#this is just all so weird as a queer person too because i KNOW 'progressive' people would be fine with me

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Very suspicious of people who talk about antisemitism who put it in quotes (as in, "antisemitism"). I think the call is coming from inside the house!

It's weird seeing people say, "marginalized people know their marginalization best, listen to them when they say something is -phobic or -ist!" and then see them turn around the millisecond a jew says, "hey, this is suspiciously antisemitic"

[bibuckleykinard]

how many times do we need to learn as people that irony and hyperbole can be harmful because 'jokes' aren't easily distinguished from genuine thoughts and feelings until we stop rewarding people for speaking or posting about violence

like even if you're joking/don't actually believe that/think whoever you are insulting is bad/immoral/fictional therefore deserves it - ad hominem attacks always do more harm to the people who share those characteristic then the individual you intend to cause harm to or discredit

[angel---eater]

I love being the only not-cis person in group therapy, btw. Love it. I tried to bring up how dysphoria is contributing to my difficulty with mood regulation and like, absolutely no one in that call understood wtf I was talking about, lol. That weird, pervasive gendering of Cluster B happened last session though, and it was viscerally uncomfortable on my end, but everyone else in the fuckin' Google Meets room or whatever just nodded in understanding like that shit was scientific fact. Like it got fully bioessentialist up in there for a minute. Cis people are so fuckin' weird.

[wordsinhaled]

transmasc haircut woes ahead...

so i was growing out my hair again but it is starting to become annoying/a sensory nightmare this summer/doesn't feel like me/kinda gives me some dysphoria.

so i wanna give it the chop (again).

but the thing is i am. like. very intimidated by barber shops??? i live in a significantly queerer and more progressive city now than i used to which helps. but i'm still a tiny 4'10 pre-T transmasc person and i do not feel like i look like someone who "belongs" in a barber shop, if there is such a thing (i'm sure there isn't but the anxiety tells me there is).

i am sure i am overthinking it but being in like... a Designated Male Space feels quite scary. i struggle to even walk past florsheim's in the mall or have other men see me in the men's section of stores, if that gives you context on how scary all of this is for me. i have no idea what i think is gonna happen if i walk in there - like, anxiety brain says i'm gonna be gatekept out, people are gonna be like, "what are you doing here?" or "you're not masc enough to be in here," or whatever, i have LITERALLY no idea - and i'm sure i'm making a mountain out of a molehill and no one will actually be mean to me or bully me in a barber shop!

but the thing is i have like, no idea what goes on in there? and that's part of the anxiety, i guess. mind you, i know queer cis women go and get their hair cut in barber shops as well, so i guess... i also don't want to be read as that either?

i have gotten my hair cut before by a male hairdresser at a hair salon and it was a person my parents picked, a hair style my mom picked, and then he would dye my hair a Different Shade of Brown and my mom would give me frosted highlights or whatever at home, because she told me my natural hair color was boring and lacked depth. i had more or less zero control over the experience in terms of what i came out looking like. i was like... 23, 24 when this was still happening.

at one point, she took me to a consultation to get my hair chemically straightened (keratin, i think it was going to be) which would have gotten rid of my natural wavy texture, because i was "too lazy to put in the work" to do anything with my hair (because i wanted it to be short, most of the time, if anyone asked me). that was like, the one thing i brought myself to be able to say no to because. i didn't want to do that.

it took a while for my hair not to be processed to shit and to grow back in nice. but i fucking LOVE my natural hair color and texture and volume actually, it's beautiful, in my opinion, if i do say so myself. it's a lovely shade of brown and it's got amber/chestnut highlights in it in the sunshine and it has nice texture and it's soft. come pet my hair, basically.

anyway, sorry for the detour about Hair Styling Trauma but maybe this will help explain why the fuck i feel like i can't go and just Get My Hair Cut. lol, gotta love finally getting out from under the thumb of a narcissist and still having Shit Going On years later.

even up until the most recent time my hair was short, i have been going to hair salons (not barber shops) and i have been in that weird limbo of "girl asking for pixie cut," which is NOT the experience i want this time. every hairdresser i've ever had is always like, are you sure you want it this short? the last person who cut my hair was a pretty chill italian guy (like, came recently from italy, spoke italian in his shop, not like long-time italian-american type italian) who felt... probably the safest i've found because he was sort of relaxed about the whole thing and didn't get weird about it. but even with him, as close as i managed to verbalize what i want was to ask for something "gender neutral" because it felt like. incredibly scary to be like, "i do not want to look like girl. please do not make me look like girl."

he understood the assignment and is probably the one who would give me the best haircuts i've had. but even then it still sort of felt like i was... asking for it in a sort of weird adjacent-to-what-i-really-meant way and getting there by sheer coincidence of a person understanding the assignment vs like. please make me look more like boy. am not girl trying to look like boy. am not edgy girl with pixie cut. you feel me???

edit: also. i don't think that hair is inherently gendered one way or another, it's just like... the way that people tend to gender the process/different types and styles of hair that makes me uncomfortable and makes me feel misgendered. and like the perceptions of you that people have. and that a lot of the vibe is going to depend on how whatever individual haircut works with my face. and that when i go on T these things may also change. so i'm not trying to like... binary the hair but also... it's the dysphoria of how people talk to you/look at you/etc. at personal care places, you know?

i don't even necessarily want something with zero length, because my hair tends to look good when there's something there to style, but i just ... i don't want a Women's Short Haircut, you know??? at the same time i know that i have a Lot of Hair and people have fucked up my short haircuts before so i don't want a Bad Haircut either. i don't feel like i can do the same shit i always do again where i come in and sit there silently and slightly embarrassedly while i secretly hack my way into gender euphoria while the person thinks they're cutting a girl's hair.

anyway, what the fuck do i do and how do i not feel like dysphoria central during this whole process? what is a barber shop like? what do people talk about in there? can i just be quiet? is everything going to clock that i have not socialized with men like ever but want to? idk, do i lead with being transmasc? do i just bring sample photos of men's haircuts only and have a conversation about how they will work with my face shape? do i just say i am trying to look Not Like a Girl? that seems. incredibly terrifying. i would bring a queer friend to chill me out, but i haven't made any here yet to be able to bring.

asdjdjfj if u have read this far thank you and sorry for being a hot mess !!!

[catboybiologist]

i just had a moment

i wonder how many people on this were, in a way, saved from an alt-right pipeline by realizing and accepting that they're queer.

like 12-13 year old me was going on like /pol/ and shit before the dysphoria hit

just makes you think

Oh yay this is causing me to ramble

I think that being targeted by some form of radicalization was genuinely part of the reality of being a white kid online in the 200Xs to 201Xs.

I don't think I was fully on that pipeline, but I was 3000% an obnoxious neolib atheist as a teenager. The kind of person that describes themselves as "socially progressive, economically conservative", engaged with MRA stuff online with shallow "but what about men" sentiments, thought many protests had "the right idea, but are too extreme, we should just debate", and generally considered myself better than everyone else because of how "smart" and "rational" I was.

You know the type. This was when I was like... 14-17yo. And before you scoff at it being "dumb teenage shit", the alt right targeted those people, at that age and time, hard. I turned 18 in 2016, and that election was my first, coming right off of an online climate relentlessly trying to radicalize kids... So yeah, it was weird.

