#understand your relationship to queerness as a way of validating your self image

[yourworldiseternallycomplete]

literally you guys have to stop tying your self image to some sort of ontological queerness!!!

[scarefox]

The way some people straight up deny soft criticism of the BL industry (stuff that isn't even a secret if you don't close your eyes and ears!!!) Criticism by literally LGBTq people working in said BL industry in Thailand..... basically one of the only ones who's voice are most valid here in this discourse. That's not hypocrism of people working in the industry to open their mouth! That's called self-awareness and using this genre to convey a message and trying to fix issues. This is about Step by Step and Lovely Writer atm. But those are not the only dramas who brought up some critic but somehow people get salty now about that little poke from SbS? Did you sleep the past 3 years?? And it's not a coincident that it's always the same topics certain BL dramas brought up!

I feel like some people here don't get that you can criticize your own work place, your own industry, your own country WITHOUT hating, shaming or demonizing it completely! Yall need stop this black & white thinking and the constant urge to feel personally attacked by something like this...

Especially the message of LW (the same people who make SbS now) was that there is nothing wrong about loving BL stories and they do like producing them. BUT that there are some things in the industry that are bad and harmful NOT ALL OF IT, SOME THINGS! Like the treatment of actors and certain topics by companies and producers. And the main theme of LW: the toxic overstepping and overcontrolling shipping culture that can (and did) destroy real life relationships / friendships under the weight of the pretend relationship (pretend as in they are not dating for real (everyone knows that! or should know that! this is also not even a secret if you watch interviews outside of the fun and couple game shows) at least in most of the cases.... in some rare ones yes, in some very rare cases some actors actually date but they are too afraid to come out due to homophobia and the way the industry & fandom treats those cases (source Dr. Thomas Baudinette who studies the industry as a form of queer asian media and interviewed companies and actors since years... somewhere in this he talks about actor relationships, I can't find the time stamp atm))

ALSO the point about exploiting the LGBTq community is NOT about the fans or LGBTq audience who love these dramas. But about businesses and literal Thailand itself. For using those stories and actors / couples for advertising, for marketing, for tourism even. BUT at the same time some don't care for real life LGBTq issues and rights or the fact that Thailand is still not agreeing on equal marriage (which is not just about them not being able to marry but they get denied a lot of things married couples get. alone the fact that they can't see their partner in the case of an emergency in the hospital because 'they are not family'). In the said SbS scene they were literally discussing which pretend couple has the most fans and how they could use their fandom and fan clubs to gain profit. Don't you guys get how fucking frustrating this is for the LGBTq people and allies who work in the BL industry, to get paraded in front of the camera for money and image but still don't get treated equally??? THAT is what they mean with exploiting.... And it's a lot of producers, writers and some actors who voice those points, not just these few self-aware BL dramas. But doing it through the medium they adress is the best way to reach the right people, to make the right people aware and ask for their support. Since they can't say such things directly (even though they should) unless they want to lose their job, they still like to a degree.

And I am sorry but the opinion of actual thai people who are inside that industry is more valid than some random fan who just doesn't want to understand those things in order to enjoy their shows without feeling bad.... What if I tell you that you can do both and that this is not about shaming you or making you feel guilty (unless you participate in toxic overstepping behavior or are actually LGBTq-phobic, then yes feel guilty)! Acknowledging issues, supporting to fix those issues and still have fun with these dramas and actors.... Those things can and do coexist and nobody said otherwise!!

[multiplicity-positivity]

Here’s some positivity for mlm headmates in mostly wlw systems, and wlw headmates in mostly mlm systems!

(Note: our definitions of mlm and wlw include he/him lesbians, she/her gays, bi/pan lesbians and gays, nonbinary lesbians and gays, and ANYONE else who identifies with the mlm or wlw label!)

System life can be really messy, especially when it comes to sorting each member’s sexual and romantic orientations! For some headmates, it can feel isolating or uncomfortable being the only MLM headmate in a mostly WLW system, or vice versa. This post is for all the headmates who find themselves in this position!

We want you to know that you are a valid and cherished member of your system, regardless of your orientation and how it compares to the rest of your system! We know how isolating it can feel to be the only WLW or MLM member in a system made up of the opposite, but this doesn��t mean you’ll never be able to find love, joy, and others who can accept you for who you are!

It’s okay to feel influenced by the orientations of your system members! It’s okay to feel confused about your orientations, to question for a long time or to experiment with labels as you try to find what works best for you! It’s okay to get your orientation mixed up with another member’s, to not understand your sexuality or romantic attraction, or to feel frustrated that hardly anyone in your system experiences attraction in the same way you do! You’re allowed to explore, to question, to feel your wants and desires to the fullest, and to act on those when safe to do so!

Your identity as MLM in no way invalidates the identities of your WLW headmates, and the same goes for WLW headmates in mostly MLM systems! We promise you are just as queer as the rest of your system, and identifying the way you do doesn’t cause anyone any harm! Please don’t feel guilty for your attraction - something that you can’t choose and is outside of your control! You are a brilliant, shining member of your system just the way you are, orientation included!

Remember MLM-WLW solidarity is for everyone! We hope you and your system can grow and flourish together despite your differing attractions. Even if the way your system identifies means you won’t have the chance to find fulfilling romantic or sexual relationships, we truly hope that you can find joy in your life and ultimately come to terms with how your orientation fits in with your system. Life is never black and white - it is often incredibly complicated, and this is doubly true for those who are plural!

(id in alt text!)

We’re wishing you a future full of love, peace, and kindness from those around you. You are loved, you are an important and vital member of your system, and we are rooting for you in all that you do! Thanks for reading, and please show yourself some self-compassion today!

(Image ID:) A pale orange userbox with a cluster of multicolored flowers for the userbox image. The border and text are both dark orange, and the text reads “all plurals can interact with this post!” (End ID.)

[jeonjk0504]

Hi! I admire your open minded responses and ethics. You have said in some posts that you believe Taehyung and Jungkook are mutually attracted to each other but that they haven't confessed or consummated. (Please correct me if I got it wrong!) I was wondering why, in your opinion, Taehyung and Jungkook wouldn't just take the leap and be together after being on a journey of so many years? Is it your opinion that homophobic society is holding them back? Is it the risks to the band? They seem like two rich, empowered men to me. Taehyung seems like a very honest and authentic person. And Jungkook tweeted a drawing he made of a famous line from Love Simon. These guys would know that being in a committed same sex relationship is an option, right? I am not saying they could necessarily be open about it but I find the idea of them wanting it but not acting on it challenging.

It is a sentiment that I see in a lot of cis het female dominated spaces that revolve around queer men, or the idea of queer men. It's love, it's attraction, it's everything but the relationship. And the sex. It strikes me as a heteronormative overlay on what queer men can and can't do, as if the relationship is allowed to be sexual and romantic only in y'all's minds. It looks like shipping but it also looks like erasure.

Personally, I do not think that Taekook are together but I could be wrong. Anything is possible. I admire the way you stand up for what is right and role model that it is never ok to be a bully. What people consider 'harmless' is relative. I don't buy any 'ships' in BTS as purely aesthetic relationships. I am a gay person and can't take away my identity while seeing this content. Hovering between the space of 'they are real' and 'I just want them to be real' is a safe space for bloggers to be. But it isn't a great representation of genuine LGBTQ+people. A 25 yr old and a 23 year old aren't nuns.

You don't have to answer this question if you prefer not to, of course. I didn't mean to try to make you defend your interests. Your points of view are as valid as mine.

Hey anon!

Thanks a lot for your interesting questions! :)

My personal feeling of them being mutually attracted to one another but not being in a relationship, stems from the dynamic they have. But i got to say, i‘m never 100% sure. I don‘t think you can tell at the tip of their noses if people are in a relationship, because it‘s mostly based on „what would i say/do/act like in a relationship?“ and that can never be copied onto people, even less if you don‘t know them personally.

What makes me say that though is a mixture of reasons. The biggest of them is simple: their friendship. My personal impression is often, that they feel drawn to each other but they also have a good eye on their responsibilities and possibilities. This is less of something i can „prove“, it‘s simply a feeling i get based on various situations and how i see them act, none in specific. I also imagine to cross the line of friendship, might be a lot harder in a conservative country while being in this wide reaching spotlight in contrast to other spaces. And all the other things you took as an example, can add to that they don‘t have to though (the popularity, the band, the family, …).

Also when i say i get the impression it‘s unspoken, i refer to them talking about that attraction or establishing a mature understanding, i have never said they haven‘t acted on it. Their body language feels like they have, actually. To me at least.

I know they both support LGBTQIA Artists and Art. But supporting it and identifying with it are two different pair of shoes.

And while Taehyung seems very, let‘s say adventurous to me, he has always had a strong affinity to a self-image based on his father. Which might mean you can indulge in something for fun (same sex intimacy) but when it get’s serious (same sex relationships) it‘s better to follow conservative ideals, like a lot of oppressed or erased homosexuals in Homophobic countries do.

This is just a connection i keep thinking about though, not a fact. It‘s only a fact that he views his dad as a role-model, visually and also in the role that he performs. His strong wish for children supports that as well. And i‘m not saying it‘s impossible for same sex couples to start a family with children (at least not where i come from) but in SK it‘s sadly not an option as of now. They‘re neither allowed to marry, nor have a legal partnership which will definitely have an impact on how you approach relationships in any case.

And i keep questioning myself: would you share such a sensitive wish like having kids, knowing fully well that it‘s not an option while being in a serious same sex relationship? Or would you share it in the belief that laws will change in the future or you will („somehow“) end up with a woman to make it happen? It may be nitpicky of me to question that, but i see it as a possible indicator of Taehyung not being in a serious same sex relationship as of now, because i feel like his desire to have children in some way, has always been noticeably strong and if he shares his wishes in such a carefree way, maybe his wish is in no danger.

Btw i know a lot of TKer i talk to disagree with me on this and they don‘t think it has to mean anything! 😌 and to be fair: we have the same amount of possible indicators that speak in favor of a relationship. I feel like i‘m talking a lot about why i think they‘re not, rather in what way they could actually be… (very ironic, looking at my blog)

Jungkook on the other hand is a little romantic to me, but he seems very careful too not like someone who just takes the leap (i‘m not saying shy, pretty sure he got over that a few years ago for the most part..).

There is a lot more, but it would take up too much space to elaborate so i hope it‘s okay i only gave a small reason for now.

Concerning your criticism on cishet spaces, they are of course valid and it‘s important to keep an eye on that and call out people who hurt the community. I don‘t feel comfortable with you associating me in that space though, because i doubt you actually know from what perspective i am sharing my opinions. I also use BTS neither for hetero nor LGBTQIA representation because i don‘t know what they identify as. It goes both ways. You might see it as hovering in a safe space, but for me that safe space is mostly there out of respect, not because i don‘t feel brave enough to take a stance.

I thank you for your respectful questions! :) it was interesting to reflect on why i view them the way i do. Please always feel free to share your opinions with me 🥰 have a nice day!!

[thedreadvampy]

Hey Ruth! I noticed you've talked in the past about asexuality in quite a negative manner. As an ace-person (who has received backlash for it) I was wondering: do you still uphold these opinions?

Hey! I have in the past said I don’t really...like people popping up in my ask box asking me My Opinion On Asexuality, but I do appreciate you asking me as someone I kinda know and with your face turned on, so I’m gonna aim to answer in the macro. Though I mean it depends on what the opinions...are? I have had a lot of opinions over the time I’ve had this blog and I don’t necessarily know what all of them were or which ones have concerned you. I can give you a top-level view of how I see my views, though (however, since I have been largely holding off on answering this kind of ask for Literally A Year Now this is less an answer to your specific question and more an answer to the last year of asks)

(also if I get dogpiled in my inbox for Having Bad Asexuality Opinions which I do every time I talk about asexuality regardless of what I actually say then. my phone is broken I won’t know about it :) so I feel untouchable)

I don’t think I hold a negative opinion of asexuality as an identity (I say I don’t think bc we all have blind spots)? I have a lot of very important people in my life who are asexual, aromantic or aroace and. I mean it feels pretty condescending to say ~uwu it’s valid~ bc like. ace and aro people don’t really need my input to validate their identity. but a) it seems like a pretty accurate way to describe their experience and b) I know a lot of them have had a really huge boost from finding a name and community to fit their experience and have found that really helpful, and I’ve seen that make a huge difference in people’s lives and I’m really happy to watch my friends come to understand themselves and feel comfortable and accepted in a part of themselves they had felt really alienated or stigmatised by. In a broader sense, I think there’s huge value in decentralising romance and sex in our assumptions of What Human Happiness Means and for some people that’s not the most important thing, and for some it’s just not interesting. 

