense in his own unique way when needed.

8. What’s something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

"Langst" (A.K.A.: writing him as the biggest woobie and victim in the entire universe, with members of his team ignoring or outright bullying him so he can whine and angst about it and contemplate suicide or self-harm over it), attempting to turn him into Shiro, acting as though Shiro being gay isn't "good enough" representation or they were "queerbaited" because Lance wasn't confirmed bisexual and shown onscreen playing tonsil hockey with Keith, treating him like the only character who matters and whining about how he was "done dirty" by this show when Allura and Shiro objectively were handled with the most insensitivity, disrespect, and negligence of anyone...

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

I love Lance and Hunk's friendship. They're (mostly) sweet boys who are trying their best, even though they're in way over their heads, and always have each other's backs when push comes to shove.

And, Hunk.

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

He's such a sweetheart,

and also surprisingly has some of the strongest character development. He goes from being terrified of the existence of aliens and wanting to bail out of sneaking out of the Garrison, infiltrating the quarantine zone, and venturing into space, in order stay in the barracks where it's safe, even suggesting handing the Blue Lion over to the Galra out of fear of them invading Earth to seize it, to adamantly standing his ground against a group of aliens when Lance is injured and in desperate need of a healing pod, fighting to fulfill a promise to a dear friend, and wanting to head into an active warzone to save his parents.

He may be scared, even terrified, but he's always willing to do what needs to be done. Whether it requires him risking his life to vanquish evil and save the day, offering his best attempt at a motivational speech,

being the voice of reason who questions authority,

or ingeniously whipping up a delicious comfort meal with alien ingredients for someone in need.

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

The "jokes" at his expense. Be it his anxiety, his stomach issues, or his weight. Showing him daydreaming about and salivating over food, and "comedic" gags about him being too big to fit into certain spaces get really old really fast.

7. What’s something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

I like when fandom treats him with the respect that he deserves, writing him as a three-dimensional character who has his flaws, but can always be counted on to act as a solid, dependable rock for his friends.

8. What’s something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

Ignoring him because he's not conventionally attractive enough for their tastes, claiming that he's "boring", and reducing him to a one-note side-character to be paired off with Shay or Romelle on the peripheral of the main story, so they don't have to explore him or his relationships in great length, or at all.

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

I already stated my love for his and Lance's friendship,

so I'll reply, here, that I also enjoy his relationships with Pidge,

Keith,

and Allura.

(Watching him interact with Sal from Vrepit Sal's in the space mall food court is also a lot of fun.)

----

Thank you ever so much for the submission!

[thestobingirlie]

I'm rereading a Steddie fic that was one of my favourites. For the most part it's still good, I love the writing. But it's the way the background R/nance is handled. I never noticed it before, I guess r/nance didn't bother me as much as it does now.

In this fic it has Nancy being incredibly mean, and at times outright cruel to Steve, and by cruel I mean it makes her words in the bathroom fight seem kind. And Robin is just fawning over Nancy at every turn. No matter how bad Nancy is treating Steve, Robin is all over her, talking her up and making eyes at her.

And I'm just???? Robin wouldn't stand for someone being so mean to Steve, let alone be crushing on/making eyes at someone while they're being cruel to him.

It's again making me convinced that r/nance shippers don't understand the importance of friendship and platonic relationships.

i think this version of nancy is kind of an extension of a trope we see a lot in mlm fics. which is turning the woman standing between the gay ship into a raging bitch.

so, some steddie writers, in order to get nancy out of the way, present her as an exceedingly horrible person to steve. who abused him and loathed him for their entire relationship. who has no care for him at all. this happens in however many fics, people read them, and write their own, imitating this writing. until eventually fanon nancy just constantly treats steve terribly.

i also think something that kind of contributes to this is, like you said, people vastly misunderstanding what friends are lmao. this growing idea that no one owes anyone anything and who cares if what you do hurts someone you love. of course robin wouldn’t give the tiniest shit that her actions might have a negative affect on her best friend! because she doesn’t have to, so why would she.

it’s also just sad that so many people say they prefer platonic stancy to romantic (fair! everyone has their own taste), but then don’t actually explore platonic stancy. or by ‘exploring it’, they just turn nancy into a dick and steve into a doormat.