I feel like the ones that didn't become alt right gradually slid into leftism. Usually, the "revelation" moment was when you're excluded. You realize a lot of these people's "rationality" is based on irrational biases that they're dressing up as "logic", and it all crumbles. PoC and other minoritized groups are excluded form the start, of course, but since being queer is something that doesn't awaken until a bit later in life, it creates a kind of unique experience of potentially falling down that hole, until you realize you can't be a part of it.

But also to be fair... the same environment that caused a lot of the radicalization also fostered a lot of the communities we love. Modern "breadtube", as annoying as that term is, is an offshoot of this as well. Beyond just a few online-famous people, there's larger circles of leftist communities that have organized and done real, active good. I still carry some streaks of that stuff around, and I'm probably less extreme than most terminally online queer leftist circles. But idk. A bit of that weird, "rational worship" online vibe has done good, even if it's also done a lot of harm.

Honestly, everything I'm talking about here is extremely well summarized by Contrapoint's tangent about New Atheism. It's a Patreon exclusive, but it's a topic I saw myself reflected in a lot.

If my ramble here is shitty/incomplete and feels like I'm being apologetic or trying to excuse the alt right, that's an error in communication, not my actual intent- I hope that's clear.

[greghatecrimes]

I don't think you can say house md was not homophobic even with the so called "rep" it's definitely a product of its time but you don't gotta lie and say it was more progressive than it was, you can just like the show while acknowledging it's problems. Yes, there was a bisexual character, who had countless biphobic jokes made at their expense. There was a whole episode where house and wilson talk about how weird it is for one of the nurses to date a trans woman who they call a tranny. There's a whole episode about them discovering a teen girl is intersex and house misgendering her by calling her a man the whole episode and telling her that her anger is due to the cancer she has when she becomes upset about being told she is "not really a girl" I love the show too, but every person that says the show is homophobic and transphobic is right, it's a product of its time, it still more bigoted than "progressive", and liking it even like that is not a crime or makes you a bad person. Let's not lie about what it is just because we like the show, plenty of queer people do but that doesn't make it less bigoted.

Respectfully: I don't think I'm lying at all when I say it was progressive for its time.

You're right, though, anon! It ABSOLUTELY could be bigoted, too, especially in the early seasons (specifically I'm thinking of the moments you mentioned, the one with the nurse House and Wilson discuss, and the entire episode "Skin Deep", etc.) and I can acknowledge that. I agree, it doesn't make someone a bad person to enjoy something like this show that is indeed a product of its time. But even just beyond the "rep" of having Thirteen as a canon bisexual character, the show did so much that was progressive for its time IRT: lgbt+ presence in media.

Just one example of many I could give is "The Softer Side". The entire episode "Skin Deep" is something I like to skip over, but it's not a "forgive and forget" type of thing. I don't approve of the episode and I want to hold the writers who came up with that entire thing and everyone who let it slide accountable. But three seasons later, we got "The Softer Side", written by Liz Friedman. The Softer Side's patient is a child who was born intersex, but was given gender assignment surgery at birth, and whose parents don't want him to know he's intersex. The episode handles his case with such care that I don't think a show today could really even come close to achieving. The issue was never that this kid was intersex. He's not being treated for a condition that was caused by him being intersex. Him being intersex has nothing to do with the diagnosis he gets at the end of the episode! The only reason him being intersex came up during his case is because his parents didn't want him to know, and thus told the doctors at PPTH to lie to him about testosterone he was being given (it's implied his parents had been giving it to him for at least a year/a short while iirc). And the team at PPTH (specifically Thirteen) thought that he had the right to know, that it would be good for him to know and understand this part of himself! They're supportive! The episode doesn't wave away the fact that he was given gender assignment surgery! It pushes for an acceptance of both masculine and feminine and giving people the freedom to decide for themselves, even when they are children (and not saying a child the patient's age is too young to know what he/she wants, etc.)

The way House MD and Liz Friedman handled this absofuckingloutely blows other shows portrayal of intersex people at the time out of the water. Does it make up for Skin Deep, or the t-slur comment? No. But it set a precedent for how other TV shows should handle such subject matter going forward. This is why I don't think the show as a whole is homophobic, despite having homophobic/transphobic/bigoted moments.

It's also worth noting that Liz Friedman, who wrote The Softer Side, is a lesbian herself, was a writer on Xena: Warrior Princess (an earlier example of queercoding), and was one of two LGBT writers who were in charge of writing all of Thirteen's plotlines.

[genderqueerdykes]

Your stuff about being 'too queer' really hit home, ty for making it.

We're trans abinary xenogender, and most people respond to that by sweeping us under the umbrella of nonbinary, and it just feels wrong. we used to be nonbinary, but we aren't anymore, and even queer people don't seem to get that.

Not many people have been explicitly weird about it one-on-one, but even in a lot of progressive spaces, it feels like we're expected to declare our gender from a drop down menu and no one can handle it when their three to five options don't cover everyone.

(To continue the metaphor) we appreciate that most places have an 'other' button now, but always being 'other' feels... well, othering.

Idrk where I'm going with this, but thank you for being loud and proud and unapologetic about your identity, it makes us feel like maybe we could be too, someday.

hello thanks for stopping by! i really appreciate your perspective

ever since non binary became a somewhat well known gender identity, people started lumping every gender variant and gnc person into the non binary umbrella whether or not they themselves said that fits them. it's been frustrating because i technically don't identify as non binary, i'm genderqueer, but so many places only have the option to state that you're non binary if you are not a man or a woman outright. i totally understand feeling alienated by those drop down menus, or even things that are used in IRL spaces. a lot of the time non binary is the only "other" gender option and it's not fair to everyone involved

i think it's just. so fucked up that people would prioritizing "looking normal" and wanting to assimilate into cishet culture over including queers who need a safe place to go. i don't understand it. i know that back in the 90s and 2000s there was a huge push to assimilate, but it's come back with a vengeance. people want to be seen as normal so bad, they don't want to be around the "weird" queers, which is all of us, because that's what queer means. i don't get how being "too queer" for a space is a concept, even if that's not what people call it in the moment, that's how they approach it. i don't understand

xenogenders are becoming more common as time goes on as well. i'm not expecting your elderly grandma to know this stuff but i am getting tired of queer spaces specifically targeting and kicking out complex identities they just don't understand. it's okay if one person in the group has a straight forward simple identity and the person next to them has a super complicated identity with hyper specific terms... we all belong.

thank you so much! i think you very well could be unapologetically yourselves, too. sounds like you have that energy in you already. eventually i just gave up trying to fit in anywhere and accepted that i'm always going to be "too queer" for some people and it's what it is. it's punk as fuck, it's alright to be that way. take care of yourselves for now, let us know if you have any questions you may need answering!

[karasbroken]

Okay, this week's moment might be controversial. But hear me out...

Doesn't that look like the smile of women who know each other a little more intimately than platonic friends?

Henta is presented as someone Aeryn was close to, a best friend even, at least in the period prior to her exile on Moya. And I'm not arguing that the script, producers, or actors intended to give fem/slash vibes. But they are not NOT giving frellmates either.