So like. I find it difficult to really express these opinions in any meaningful way because my opinion on asexuals and aromantics is much like my opinion on trans people or idk like people of colour. like very obviously those people exist and very obviously those people don’t deserve to be marginalised or stigmatised but it would feel. weird and performative to just make a post saying like “Asexuality Is Good And Valid, I Am Pro It” bc again like. who needs my permission or cares about my opinion. it’s not a Good Thing To Do it’s just. a thing you are that shouldn’t be treated as a bad thing.

however. and I suspect that this is what you’re referring to. while I love and appreciate ace and aro people, I think building communities and active support for ace and aro people is valuable and needed and, as above, I think Asexuality Is Good And Valid I Am Pro It, I do take some issue with elements of how discussions around asexuality are framed online (pretty much only online, I really haven’t run into the kind of black-and-white thinking in in-person queer spaces) 

and I also. think there are some issues with people extrapolating their experience of their own sexuality onto the world in a way which. I’m just going to say a lot of the time when I talk about The Ace Discourse in a negative way it’s around people assuming that the world is split into a binary between ace and allo people, or assuming that only aspec people experience a nuanced or complex or fluid relationship to their sexuality while pigeonholing allosexuality into a pretty flat image of sex and romance focus. and I have always felt like this does a massive disservice not just to people who don’t identify with aspec labels, but also to the general hope that we could work against the expectation that there’s a Standard Amount To Value Sex/Romance - I think that the assumption that there are aspec people and then Everyone Else Has The Normal Type and Level of Attraction just. reinforces the idea that there’s a “Normal” type and level of attraction. which is ultimately pretty self-defeating and also just. observably untrue. 

and this division of the world into Aspec People and Allo People also has some other weird knockon effects - I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with identities like gray ace or demi or other aspec labels beyond asexual and aromantic, but I do think that the way those labels are used is often. unhelpful. and they’re defined in such personal, subjective ways that you get weirdnesses sometimes like people Diagnosing Each Other With Demisexual or people saying ‘you can’t talk about this experience you share because it’s an Aspec Experience’ and again. there isn’t a concrete material experience there because the whole experience of romantic and sexual attraction, what that feels like and how sharply divisible it is is very, very personal and subjective. and everyone has different experiences of those and will name those experiences differently.

there’s also. historically a minority of Big Ace Blogs that kind of sneer at allosexuality or who would hijack posts about other issues to derail them to asexuality. but I don’t think they were ever representative of the community as a whole and I certainly think that inasmuch as those blogs remain around they’re a legacy of the Long-Ago (and a lot of them are trolls imo)

but there is. an issue I take that does seem to be more currently live which is the question of allo privilege. I think personally that framing all allosexuals/alloromantics as privileged over all aspec people on the basis of feeling sexual/romantic attraction is provably untrue in a world where people, particularly queer people, are actively oppressed and marginalised for expressing non-normative sexuality. it isn’t that I don’t think asexuality and aromanticism isn’t marginalised and stigmatised, because it visibly is, but it seems pretty reductive to boil it down to a binary yes/no privilege when both sexualisation and desexualisation are so actively tied into other forms of marginalisation (this is what I was trying to express in the argument about Martin a while ago - sex and sexuality are so often disincentivised for fat, queer, disabled and neuroatypical people that it doesn’t...feel like a reclamation that those tend to be the characters that get fanonised as ace where slim, straight, able-bodied and neurotypical characters aren’t. like it’s more complex than a binary privilege equation; sex and romance are incentivised and stigmatised differently at the intersection of oppressions and. for example. in a world where gay conversion therapy and religious oppression of gay and SGA people is so often focused specifically on celibacy and on punishing the act of sexual attraction, I don’t think it’s a reasonable framing to say that a gay allosexual man has privilege over an aroace man on the basis of his attraction) 

so those are like. things I would consider myself to feel actively negative about in online discourse (and again. in online discourse. not in how I relate to asexuality or aromanticism or aspec identities in general but in the framing and approaches people take towards discussing it in a very specific bubble).

but also. um. the main criticism I have of the online discourse culture of asexuality is that there are things I don’t have experience of that I have mentioned, when asked, that I don’t personally understand the meaning of but I don’t need to understand them to appreciate that they’re useful/meaningful to others. things like 

the difference between QPRs, asexual romantic relationships and close friendships

how you know the difference between romantic attraction and friendship

the distinction between sexual attraction and a desire to have sex with someone for another reason

and I hope I’ve generally been clear that this is. honest lack of understanding and not condemnation. I personally have a very muddled sense of attraction and often have difficulty identifying the specifics of any of my own emotional needs so like. it’s a closed book for me at the moment, how you would identify the fine distinctions between types of want when I’m still at step 1: identify That You Want Something Of Some Sort, Eventually, Through Trial And Error. but I think I’ve always been explicit that this isn’t a value judgement it’s just a gap in my own knowledge and yet. every single time I’ve said anything other than enthusiastic “yes I understand this and I love it and it’s good and valid” (and again. I have not gone out of my way to talk about it I have mostly only mentioned it because people keep asking me to talk about it) I have got a massive rush of anger and accusations of aphobia and “just shut up if you don’t know what you’re talking about but also answer my 30 questions to prove you think Correct Things about asexuality” and. I understand that this comes from a place of really unpleasant and aggressive backlash towards the ace community so it’s a sensitivity with a lot of people but like. it doesn’t seem proportional.

also I feel like ever since I hit like 700 followers my Tumblr life has been a constant cycle of people asking me Are You An Ace Inclusionist Are You An Exclus Are You An Aphobe Justify Your Opinion On Asexuality which. eventually yeah I’ve got pretty snippy about the whole thing. but you know. fuck it I’m just gonna lay it out and if you or anyone else is uncomfortable following me based on those opinions then I’m sorry to hear that and I will be sad to see you not want to engage with me any more but I also think that’s absolutely your prerogative. however I will not be taking questions at this time (and not just bc my phone’s broken) - demands for an argument about this Are Going To Be Ignored so if you want to go then go.

so like the big question I reckon is Do You Think Asexuality Is Queer and

yes. no. maybe. I don’t understand the question what does it mean for an identity to be queer? 

there are spaces and conversations where any form of aromanticism or asexuality makes sense as a relevant identity. talking about hegemonic expectations of normative romance. building community. combatting the idea that heterosexual missionary married sex between a man and a woman is the only rewarding or valuable form of relationship or intimacy.

there are spaces where I think heterosexual aros/heteromantic cis aces don’t. have a more meaningful or direct experience of the issues than allo cishets. because while being aro or ace or aspec has a direct impact on those people on a personal and relational level, disclosure is largely a choice, and the world at large sees them as straight. they don’t have the lived experience of being visibly nonconforming that SGA people and aroace people do. they may still be queer but there’s a lot of conversations where they bring a lot of the baggage of being Straight People (because. even if you’re ace or aro you can still be straight in your romantic or sexual attraction and if your relationships are all outwardly straight then you don’t necessarily have an intimate personal understanding of being marginalised from mainstream society by dint of your sexuality). this doesn’t make you Not Queer in the same way that being a bi person who’s only ever been in m/f relationships is still queer, but in both cases a) you don’t magically have a personal experience of societal oppression through the transitive properties of Being Queer and b) it’s really obnoxious to talk as if you’re The Most Oppressed when other people are trying to have a conversation about their lived experience of societal oppression. and they’re within their rights to say ‘we’re talking about the experience of being marginalised for same gender/non-heterosexual attraction and you’re straight, could you butt out?’)

(I very much object to the assumption coming from a lot of exclus that “cishet ace” is a term that can reasonably be applied to non-orientated aroace people though. het is not a default it really extremely doesn’t make sense to treat people who feel no attraction as Straight By Default. when I were a lad I feel like we mostly understood “asexual” to mean that identity - non-orientated aroace - and while I think it’s obvious that a lot of people do find value in using a more split-model because. well. some people are both gay/straight/bi and aro/ace, and it’s good that language reflects that. but I do think it’s left a gap in the language to simply refer to non-attracted people. this isn’t a criticism of anything in particular - there’s a constant balancing act in language between specificity and adaptability and sometimes a gain for one is a loss for the other)

some queer conversations and spaces just. aren’t built with aces in mind. and that isn’t a flaw. some spaces aren’t built with men in mind, but that doesn’t mean men can’t be queer. some conversations are about Black experiences of queerness but that doesn’t mean non-Black people can’t be queer. not all queer spaces will focus on ace needs but that doesn’t mean asexuality isn’t queer, or that queerness is opposed to aceness - sex, sexuality, romance and dating are all really important things to a lot of queer people, especially those whose sexuality and romantic relationships are often stigmatised or violently suppressed in wider society. there should be gay bars, hookup apps, gay and trans friendly sex education, making out at Pride, leather parades and topless dyke marches and porn made by and for queer people, romantic representation in media of young and old gay, bi and trans couples kissing and snuggling and getting married and saying sloppy romantic things. and there should be non-sexual queer spaces, there should be discussions around queerness that don’t suppose that a monogamous romantic relationship is what everyone’s fighting for, sex ed should be ace inclusive, etc. 

I think the whole question of inclusionism vs exclusionism is based on a weird underlying assumption that If An Identity Is Queer All Queer Spaces Should Directly Cater To That. like. aspec identities can be queer and it can be totally reasonable for there to be queer spaces that revolve around being sexual and romantic and there can be conversations it’s not appropriate or productive to centre asexuality and aspec experiences in and we can recognise that not all queer people do prioritise or have any interest in sex or romance. in the same way that there’s value in centring binary trans experiences sometimes and nonbinary experiences at other times but both of those conversations should recognise that neither binary or nonbinary gender identity is a Universal Queer Experience.

anyway that one probably isn’t one of the opinions you were asking about but I have been wanting to find a way to express it for a while so you’re getting it: the Ruth Thedreadvampy Inclusionism Take.

uh. it’s 1:30 on a work night so I have been typing too long. if there was an opinion you were specifically thinking of that I haven’t mentioned, chuck me another ask specifically pointing to what you want me to clarify my thinking on. sometimes I gotta be honest I’ve just been kind of careless in my framing (thinking of the Martin Fucks debacle where I spent ages insisting I didn’t say Martin couldn’t be aroace then read back like two days later and realised that I had said “he’s not aroace” bc I had written the post at 2am without proofreading and had meant to say “unless you think he’s aroace”) so I May Well Not Stand By Some Posts or might Stand By Them With Clarification

[annecoulmanross]

Do you know the Roma sub Rosa series by Steven saylor? If yes, what do you think of the Cicero description in it?

Hello anon!

I’m assuming this ask might be about the conspicuous absence of Steven Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa from this post about Cicero fictions?

Yes, I’ve read most of the Steven Saylor novels and short stories, and though I’ve enjoyed aspects of them, I do confess I have a (few) bone(s) to pick with Saylor about how he depicts Cicero! More on this below the cut!

[Spoilers for all of Steven Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa stories, but like, nothing that you wouldn’t also be spoiled for if you picked up a history book about this period.]

The important thing to know about Saylor, first and foremost, is that he actually set out to write a series of books about (and, indeed, from the perspective of) Cicero. But once he got around to the research stage, Saylor decided he didn’t actually like Cicero, and basically relegated him to being a side-character relative to the self-insert OC narrator “Gordianus,” whom Saylor created to be his new protagonist.

Now, I respect the fact that Saylor wanted to have a character that he could basically mold to his own whims – sometimes you don’t want to have to read thousands of words of Latin to get an accurate grasp of a real, complex historical figure just to be able to write in that person’s inner voice, you know? That’s valid. If (when) I write a Cicero novel, it’s not going to be from Cicero’s perspective. I also want the greater freedom of a lesser-known (or original) POV character.

That being said, I think that Saylor’s treatment of Cicero is ungenerous, unimaginative, short-sighted, petty, and mean – and that I don’t respect. Saylor’s Cicero is amoral, deeply lacking in compassion, and egotistic. The historical Cicero was obsessed with his own self-image, yes, but he cared very much about the people in his life. Saylor’s Cicero lacks many of the fundamental relationships that made the real Cicero who he was, like his love for his daughter and his passionate friendship with Atticus. Saylor’s Cicero is full of logical inconsistencies: in A Gladiator Only Dies Once (2005), Cicero is too squeamish to enjoy a gladiator show, but in The Throne of Caesar (2018), Cicero revels in Caesar’s death to the point that he was “giddy with joy.” (Historically, it’s reasonable to say that Cicero viewed the death of Caesar as a purely positive thing, but Saylor’s narrative clearly shames Cicero for this supposed bloodlust, which is not a take I find valid or compelling within the arc of this Cicero’s character.) Saylor’s Cicero exists only so that Saylor’s Gordianus has someone to consistently cringe at and morally judge.

I also think that Saylor leans too heavily into the idea that historical men are all misogynist and that the only way for a historical man to express enmity with a woman is to slander her with sexual invective. While the real Cicero had no compunctions about using sexual slander, he used the same types of sexual insults against both men (Clodius, Caesar, Antony) AND women (Clodia) and even then, he didn’t use these terms against all the women he disliked ; Cicero very much hated Cleopatra, but never used any sexual slurs against her – whereas Saylor has his Cicero call Cleopatra a “whore” for no apparent reason, in The Throne of Caesar (2018).