[most-canon-non-canon-ship-poll]

They don't even like each other

Why Sasusaku is shit - a submission-based essay, part 1/2

Sasusaku - a canon het ship from the Naruto and Boruto fandoms between Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Hanako

sasuke has not and has NEVER had a shred of interest in sakura from the get-go. she continually harasses him and refuses to take his rejection as a no. later on in the series they try to kill each other at one point but sakura is still stupidly in love with him even though the dumbass instigated the killing attempt. he leaves her for dead at a later point toward the end of the series when they're literally fighting against a god lol. and STILL she tries to confess her love to him just for him to reject her once a-fucking gain. the series ends with him pushing her away. in the series sasuke's brother itachi has this gesture where he pokes sasuke on the forehead as a sign of distance- and sasuke does the same to sakura. SOMEHOW they end up together in the horrid sequel series boruto. but after allegedly knocking her up (which is a dubious topic in of itself which is a whole nother topic. but there are maternity doubts about their daughter sarada) he abandoned her to "go on a misson" for over 10 years. every time he is around her he looks like one of those animals in a really bad zoo that wants to ram itself against the glass in its enclosure. IT'S PRACTICALLY OUTRIGHT STATED HE AND SAKURA HAVE NEVER EVEN KISSED!! also this doesn't factor into how much the ship itself sucks but the shippers are some of the most homophobic pieces of shit i have encountered in any anime fandom <3 i hate them so much and i hate their shitty ship even more!

okay. listen. this has been done to death but HOLY FUCK. literally the reason sasuke even married her despite having NO INTEREST FOR THE ENTIRE SERIES was because she HARASSED HIM SO MUCH that he FINALLY GAVE IN JUST TO SATISFY HER. she manipulated him REPEATEDLY. she gave up on him after he left and tried to manipulate naruto into not going after him. they have NO CHEMISTRY. NO ROMANTIC BUILDUP. SASUKE IS A FLAMING HOMOSEXUAL. THEY HAD A KID?? THAT HE ABANDONED FOR THIRTEEN YEARS???? THEIR ONE DATE LASTED TWO AND A HALF MINUTES??????? THEY PROBABLY HAVEN'T EVEN KISSED?????????????? KISHIMOTO DIDN'T EVEN TRY TO WRITE A ROMANCE. HE JUST ONE DAY SAID "OH YEAH BTW SASUSAKU IS A THING NOW" PROBABLY JUST TO APPEASE THE SASUSAKU FANS OUT THERE. NARUTO AND SASUKE HAD MORE ROMANTIC CHEMISTRY BUILT UP WITHIN THE FIRST FIVE EPISODES THAN SASUKE AND SAKURA DID IN THE WHOLE GODDAMN SERIES.

She was in love with him for the entire series. he thought she was fucking annoying. that never really changed but the author decided they should end up together at the end. they got married and had a kid and he went on a trip for the kid’s entire life. he had more interest in his best friend/rival/canon soulmate. the author can’t write women. i feel very bad for sakura it is not her fault her husband is gay.

lbr theyre both gay and in love with their besties

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

As a neurodivergent person, I’m really disappointed that neurodivergency in TOH is never outright stated in the show itself to my knowledge, unlike at least some of the characters’ LGBTQIA+ identities…and the fact that Luz wasn’t conceived to be as ADHD at first does make me feel a little eh :/

This is why representation in media is highly subjective; you will have people in the same group disagree over whether the representation in question is good or not because surprise, surprise, people are individuals and not a monolith.

A common way to avoid this is to be explicit in what the representation is so those unaware or unfamiliar with the group can at least understand what they're looking at. Another way is to have a wide variety of representations; for example instead of your token gay man, a show has queer characters of all sexualities. TOH is good at this variety of representation but it falters because a lot of it is in supplementary material. Luz is canonically bisexual as is Eda but Lilith, Hunter, and Willow only have their sexualities confirmed outside of the show, which feels like a huge missed opportunity.

As for Luz's neurodivergency, that really should have been stated in the show since they leaned hard on Luz being an outcast and struggling to fit in; the text explicitly drawing attention to her ADHD as one of the reasons for her failing to make friends instead of simply doing dumb pranks in school.