Farscape was progressive-ish for its time in the handling of queerness, but it wasn't progressive enough to make its female lead openly bisexual. However there are a couple hints that Aeryn isn't opposed to recreating with women, even if it isn't her usual preference. And this moment is one of them.

Of course people/characters can just be friends, and I'm not particularly into slash just for the heck of it. (Folks who queer everything, I love that for you!).

But I like bisexuality for Aeryn because I think it makes a lot of sense with what little we know about Peacekeeper culture. Sex isn't primarily for reproduction, it's for stress relief, to reduce sexual tension, and to promote unit bonding. People are expected to have sex often, but not regularly with the same person, to avoid jealousy, attachments, and especially relationships forming. Loyalty and sacrifice are highly valued. But lots of sex is one of those things that keeps PKs compliant during what is either a short and stressful or long and boring life.

In other aspects of Peacekeeper life, egalitarianism sort of seems to exist, though maybe in a "peacekeeper is your gender/sexual identity" sort of way rather than "men and women are equal" way because almost everyone is sort of masc-coded. PKs are required to have sex as assigned, for procreation and probably sometimes for recreation, so it wouldn't be that weird for people to be situationally bisexual even if it's not their innate inclination. (This isn't all just my speculation -- for example, Claudia Black had the understanding that Aeryn and Velorek started as an assigned pairing of some kind.) Some PK units are just five person crews, and as we've seen, they're mixed gender. In order to not pair off, people would need to sleep with all of their teammates at least occasionally (and I suppose take care of themselves too).

I particularly like the idea of Aeryn having had sex with Henta because it emphasizes that alien nature of Peacekeeper friendship. I can more easily believe that the warmth between Aeryn and Henta was caused by them having frelled on occasion (and fought together too, though Henta couldn't have been in her last unit because they were all demoted) than that they're close because Aeryn shared anything of her inner self, her emotional and rebellious nature, and created intimacy that way. Sex is the closest to emotion that they're really allowed, and even then they're not supposed to get attached. When Henta dies in front of her, Aeryn is affected but not devastated because there was a limit to how much and how deeply she allowed herself to care.

I see PK friendship as more "bros who grew up together" than "bosom friends". Frelling your shipmates makes it "no homo" where the forbidden dynamic isn't homosexual behavior but emotional involvement: Nah, we're just friends that frell sometimes like anyone else, no biggie. They're not important or meaningful to me. If we make long intimate eye contact it's because the sex was good and we had good times and were good comrades who were solid in a crisis, not because I care profoundly about them as a person...

Or I don't know. Maybe I just like to make everyone bisexual.

[xoxoladyaz]

AU-gust, Day 3: Writer

TW: References to monster smut and genitalia, Shrek

Robin’s mad at him.

(Well, mad isn’t the right word. Frustrated? Annoyed? Shocked by his enduring stupidity? All of those are probably better options.)

“Seriously, dingus? You haven’t told him yet?!”

Steve anxiously ran his fingers through his no-longer perfectly-styled coif. “I’ve tried, Robin! It’s just kind of hard to tell the guy that you’re falling in love with that you write monster porn for a living!”

It had started when he was a senior in college, reeling from his break-up with Nancy and trying desperately to find anything to distract himself from his heartbreak. It was a total joke at first, trying to find the cringiest romances he could find and reading them with Robin as they got progressively more and more drunk on whatever cheap booze he’d squirreled away from Tommy that week. But then one night he found himself in bed crying when Matthias the Minotaur sacrificed his life for his one-true love and he couldn’t stand it because Matthias deserved a happy ending after everything he’d been through and Steve had read enough of these books, for fuck’s sake, he could write a better ending!

It was just a hobby for a while, a secret shame that got him through the doldrums of working for his father while trying to figure out what he wanted to do next. Steve could never keep anything from Robin, though, and while she initially teased him for writing “monster porn,” after she read one of his stories she demanded he submit it to some indie romance publishing houses and she didn’t give up until he had done so and now – well, now Steve was making a truly obscene amount of money off of his many, many monstrous and paranormal romance books (with Robin as his editor, of course) and had kissed his shitty parents goodbye.

(And if his pen name was his father’s name, which meant that anytime someone googled “Richard Harrington” the first thing that popped up were book titles like “Prisoner of the Gargoyle’s Heart” and not his father’s incredibly influential law office, well, that was just payback for twenty-five years of bullshit.)

The thing is, Steve isn’t even ashamed of it, not really. He’s always been a kinky guy, first of all, and besides, it’s not all about the sex (although his sex scenes are some of the best in the business and he hadn’t shied away from writing queer books when the rest of the world had.) What he liked most about the stories he wrote was that regardless of what his monsters had looked like, or lived through, or done in their past, or where they’d come from, they all found someone who loved them because of their differences - because of their monstrousness – and not in spite of it.

(And yeah, okay, he liked the sex stuff too. Who wouldn’t want to fuck a dragon with two dicks? Or Prince Titian, the golden-haired merman who had both sets of humanoid genitalia? Or Neptus, the half-man, half-octopus who had all those huge tentacles - )

“Dingus. Stop thinking about Neptus.”

“Huh?” Steve asked, shaking his head. “How did you - ”

“Because I know you, Steve Harrington, and there’s only one person slash fictional entity that you get that weird horny look for and honestly, I could have lived my entire life without knowing about your tentacle thing - ”

“ROBIN, it’s not – I don’t have a tentacle thing ­- ”

“ – but we can deal with your weird fetishes another day, right now we need to discuss why your boyfriend still thinks that you’re an accountant and the fact that you need to tell your boyfriend about your job so I can tell my girlfriend about my job so she understands why I need so much therapy and why I know so much about your sexual preferences - ”

“Jesus, Robin, I got it, I got it!” Steve stood and headed for his minibar. “Look, it’s not – it’s not that I don’t want to tell him, it’s just – people can get kind of weird about it.”

“Yeah, and those people suck,” Robin replied as she followed after him. “But Eddie isn’t Nancy or Tommy or Cheryl or Brad or Kel, he’s Eddie.”

“Yeah, world-famous-high-fantasy-author-Eddie-Munson! He’s, like, actually legit Robin! He’s won the Hugo Award twice!”

“He also likes to go to the Renaissance fair dressed up as a faun and annoy people by playing the pipes, Steve. And you’ve seen his weird monster dildo collection which I know you have too - ”

“I know, I know!” Steve exclaimed as he poured both himself and Robin a glass of Merlot. “I just,” Steve turned to face Robin and sighed. “I’m just scared, Robin. Like, it hasn’t even been that long but he makes me feel – I don’t even know, like, I haven’t felt this way about someone since Nancy, you know? And Eddie - this feels like it could be more than that. Like a forever sort of thing.”

Robin sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder. “I know, dingus. And I know that people have you given you all kinds of shit in the past, but that’s not going to be Eddie. And if it is Eddie, I will kick his ass into the ocean and feed him to your squid-man.”

“Neptus isn’t a squid man, Robin - ”

/////

Robin was right, of course. Robin was always right.

(Except for when it came to best Marvel movie, she said Civil War when everyone knew that Thor: Ragnarok was the superior film.)

Anyways.