Ultimately, though, I think the worst injustice done to Cicero in Roma Sub Rosa is a narrative one: by ending his series with the death of Caesar, Saylor omits one of the pivotal moments of Cicero’s career: his final (and fatal) resistance to Marc Antony. The conclusion of Saylor’s series suggests that, after Caesar’s assassination, the story is simply done, and the world will soon settle gently into a new normal. In reality, the year following Caesar’s death represents a massive and violent sea-change, during which Cicero sacrificed his life in a vain – yet noble – attempt to preserve the republic against the machinations of those who would install an empire. It’s a tragic story of resistance to tyranny that has inspired revolutionaries for two thousand years, and Saylor simply doesn’t seem to care about this.

To counterbalance this laundry-list of disagreements, here’s is a more positive list: Three (3) Things I Like About Saylor’s Cicero

1. Every single Baby Gay™ in Saylor’s books is in love with Cicero, which gives us some incredible lines like this one, from Cicero’s intern, Rufus: “‘I didn’t kiss her for pleasure. I did it because I had to. I closed my eyes and thought of Cicero,’” from Roman Blood (1991).

(Note: Rufus also waxes rhapsodic about Cicero by quoting Sappho’s most famous queer poem, the Phainetai moi, in The House of the Vestals (1997) – cf. image below.)

2. Quite often, Saylor’s narrator has to witness everyone around him (including the members of his own family) hero-worshipping Cicero. I get a certain schadenfreude out of reading about this.

3. Every once in a while, Saylor will use his narrator to make prescient comments about the future (i.e. our present), and sometimes (sometimes) these comments are emotionally rewarding to a Cicero fan, like this speculation: “Who knows, perhaps all that survives the ravages of time will be scroll upon scroll of those long-winded speeches of Cicero’s, lovingly transcribed by Tiro – and ours will be known as the Age of Cicero, seen through his eyes alone,” from The Throne of Caesar (2018). 

Overall, though, I more often find myself angry at how Saylor handles Cicero, rather than amused. I fundamentally don’t think he understands who Cicero was as a person, or what motivated him, or why anyone would care about him, now or then. That being said, I do appreciate that Saylor gives a good amount of character development to Tiro, Cicero’s enslaved (and later freedman) secretary; he’s one of my favorite characters in Saylor’s books, and one of my favorite historical figures, period.

Also, you know, there’s this:

I hope this answers your question – feel free ask more about Cicero, any time!

[cavehags]

I know you've talked/reblogued about how lesbophobia and biphobia against women are essentially the same thing (Very eye opening btw!) and I'm cujrious if you've ever talked/thought about the differences in homophobia against gay/bi men and homophobia against lesbian/Bi women! If you don't want to talk about it just ignore, but I love hearing your opinions on stuff!

yeah so just like with the “lesbophobia”/“biphobia” stuff, i think these are different manifestations of the same violent bigotry. 

homophobia is the resistance to anything that undermines the gender roles that support the patriarchy. it is an offshoot of misogyny in that way. through homophobia, both gay/bi women and gay/bi men are punished for living our lives in ways that are not prescribed by gender roles. if men and women can live happily alone or in same-gender relationships, that undermines the party line of the patriarchy that says that the sexes are opposites and need each other. in a society governed by this expectation, all men are kept straining to perform masculinity while all women must not only perform their role, but also do so while trapped in a weakened and subservient social position. 

homophobia limits and punishes gay men and gay women differently, but we’re still being disciplined for the same “crime.” the way men are steered away from forming intimate friendships with other men, even in childhood, allows internalized homophobia to root itself very deeply in men. physical violence is also normalized among men to a certain extent, from childhood bullying to gay-panic-motivated hate crimes. on the other hand, since homophobia is a function of misogyny, it hits women hard in a range of subtle and explicit ways. girls are conditioned to rely on men for validation and survival no matter what, and that can inhibit the process of self-discovery or severely limit a woman’s options if she chooses to live without a male partner. compulsory heterosexuality is maintained through the all-encompassing culture around sex and romance for girls. there is also an institutional element to this; throughout history, the social order of the patriarchy has used norms and institutions to prevent women from living without men. and like men, women are also subject to violence for deviation, with corrective rape being one example. 

significantly, since men are the dominant class, in some societies and in some limited contexts men have shown other men some degree of leniency. men living alone or with another man throughout history have at least been able to support themselves financially, while women have been denied that freedom. men throughout history also had access to the public sphere, so even a gay man married to a woman could live a whole life outside the home. life for gay men would not have been free or easy, and in many cases the punishment for being discovered would have been severe, but for gay women there is an added dimension of constraint that is obviously a function of misogyny. 

all this is to say that while the expressions of homophobia obviously differ, and the specific types of behaviors that are discouraged vary between women and men, the chief goal of homophobia in maintaining the patriarchal social order is the same.  

there’s also obviously a lot of intra-community infighting that illuminates how deeply homophobic biases are rooted even in gay people. it’s a common trend for gay and bi women to downplay the homophobia that gay and bi men experience and distance themselves from them as if repulsed. this is especially true online. just think of the memeification of the term “gay panic” or the past decade of artists trying to canonize a “lesbian flag” separate from the all-purpose rainbow flag. or consider the homophobic, serophobic stereotypes that tend to orbit any discussion of how gay men approach sex and partying compared to how lesbians do. i have personally observed many lesbian and bi women, especially those my age and younger, half-jokingly saying that cis gay men don’t deserve a voice in queer circles. while that may be partially a joke (and while i remain mystified about what “a voice in queer circles” even means), this claim reflects a lot of ignorance about what gay men have to fear from homophobic society and why they are obviously qualified to speak on gay issues. and then on the flip side, many gay men gravitate toward feminine gender expression as an act of resistance, but are unable to make sense of women who repudiate the feminine gender expression standards that were beaten into them growing up. weight-based stigma is also common in some gay male circles. lesbians who are fat or unfeminine are often the butt of the joke among gay men whose perfectly understandable concentration on their own self-image has led them to become judgmental of women’s as well. 

to be clear, i do not believe that there is an inherent animosity between gay men and lesbians, and i hope the first part of this post clearly lays out why our communities have so much in common that we should be able to find safety with each other. but our society is homophobic, and homophobic beliefs and stereotypes drive us apart. i think the ability to create hypercurated microcommunities on social media is largely to blame. it is very easy for lesbians on twitter or wherever to only hear from other lesbians and somehow come away with homophobic misunderstandings about what gay men’s lives are like. i would like to see us rally together but social media makes that very hard. we should be uplifting each other and talking to each other about our lives instead of fracturing our community and fueling the homophobia that is only going to hurt us.

[gettin-bi-bi-bi]

Hi! I’m having a hard time not feeling like my attraction to women is predatory, especially since i’m mostly sexually attracted to them and not completely sure if I’m able to develop a romantic relationship with one. What can I do?

Being sexually attracted to a fellow adult (or a fellow teen (or adult) if you’re a minor) is not predatory. It is a natural biological response. And it does not need to be accompanied by feelings of romance in order to be justified. It’s not something you can help. What matters are your actions. Staring, ogling and making suggestive faces or gestures are behaviours that can be predatory. Glancing, thinking and fantasising are not. Your thoughts about women are no more predatory than your thoughts about men.

I hope I don’t offend you but I’m going to assume you’re a woman and/or were socialised as a woman because we see many queer women, trans men and nb queer folk in our inbox feeling this way about their attraction to women and I can think of a couple of possible reasons for it, and none of them are because you’re predatory.

Firstly, thanks to heteronormativity, and patriarchy, we all grow up seeing sexual images of women through the male gaze, which is often predatory or objectifying. That could be why you (and others) feel your sexual attraction to women is predatory. But individual sexual attraction is not the male gaze, even if you’re a man. The male gaze is a sociocultural idea suggesting that men see the world through a different lens because of patriarchal socialisation, power and privilege and it (quite rightly) claims that men’s perspective is dominant in our culture. The individual can be influenced by this but that’s not your fault. The fact you feel like your attraction is predatory means that you’re already critically examining the influences of the male gaze on yourself, which means you probably understand gender better than any cishet man already. Sometimes that kind of self-critique is helpful. But I often tell bi people, if self-critique isn’t helping you then forget it. Live your life, let yourself be who you are and don’t worry about the meanings behind your feelings or thoughts. They’re personal and they’re yours. For queer people, I think radical self-acceptance is more important than self-critique because there’s plenty of time for self-critique later, but self-acceptance should be your first priority.

Secondly, it is possible to be sexually attracted to people without feeling romantic feelings for them. It might be a long time before you feel romantic feelings for a woman as well as sexual. Or it may be never. The split attraction model is valid. You could be sexually attracted to women but not romantically attracted to them. Or you could be romantically attracted to a woman in the future, you never know.

Either way, being just sexually attracted to women is natural and valid. But we live in a very sex negative society where sex is seen as this impure, unclean thing that is only acceptable in the context of romantic relationships or procreation. That’s not true. Sex is a natural and enjoyable activity that can be an intimate, social and bonding experience, even without romantic feelings. Yes, even casual sex can be those things. And even if sex is just about a physical release with no other feelings at all, if all parties go into the sex understanding that that’s all it is going to be, then that is fine too. It’s not dirty or animalistic or inherently predatory. Your sexual feelings are normal.

If you’ve been socialised as female, you grow up with a cultural expectation (thanks to heteronormativity) that you will be attracted to men and only men. Therefore, romantic feelings for men may emerge when you’re very young, before sexual feelings. Then, if you’re bi, when sexual feelings for women develop too, that attraction often presents itself in reverse. Sexual feelings first, followed by romantic feelings. In that way it is a different type of attraction and may feel different to you. It may feel wrong that your feelings for women are only sexual, because in your first experience of attraction, your feelings for men developed romantically, first, and sexually, second. So you assume that’s how attraction is supposed to feel. But those early romantic feelings for men were influenced by heteronormativity. That’s one of my theories anyway.

But the explanations and theories for why you might feel like you’re being predatory don’t matter as much as my main point, which is that sexual feelings and urges are not inherently bad, even though society likes to make us think they are. Your personal and individual thoughts and feelings are not predatory. Behaviour can be predatory, thoughts can not. And this applies even if I was way off the mark and you are, in fact, a cisgender man. A lot of what I’ve rambled on about may not be relevant to cis men, but my main point is. Being sexually attracted to and fantasising about having sex with women is not inherently predatory and is no more or less predatory than being sexually attracted to and fantasising about having sex with men.

I hope that helps a little. As for what you should do? Give yourself a break. Let yourself find women sexy without feeling bad. Women are sexy.

Max

[orionsangel86]

I agree with the overly fetished views that fandom seems to have of gay men. As a gay man who’s really short, it’s soooo fuckin weird to have people assume I’m a bottom??? Like, I don’t even know you enough to disclose my sexual life and you’re making? weird? assumptions?? Also, there’s a certain fan artist who shan’t be named who makes a certain shorter character super feminine and it kills me every time

EXACTLY

Urgh I’m sorry fandom makes you feel that way.

I’m gonna put this under a cut as I am about to rant about this topic because it is my biggest gripe within fandom. Don’t read on if you are here for fun happy positive things. Beware fair readers, there be strong potentially offensive opinions and plenty of fandom wank down below...

Fandom is unfortunately filled with CIS het women who like to stereotype and force men into their preconceived internalised misogynistic perceptions that to be short or slender means you are the weak dainty “girl” in the relationship and that’s why whichever character they deem the “girl” is also ALWAYS the “bottom”. It also is the same way fandom tends to muddy the waters between sexual positions top/bottom and BSDM terms dom/sub, where bottoms MUST be submissive as well. Half the time you will see posts talking about character traits which perhaps might indicate a submissive streak, and people will take that to mean that a character is a bottom, when the two do not correlate and it is highly problematic to assume that they do.

It’s so fucking problematic and I don’t think that these (mostly straight cis female) fans realise that by encouraging these harmful stereotypes, they are actually also being totally misogynistic and anti feminist. Women are not all bloody Anastasia Steel’s for christs sake (and don’t get me started on that god awful book/movie series). A women can be tall, broad, muscular, she can be dominant and strong and she can damn well top a man if she wants to.

When it comes to shipping male characters in gay/queer relationships, fandom MUST stop inflicting outdated heterosexual stereotypes on them. It seems like fans find a pairing they like (for instance Dean and Cas) and then immediately have to decide which one of them plays the female role. They then twist and change the characters, their traits, the way they look etc, so that one of them is basically a woman. That character then MUST be the submissive bottom and URGH I HATE IT.

(Making a quick note to say that whilst these particular common stereotypes within fandom are very much a problem, this is not to be confused in any way with fans taking their fave characters and headcanoning them as trans or nb or anything else genderwise which reflects an even more marginalised group and is usually a type of fanwork created by fans who are in fact trans or nb themselves.)