Honestly, I didn't even pick up on the fact that Luz had neurodivergent traits until the fans pointed out because they projected their own experiences onto the character. Dana liked the idea and threw it in but the writing would have been stronger and the rep more meaningful if Luz was designed like that from the beginning. Instead, the creator responded to the audience and added this new character trait so it doesn't feel like it reached its full potential as a result.

Because of this lack of direct statement, we get giddy comments from the audience that "Hunter is so autistic-coded!" Well, why not actually make him autistic? It would give kids a chance to see themselves in the hero character and for non-autistic kids to understand what that even is and hopefully not bully their classmates because now they know why their peer acts like that and that it's ok.

[224bbaker]

Genuine question now they're fully public domain in the states are your Holmes and Watson dating bc. I love them and I never met a granada holmes fan who didn't think those two were together

(When asked what he thought about it, Jeremy brett said 'if it cheers the gays up, I'm thrilled', so)

Love this question, and love that you love them! I also firmly believe Granada Holmes and Granada Watson have been married for 20 years, Burke!Watson is my best friend, bless Jeremy Brett riding so hard for Watson to never get married, true legend shit.

Re: the actual question: I'm gonna put this under the cut because even though I'm not gonna outright spoil anything, it does reference some season 2 plans so people who reeaaaally want to stay in the full dark can avoid.

First and foremost:

There are two showrunners fighting on my shoulders right now: one that knows that we have Plans for these characters in S2 (that we are writing literally right now) and wants the audience right now to simply know that we're going to spend more time with them next season so we can keep our Secrets, and wants to pretentiously tell you that S2 is thematically About Stuff like expectations and the way that we present ourselves and the way that we communicate with the people we love and partner with----and the other, bigger one that was fully in the fucking trenches for *certain* adaptations of this story that have taken the “just wait and maybe you’ll see next season!” approach but never followed through in the text, and in NO possible world do I want people to think that’s our intent because absolutely fuck that.

So while we fully intend to answer that question in the text of S2 in [what we think is, fingers crossed] a fun, unexpected way and tell a bit of our version of the Holmes/Watson story, I’m also not gonna sit here and be coy and pretend that story isn’t a love story. It 100% is. It was always going to be, for our versions of them at least. But it’s a love story where we ultimately thought it might be a dang shame if we kept so much off screen by having them be a settled, functional, happy James-and-Archie-type couple from the second we meet them, when we could let you (and our characters) in to a bit more of that story.

If I had to put a label on their relationship right now it’d be a solid “it’s complicated.” There are ways that they are far better than our characters (I'm sure you're aware) but perhaps ways our characters are a bit ahead of them, and things both groups have to learn from each other. But we’re a comedy, they’ll get there--we're just gonna be a little coy on the "how" for now.

But like

insane

[genderqueerdykes]

Hi. Here's a lot of words that y'all don't have to read and I have a question that y'all don't have to answer. I think you all make a lot of great points. I'm sorry if this is on the blog already.

I think I might be what you call an egg. I just try not to think about it. I'm going through a lot of stuff right now that needs processing and I can get to the gender thing when I can get to the gender thing. That said, I'm trying to let myself exist in queer spaces and it feels like everyday women are bashing men without batting an eye. Actually, that's happening not just in queer spaces. Nobody says anything except to agree. Even people that I've known for a while and know that I'm married to a cis man whom I love and respect (and who actually got me interested in feminism). I told one friend that I was uncomfortable by her comments and she flipped it around, pouted exasperatedly, and said, "I thought you were a safe space!" I didn't know that there was a safe space for sexism!

What the fuck do I say to people? I'm autistic and have an extreme sense of justice and can't just let things go but I want to be at least somewhat respectful-sounding because when you yell at people they shut down and think you're wrong/the problem. I also don't want to talk their ears off/write paragraphs like this. 😬