Robin was right, it was time for Steve to tell Eddie the truth. And Steve had known that too, knew that stretching it much longer than two months would probably end really, really badly, especially if Eddie didn’t take it well, but enough of his relationships (romantic and otherwise) had been ruined by people just not understanding or not caring enough to try to understand his stories or why he loved what he did, but Eddie was different. Successful and handsome and creative and intelligent? Sure, Steve had dated people who had all those qualities before. But only Eddie Munson spent hours on the phone with Steve’s friends, talking them through their D&D related problems. Only Eddie Munson showed up on their first date with flowers for Steve, when Steve was the one who normally had to go all out for his partner. 

And only Eddie Munson would learn Steve’s favorite Taylor Swift songs in his free time (instead of the latest Metallica or Ghost) because he wanted to make Steve smile, which is what Eddie was in the middle of doing when Steve finally worked up the nerve to tell him. 

“The stakes are high, the water’s rough, but this love is - ”

“Hey, uh, Eddie? I kind of need to tell you something,” Steve interrupted him as he walked into the living room, beers in hand.

Eddie stopped what he was doing at Steve’s entrance and beamed, setting his acoustic guitar off to the side. “Everything alright, angel?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I just – here,” Steve handed him a beer. He waited until Eddie had taken a sip (and swallowed) before continuing. “I, uh, well – look, we’ve been dating for two months now - ”

“Two months, three days and fourteen hours,” Eddie winked as he took another sip.

“ – and – right,” Steve flushed bright red at the look in Eddie’s eyes. “Right. Uh, anyways, we’ve been dating for two months and I just thought it was time to tell you and – okay, it’s not a big deal but it is kind of a big deal? But not what you’re probably thinking, I’m not, like, married or anything, I – I’m not an accountant, okay, I’m a writer!”

“I know.”

“ – not, like, a normal writer, I write – wait, what?” Steve gaped at Eddie. “You – what?!”

“Baby,” Eddie started slowly, his finger running in tempting circles around the rim of his beer, “you know I know people in the romance world, right?”

“I – what? You knew this whole time?”

“Yep,” Eddie shot Steve a sultry smirk along with another wink. “I knew exactly who you were when I asked you out, big boy. Or, I knew who Robin was and I put two and two together.”

“I – how?!”

“Baby, you didn’t even change your last name.”

Steve just sat there in stunned silence while Eddie continued to sip on his beer, a teasing gleam in his eyes. “But – I – and you’re okay with it?”

At that, Eddie’s smile grew a bit more serious, and he set his beer down on the coffee table so he could hold Steve’s hands in his. “Of course I am, sweetheart. You’re insanely talented, Stevie.”

“I – I write porn, Eddie. With monsters in it.”

“I know, it’s stupidly hot.”

“But you – it could hurt your career if people found out,” Steve said softly, sadly, squeezing Eddie’s hands. “People – people would give you so much shit, Eddie.”

Eddie squeezed back. “Steve, my nickname was ‘The Freak’ in high school. I was a poor kid with shitty parents who was raised in a trailer park. People have given me shit my entire life and frankly, I couldn’t give a flying fuck about what anyone said about you and your writing. If anything, people are going to ask me what the fuck someone as handsome and gifted as you is doing with someone like me.”

Steve snorted and Eddie let out a laugh. “I mean it! You’re like Prince Charming or some shit and I’m the ogre living in the swamp.”

Eddie froze for a few seconds before a maniacal grin overtook his face.

“Eddie?”

“Stevie, baby, have you ever considered a sexy Shrek retelling?”

“No. No.”

(“There’s an Ogre in His Swamp” was released on April Fool’s Day the following year. The author, Richard Harrington, posted a dedication in this book, the first of many that he would dedicate to his husband, E. W. Munson:

To my Ogre – thank you for being my happily ever after.)

[notvv0ltz]

Self

Alright everyone, this topic isn't going to be about an art but rather about self… Or selves (foreshadowing). I'm writing this because not much of people are describing their experiences in this complicated sense of self.

So, like… Originally this post was planned to go deep through my traumatic experiences, but then I realized that no one needs to hear that. And it was also mentally breaking to me, so I will mention things only briefly just to give a context.

Still, the warning stays the same: my opinion on such matter and use of terms may differ from your own, and it still stays as an extremely personal post from a mentally ill person, read at your own risk.

I'm a guy who lives in a much better place now with queer found family, but before that my life quite sucked. I can barely remember my childhood, but I know that my trust was betrayed, and I couldn't rely on people in real life at all for different reasons. Not going into details of this one, but I'll just say this: I feel physically unwell when people are angry at me, especially when they're gaslighting me, and that's not without a reason. There was also a time when one parental figure drank heavily since I was 4 and continues to do so in a "mild" manner. I also have a physical evidence that I was "too tired" when I was 6 already. Overall, there were situations which my brain perceived as not safe.

It all made me socially isolated and apathetic for a long period of time. And I also had a vivid imagination. So vivid that I could stare at ceilings for hours without moving. It became maladaptive at my worse periods of life and disrupted me from doing schoolwork. But out of every other ways to cope I could have at that time, this one was the most harmless.

This had its own consequences, though… Everything changed when I had a breakdown in teens and I started feeling someone patting my back, but no one was there. It was my character (if you know, you know), that since then lives rent-free in my head.

What that truly was is still unknown to me, like why he suddenly feels like a very real person talking to me and why his speech doesn't feel scripted at all. He progressed from being my protector from The Bad to someone with his own desires and urges that contradict mine. To someone who disagrees with me sometimes and gives me another perspective. To someone who feels differently. But at the same time, with a lot of similarities because, well, we share the same brain.

What did none of us expect is that there were times when he took control of the body. No one from outside notices anything different, but internally it was quite weird to hear myself in my head in a muted way, as if I'm in a backstage. And it was odd and agonizing even for him to control the body that didn't reflect at all his self-image. Every time it happens, we prefer to wait out when he goes back to the "backstage". He is very ashamed of his own existence, so if he ever makes an attempt to not hide, please be nice to him.

Even with such complications, I love him very deeply. Without him, I wouldn't survive, and I'm serious about this. He helped me to process emotions, "co-piloted" when I was in severe stress, he made me feel less alone and misunderstood.

I think, at it's core, it's a healthy coping mechanism. It's just that there are conflicts that are unresolved, and that requires a therapist. I also tried to fit in plural communities, but it did literally nothing good to us. We felt like we needed to qualify for the label and thought that I'm just asking for attention despite us documenting our "huh that's interesting" moments. Because I'm in a better state, the other guy in my head appears less, but that doesn't deny that I have something going on. I don't think that collapsing over a sudden change in feeling self means that we're just, you know, role playing. We should treat people in this confusing state better, even if it ends up that they weren't plural. The rampant fake claiming culture misses the fact that no person that didn't struggle in life would consider this label. You can easily make someone's health worse by not giving them a room to explore themselves and sometimes admit that they were wrong. So please, be kinder.

I hope this post wasn't a bit too much for this blog and was helpful to someone. I tried to cut off the details of my traumas, but it was crucial to note that without them nothing would've happened to me. I also prefer to use more broad terms over specific ones to describe our experience because we're still not sure what's going on. Thanks for reading.

[animehusbandharem]

I’m curious of other’s opinions on this: out of all the suitors, who is the most believable and least believable for “Belle” to actually fall in love with? Basically, how realistic would it actually be for her to fall in love with one of them?