I’m not gonna comment on specific artists, but I tend to block urls of bloggers whose stuff I feel is particularly problematic and I also now have the WONDERFUL post blocker xkit extension OMG it is a GODSEND I highly recommend it. If you keep seeing a post on your dash because everyone is reblogging it even though it is super squicky to you (like for instance an obviously feminised Cas or Dean is squicky for me) you can use the extension to block that particular post so you never have to see it again regardless of how many of your mutuals reblog it. Its amazing!

I know that on this hellsite we like to encourage everyone to be as creative as possible and that everyone is valid and we don’t kinkshame and everything etc etc, and I’m all for that, whatever floats your boat and all that. But there is a line, and the line is when what you are doing becomes offensive to the marginalised groups you are supposedly supporting. Like I really don’t care if you are into tentacle sex or hell, even a furry, but I do care if the only way you can comfortably support a gay ship is to force either of the male characters into a “female” template and give them a “self lubricating asshole”. Like... come on. This is why I hate A/B/O. If you have to force gay men to fit a hetero model, you aren’t supporting gay men, you are fetishising them. You are also probably kinda homophobic.

What I really hate about this stuff is how it always seems to be the problematic stuff like this that blows up and becomes a trend and suddenly everyone is jumping on board and no one is given a second thought to how fucked up it is. WHY IS A/B/O EVEN A THING?!? It started as a J2 beastiality fic like WHY DID IT BECOME SO POPULAR?!

Why is Twist & Shout so bloody popular too? Its not even in character. They aren’t even Dean and Cas! Cas is a pale skinny little TWINK?! WHHHHYYYY? I don’t understand it if you ship Destiel wouldn’t you at least want the characters you are reading about to BE Dean and Cas?!? Don’t get me wrong I love AU fics, but I still want to be able to picture and hear Dean and Cas in the characters being described.

Why was it such a thing in the early seasons to make Cas a girl? (that’s hyperbole obviously but he might as well have been based on some of the early fanfics/fanart I’ve seen and immediately noped out of.) Misha Collins has never looked anything like that! He’s never been feminine looking and just because the dude can pull off a dress doesn’t mean you can force him to suddenly be the cute tiny pale perfect curvy pretty submissive beauty you can’t help but imagine Dean with. If you want that for Dean, ship him with Lisa. Stop forcing Cas into a model that just doesn’t make sense for the character.

This goes for Dean as well of course. The dude may have a thing for pink panties and ballet shoes and taylor swift sure, but can we not feminise him to the point he is unrecognisable as the character please?

I know that a lot of this has routes in YAOI. Something I have generally avoided because quite frankly it disgusts me. I find the whole thing just super uncomfortable and messed up and see it purely as a straight womans fetish. So much of fandom shipping behaviour comes from YAOI and its caused a lot of the toxicity we have seen over the years. I think it has got a lot better in recent years though because the queer community is slowly gaining a monopoly in fandom (imo) and as they (we, I should say, as my bisexual ass has quite clearly had enough of this) become more interested in shipping and fandom culture, we can also start educating those straight fans who might be willing to listen and learn. Maybe one day we can say goodbye to the problematic trends of today, or at least, keep them on the fringes of fandom as more and more people wake up to the fact that they are harmful.

And if that means I never have to look at an image of a short pale “pretty” Cas with womanly hips again, I’ll crack open the prosecco and consider it a win.

[abecat]

One of the many sketches I’ve done this summer, trying to figure out how to teach the figure drawing/character design class online. Of course, these indulgent drawings are just for me, but they help me think about the biopolitics of figure drawing in the current moment (of pandemic, of political unrest, of collective trauma)

First some background: From late modernism onwards, the whole enterprise of  academic figure drawing becomes highly suspect. As I understand it, the french academic tradition (that spread through Europe and into the US) established the educational standards of anatomy and naturalistic rendering, with the aim of training artists in the creation of highly emotional images. These images would be used by the state to form cohesive and durable nationalist identities: cheesy neoclassical paintings that drew a connection between France’s III republic to ancient Greece and its idealized concept of democracy. Like Uncle Sam in America’s WWI, these neoclassical mascots have one purpose above all: to rouse the spirit in service of the sovereign (emperor, corporation) for easy manipulation. Now, dear person reading this, you may agree with the project of building a national imagery regardless of how “ahistorical” these pictures may be. But you have give modernist their due: the worst excesses of these canons were embarrassingly in evidence during the Third Reich, with its obsession over "perfect” bodies for a “perfect” race.

So drawing state-sanctioned “perfect” bodies is out of the question, but modernist didn’t really delivered us from sin either. There are just too many examples of asshole “genius” artists who thrived on a predatory relationship to their subjects (Gaugin and Picasso, anyone?) It seems that the emancipatory gesture against the naive bourgeoise taste could not extend to the issues of gender and race inequalities. Postmodern artists, aligned to feminist, queer and anti-colonial projects, thrived on these active biopolitics, engaging them to draw attention to injustice, to deal with false consciousness and internalized opression, and to express long-repressed lust. The question become not whether we should do figure drawing, but who and why should do it. I find the question to be eminently just and interesting, but just as often, paralyzing.

In this context, a class “Figure Drawing/Character Design” may look, from the outside like a puzzling idea. It is like a bad recipe that mixes modernis-postmodernist unresolved issues with total capitulation to market forces. Anime? Cartoons? Caricatures? Stories? And all of it mixed with figure drawing? How can this be insightful?

Figuring the potential for insight in this class, given this context I sketch here, has been my challenge for the last five years. I could simply say that there is a market for it, that students/audiences like it, that gaining skills is pragmatic, that people have been drawing “characters” from prehistory... and just move on feeling justified. But that wont do.

One day I will write something scholarly about this, but here is a sketch of why I think this class has the potential for insight: Character design and figure drawing exist in the context of a complete immersion in capitalist communication technologies. After giving ourselves a moment to mourn the fall fo the Berlin Wall (if that’s your jam,) we must understand that our existence in this soup of capitalist communication technologies has the effect of diluting the membrane that trap us in our bodies. The concept of “Character Design” as something that can be learned and practiced by anyone (the putative project of art education) means that we all have the right toy around with the body. Paradoxically, the fact that we all are here shouting in social media, telling our stories and drawing our traumas, attenuates some of the inequalities that made modernist and postmodernist so anxious. Character Design is a conversational tool, a shared language that a huge mass of “content creators” use to talk about The Other, and by extension, The Self.

To put it clearly, drawing characters reveals a deep longing for The Other - an enormously human need for proximity and validation (just ask Henry Darger). But because, in the “old, real world” The Other is prickly and hurts (and we hurt them), we must negotiate. Like transitional objects, these characters facilitate the exploration of new shared realities, new embodiments.

Here is the secret you should know: every character I draw is me. Is not a portrait of me, is not a realistic or idealized version of me. It is me extending my being into matter, exploring other bodies, and making those explorations have real stakes thanks to erotic, violent or tender psychodynamics. In every choice I make about the design of my characters I detect, after the fact, the longings, traumas and hopes to form my personality. For example: all this skinny catgirls I’ve been drawing since Im 12 (way before I knew what the internet and furry or anime was) are intimatel related to life-long struggle with body dysmorphia. As I draw a crispy ribcage, I can feel the sharp angles as if they were mine, to mention one example.

The figure component of the class comes into play in a very specific way: the ritual of drawing a nude model in person is a perfect illustration of the shared responsibility for reality formation among people. Nude models, who must stay still and never turn their heads around to scan the room, depend on all artists in attendance to hold the world together, to perceive and refigure what the model can’t see. It is a powerfully intimate dynamic in which the model imposes a moral contract. The model says “ you see me naked and I hold you responsible for my well being, as I remain in this vulnerable position, all in service of this ritual that transcends us both.” To bring storytelling and character design into the mix (that is, to bring the vulnerability revealed by design choices, as in the case of my anorexic catgirls), is to up the ante. I’ve seen it in the room: both artist and model disrobe, the model by putting themslves, nude, in the hands of us artists in attendance. The artists by revealing their current negotiation with The Other through their characters.

And now I gotta teach this remotely. The model is not available, and so the stakes feel lower, less challenging. As I was drawing these characters using cheesy nude photos I found on some website, I realized that I missed the sacred contract, the confessional dimension of drawing like this in the figure drawing room. I guess I’m writing all of this precisely because I feel the need to confess.

[jonny-versace]

Hey! I kinda stumbled into your post about The Magicians and, as someone who a) is also interested in fandom culture and b) was an active member of The Magicians fandom during its highest (and lowest) points, I thought I'd share some of the context revolving around the shipping controversy.

So, during the first two seasons, the central m/f ship clearly seems like endgame, with no big hints about the main character being anything but straight. Sure, because the protagonist's best friend is a queer man who has a crush on him, and there are the usual queerbaty lines here and there, they were a big ship among the fandom, but nothing more. Until season 3 came along, and had something of a bottle episode, where the two get stranded in the past together and are explicitly in a romantic relationship. After they return, both kinda acknowledge the fact, but The Plot comes knocking. Shippers became more numerous, and some people started speculating that they could be a viable ship, but most of the fandom took it as a nod from the writers and a self-contained story that wouldn't come back.

All the while, the show's social media accounts hyped up this pairing more than any other, and made frequent remarks suggesting more canon recognition. Virtually every week you'd find a tweet, a poster, and so on, that egged people on. And by this point, the showrunners had the audience's trust due to their handling of other topics. There were more POC than usual for TV, the main character's chronic depression was an ongoing struggle, things like addiction and trauma were handled in believable ways. By having a self-described "depressed supernerd", who is comfortable with being bi/ pan, and storylines that catered to a queer neurodivergent audience, during three years they grew and grew in popularity and as a safe space for exactly these groups. I was one of those: I'm a historian, and pretty used to consuming media critically; I wasn't a teenager who's never seen herself represented, but an adult who got used to looking for good representation when I want to find it, or just watching things with no expectations for the fun of it, and at most dissecting the "what ifs". This show stroke me as the former, and became the relaxing and understanding queer space I ran into after a very long week. And there were A LOT of people in a similar situation.

Then came Season 4, and that's when things got tricky. Because you see, for three years they told us this show was clever, and it turned out to actually be; that this was a subversive and complex story being told in an absurdist way, and all that came to fruition. So when, with this season, there was both a flashback confirming that the main character wanted to persue a romantic relationship with his best friend, like in the past, but got turned down, and a very final break up between him and the girl who seemed like endgame for the first seasons, shipping went from "cool but unlikely pairing" to "damn, that's a great subversion of queerbaiting!". And their social media, trailers, released images and so on confirmed that to the audience (the tweet I recall better had the main m/f pairing, with a closed book, and was captioned with something on the lines of "a chapter ends so that another can begin"). The protagonist spent the entire season trying to rescue the guy he'd confessed feelings for. In a moment where they'd have to establish his identity, the frase said by said guy was the same reference used to talk about the bottle episode multiple times before. The nature of their relationship having changed is acknowledged by another character. At the end of the day, it seemed like a clearly confirmed fact.

And that's when the protagonist dies. There's a lot more ugliness around his death and how it was handled by the script, or how the showrunners pat themselves in the back. But it suffices to say that when an audience is mostly composed of "queer depressed supernerds", killing off the person who represented how someone like this could not only survive, but thrive, is more than a little traumatic. And doing so without ever giving the oh-so-central amd hyped up m/m relationship any ending, good or bad, makes it all seem both pointless and mean spirited.

Sorry about the gigantic text; this was such a unique fandom response and situation that I'm still quite fascinated by it (something like the near perfect creation and corruption of a vulnerable community's safe space). I don't know if you care about it, but just in case this interests you as well, now you have a summary.

hi hello! first, thanks for the extremely thoughtful post, it was interesting (I don't explicitly remember what I said in my post but I very much do remember being fascinated by the fall out of what the show did at the time) (I swear I'll finish pick it from S2 one day, though I'll admit I personally found season one a bit of a slog).

I remember reading enough posts from people on here and articles on sites like io9 to agree that what they did re killing off the bipolar I believe? lead and framing it as a noble sacrifice or something was in extremely poor taste, and I sympathise(d) with all the people who could relate to him and their grief coz like you said, even from my outsider perspective it seemed very ugly on the part of the show.

as far as the ship part of the conversation goes, I'm still largely ignorant of that from a first hand experience pov. but generally speaking, for me, I was and still am fascinated by what these (often lower budget, American CW/syfy etc) shows do to kinda stoke or fan fandom expectations/wants vs what fandoms do to themselves to set themselves up for a fall (canon vs fanon basically). in other words, how much a show queerbaits its audience vs how much the audience queerbaits itself, if that makes sense. not at all saying that's what happened in your fandom, again I haven't yet seen enough of the show to form an opinion on the ship aspect, but really just generally with those kind of shows (Supernatural being the big one recently, that Roswell show, even Teen Wolf going way back).

I usually find myself coming to the conclusion that like most things it's not a black and white issue, and that there's a certain amount of "blame" for lack of a better word on both sides. but again that's usually an observation from me as like a satellite to these shows and fandoms, not really valid in many senses, just something that eases the itchy part of my brain that's super intrigued when these fandom dramas explode as they're prone to do.

but no, I deffo do care in a larger sense so thanks so much! I'll deffo save this in case I ever get around to finishing the show for myself

[hoe-doroki]

Alright, friends, your local demi is going to take one last bow before ace week is up.