🌀

jesus, i'm so sorry people are treating you like that. it really hurts my head to see people do this. you don't deserve that kind of behavior, you're not a shitty person for trying to figure out your gender. you're not shitty for being happily married to a cis man. i have so many words so i hope i won't give you a reply that's too long to parse

no matter what people's beliefs are, everyone is reinforcing that women need to hate men. like you're right it's just everywhere. not just queer communities. it's weird. it's like, i get it, the way we force men to act is absurd. we need to focus on helping men snap out of the shitty things we force them to do and support them in growing and changing. also like i don't get how people dont see how terrible it is to openly admit that they see trans men, queer men, gay men, bi men, disabled men, men of color, intersex men, multigender men, and so on. there are so many groups of men affected by this i dont get why people don't care

this "safe space" thing has gotten abused to hell and back. it's out of control, now it's being used as a gatekeeping tool. it's weird to me but people are defining things like this:

general lgbt/queer communities = women's safe space

lesbian community = women's safe space

nonbinary community = women's safe space

butch, gender non conforming, genderqueer community = women's safe space

genderfluid, bigender, multigender communities = women's safe space

bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, & polyamorous communities: women's safe space

like it's gotten way out of control. people think that every experience that doesn't outright say man is a women's safe space. and even then, we see entitlement there in the transmasculine and trans man communities as well. the thing is is like. these are intended to be communities. not safe spaces. like

women's groups exist. there are groups dedicated to providing safe spaces for just women, irl. a lot of the time they're based out of crisis and sexual assault survivor clinics, but there's also ones for homeless women, and so on. like i honestly guarantee you that if you googled "women's safe space" you'd find some local, brick and mortar places designed to be there for women and only women. like. those. exist.

we don't have to turn the entirety of queerness into a women's safe space. i feel like women who have been hurt by men are running to the wrong place a lot of the time. or they expect every other queer person to have the same trauma as them. like i think people in general are very queerphobic and assume that most queer people are women, for some reason?

i don't know why people view this as the "running away from men club". that's how terfs define the lesbian community. if you want to show people why this is dogshit, it's because that's literally how terfs define lesbianism. that's how rad fems define lesbianism. the "we hate men, we never want to be around men ever again, men are inherently dangerous" club is the lesbian separatism club.

people often say "why is there a lot of talk of lesbian supremacy lately?"

it's because so many people got indoctrinated into rad feminism without ever realizing it. queer communities are not the "we hate men" communities. those are rad fem communities.

so many queer spaces need to involve men, because men are very important in so many queer experiences. erasing their experiences and denying them the right to be in those spaces isn't helping anyone. if people want to be in all woman groups, they need to search specifically for that. if someone defines "lesbian" as "women's only safe space," they're looking for a women's space. honestly, maybe people just need to be nudged in the right direction. maybe not enough people know there are literal all woman safe spaces irl that help women with homelessness, sexual and domestic abuse, childcare, substance abuse, mental health, and many other resources.

sometimes there are behavioral health and crisis centers that accept just women. some psychiatric hospitals have spaces for just women. it really is possible to create, nurture and participate in womens only spaces. people are just trying to take over something they personally don't belong in, and it's insane that that's the norm right now. people are obsessed with going backwards in terms of progress in accepting diversity in queer lives.

anyway, i hate this shit, so i hope things improve for you soon, people are just. so proud of being mean right now. people are proud to be assholes and they take it out on disadvantaged men. isn't that sad? people are pissed off about patriarchy, the establishment ABOVE us, so they attack poor, mentally ill, disabled, neurodivergent, intersex, trans, queer men and men of color, as if that'll solve anything.

[vonclosen]

okay here’s my elaboration since i’ve been asked. bc i love writing Interpersonal Drama and about complicated bad guys. please note that they are complicated messy bad guys and im not aiming to woobify anyone (i dont think im successful in not woobifying but literally whatever). these dudes suck. they are really interesting also :3c

cws: mentions of child death, pregnancy, miscarriage mentions that would only make sense in a post-nuclear apocalyptic wasteland. also relationship with a massive problematic power imbalance--not romanticized, but explored. like i said, these are bad people so its no surprise really. disclaimer: im a transmasc pls dont be weird about me writing trans men being birthgivers and parents.

some backstory: - caesar is gay. he doesn't really fully recognize it. - he had a wife who he loved a lot, but was not sexually attracted to. they had sex anyways because obviously he's so in the closet its not even funny + he felt he needed heirs. she was a really special woman in his life and one of few he's ever actually respected - caesar and his wife had 1 daughter and were never able to get pregnant again. the daughter's name is julia, she's like 30 - following his wife's death, he was only with joshua for a time before realizing he might want to have more heirs

so: caesar saw an opportunity to have both a male partner and get his heirs. he "chose" vulpes for this role, and because vulpes is a miserable brainwashed zealot, he agreed. all of his children were born as secretly as he could manage in order to preserve vulpes' privacy about his AGAB/status as a trans man.

this also unfortunately meant that a lot of their children didn't spend a lot of time with vulpes, instead being raised by vulpes' sister, alba (who many suspect to be the parent of the many kids, but she is Not). some were miscarriages, others were cases of failure to thrive. here's a little timeline of the children's birth dates; a * indicates that they are still alive.