I based my rankings based off a mix of Belle’s personality and the actual story and how it plays out - i tried to be as least biased as i possibly could lol

My ranking would be:

1. Leon: i picked Leon as most believable because of how quickly she warmed up to him and how compatible their communication styles are. They’re honestly almost too perfect that it makes me wanna gag (sorry Leon lovers lol)

2. Keith: He comes in 2nd similarly to Leon, the nice Keith and Belle get along so well and it seems like she has a soft spot for him from the get-go. It’s believable to me also because of how his story was written and i could definitely see MC ending up with him.

3. Rio: The boy next door has to be believable. Poor Rio lol. I put him 3rd because she has to get past seeing him as a friend which is a small obstacle, but it is totally believable because theyre already super close and it would make sense.

4. Chevalier: the “true” route. I love their story, and given their personalities, i think it was very well written for both of them to compliment each other. They have just enough in common to keep the stability, but also love languages to help learned and keep the spark alive.

5. Gilbert: the “bad boy”. He is believable to me because the slow progression makes sense, and you can see how both of them compliment each other and pique their interest of the other as well. It seems like a natural progression, and it’s one that we can see coming.

6. Clavis: the class clown. One of my favorite routes 🥰. I think the dynamic between Belle and Clavis are so quirky, that it works. It makes sense once she learns more about Clavis that she would fall for him.

7. Licht: Sweet emo baby. My first love. I put him lower on the list because he’s harder to actually get to know, so the likelihood of her truly being interested in him at first is likely low, but once she finds out he’s a sweet baby - she will be smitten and will fall.

8. Sariel: Daddy issues. I actually really like his route and i genuinely believe this could happen, the only reason hes lower on the list is because i think it would be less likely that Belle would sacrifice her “professionalism” but i do still think it’s a believable story!

9. Silvio: Loveable asshole. Okay, listen - i’m sorry Silvio stans… i ranked Silvio lower because it would take a lot longer for her to warm up to him… especially the way he talks to her - and quite frankly, with all the other options around, why would she fall for him when theres so many other princes?? BUT… i do think his route is very believable for what it is and i did enjoy it personally

10. Nokto: emo playboy. Let’s be real, she would be so turned off by his bullshit, i find it hard to believe she would even think twice about wanting to get to know him. When she does, i don’t think she would want to be more than friends.

11. Luke: Baby bear. I cant picture them together because of how young he seems honestly 😣

12. Jin: Titty idiot. His route felt so wrong and weird to me… it felt forced and awkward. This just doesn’t feel like a good match and it doesn’t seem like a natural progression to me. He doesn’t have much of a personality, and they both just don’t seem to fit

13. Yves: Baby girl. I cant take him seriously as a lover when even the game suggested that Belle questioned he may be queer. (Nothing wrong with this at all, just doesnt fit the narrative they are selling). I LOVE YVES and everyone needs one in their life, but he’s not believable as a lover… and we all know why 🙃

[hsvh-hp]

Hi! Thanks for all the responses -- I hadn't realized how many chapters I'd gotten through since your last round until I saw the emails lmao

I was wondering, in regards to this:

And omg, I totally feel you on being a trans person in the HP fandom. It's very weird how my tumblr dash is set up. I have mutuals still from old fandoms who are queer, and I feel so ostracized from them at times when they toe the line of 'anybody in the HP fandom supports JKR, you're a bad person if you're still engaging with it'. I'll spare you the essay on why I disagree with that, but oddly the safest place I feel on the internet as a trans person is in the HP fandom. Which is weird at face value, I suppose, given what JKR is doing, but we really are separate from her. I've yet to see substantial evidence that fandom, which is infamous for generating zero revenue, is floating trans peoples' demise. It's just a thought crime, I guess.

if you would, perhaps, not spare me the essay? lol

I feel the same sort of ostracization which is especially frustrating when I am in such "thought crimes are fake!" circles, and I'm interested in your perspective, if you want to give it!

Sure, I’ll offer my perspective on it! This is probably best broken down into bullet points:

1. JKR was already a billionaire before she came out as a TERF.

There is nothing in the world that will change this status. Even if every single person currently engaging with her various IPs immediately dropped them, JKR would still have a billion plus dollars to drop on anti-trans movements and whatever. A billion dollars is immensely difficult to picture. The easiest way is to think like this: if you make $50,000 a year, the equivalent of her dropping $75,000 the other day is you spending $3.75. How often do you spend 0.0075% of your income and give it any thought? JKR’s wealth is not directly tied to ‘levels of fandom engagement’.

Which leads to…

2. Boycotts don’t work.

Sorry. They don’t. Not against someone this politically powerful. If they did, the flood of people out of the HP fandom in 2020 would have had a measurable effect. What did have a measurable effect? People not going to watch the Fantastic Beast movies (because they were hot trash lmao). Not giving JKR any more money works in the sense that it cripples her future projects, but it has zero effect on what’s already in her purse.

Also, think of boycotts this way: wasn’t it hilarious watching conservatives try to boycott the Barbie movie, Nike, Bud Light, and whatever else they’ve systematically locked on to? But so then why do progressives/the left/whoever think it’s going to work the other way? Like with Hogwarts Legacy? Just don’t interact with the media, dude. And if you do, pirate it.

3. Fandom is not mainstream. I have never seen any data to substantiate that participating in a fandom directly correlates to dollars for the IP. Copyright literally prevents that from happening. To bring up to popular saying, “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism”, fandom exists outside of capitalism—for me, at least, as a fan fiction writer. This is a hobby to me. I have never seen a red cent for any of the hours of work I’ve put into my fics.

And I can probably guarantee that no one has stumbled upon Harry Potter through me, lol. They didn’t read one of my fics and go, ‘you know, I should check out what source material this is coming from’. Harry Potter is so well-known that there’s no way they came in blind.

Also, the TERF discourse is very much an online thing. I work retail irl and I’ve had conversations with customers who’ll say “you know, I really don’t get all this hubbub against trans people” but are too boomer to be anything more than tangentially aware that Harry Potter is a Thing. Like, ‘oh yeah, my kids read those books when they were coming out, but I never bothered’. One of my employees bought a set of the HP books because they were on a wicked deal at Costco, and when we were discussing it I told her that while I still enjoyed HP, I wasn’t comfortable giving JKR more money because she’s extremely transphobic and donates a lot of money to anti-trans causes. My employee was horrified and said that had she known that, she wouldn’t have bought the books. Lots of people just don’t know!

Which takes me to…

4. This type of online activism isn’t effective.

I’m talking specifically about being anti-Harry Potter or anti-JKR. Falling into those two categories does not automatically make you pro-trans. This was pretty blatantly obvious back when the books were being burned for promoting witchcraft. As far as fighting for trans peoples’ rights, screaming until you’re blue in the face about how anybody who engages with Harry Potter is a traitor and JKR BAD is wasting time better spent doing something productive - something that could actually benefit trans people rather than…I don’t know…virtue signalling that their blog or twitter account is a safe space?

5. I personally do not feel welcomed or vouched for by these people.

Listen, I’m going to break myself down into all my stupid little categories. I’m trans. Autistic. Intersex. Aromantic. Asexual. Basically, all the things that people love to try and cast out of the queer community, whether that means they’re trying to split LGBTQIA+ at the T or Q.