I’m going to talk about myself, because I the lived experience of ace and acespec people isn’t talked about enough and, well, this is the week to talk about it!

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s bring in a good ol’ frame of reference:

78% pure. For those who don’t know this is the rice purity test, where high scores mean you haven’t participated in many “racy” activities and low scores mean you have.

First, let’s state that I don’t want to put too much stock on this test. Only 3/4 of the questions are about sex and dating while the remaining 1/4 is about alcohol, drugs, and illegal activity. (Part of the reason my score is so high is because I, unrelated to being acespec, don’t drink or smoke.) But, like I said, it’s a place to start.

Stats. I’m a 24-year-old woman. I am cisgender, straight, and demisexual/demiromantic (not asexual or aromantic). I have never had a boyfriend, I have never enjoyed kissing, I have never had sex.

Oof, and right away, I’m embarrassed saying that.

And that’s the whole problem.

(This post clocks in at ~1.6k, so the rest is under the cut. Trigger warning for suicidal ideation.)

Well, not my whole problem, haha, but it is why I’m bothering to talk about this instead of keeping it secret, like I prefer to. I want to dispel some myths that harm the way I view myself and keep me from being honest with others. Because I fear that when people look at me and hear “24-year-old virgin” they assume things about me that just aren’t true.

First thing’s first. The fact that I’m a virgin means nothing except that I have not had sexual intercourse with another person. There are no other assumptions to be made.

It hurts when people are surprised by this. I happen to fall mostly into the barbed categories of American conventional attractiveness, so when people hear that I have never had a boyfriend or that I’m a virgin, they assume there’s something wrong with me. Or that past men I’ve been around have missed an opportunity or something.

This is shitty on two levels. One, the assumption that my stats are the way they are because of some failure sucks. All it should be is a reflection of my agency and the fact that I am the queen of saying no. (In fact, it was my first word.) But then people are assuaged by the fact that I have, in fact, been approached for sex, as though that confirms for them the value that they assumed I had. As though that’s where any of my worth should be coming from.

Two, these assumptions, when flipped, imply that it would “make sense” for me to have my stats if I looked different or was less neurotypical.

Media--as it does--has played a role in these assumptions. I think about the characters who are “later-in-life virgins” and I think of Emma Pillsberry from Glee, who deals with extreme OCD and germophobia. Or Sheldon and Amy from The Big Bang Theory, the former of whom might very well be acespec and is likely on the autism spectrum as well, but who is shown to be very antisocial with many difficulties forming interpersonal relationships and the latter of whom comes from a very conservative family and a mother who ensured she couldn’t learn social skills until well into her thirties. Or the “what if” episode of Friends that basically asserts that Monica would have been too fat to get laid. Or The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which I don’t wish to talk about. (Oof, all such problematic examples)

And yes, these characters are all white (I am not) and that’s a discussion for another post better made by someone who is more of a media expert than me.

These characters are all portrayed to have something that “explains” why they haven’t yet had the privilege of having sex. And we see in movies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, or a whole host of teen movies, that virginity is something to conquer--especially for male characters.

I don’t look how people expect virginity to look. I’ll be real--I have high self esteem. I think I’m awesome inside and out and I don’t see any reason why I should be shy about that. I know that if I wanted to have sex with a stranger, I could do it tonight (covid notwithstanding--be safe, friends).

And even if I were a different person who had less self confidence or looked different or came from a different background, that wouldn’t mean that I “deserve” to be a virgin or whatever it is media is telling us. Virginity still wouldn’t have a damn thing to do with the other things that make up a person.

So, louder for the people in the back: being a virgin doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with me.

Next point. Being a virgin doesn’t mean that I’m innocent, a prude, or that I’m “waiting for marriage.”

Gosh, I’ve been asked if I’m waiting for marriage too many times. Two things. 1. No. I’d rather know my sexual compatibility with a partner before marriage and 2. I’m an atheist. So no.

Also, I am not innocent or a prude.

My lack of experience makes me feel infantilized. It does. That’s a personal issue of mine and, ya’ll, I don’t have many answers for how to overcome it. But I have done what I can to change that.

Guys, some of the best choices I’ve made in my adulthood are the things I’ve done to reclaim my sexuality (meaning sexualness not orientation) for myself. Not gonna get super nsfw here, but I’ve invested in about a dozen sex toys and I intend to buy more. They always makes me feel so much more adult and sexy. And I’ve done things with them that I feel pretty confident that many of my sexually active, allosexual friends haven’t done. This kind of thing isn’t for everyone acespec, but it helps me reclaim my worth as a sexual being, without needing a partner to validate that.

I’m also fully valid to write erotica! I love erotica and it’s another way I take back my sexuality. It is just as valid for me to write as it is for anyone else. I am capable of research--both on my own body and from resources, experts, and classes. I don’t need to have had sex for my opinion to matter.

Oh, and being acespec has nothing to do with my sex drive. It seems that I have a libido that is either average or slightly above average--I’m also a person that the more I’m engaging with my libido, the higher it gets.

This often feels like a curse. I, unlike many, but not all, acespec people, strongly desire sex. Like, I’ve bundled up a 35-pound weighted blanket on top of myself whilst engaging in self-pleasure just to try and make the activity feel more partnered (pro tip: that didn’t work.) The truth is that I’m really sick of having to take care of my libido by myself and would much rather have a partner.

But it’s not easy.

I’ve tried online dating, guys. Many times. I can’t do it. That’s not true of all acespec individuals, but it is for me, at least right now. For me, my demisexuality means that the idea and experience of going out, even on a casual date, with someone I’m not already interested in is nearly intolerable. And my current lifestyle, for many reasons, doesn’t lend itself well to me naturally forming crushes.

I’ve only had one major crush in my life. And it was 10 years ago. So you understand the difficulty.

I hate being demisexual, guys. I do. I wish that I could write this post with the intent of spreading pride and positivity, but I can’t. That’s not where I’m truthfully at yet. I’m lonely to the point of suicidal ideation. I’m too young for it, but I’m already making contingency plans for freezing my eggs or trying to imagine a future where I could be a single mother and...I can’t yet reconcile it. I know that part of this is my dreams being created in society’s image, but all I’ve ever wanted is to be a wife and a mother. And it’s hard to see that future when I can only look at my past and see images of silicone and sexual repulsion.

Remember when I said I’ve never enjoyed kissing? I’ve had more stage kisses than “real” kisses and, I have to say, the staged ones were more enjoyable because at least I wasn’t forcing myself to do them. Forcing myself to try to kiss someone so that I could feel “normal.” Forcing myself to kiss someone just because I was curious about what it was other people were talking about. My first “real” kiss was at 20 years old and it was a night where I forced myself to do a lot of things for the sake of catching up with my peers and I’ve been deeply uncomfortable with that experience ever since, and I can only be grateful that I stopped it as early in the evening as I did.

Everyone’s experience is so different, ya’ll. I haven’t heard a story like mine before, so in no way can I claim it to be an experience that widely represents demisexuality. It certainly doesn’t represent asexuality, nor how queerness (or many other things) intersects with either of those things.

But, at the same time, I’ve never heard a story like mine before. Do you know how helpful it would have been to have been able to see a story like this a few years ago? Ten years ago? It would have been life changing. Because even though, in the middle of all that self-confidence I spouted off about paragraphs ago, there’s this kernel of self-hatred stuck in my teeth, I would have felt validated. I would have felt seen. I would have been able to DM someone who could have told me, hey, it hurts and I know no one seems to understand you, but I do.

That’s to say, if anyone is going through something similar and wants to talk about it, my DMs are always open. I’m no expert, and I bet some of the things I’ve said here aren’t going to hit some people right, but this is my experience. This is the most intimate part of my life. It is a privilege that I’m sharing this with you all, so please, hold it with care. I hope this means something to someone.

Happy ace week, ya’ll.

Oh, and the rice purity test doesn’t mean shit. It’s good fun if you want, but if it makes you feel any kind of way because your number is too low or too high, throw it away. That’s not where any part of your value comes from.

[saltyaro]

[Image description: The cover of the 5th book of Aromantic (love) Story. It features a drawn woman in a red tank top, a white skirt that hides her heels, and red high heels shoes. She has her hands on her hips and looks confident.]

You know what I forgot to do? That review on the 5th and last tome of aromantic (love) story. For those who weren’t aware yet, I’m not going to keep the suspense going on any longer: yes, it is safe, no, the heroine doesn’t end up as a straight woman. That’s already a victory in itself, so now all of you can go ahead and buy it if it’s available in your country ;) 

The actual review is under the read more, it’s not spoiler free so!

So, Futaba (the main character) tried dating to see if she’s able to develop romance, or not. The person she chose to do so with of course knows about it, and they’re actually both trying it to see if they can understand romance. Futaba still can’t imagine romantic attraction outside of sexual attraction, which frustrates her, because she *knows* allo aces are a thing so obviously, sexual desire isn’t necessarily linked! The viewpoint of her (straight dude) partner-in-crime is...well, not surprising at all, actually. His opinion is that romantic feelings are born of, on one hand, wanting the other person’s happiness, while also wanting to possess them and keep them all to yourself. 

This is, well. A very Straight Man™ way of seeing things, but, on the other hand, this point of view isn’t limited to them. (I promise, I’m not going to ramble about how it’s scary that society puts such a violent feeling as the most beautiful and important. Not on this post at least)

Fun note, at least for me, you have the classical “guy is sick, girl brings him medicine” except...Futaba gives him the medicine and just. Leaves. I love her. Well, she ends up going to his apartment, but that’s where her being aro really stands out. Usually, in a basic romcom, everyone’s flushed, and it’s annoying. But Futaba is aro, so she isn’t embarrassed, she just sees someone she cares about being sick and wants to help. She’s very natural and stoic about the whole situation. It may seem like a detail, but honestly I find that so important!

She explains that, when she was a teenager, she avoided men as much as possible (to avoid romance) and I relate. So fucking much. I don’t know if any of you did the same, but with my parents bugging me about boys, I just avoided them as much as possible (with a few exceptions). I didn’t feel unsafe around men yet back then, so I know that’s not what it was. 

She explains she was afraid of creating misunderstandings, and ended up not using the world “love” at all because of that. I relate to that so much too, I’m trying to heal from that, and I think it’s important, really important, for us as a community, to learn to separate love from romance. Anyway, this kind of struggle that just...hinders your vocabulary options is really a shame, and I’m glad to see a character mention it (and not be shamed for it!).

Are you ready for some Hetero Bashing™? Because Futaba reunites with her friends and they talk a bit. The Straight dude (Kyosuke) asked Futaba to think about marrying him, and she’s a bit “huuuuuh” so she talks about it to her friends. Friend 1 is like “well, you don’t need to be *in romance* to get married. I have friends, a straight dude and a lesbian, who got married by necessity” and Futaba expresses that she never thought such a thing would happen to her, she never thought of marriage being an option for her. Friend 2 they says that it’s the contrary for her, impossible to avoid the idea of marriage and children, despite not wanting either, because it’s been so ingrained in her head. “you know, the “to perpetuate the specie” argument, like having descendance is every human’s mission...”

And the friend 1 says “ah...the perfect exemple of a notion made by straight people to validate their point of view!” and I love that?? I mean, in general, even in the larger queer community, we’re dancing around the argument, finding proof that there are non-straight animals in all species, and all. She then adds “If reproductions is *that* important...then rich single people could have a ton of kids using articifial fertilization and bingo, they’d have contributed to society’s well-being!” Friend 2 is like “uuuuh, that would raise ethical issues” to what friend 2 answers: “Personally, I kinda reaaally don’t care for lessons of morality from a society that considers sexual minorities and childfree people as useless. If we consider that humanity will necessarily go extinct one day, then mating to reproduce is nothing but a useless cycle”. I really like that take which’s why I *had* to share it despite it being so long to read haha. 

Futaba is surprised by her words, so friend 2 explains that friend 1 is worried that a straight guy is going to steal Futaba from them, and she doesn’t want to be abandoned. Friend 1 is bi but that’s a very aro sentiment here tbh. 

(Straight bashing, over)

You have the usual meeting with the family...god, how realistic is that, you see your aunt and uncle you haven’t seen in maybe years and the only thing they’re interested in, is whether or not you’ve found a romantic partner. I swear, I got annoyed for the character cause it’s so true. She’s bothered (and I am too) by her grandma’s affirmation that everyones gets married someday. I hate that, it really, really annoys me that I supposedly can’t be free to make my own decisions! But she also knows that it would be useless to explain to her grandma that her words are paternalism, so she lets her be. Because she means well, and maybe that’s the worst thing about amatonormativity and its assumptions...that the people upholding those mean well. 