2268: julius born*

2270: gaius born*

2271: aggripina born*

2272: calpurnia born, died

2274: fulvia born

2275: fulvia died

2278: livia druscilla* born, augustus born, died

2279: caesarion born

2281: caesarion died; cato born*

i waffle on whether cato is caesar's or a vulpes/arcade offspring lol. i only really like vulcade under my Extremely Specific AU Circumstances. the Circumstances being arcade is captured by the legion, and tired of being caesar's little pet guy, commiserates with vulpes and they're like

i digress. vulpes was very Into being caesar's secret husband or whatever at first (which joshua REALLY didn't like). by 2281 vulpes is still of course a zealot who's devoted to caesar (the title itself and the legion's dogma), but after as much as he's been through he's teetering on the edge of disillusionment on a personal level. he has a lot of hidden rage inside him, and he's very protective of julius (who, despite being the oldest son, isn't caesar's preferred heir-- gaius is.) i like to imagine him: A) leaving the legion outright with julius and settling down somewhere so his poor son can have a normal ass life B) having a certified brutus moment and staging a coup so julius can be the new caesar. he gets lanius out of the picture bc he just fuckin hates the guy.

i also have a stupid ass fun little modern au where caesar is a shithead senator whos secretly gay and really into roman LARP + vulpes is his miserable stay at home partner who raises the kids and drives a massive SUV and is ready to smother him in his sleep at any moment but doesn't because he doesn't wanna go to jail. also gaius has a like 5k computer setup to play fortnite all he wants. vulpes is having an affair with someone he likes much better. lmao

[batboyblog]

I think too many people have decided that media consumption (or refusal to consume some media) is not only a form of activism, but the highest form of activism.

So to be clear you can read a book, watch a movie etc without agreeing with the actions or the view points of the characters even the main character. Watching John Wick doesn't mean you believe in guns as the answer to problems. Watching Dirty Harry doesn't mean you endorse police violence. We can go on and on here, but basically watching or reading a piece of media doesn't mean you agree with the characters and their actions and often times media is made intentionally complex to make a character questionable or indeed outright bad while we still are made to understand them.

You also can read or watch a work and not agree with the author's politics. HP Lovecraft was a horrible racist, antisemite, hated women etc, but he's long long dead, hell Walt Disney hated Jews, hated them, loathed them, that doesn't mean you're a Nazi if you watch Snow White.

Of course life is complex so there are a few areas where you should boycott buying someone's work. One is when the author is objectively a horrible human being and is still alive so you buying their work will support them. This would be like Woody Allen, R. Kelly, Bill Cosby, and Roman Polanski to name a few off the top of my head, they're horrible sex criminals, your support allows Allen, Cosby and Polanski to support their life styles sadly out of jail.

a second group is when authors (or I guess copyright holders) have political views you disagree with and have made it clear they will spend the money you give them on their politics. This is JK Rowling of course, but also Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game, who is a devote Mormon and has given a lot of his money to the Church but also to anti-gay movements like Prop8 back in 2008, it was on the board of a national anti-gay marriage org, any ways buy Ender's Game used is what I'm saying.

Most books are just books, they may have themes or ideas in there that are political or cultural and you may feel some way about those but mostly they're stories first. However a small number of books are political manifesto dressed up as work of fiction. Most famously, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged which pretend to be novels but really are odes to Rand's political philosophy that greed, and selfishness are really good things and helping the poor is evil. If you want to know what the worst people in government are talking about and want to suffer through some of the worst writing imaginable, pirate it. Rand didn't believe the government should help people so you know no copyright for you.