The anti-Harry Potter stuff, as far as attacking the fandom, feels like the latest strain of purity politics to me. As I’ve laid out above, abandoning HP will not right the wrongs of JKR in any measurable or tangible way. Boycotts don’t work. Fandom does not feed JKR’s coffers, and destroying the fandom will not cripple her. There are trans people inside the HP fandom, and what of us? Are we traitors? Are we not ‘really’ trans, because obviously we don’t care about the current political climate? Are we just confused and need to be enlightened as to what harm we’re doing? Where have I heard this rhetoric before?

One small thing, tangentially related:

6. I don’t care what JKR says about how engaging with Harry Potter tells her about who her ‘supporters’ are.

Seriously? She’s a lying dirtbag, and I’m just supposed to take her word on this? This is the one thing she just so happens to be right about?

When she started spouting TERF shit, I was really saddened by the writers who, upon leaving the fandom, also deleted their works in protest. Seeing as the majority of the HP fandom is queer, I’m sure that JKR was very pleased with the amount of queer media erasure that occurred. Why did we do that for her?

7. I believe JKR actually seethes and malds over the prospect of her fandom being queer and producing queer content.

As a writer, there’s a special kind of pain that comes from someone not quite interpreting your work the way you would have wanted them to. What do you think JKR’s first reaction was when she first learned about the Harry/Draco ship? The Draco/Hermione ship? If she didn’t live in a stone castle, I bet she would’ve punched a hole in the wall.

So, yeah. Transing and gaying all of her characters is a pretty nice way to get to her in a way that she can’t legally or financially retaliate. Every time she screams ‘WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?!’ at the queer people in her fandom, a trans person’s crops are watered.

8. The HP setting is very welcoming to trans people.

Potions exist that can change your body. Enough said.

That the Harry Potter books never really says anything specifically about trans people (NOTE: obviously JKR’s prejudices even back then showed through, but this isn’t about that) leaves the question on the table. Obviously trans people exist in the Harry Potter setting, because they exist everywhere. So, how did they never get any page time?

Well, who says they didn’t? In a setting where potions exist to change your body, trans people are just…people. I don’t even think that they would have a marginalized identity because gender dysphoria would be something very easily treated. Think of it like someone who takes medication for blood pressure. They need the medication, it’s life-saving, and while there isn’t a magical pill to ‘cure’ high blood pressure, it can be managed. The magical world revels in being strange. Why would being trans, while being considered strange here in the ‘Muggle’ world, be anything other than normal there? Why can’t it be?

And then there are Metamorphmagi. People who can literally change themselves at will! If that isn’t a trans person’s dream, I don’t know what is. I would personally love the option of being the biggest, hairiest dude with a dick so big an erection would make me black out, and then ultra femme and delicate the next.

Last on this point, Harry never notes anyone specifically trans in the text (NOTE: touching on things like the physical descriptions of Rita Skeeter and Marge Dursley, JKR tends to do the ugly=bad person thing. Although she describes Rita and Marge as mannish in appearance, they aren’t trans characters. They’re women that JKR wants to frame as bad people. Like I said above, this is JKR’s prejudice showing through). If Harry never notes anyone as specifically trans, that probably means that it’s impossible to tell at face value. The same as blood pressure medication, to return to that analogy. How do you know someone is on them? They tell you. You see the pill bottle and happen to know what that medication is for. They complain about side effects. They complain about the symptoms that led them going to the doctor in the first place.

9. Queer HP fandom content can potentially be how a Harry Potter fan realizes that they’re queer (or that queer people are just regular folks).

Hey, the first one happened to me!

If someone comes into the Harry Potter fandom unaware of JKR’s politics - maybe they were gifted the books for their birthday or happened to catch the movies on TV - it’s good actually that this person doesn’t fall right into an echo chamber of JKR’s politics. I’ll be happily here to correct her record in a way that isn’t shaming or policing them.

Anyway, I think that’s everything lol. To summarize:

- The HP Fandom is a neutral setting. Engaging with it doesn’t help JKR, and not engaging with it doesn’t help trans people. Just don’t spend money on official HP merch.

- If you want to be a pro-trans activist or trans political ally, please just ignore JKR and put all your focus on the real world.

- There are trans people in the HP fandom who are left feeling awkward and uncomfortable due to virtue signalling.

- Generating queer HP content is good, actually.

[nothorses]

hi! this is a question about pansexuality that i fear asking. tbh i don't really care what anyone identifies as. everyone's part of my community to me. i am trying to wrap my head around bi v pan stuff as someone who is neither. i know bisexuals who are critical of the pan label because to them it distinguishes bisexuality as starkly Not being pansexuality. when definitions of bisexuality have included "attraction regardless of gender, or to all genders (and including trans and nb people)" for many bisexuals since like the 70s which is how i see pansexuality defined a lot of the time

i know that bi and pan have always been concurrent labels and they have a lot of overlap and that some ppl use them interchangeably. and i truly don't care that ppl id as pan. but i do feel weird seeing it juxtaposed to definitions of bisexuality that aren't inclusive of all bisexuals? (ie that bisexuals aren't attracted to ALL genders, just two or more.. when many bisexuals Are attracted to all genders! part of bisexual history is that people have been fighting to let others know Bisexuality is more inclusive than the literal like latin meaning of bi = two). i don't know where to stand on this divide. i love pansexuals and the pan label and the right to self determination in identity but i do understand the argument that it feels hurtful in a biphobic way to say it is inherently a distinct sexuality from being bisexual when it's. like. many bi and pan ppl would define their sexuality in the exact same way other than a difference in specific label. i feel like people hate this opinion lmao!!! please help! even if you hate my opinion too i literally feel like i need guidance KDBDBS

Tbh I think there's a lot of historical context to this whole convo, and I don't think you're alone in being confused. And honestly given the amount of info you have, I think you're in a pretty respectable spot about it. (And I say "historical" here in the sense that I am. 25. and I'm mostly talking about the things I have either seen firsthand, or read about/heard about from others.)

So like- when I was a Young Queer, it was very common for people to define "bi" as meaning "men and women" (or even "cis men and cis women"), and thus "pan" rose to popularity as an alternative to essentially mean "everyone, including trans and nonbinary people".

This was like, early 2010's? And I'm talking about other Young Queer spaces and interactions. And you kind of have to remember that in that time, it was kind of radical to tell people not to call things "gay" if they didn't like them. Joking that people were trans (usually in terms like "lol Justin Beiber is a lesbian") was common even in progressive spaces. I was stunned when a friend of mine asserted that they were just gonna stop using the r-slur, like, at all.

So I can kind of understand why "pan" might have felt like a needed thing at the time. I think it felt like a kind of shorthand for "I'm cool with trans people", and at least from my perspective, that was something you very much needed to state back then.

I think there are a lot of people my age who, if they don't still understand "bi" and "pan" that way, at least kind of "get" where that definition is coming from. And yeah, it's ahistorical as hell! "Bi" has always been inclusive of trans people. Not to mention people have been defining it all sorts of ways for a long time now; there are a ton of definitions out there, and how the word is defined often depends on who you ask.