The manga also touches (rapidly) on Futaba feeling of guilt for not being sincere with her family. Her parents aren’t pressuring her to get married, but she knows that seeing their only child, still single, and over 30, is sure to make them worried (especially given she’s not exactly wealthy). I can’t express how much I love seeing a character like that, she knows what she wants, but there’s still this lingering feeling that keeps you from feeling totally at ease, regardless of how much confidence you’ve got. It’s only natural and nothing to be ashamed of. 

I think one of my favourite moments of this book - maybe of all the serie? is after Kyosuke’s friends remotivates Futaba by, basically, telling her to do what she always did, fight out of spite, even if that means to accept to sometimes take hits (this happens throught the phone). Kyosuke says to his friend, that he would never have neeb able to say such things to him, and his friend answers that love blinds him, and prevents him from seeing what she really needs. To that, Kyosuke doesn’t answer, and his friend understands immediately and says “That look...maybe you actually nurture this self-deception.” 

And I love this moment because, for Futaba to be happy, she needs to be single, and free. From him, and his expectations of romance, because even though he knows, rationally speaking, that she won’t ever feel the same, he still wants her, and still wants to be the one at her side - when no one should be. Not in a partnership way anyway. He’s actually choosing to ignore the rational part of him because he still hopes for her to make the difficult choice, and stay at his side, because it’s not really that he wants her to be happy but rather, that he wants to be the one to make her happy, which is of course, extremely selfish and possessive. I love that it’s just laid here, without ambiguity. What’s great also, is that the straight dude in romo realizes what he’s doing, even if he tries to ignore that. Later in the manga, Kyosuke thinks to himself that he couldn’t help but hope that she would concecede, yield, and accept him, despite knowing that’s not what she needs, and knowing that’s not the way you build a positive relationship. I...don’t know if alloro usually know they’re doing such things? I don’t know what’s worse, to be confident you’re not doing that shit when you’re doing it, or to keep on doing it even though you’re aware. 

On a sidenote, I really, really like that she got boosted by the least expected person? They don’t like each other, they’re more or less at each other’s throat most of the time cause he’s sexist and unsentitive, but in the end, he was touched by the anger in the beginnings of her work, and it built a sort of...professional trust between the two of them. Like, those characters won’t ever be friends, but there’s still that little place of trust between them, it’s a delicate portrayal of ambiguous relationships. 

Basically, what ends the manga, if the end of Futaba’s own manga (the romantic comedy). And I really like the outlook she has on it, at the end of her 2 years and a half of work. Even though she didn’t want to write such a thing, in the end, she met a lot of people thanks to it, and, through challenging her own vision of relationships and romance, she finally managed to complete her certitude in herself and who she is. I think that’s a lovely parallel. 

It also ends her questions, and she rejects Kyosuke (I usually can’t help but laugh when a Straight man gets rejected in fiction I’m an asshole I know). Their conversation is really lovely after that, and challenged the expectations of partnership. Kyosuke asks her if she would have accepted his proposal if, like one year ago, he didn’t feel anything towards her. And her answer is no. She did think about it, imagining their marriage as a fake straight couple, and how she knew that, while it would have asked concessions and sacrifices from both of them, they could have been happy.  But what she needs isn’t some stability based on renunciations, but ton confront reality, so she can live in agreement with herself. 

Also, the moment after her choice, loneliness and worry strike her, and she acknowledges that feeling, because it’s okay, it doesn’t mean she made the wrong choice. It will pass. 

The younger guy who’s also in romance with her, interestingly enough, resolves the situation in a very mature way. He asks her if she’s found her answer, when they’re about to part ways (he’s no longer her assistant), and she says that, yes, she doesn’t feel romance - and he thanks her, for having endured his weirdness all this time, and bids her farewell. And we then have his thoughts - while his decisions, to act that way, was difficult for him, he did so because it was the right thing to do and he realized that insisting would have bothered her. That was nice. The situation is weird for Futaba too, because, as his senior, she kinda felt responsible for him, protective maybe? And she’s a bit overwhelmed by how much this kid’s grown. 

There’s an epilogue of sorts, and we can see that Futaba decided to entirely live while being true to herself, which also means making some changes. 

To conclude: I really liked this serie! It’s nice to see a woman over 30, finally embracing herself - despite having gone through doubts, even at her age - after making sure she was right about her feelings. She’s, well, asexual I think, but it’s the aro part that matters to her, and really has an influence on her life, the ace part is more of an afterthought. It’s also nice to see a nonamorous aromantic woman! Aro women are already hard to grasp in our amatonormative and migogynistic society, so a nonamorous one probably even more so. 

It was overall a really nice experience, I’m not going to say everything was perfect, and her aromanticism is the topic of the story, but Futaba is also her own person and this is never downplayed in favour of talking about her identity. Definitely something too rare and, as such, very enjoyable. 

[mxenigmatic]

2020’s Self Care Books for Trying Times

With Covid-19 a global pandemic that is still lingering in the air, and keeping our connections at a social distance, added how here at NYPL our librarians miss the frequent interactions with our patrons, I was contemplating on ways to keep our reading connected, our souls warm, and our health having its self care. Before google, I’d rely on the plethora of information our branches hold on any challenge in life I’d be facing. Now with a myriad of problems we can tackle, and resources we can all use to improve our lives, I wanted to tackle grounding and elevating ourselves to cope with our surroundings, than advice I can provide on financial, relationship, life goals, etc.

In this blog “2020’s Self Care Books 4 Trying Times” I’ve comprised my 20 favorite titles for the year 2020 on wellness, people’s journeys, and how health experts can help guide us to a calm and vibrant place for our wellbeing. From parenting tips, to self acceptance, coping with a mental health disorder, or even self care rituals, the need for healthy habits is a topic we all can relate and rely on to keep us striving through this winter, and being united through our current unstable climate. We should never be ashamed of our experiences, asking for help, and addressing challenges in our lives to be at peace with our pasts, content with our present, and hopeful about our futures.

What is Self-care, according to very well mind, describes a conscious act one takes in order to promote their own physical, mental, and emotional health. There are many forms self-care may take. It could be ensuring you get enough sleep every night or stepping outside for a few minutes for some fresh air.

What is mindfulness? Mindfulness refers to being in the moment. This means feeling what our bodies feel, letting ourselves think without judging our thoughts, and being aware of our environment. It is about paying attention on purpose to both what is happening inside and outside of you.

ADULT

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey

Topics: Professional Development, Success, Psych Evaluation

One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated readers for nearly three decades. It has transformed the lives of presidents and CEOs, educators and parents—millions of people of all ages and occupations. Now, this 30th anniversary edition of the timeless classic commemorates the wisdom of the 7 habits with modern additions from Sean Covey. The 7 habits have become famous and are integrated into everyday thinking by millions and millions of people. Why? Because they work!With Sean Covey's added takeaways on how the habits can be used in our modern age, the wisdom of the 7 habits will be refreshed for a new generation of leaders.

Stay Positive: Encouraging Quotes and Messages to Fuel Your Life With Positive Energy by Jon Gordon

Topics: Self Help, Affirmations, Optimism

Stay Positive is more than a phrase. It's an approach to life that says when you get knocked down, you'll get back up and find a way forward one faithful step and optimistic day at a time. Start your day with a message from the book, or pick it up anytime you need a mental boost. You can start from the beginning, or open the book to any page and find a message that speaks to you. The book is a go-to resource for anyone wanting to inject a healthy dose of positivity into their life

$9 Therapy: Semi-Capitalist Solutions to Your Emotional Problems by Megan Reid and Nick Greene

Topics: Life Skills/Hacks, Self Care Rituals, Budgeting

A collection of the authors' favorite life hacks and mini-upgrades, such as craft cocktails on the cheap or tips for a perfectly planned staycation. Sometimes it takes as little as nine dollars to turn your life around. How to find simple pleasures in a pricey, wellness-obsessed world.

You Were Born For This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance by Chani Nicholas

Topics: Astrology, Self Acceptance

A revolutionary empowerment book that uses astrology as a tool for self-discovery, success, and self-care from the beloved astrologer Chani Nicholas, a media darling with a loyal following of one million monthly readers.

TEEN

Teaching Mindfulness to Empower Adolescents by Matthew Brensilver

Topics: Mindfulness, Educational Guides, Learning Disabilities, Reflections

Effectively sharing mindfulness with teenagers depends on distinct skill sets . . . done well, it is incredibly joyous." Matthew Brensilver, JoAnna Hardy and Oren Jay Sofer provide a powerful guide to help teachers master the essential competencies needed to successfully share mindfulness practices with teens and adolescents. Incorporating anecdotes from actual teaching, they blend the latest scientific research with innovative, original techniques for making the practices accessible and interesting to this age group. This text is an indispensable handbook for mindfulness instruction in its own right, and a robust companion volume for teachers using The Mindful Schools Curriculum for Adolescents

The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color by Virgie Tovar

Topics: Self Esteem, Plus Size Positivity, Hygiene

Every day we see body ideals depicted in movies, magazines, and social media. And, all too often, these outdated standards make us feel like we need to change how we look and who we are. The truth is that many teens feel self-conscious about their bodies and being a teen girl of color is hard in unique ways. So, how can you start feeling good about yourself when you're surrounded by these unrealistic, and problematic images of what bodies are "supposed" to look like? This book is an unapologetic guide to help you embrace radical body positivity. You'll identify and challenge mainstream beliefs about beauty and bodies; celebrate what makes you unique and powerful; and build real, lasting body empowerment. You'll also learn how to spot diet culture and smash your noisy inner critic so you can start loving your body. It's time to create your own definition of beautiful and recognize that your body is amazing. It's time for a self-love revolution!

Out!: How To Be Your Authentic Self by Miles McKenna

Topics: Coming Out, Self Acceptance, Family Dynamics

Activist Miles McKenna came out on his YouTube channel in 2017, documenting his transition to help other teens navigate their identities and take charge of their own coming out stories. From that wisdom comes Out!, the ultimate YA guide to the queer lifestyle. Find validation, inspiration, and support for your questions big and small--whether you're exploring your identity or seeking to understand the experience of an awesome queer person in your life."

Dancing at the Pity Party: A Dead Mom Graphic Memoir by Tyler Feder

Topics: Grief Counseling, Coping with terminal illness, Bereavement. Family Estrangement

Tyler Feder shares her story of her mother's first oncology appointment to facing reality as a motherless daughter in this frank and refreshingly funny graphic memoir.

Superpowered: Transform Anxiety Into Courage, Confidence, and Resilience by Renee Jain and Dr. Shefali Tsabary

Topics: Health, Fitness, Selt Esteem.

The perfect tool for children facing new social and emotional challenges in an increasingly disconnected world! This how-to book from two psychology experts—packed with fun graphics and quizzes—will help kids transform stress, worry, and anxiety

Teen Guide to Mental Health by Don Nardo

Topics: Teens, Mental Health, Body Image, Puberty

Todays teens face and are expected to deal with a wide array of personal, social, and other issues involving home-life, school, dating, body image, sexual orientation, major life transitions, and in some cases physical and mental problems, including eating disorders and depression. This volume examines how many teens have learned to cope with and survive these often stressful trials and tribulations of modern youth.

KIDS

Turtle Boy by Evan Wolkenstein

Topics: Social Life, Friends, Relationships, School Stress

Seventh grade is not going well for Will Levine. Kids at school bully him because of his funny-looking chin. His science teacher finds out about the turtles he spent his summer collecting from the marsh behind school an orders him to release them back into the wild. And for his Bar Mitzvah community service project, he has to go to the hospital to visit RJ, an older boy struggling with an incurable disease. Unfortunately, Will hates hospitals. At first, the boys don't get along, but then RJ shares his bucket list with Will. Among the things he wants to do: ride a roller coaster, go to a concert and a school dance, swim in the ocean. To Will, happiness is hanging out in his room, alone, preferably with his turtles. But as RJ's disease worsens, Will realizes he needs to tackle the bucket list on his new friend's behalf before it's too late. It seems like an impossible mission, way outside Will's comfort zone. But as he completes each task with RJ's guidance, Will learns that life is too short to live in a shell.

How To Make A Better World: For Every Kid Who Wants To Make A Difference by Keilly Swift

Topics: Activism, Human Rights, Organizing

If you are a kid with big dreams and a passion for what is right, you're a world-changer in the making. There's a lot that can be changed by just one person, if you know what to do. Start by making yourself into the awesome person you want to be by learning all about self-care and kindness. Using those skills, work your way up to creating activist campaigns to tackle climate change or social injustice. This fun and inspiring guide to making the world a better place and becoming a good citizen is packed with ideas and tips for kids who want to know how to make a difference. From ideas as small as creating a neighborhood lending library to important ideas such as public speaking and how to talk about politics, How to Make a Better World is a practical guide to activism for awesome kids.