Finally there are a very small, tiny handful of books you really just shouldn't read. I'm thinking here of like The Turner Diaries. Like Atlas Shrugged, The Turner Diaries are political manifesto pretending to be a novel. It's basically the Bible of neo-Nazis so unless you're an academic studying the modern white supremacy after WWII, you have no reason to ever read it (same with Mein Kampf, but I've limited myself to works of fiction)

[paperstorm]

Re kids - to me the writing made it clear enough that Carlos's holdup with kids had more to do with his relationship with his own parents, specifically his dad, than a strongly held desire for himself. I always expected season 5 to be partly about Carlos coming to terms with his upbringing and parents and, with that, deciding he does want to be a parent himself. It's part of the reason I didn't want them to kill Gabriel bc I thought that story would be better with him there, but I think if they do it right (not guaranteed with this show of course!) it could be powerful and give Rafa some great acting opportunities. But who knows with 911 Lone Star. More than 50% chance the 126 finds a baby down a well and it ends up with Tarlos.

Yes they definitely presented it as Carlos being worried he wouldn't be a good father, rather than him outright not wanting to be one. And as others have said it would be a super, super powerful statement in today's political climate to show a gay couple in Texas having children on a prime time TV show. Like unbelievably powerful. I don't disagree with that at all. I have a personal hang up where I really don't like the trend of a character saying they don't want kids and then being talked into it or pressured into it, which happens a lot in movies and TV shows and it always just really rubs me the wrong way. People should be allowed to not want children without everyone in their lives acting like they're just too dumb to know any better. But that's not like anyone else's problem, it's my thing and if it narratively makes sense for Tarlos to be come fathers then my personal issue doesn't matter at all.

[btelling]

11 and 12 for The Squib, please :)

Thank you so much for the question!! Another excellent choice!

11: What do you like best about this fic?

I really love the concept. It's a world that, though horrible, I'm always really excited to return to and think about. The divide between the muggle and wizarding worlds was always something that really fascinated me in canon. And the implications of just how horrible it would be to be a squib didn't really hit me until a later re-read when I was older. Because you're introduced to the concept of Squibs through the lens of Filch, who we all hate, and its this joke. Oh isn't it so funny that this man who is so mean to Harry and his friends has to clean up after all the magical kids and can't even do magic himself (which, god, maintaining a castle that large as one person when you can't even do magic is just cruel, no wonder he was so bitter). But when you really start to peel back the layers of it, you would never really find home in either world. How do you settle for the mundane when you know that Narnia is out there, you just can't access it, not really? And then the wizarding world has also rejected you completely. You're a joke. So while your siblings and relatives are all engaging in literal magic you're just what, being an accountant? While the whole family laughs at you at best or outright denies your existence if they're pureblood? And it's the same for Muggleborns. They have to uproot their entire lives at 11 and leave their world behind for 9 months out of the year every year for 7 straight years. How would that not fracture their relationships with their families and loved ones? Muggle technology can't work inside Hogwarts, so particularly as the Muggle world advances, they're falling further and further behind their friends and relatives. They're completely cut off from their past lives. If they want to communicate home, they have to use the wizarding owl system. If they want to catch up with friends over the summer holidays, they can't talk about their schoolwork or too much about their peers, because oh there's the statute of secrecy. They graduate with qualifications in Transfiguration, they're not going to a traditional university. They're not going back to the Muggle world. It all feels a bit, and to act glib about something incredibly serious and awful, forced assimilation. The implications are really awful if you start to dig just a bit under the surface. The fandom jokes and has theories, but Hermione basically all but stops seeing her parents after GoF - one skiing trip cut short in OotP (thanks Harry) and then she's back to the wizarding world. Because that's where her life is. Now what if we turn up the gas and add more tension to this situation? If these worlds that these characters have to straddle are actively at war with each other, but the muggles have a leg up this time? Well, it was just too tempting to pass up.

12: What do you like least about this fic?

I'd say that, and as much as I loved getting to explore their story, I do wonder if I wasn't writing and posting this chapter by chapter with basically a vague idea at best of where we're going next (we're all in this together), if I'd have gone for such an awful outcome for Dean and Seamus. It felt right at the time, to show how directly impacted more canon characters were by this new world, and I got to zoom out and show more of the world (the scene with the wizard at the bar is a particular favorite of mine) all through the story of a half-blood and a muggleborn traveling together and, again, having to straddle these two worlds. But I never like falling prey to harmful tropes, and I do wish I hadn't "buried the gays" so to speak. Justice for Dean and Seamus, they deserved better.