But then you ask: if we know "bi" is and has always been trans-inclusive, why does anyone still need the word "pan"? And I think the answer is... complicated. And extremely personal, tbh.

This happens with queer language all the time; as terms are cycled out in favor of new ones, people who've been using them hang on regardless. Sometimes they don't know the language has been updated, but usually it's more than that. Usually they have more of a personal relationship with the word, and the community, that they can't just give up in favor of a new word.

Maybe some people who do understand that "bi" is not actually a transphobic term also still view "pan" as shorthand for "I'm cool with trans people", and that's important to them. Maybe they grew up with that word, formed relationships under it, and came out with it. Maybe the pan community impacted them in some profound way, and rejecting it over shifting definitions just doesn't feel right. There could be any number of reasons.

The other part of this is that much as people have come to understand the original definition of "bi" more widely now, the definition of "pan" and "bi" both have taken on multiple definitions as well. I've seen a lot of definitions that seem to exist just to differentiate the two. For example:

Bi: attracted to multiple (but not necessarily all) genders Pan: attracted to all genders

Bi: attracted to all genders, but in different ways, or with preferences Pan: attracted to all genders essentially the same

Bi: attracted to multiple (or all) genders Pan: attraction regardless of gender

I've also seen people use "bi" as the umbrella term, and "pan" as a more specific label beneath it (often with one of those pairs of definitions).

And you mention that "bi" has a lot of different definitions and understandings- so does pan! How a person understands those words, particularly when they identify with them, is going to be deeply personal and very likely very different from the next person. I think a good rule of thumb is to assume that whoever you're talking to may just have a different definition and understanding of the word they're using than you do, and try to ask them about it if it concerns you.

[a-libra-writes]

HIII!! can i ask, how do you write Mordecai Heller?? THANK YOUU!!

hmm Ill try to answer this best I can and try not to ramble too long but we'll see how that goes... Im not gonna act like im an expert or whatever, this is just my thought process ig? ALSO Im ace and so is he, and I add my own experiences into my writing. Anyway the long version here:

so first thing's first!! READ THE COMIC ALSO THE SIDE COMICS ALSO ALL THE EXTRAS bc esp the extras, you get to see a lot of his personality pre-Marigold. It's two very distinct points in his life - I'd venture to say that pre-Lackadaisy and early Lackadaisy Mordecai are also very different (and that makes sense - he was a kid, and he was with the Lackadaisy crew for 7 years). He has a very distinct character progression that in my opinion is very interesting and well-written!

actually, p much all lackadaisy characters are well-written, but mordecai is a fun case because he just has so much going on: his social skills are abysmal, and he doesn't seem to find it a problem. he has committed brutal murders and executions and considers them 'just business'. he doggedly pursues discrepancies. he fixates on things being neat and symmetrical if possible. He can deal with things not being that way, for a time (note when he's covered in bloody and filthy from a job, he doesn't freak out - because that's Business (tm) and he can just wash up anyway. But a driver getting a snot mess all over the car he has to drive in all the time? Unforgivable.) he grew up in squalor and has a serious phobia of spiders and rats. He's emotionally repressed in more ways than one. He's queer and is deeply uncomfortable with people (especially women) touching him or showing interest. He still thinks about his sisters fondly. he also thinks they're better off without him. He actually found a friend (or more) in Viktor and he'd never, ever, ever say it, and his way of keeping his friend out of crime and 'protecting' him was by shooting his kneecaps. his sense of humor is crap, and he doesn't understand why his mannerisms would be considered amusing. he got into crime at a young age, doing gangster's finances for them. as a kid.

im missing some other tidbits, but you get it. the dude is real interesting to think about and write, to say the least.

I think a lot of writing mordecai, esp if you're writing a more romantic fic or even if it's just platonic - he's so closed off! part of why the Savoys are so interested in him is they've worked with him a year and he just doesn't loosen up or talk much about himself. he and viktor knew each other seven whole-ass years and you think they ever talked about their families? how they came to know atlas? what they thought about the job? granted, Viktor is just as closed-off himself, but you get what im saying. he has a serious problem with letting people in, and part of writing him is getting a crowbar and figuring out which spot to put it in and bend it juuuust enough to open something up.

ok that metaphor went somewhere weird, but you get me. and, if im being honest, a LOT of what i channel is my own asexual experience. I used to be very touch averse, especially to the opposite gender - to the point where i'd panic if I felt a man was "too close" (i.e. less than 2 feet) and "lingering" (aka minding his business). I didnt mind my friends hugging me, but I didnt really like the cuddle sessions my female friends wanted to do, and after a point, I disliked hugs from my male friends. if a guy was crushing on me? Hell no, he wasnt going near me, even if I thought he was cute too (when I was younger I DEF had a thing for my female friends too, but i registered that as 'gaaaaal paaaals' for the LONGEST time until I accepted I was bi) There was like - an undercurrent of fear and anxiety. It took me a long time to identify why. while other people seemed delighted when people they liked held their hands and hugged and kissed, it sent me into a panic.

eventually i figured out my thought process: physical affection will inevitably lead to sex, and bc i thought i was straight, there was the terrifying thought of ... oh god if i date a guy he'll expect me to have sex. oh no oh no oh no-

(and no, no one taught me much about consent or taking things slow or talking to your partner. i had to figure it out, which sucked.)

all this to say ... when I write Mordecai, especially in a romantic sense, I kind of channel that anxiety I felt in my teens and early 20s. and like, this is the 1920's!!!!* Not to mention his upbringing, and of course his line of work - where he definiately cant have feelings getting in the way of murdering someone. I think this adds up to someone whose repressing themselves - their sexual thoughts (or lack thereof), memories of family, romantic thoughts, platonic thoughts, and so on.

I like to think - again, this is fanfiction, I seriously doubt it'll come up in the comics - in a romantic relationship (or even an intense platonic one), he gets intense about it. Because Mordecai is an intense guy - you can't hatchet up someone "because i was told to", or kneecap a friend you wanted to "protect", or switch sides to your father figure's rival and pretend like you betrayed everyone just to investigate that father figure and not be, uh. some kind of Intense. I often think that, in a relationship, his jealousy and confusion/apprehension around affection and sexuality would be just as intense. And eventually, the feelings of loyalty and devotion ... once he finally lets himself have it. Because I also think, to some degree, he doesn't think he should have it - just like he thinks his sisters and mother should just leave him behind.

when im writing him in the romantic sense - as I began to accept and understand my sexuality, and talk through my feelings with my partner (also generally have better mental health, my touch averseness got a lot better.** Again, Im also kind of projecting my feelings and experiences onto Mordecai regarding this. I like to think that, once he really trusts someone and allows them to touch him, other barriers begin to tumble down. its like raw nerves being touched sometimes, but he steadily gets used to it and eventually takes solace in it (now getting him to ADMIT that srfjsdfs--)

anyway! As always, fanfic is fanfic. You are free to characterize this murdercat however you wish. These are just the jumbled thoughts that run around in my brain.

* Asexuality, like homosexuality and many shades of queerness, was considered an illness. IF anyone even acknowledged asexuality at all - its definition and terminology hadn't really caught on until the 1970's, though the Kinsey scale attempted to address it (and Jennie June attempted to write and define this in the 1920s, but I seriously doubt her writings were widespread).