All About Anxiety by Carrie Lewis

Anxiety. It's an emotion that rears its head almost every day, from the normal worries and concerns that most of us experience, to outright fear when something scary happens, to the anxiety disorders, that many kids live with daily. But what causes anxiety? And what can we do about it? All About Anxiety tackles these questions from every possible angle. Readers will learn what's going on in their brain and central nervous system when they feel anxious. They'll learn about the evolutionary reasons for fear and anxiety and that anxiety isn't always a bad thing--except for when it is! Most importantly, kids will discover new strategies to manage their anxiety so they can live and thrive with anxiety

Dictionary for a better world: poems, quotes, and anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham

Topics: Inspiration, Self Help, Advice

Organized as a dictionary, entries in this book for middle-grade readers present words related to creating a better, more inclusive world. Each word is explored via a poem, a quote from an inspiring person, and a short personal anecdote from one of the co-authors, a prompt for how to translate the word into action, and an illustration".

I feel... meh by DJ Corchin

(E-book)Topics: Health, Fitness, Management

This series helps kids recognize, express, and deal with the roller coaster of emotions they feel every day. It has been celebrated by therapists, psychologists, teachers, and parents as wonderful tools to help children develop self-awareness for their feelings and those of their friends. Sometimes I feel meh and I don't want to play. I don't want to read and I have nothing to say. Sometimes you just feel...meh. You don't really feel like doing anything or talking to anyone. You're not even sure how you're feeling inside. Is that bad? With fun, witty illustrations and simple, straightforward text, I Feel...Meh tackles apathy—recognizing it as a valid emotion, while also offering practical steps to get you out of your emotional slump. It's the perfect way for kids—and adults—who are feeling gray to find some joy again!

Violet Shrink by Christine Baldacchino

Topics: Phobias, Relationships, Social Skills

Violet Shrink doesn't like parties. Or bashes, or gatherings. Lots of people and lots of noise make Violet's tummy ache and her hands sweat. She would much rather spend time on her own, watching the birds in her backyard, reading comics, or listening to music through her purple headphones. The problem is that the whole Shrink family loves parties with loud music and games and dancing. At cousin Char's birthday party, Violet hides under a table and imagines she is a shark gliding effortlessly through the water, looking for food. And at Auntie Marlene and Uncle Leli's anniversary bash, Violet sits alone at the top of the stairs, imagining she is a slithering snake way up in the branches. When Violet learns that the Shrink family reunion is fast approaching, she musters up the courage to have a talk with her dad. In this thoughtful story about understanding and acceptance, Violet's natural introversion and feelings of social anxiety are normalized when she and her father reach a solution together. Christine Baldacchino's warm text demonstrates the role imagination often plays for children dealing with anxiety, and the power of a child expressing their feelings to a parent who is there to listen. Carmen Mok's charming illustrations perfectly capture Violet's emotions and the vibrancy of her imagination. A valuable contribution to books addressing mental health."-- Provided by publisher.

Check out this link to a presentation by NYPL’s Children’s Librarians, Sarah West and Justine Toussaint on Mindfulness/Social-Emotional Self-Esteem Picture Book Spotlight. Featuring popular book titles in our database of the past few years promoting kids well beings!

Pre-2020 Books

Aphorism by Franz Kafka

Topics: Life Quotes, Recovery, Future Planning

For the first time, a single volume that collects all of the aphorisms penned by this universally acclaimed twentieth-century literary figure. Kafka twice wrote aphorisms in his lifetime. The first effort was a series of 109, known as the Zurau Aphorisms, which were written between September 1917 and April 1918, and originally published posthumously by his friend, Max Brod, in 1931. These aphorisms reflect on metaphysical and theological issues--as well as the occasional dog. The second sequence of aphorisms, numbering 41, appears in Kafka's 1920 diary dating from January 6 to February 29. It is in these aphorisms, whose subject is "He," where Kafka distills the unexpected nature of experience as one shaped by exigency and possibility."

This Book Loves You by PewDiePie

Topics: Life Skills, Inspiration, Food 4 Thought

A popular blogger shares humorous pieces of advice and positivity, including "Never forget you are beautiful compared to a fish" and "Every day is a new fresh start to stay in bed."

The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach To Living A Good Life by Mark Manson

Topic: Self Help, Happiness, Motivation

In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger shows us that the key to being happier is to stop trying to be 'positive' all the time and instead become better at handling adversity. For decades we've been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. But those days are over. 'Fuck positivity, ' Mark Manson says. 'Let's be honest; sometimes things are fucked up and we have to live with it.' For the past few years, Manson--via his wildly popular blog--has been working on correcting our delusional expectations for ourselves and for the world. He now brings his hard-fought wisdom to this groundbreaking book. Manson makes the argument--backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes--that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to better stomach lemons. Human beings are flawed and limited--as he writes, 'Not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault.' Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. This, he says, is the real source of empowerment. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties--once we stop running from and avoiding, and start confronting painful truths--we can begin to find the courage and confidence we desperately seek. 'In life, we have a limited amount of fucks to give. So you must choose your fucks wisely.' Manson brings a much-needed grab-you-by-the-shoulders moment of real-talk, filled with entertaining stories and profane, ruthless humor. This manifesto is a refreshing slap in the face for all of us so we can start to lead more contented, grounded lives."

Zen Pencils: Cartoon Quotes From Inspirational Folks by Gavin Aung Than

Topics: Writing Development, Expression, Quotes

Gavin Aung Than, an Australian graphic designer turned cartoonist, started the weekly Zen Pencils blog in February 2012. He describes his motivation for launching Zen Pencils: I was working in the boring corporate graphic design industry for eight years before finally quitting at the end of 2011 to pursue my passion for illustration and cartooning. At my old job, when my boss wasn't looking, I would waste time reading Wikipedia pages, main biographies about people whose lives were a lot more interesting than mine. Their stories and quotes eventually inspired me to leave my job to focus on what I really wanted to do. The idea of taking these inspiring quotes, combining them with my love of drawing, and sharing them with others led to the creation of Zen Pencils.

By: @Mx.Enigma

She/They/Queen

[worms-wav]

Inhabiting The Body

I began this essay wanting to write a structured, academic piece about the body as a home. Habitat. But the more I searched, the more I realised academia is not the framework within which I can best unpack and understand my (or anyone’s) relationship to the body. I grew up being told that Western forms of knowing were the only ones that were correct. You cannot write an essay without citing sources. It is not enough to just know something, or to inherit knowledge passed down in whispers. Real knowledge is double-spaced, Times New Roman, and cold. This is not to say that I don’t think that kind of research and knowledge is valid. I think there are certainly situations where I want to understand something through the lens of academia, through other people’s research, through a bright, naked paper trail.

But trying to write this essay has taught me that that can’t be the only kind of essay I try to write when I want to understand. Which has been a difficult thing to unlearn, especially when the body has always felt like a site of public discourse. Even more so when the body is femme, grew up as a cis girl, of mixed heritage. Less so because the body is able-bodied, light-skinned, Chinese-passing, and cis-passing. The body -- and I say ‘the’ body instead of ‘my’ body because in analysing it, it rarely feels like my own -- is a crazed intersection of privileges, learned behaviours, unlearned truths and internalised value systems. Who owns the body? Who has a right to the body? When do these people have a right to the body? What is the body in the context of the self? What is the body in the context of society? What is the body in the context of other bodies? These are questions that, perhaps, can be trudged through in Scopus and JSTOR, but are really, honestly, best understood through turning inwards, thinking, and speaking quietly to the people who don’t necessarily wish to filter their experiences through the pipes of academia. Western academia feeds into the myth that the mind thinks, and the body follows. The genesis of an idea can never be in the doing -- it is in the conceptualising, the theorising, the thinking. So when we think about the body, we think of it as primal and lesser and full of instincts we must evaluate before following.

And even as I write this, I know that this essay is not exactly the anarchist anti-academia piece it wishes it was. Perhaps I am Southeast Asian, but I have been so colonised that my regional awareness is clinical, not cultural. I come from Singapore, which has been dubbed ‘the imperialist of Southeast Asia’ because of how passionately we suck the empire’s cock and try to distinguish ourselves from the rest of Southeast Asia. Last year, we celebrated the ‘Singapore Bicentennial’. What is that? It was a nationwide commemoration marking the 200th anniversary of Stamford Raffles’ arrival in Singapore. Raffles was the British son of a slave trader, whose arrival on our shores marked the beginning of our colonisation. So when I speak about the body outside an academic understanding of it, as much as I want it to be an ode to local, indigenous ways of understanding the body, I know it never will be.

So here is the first marker of my body: colonised, but also, coloniser. Literate, in someone else’s tongue. Literate in someone else’s tongue that, for most of my growing-up years, was indistinguishable from my own. 

This essay is self-serving. It’s not meant to be a great essay. There are millions of great essays out there by much more qualified people than I. All I want through this essay is a space in which my thoughts and feelings can visibly exist. I speak about my own body and my own feelings, and I understand that academia does not always enjoy these things. We are meant to be rational and disconnected, a voice displaced from personality. But again, perhaps academia is not the entity that needs to read this, and perhaps there is merit in writing about my own experiences and those of the people around me. If art is about externalising the internal, then here is my contribution.

The genesis of this project lay in my own tangled relationship with my body. I used to believe it was normal to be unable to perceive my body accurately -- after all, we drown in images of other people’s bodies on the daily, and we’re constantly told what our body should and shouldn’t look like. It was unsurprising to eleven-year-old me that the sight of my body in mirrors and photographs repulsed me. But the nonchalance turned to concern when the repulsion morphed into vivid hallucinations, also often centred on my body. They ranged from the mild (the body grows old, then it is a man, then it is my father) to the terrible (the skin on the body melts off flesh, exposing neon maggots within).

I wish I could package that discomfort neatly within my relationship with my gender. I wish I could make a broad, sweeping statement like, “once I acknowledged I was non-binary, the hallucinations stopped, and I felt more connected to my body” but this is wholly untrue. I’m sure, deep down, there is some connection between my gender trouble and my disconcerting grip on reality, but on the surface at least, the only thing they have in common is my body. And so this is where we begin - at the body. At my colonised, coloniser, dissociating, disconnected, immaterial, tangible, hallucinogenic, Queer body.

I think most of us begin to conceptualise the body as a space long before we find the words for it. We explore our bodies, trace topography, memorise shortcuts, collapse geography, navigate terrain. We know what goes where, what feels good, what hurts, what is part of our body and what is outside it. We create a distinction between our own bodies and other people’s bodies. Just as geography is not simply a matter of cartographic divisions, the borders between bodies are not simply physical. Our bodies and what they mean, where they are, bleed into each other in meaning and solidarity and sex and pain. How do we group some bodies together, decide the societal value of bodies based on similarities and differences? A friend named Ants points out that the body is not truly separate from the world around us - we are a microcosm of organisms and other things, the “edges” that cut us off from the air around us do not truly exist. Art teachers tell you to look at the world and recognise there are no lines -- this is true on a bodily level as well. This friend points out, ‘the notion of a “home” relies on the ability to invite in and to refuse entry - but actually wow humans are more permeable than we like to admit.’

This permeability goes beyond the physical entanglement of us and our surroundings. We are not the only ones residing in our bodies - we share the room with a thousand other people’s opinions of us, some more dangerous than others. Some bodies, the system has decided, do not belong to themselves. There is a lot to be said about the colonisation of the bodies of Black and Indigenous People of Colour (BIPOC) by the violence of white systems of power within which much of the world operates. There is also a lot to be said about the gentrification of our bodies to fit in, the policing of femme bodies by a patriarchal system, the cheapening and exploitation of some bodies, and the way some bodies must mortgage themselves to imposed power structures in order to survive.

If the body is a space, then capitalism wants to cut us all up into little bitty pieces and make sure each of our components is most efficiently and clinically used. And, as dystopic as this idea is, it has already been achieved. We all labour under capitalism, our bodies are broken and exploited (again, some more than others. Some much more than others.), and we all go to sleep only to wake up to do it again. When the world is constructed such that nothing belongs to you without capital, the body feels like precious real estate (or, conversely - the body feels incredibly fucking distant). We want agency over it, we want control over it, we want it back. We want to feel comfortable in our skin, so we pay a premium to make sure our physical, spiritual and emotional selves line up with the identity we have created for ourselves in our minds. We find ways to slide ourselves into our bodies, we look for things like connection and authenticity. We want our bodies to feel like home. And yet, the language we are given to talk about habitation of body, of space, corner us to think about our agency in very specific terms.

When we think about habitation, we think about the home. ‘Where do you live?’ is the same question as ‘where is your home?’ or, more transparently, ‘where is your house?’ Although the concept of home is arguably intangible, we find ways to ground it in a very material context. Linguistically, we position ‘home’ through idioms like ‘home is where the heart is’, ‘a man’s home is his castle’, ‘home ground’... The English language has developed a very extensive range of phrases that link ‘home’ to a sense of permanence, ownership and identity. This conceptual positioning of the home is mirrored in very tangible ways. We want to buy a house, not rent one. We have landlords who own our houses but do not live in them. We deliberately build walls, doors and locks to demarcate ‘our’ space. And ‘our’ space is defined mostly by the fact that it is not anybody else’s. 