**A stranger can brush past me or put a hand on me and I only have a few seconds of anxiety. My friends and family can hug me for a while, or I can cuddle up to them. I don't mind my husband cuddling or kissing me at all anymore; he's actually the one person I can tolerate sustained affection from. A huge part of this change came from accepting and understand my asexuality as part of me. I wasnt "messed up" and "broken".

[chaoskirin]

I have a slightly weird question and I'm sorry if this comes off in any way negatively but I'm worried as all fuck.

I'm Irish, living in Ireland, but American politics has a huge influence over here. Conservative groups here pay folks from American lobby groups to come speak at their events to push banning abortion or queer/trans rights or denying asylum seekers. Not to mention the reach of social media and how a bunch of far right/fascist groups over here get riled up by people on the other side of the Atlantic to start riots and shit.

The prospect of trump being re-elected terrifies me because as bad as it is now, it was even worse when he was in power. Even if Biden didn't have a blue congress for this term it was still better. I'm sorry if this sounds like fear mongering or being unreasonable or naive but that's just way it seemed to me.

I don't know how to help y'all across the pond, I don't know what I can do from here. But is there anything we can do?

Hey, I thought about how to answer this for a while, so sorry it's taken almost a day to get back with you.

The reason I am so outspoken about Americans voting (and people from ALL countries who have a chance to stop fascism from taking over) is that there are FAR more progressive people than there are fascists. The fascists are just louder.

The problem is that progressive people are not playing the same game as fascists. The right wants total domination. They want to be able to jail or kill people who disagree with them. Whereas the left wants fairness, a right to choose, and peace.

The right has no qualms about using less than savory tactics to achieve their goals. Among these tactics are jailing people who disagree with them, denying those people the ability to vote, and engaging in voter suppression. The left believes that if they hold the course and play by the rules, everyone will eventually fall in line.

And, worst of all, the left currently believes in moral victory over damage control. A moral victory to the progressive left means voting for someone who has no bad marks on their record, and they continuously fail to see that that person does not exist. Whereas the right treats their chosen candidate as a god despite what they've done. The right will rally behind one person regardless of their actions, and that makes them terrifying.

In the United States, Republicans only make up about 25% of the population, and yet they account for half the vote. This is, in large part, because of voter suppression. But it's also because there are a lot of progressive voters who are refusing to vote because they believe this sends a message.

The best thing you can do is get the word out to everyone you know that not voting ONLY sends a message to the people who will be harmed by the result. One vote does not make too much of a difference. But a hundred votes? A THOUSAND votes? Every single vote adds up to something that WILL make a difference. And right now, the important task for everyone, both in the United States and abroad, is to impress on just how important it is to stop fascism from spreading.

Biden has done a lot of good things, but people tend not to listen to this. What they see is a man who allowed genocide. What they see is a man who has committed war crimes. A man who has allowed the transportation of weapons to Israel for use in this massacre. And they are all RIGHT.

But the alternative is worse. One of two parties will take the presidency. This is not in question. There has NEVER been a true independent candidate who has won in the history of the United States. And although people will point out that different parties HAVE won, it is only because they were backed by a political machine, and those parties then went on to become the current two party system we suffer with today.

An election year is not the time to challenge the electoral system, but it's only during election years that it seems to be brought up. So besides encouraging your American friends to vote against fascism, you should encourage them to work between elections to change the electoral system so that different parties have a chance at winning, and so the popular vote means more that the numbers achieved through the electoral college.

That's the most important right now.

[dearweirdme]

genuine question: do you guys not think it's incredibly unhealthy to sit online speculating about literal strangers' sexualities all day? do y'all not see how grossly disrespectful that is just as a general concept? these are people none of you have EVER met or spent ANY actual personal time with. they don't know you and therefore have never disclosed details about their romantic life bc it isn't your business??? what gives ANY OF YOU the right to hyper analyze everything they do to attribute it to their sexuality? i'm trying to understand how you all could possibly say you love them but don't have enough respect for any of them to simply be fans of their music and leave this weird ship at the door. y'all hyperanalyze all their body language to confirm they're in love but ignore them mentioning how the comments section is never fun to look at (bc it's ALWAYS just shippers being stupidly unhinged) and the very obvious discomfort the shipping shit brings them. most of you shippers are straight women fetishizing. most of you shippers are larries who jumped ship when 1d disbanded. most of you are grown adults who need to get offline and get real hobbies that don't involve breaking down the potentiality of sexuality for people you literally don't know personally. how do all of you have so much audacity and so much time to think half-critically but no time at all to introspect on the level of sheer delusion you have to willfully exist in to perpetuate this narrative shamelessly? this is so sick. how do y'all not feel awful about all the blatant, obvious, perceivable stress you shippers cause them? why can’t y'all behave like actual people with empathy and ethics?

Hi anon!

You are not sending me a genuine question. If that had been your aim you would’ve worded your ask differently. I also wonder if you send asks like this to blogs and accounts who talk and speculate about their relationships with women.. because if you are not actually being homophobic right now.. that would be the same.

I understand the delicacy in this. Except for the part of tour ask that seems homophobic (and plain rude and extremely biased on many accounts) I can even understand you wanting people to stay out of their private business to some level. You want to protect them from harm and I very much applaud that, even though I think your reasoning is faulty in some ways. It is for instance nothing new or weird for fans to care for and be interested in the private lives of artists. It’s something that the artists themselves and their labels/companies also know and at times even feed into. It’s basically inherent to the fan/artist situation. It’s just human nature to be interested in things like this.. is that bad? I don’t know if a word like bad or good applies here.. it’s just human to me.

You look at all shippers and their ways as the same. I think there’s many different kinds of shippers. There’s definitely those that go way too far. People should never confront members themselves with these things. Don’t go in their comments with Taekook or Jkk mentions. Don’t bring banners to concerts, just.. don’t. Not to blow my own horn.. but I would never! Also the constant searching for proof in the tiniest things… it’s so unnecessary and it makes people look crazy and (!) it takes away from the seriousness that this situation brings with it. Which brings me to my reason for talking about this.

Aside from thinking Tae and Jk are super cute and adorably in love, there’s the underlying issue of queerness still not being socially accepted in so many places all around the world. I think it’s important to talk about these things (even as a straight adult, because the more people talk about these things.. the more influence we have in making things better for the future). If no one was to ever talk about celebrities being closeted or closeting in general.. there would be no progress. I am fairly sure about what I have seen between Tae and Jk.. I am also fairly sure that they are not ashamed about their queerness. That is why I talk about this. I feel I am doing this in a respectful way. There’s things I do not discuss (sexual stuff) because I feel that’s in general not useful for the conversation.

I am not willing to take responsibility for other Tkkrs behavior though. I talk about things for myself and for my own reasons. I like to think everyone is able to think for themselves and be responsible for the way they interact in fandom. I am my own person though.. I do not rile up Tkkrs to go leave annoying comments anywhere.

Mostly though.. I am talking about love, anon. The difference between you and me is that to you them being straight is the default and to me it is not. Your ‘speculation about sexuality’ feels harmful to me.. because it’s love that we talk about.. I really hate the notion that there’s a difference between same sex love and straight love for you.