We think of habitation in terms of property. It is not really surprising that England declared the legal definition of property in the 17th century, around the same time the colonial empire was established. Theorists like John Locke tried to naturalise the concept of ownership -- in the process, also cementing who was viewed as a person and who was not. Property is an inherently racist, sexist and problematic idea. And yet, we don’t view home ownership as the selfish offspring of imperialism (see: mass deaths and poverty). The home, by all means, is a warm, comforting concept. The home is where the heart is! The home is where we take off our bras, put on a stained shirt and dance arrhythmically to Diana Ross. It is a safe space, where we unfurl, exist without fear of being watched, exist without concern about acing the performance. The home is apolitical - you don’t have to have the right opinion when you are at home. You can just be.

Before thinkers like Proudhon, Marx, Lenin and Mao called for the abolition of private property, there were indigenous peoples who viewed the land as sacred, as living, as relatives and ancestors, who continue to view the land in this way. We do not own the land - we exist alongside it. In many ways, we owe our existence to it. In 2017, New Zealand’s Whanganui Maori iwi won a 140-year-long legal battle to give their ancestral Whanganui river the same legal rights as human beings. India’s Uttarakhand high court cited this case when it ruled that the Ganges River and the Yamuna River have the legal statuses of people. I’m going off on a tangent. The point is that before we dive into thinking that abolishing private property is a radical new thought, it is important we remember it is the age-old thought of the voices we have drowned out.

The relationships between land and humanity, between property and agency, between capitalism and the individual, are complex and political. So when I speak about the body as a site of habitation, there are thousands of unavoidable histories inherent. When I refer to the body as a home, that claim does not exist in a vacuum of happy thoughts and first-world identity crises. Bodies and land are both sites of violence and ownership - historically, they have been, and presently, they continue to be. I move away from describing the body as a ‘home’ because of the way I’ve unpacked it in this essay - but I also want to be clear that I am not trying to police the language we use to discuss our bodies, our relationship to the land, the spaces between us.

In my work, I spoke of the body as a habitat. A space, landmark, geographical love letter. The home is not a habitat, and vice versa. While ‘home’ conjures images of place and ownership, ‘habitat’ alludes to something more natural, more accidental. The space we end up in because it is best for us. The space that feeds us, shelters us and places us within a larger ecosystem of which we are an essential part. When I ask ‘how do we inhabit the body?’ I am not asking ‘how do we make the body a home?’ because the home has already been made for us. It is a question, then, not of altering the body to a point of marketability, but of peeling it back and returning to the state that feels the most comfortable.

So what does it mean to inhabit the body? What does it mean for Queer people whose bodies often feel inherently hostile? How do you slide into a body that, for one, does not feel like the body you want to slide into, and for another, does not feel like it belongs to you? How do you exist as a transgender and/or non-binary person whose body doesn’t feel like the habitat it is naturally supposed to be?

At this point in the essay, I got stuck. I messaged a friend saying, ‘I forgot what my point was.’ And was promptly reminded that I started this essay to de-intellectualise the relationship I have with my body. To feel my way through the words, rub out this idea that I have to have sources and academic knowledge to discuss my primary site of existence. If that was the point of this essay, then you and I both know I have failed. I’ve intellectualised the hell out of the body. And I realise a lot of us Queer people do this - we see the body as distant, so it is much easier to evaluate it without engaging directly with the sense of loss that comes with putting ourselves inside our bodies (not to mention the fact that most of us are rarely, if at all, inside our bodies). But perhaps this, too, is a Western approach to Queerness. I think of the thousands of indigenous cultures that treated Queerness as the norm until their land was colonised and their beliefs stamped out to make way for Western laws. Singapore’s ‘main’ ethnic groups and our indigenous peoples all have long histories of non-binary genders: from the five genders of the Bugis people to the gay Hainanese sex workers to the Malay sida-sida. Was gender ever supposed to be this complicated? Or are the complications a Western import? You can understand my rage with Western LGBTQIA+ activists who view Southeast Asian countries as ‘behind’. ‘Behind’ is a flaccid word coming from those who tread on us until we could no longer walk forward.

And yet, ‘behind’ is such an important position to us -- in Singapore, we want to be ahead. Myself, in my body, wants to be better, as if better is an absolute point that can be reached if I just do the right things, am the right type of person. ‘Better’ is a weird thing to want for a body that does not really feel like it belongs to you. Early in the morning, my mama chides me: ‘you’ll never know what it’s like to fight until you have your own children.’ and I think about the life that I fight to live and I wonder if that’s not real fighting because the body I am fighting for is so far removed from my soul, the soul that is trying its best to inhabit it. And again, what does it mean to try our best to inhabit a body? At what point have we succeeded in being?

This essay is maybe useless academically, but it is useful spiritually. Writing this piece has felt like detangling a very long clump of hair in a drain, spreading them out on wet tile bathed in sunlight and watching them dry til they curl back in on themselves. I am no longer interested in coherence. I am interested in this dissonance, the words I say versus the words I learned, the land I walk on versus the land taken away from me versus the land that was never really mine to begin with. The body as its own agent but so bounded by words and language and bullshit that I have to write an entire essay just to arrive at the point of: oh. Perhaps it is okay for all these feelings to be messy, to be just loosely strung together. Perhaps it is okay that the only thing that they have in common, is my body.

[applesdrowned-a]

PRIDE EDITION !

as  promised   here   are   some   pride   headcanons  .   the  questions  are  from  an   image  i   found  (  revised  for  rp  purposes  )   ,   feel   free  to  use  for  your  own  hcs  !

1. what is your muses sexuality ? : chad is a homoromantic demi-homosexual !

2. what gender does your muse identify as ? : cismale.

3. how long have they been aware of their sexuality and or gender ? : chad knew he was gay pretty much his entire life. he never had to think about it. he just knew "yeah i like boys" and that was that. he got kicked out of private school at age 10 for hospitalizing one of his bullies who called him a gay slur

4. do they have any preferences ? : not sure what this is asking, i assume it means gender preference ? but since my muse is gay it doesn't apply. 

5. share a positive memory of your muse coming out : chad came out to his brother and sister when he was ten. his parents found out chad was being called gay slurs at school after he hospitalized his bully. it was only fair he told his siblings. his sister took a while to wrap her head around the concept being younger, but she just wanted chad happy. his older brother was also extremely accepting of his brothers sexual identity. chad became even closer to his siblings that day.

6. how do they feel about pride month ? : chad loves pride month and is super obnoxious about celebrating it. he suppressed his sexuality throughout high school to avoid ridicule so like once he got away from that and felt more comfortable in his own skin. he is not shy about letting people know he is very happy to be gay.

7. do they participate in pride related events / any other events ? : my boy loves pride events. he went to his first pride parade in los angeles in university with his third boyfriend ( they were friends still at the time ) luca russo. chad wore the flag face paint and carried his little flag around. he was in awe of the festivities. he never had the guts to go to a parade before alone. 

since then chad has attended pride every year. even if he was single at the time. he does not miss a chance to embrace his identity.

8. how does your muse feel about lgbtq+ roles in media ? : seeing his community represented in media is very important to chad. as long as its done respectfully he is always happy to see queer folk in tv and movies. and like pretty much every person in the community, he hates queer baiting with a passion. the second he sniffs it chad will stop watching the program. he can tell  the difference between that and slow burn.

9. do they feel pride in who they are ? : chad struggled with his sexuality for a long time in fear of facing ridicule. it wasn't until he finally left home did he really embrace who he was. there was no reason to hide it anymore. in his adult life chad very much has pride for his sexuality and his community. 

hes heard stories from people in the past who wish they were different if only to stop the abuse. but chad has never wanted to be anyone else then the gay man he is. if given the chance he will provide a confidence booster in this regard. born this way by lady gaga is a huge inspiration for him.  ( yes i know it came out after he canonly died but on this blog we say fuck canon ) but lets clear the room, well chad is not insecure about his sexuality, he is overall stupidly insecure otherwise.

10. who has been your muses supportive idol in their self discovery ? : as chad didn't really have to struggle with finding his sexuality he never found reason to admire anyone. he does however look up to anyone who is comfortable with their identity and or a positive influence for the lgbtq+ community.

11. who was your muses first crush ? : chad was twelve when he started crushing on a boy in his history class. it wasn't anything more then wanting to hold his hand and sit next to him and smile. it was a fleeting fancy that chad got over in a short time. chad would often get soft feelings inside his chest for boys that would even simply smile at him.  but he once again would always suppress his desire for boys, never allowing himself to actually ask one out.

12. what advice does your muse have for lgbtq+ teens ? : if chad could go back and do it all again, he likely wouldn't have repressed himself. he would tell any teen in the community to never be afraid of who they are, if people didn't accept them then fuck those people. you are born who you are, and the real ones will love you for it.

13. has your muse come out to friends and family ? : yes he has. his parents and siblings know. ( see five ) chad never had friends really so there was no need to come out. most people who meet him in his college life onward, could just tell he was gay.

14. how does your muse feel about the phrase "coming out" ? :  chad sees this as letting your colours show. before you were kinda black & white like everyone else, the same, uniform. but then you let your colours come out & were seen as different.

15. do they believe there is a closet to come out of ? :  yes. the closet in his opinion is something you hide in until you feel safe to emerge. like if someone broke into your house, you hide until the danger has past. for some the danger might never pass, but if they stay in the closet forever they won’t have a chance to really live. sure they be alive but you won’t be living your life. being in the closet is safest, but its not really living. 

16. what's your muses biggest pet peeve when it comes to lgbtq+ characterization in media ? : harmful stereotypes. mostly because as a gay man chad can attest to certain things being common, and he knows he doesn't fit into a lot of those commonalities. particularly where sex is concerned. so it makes him a wee bit insecure. 

17. what's their favourite part when it comes to lgbtq+ characterization in media ? : finding someone he can relate too. he likes when gay men are portrayed for more reason then to be a token gay character. he likes a story with an actual backbone. something real. 

18. do they practice safe sex with the same gender ? : yes and no. he is very adamant about both parties being safe and comfortable but chad for most of his sexual career was a sub/bottom. he took it rather than gave it. his first boyfriend didn't like condoms, and chad being naive and fearful of him didn't ask him to wear one. the fact his boyfriend was uncovered was not what was making him the most uncomfortable so it wasn't really on his mind.

his following sexual relationship with boyfriend three fell into a similar pattern. chad didn't give he took,  and when he gave there was no coverage. since they were exclusive neither saw a need for protection. chad didn't see an issue with it.

boyfriend four insisted on wearing one most of the time, but since chad never penetrated him he never had to wear one.

patrick didn't give a fuck, a reason why chad insisted patrick wear a condom in the beginning of halloween part 1 cause he was worried about disease. in fact i hc they were unprotected until chad suspected cheating and got his boyfriend to cover up. although pat never asked chad too.

tldr; chad has little experience with protective sex but will always want to make things as safe as possible for his partner. so boy will wear the condom if asked.

19. what are their turn offs with the same gender ? what are their turn ons : turn ons are older men of authority. chad is very dominant in personality, but also has an extreme submissive side that can come out with the right partner. this part that longs to be taken care of is what attracts him to men in control. he also likes a man who knows what he wants, and has some culture behind him. ( talk dirty to him in another language and he will melt ) oh and praise is another huge turn on, he loves validation 

turn offs are pain. he doesn't like it. anything hardcore BDSM will have him running for the hills. no S&M. and anything demeaning, don't call him slut, whore etc. it makes him uncomfy. in terms of actual personality traits from men, anyone that acts like his first boyfriend ( leather biker, hot shot type ) will have him nopping out.

20. how does your muse feel about lgbtq+ clubs/apps/websites ? : this is a grey area for him as he is certainly in support of gay web content, its how its used that effects him. like, his experience with connecting with the community in any kind is limited to a general kink website which his boyfriend used to chest on him. so his feelings around that are a little uncomfortable. 

21. how do they feel about the term "queer" ? : chad has no issues with this word. he doesn't have anything deeper to say about it, other than it sounds close to queen in his opinion and he wears that label proud.

22. what tips would they give to heterosexual/cisgendered people looking to better understand the community and news surrounding it ? : chad would tell them to be open minded and not look at it with bias. forget about the hetronormative society you live in and just be open to another view. 

23. whats the most annoying question your muse has ever gotten for being lgbtq+ ? :  the most annoying question chad gets is when people ask who is the woman in the relationship. it really grinds his gears as something like that implies either he or his partner isn't a real man. it also makes him insecure as he is neither a masculine or effeminate gay. hes kinda of in between and it really rubs people the wrong way sometimes. because they expect him to act a certain way.

he acts gay, but hes more gay, and less gay depending on what people are seeing. so when people ask him if hes the man or the woman it brings out his rage over the fact that thats a homophobic af comment, and also his dilemma on what type of gay he is.

24. how do they feel about receiving questions about their sexuality and or gender ? : chad is overall not a super friendly person. i mean he can be, but his second language is bitch so be careful lol. so it really depends on who is asking and what they are asking. if a stranger is asking dumb shit he won't be inclined to give more than a "fuck off" but if someone he knows has some curiosities he wouldn't mind, depending on how invasive it is.