#we now have less queer representation

[infiniteaugends]

The Tommy/Buck break up came out of no where and makes no sense. Did they think we would celebrate or enjoy losing queer representation? Especially in such a cruel way! I don’t get it. It feels icky that for the first time Buck’s love interest doesn’t get closure is when it’s the queer man. Especially a man who has expressed feeling alone and isolated. This is by far the worst of Buck’s breakups and it means a queer character’s arc ends with isolation and heartbreak. What message are they really sending with this?

For me as a bi person it feels even more icky. “You’re gonna break my heart.” “I’m your first, but not your last.” These feel like illusions to the bi stereotypes that we are indecisive, cheaters, and greedy. Like Bobby married the first woman he dated after the death of his family. Athena married the first man she dated after getting out of a very long marriage. They didn’t need to ‘explore their options’, but Buck is Bi so that must mean he can’t just choose a person. He needs to demonstrate it, onto the hamster wheel we go.

I was so excited about a well done Bi character (they are few and far between) and Oliver Stark said they were doing it with care. This is not with care! This is horrible, and harmful, and it makes me so upset. This is literally the second time this week that a piece of media that was supposed to be safe (that I was excited about), became a source of shame and borderline biphobia. Along with the results of the election, I’m just so tired and heart broken.

I’m sure many Buddie shippers are going to be cheering on the downfall of queer representation in the name of getting what they want. The hate and vitriol they have spouted at a queer character and an actual real human being has just been rewarded. They were right Tommy Kinard was just a plot device, another in a long list of used and abused queer characters. It all just sucks so much and makes me want this week over that much faster. This was a cruel decision done without care for queer viewers.

[walker-lister]

I just have to remind myself sometimes that no matter what anyone else says, the way a piece of media makes me feel and the positive impact it has had on my queer identity is valid, and that tearing myself apart thinking I have to defend it or questioning my own place within queer communities is not at all important when compared to the almost tangible sense of 'rightness' that piece of media helped me to feel about myself.

[thesearchforbluejello]

With the popularity of Ted Lasso, I'm genuinely just so glad that we got such a phenomenal show that has made an impact on so many people, and of course now we've also gotten the first season of Shrinking, which also knocked it out of the park.

But I still mourn Whiskey Cavalier every time I watch an episode of either of those.

There hasn't been a whole lot of tv I've actually enjoyed in the past several years, and these three feel like an absolute trifecta, but WC feels like the holy ghost at this point because there is SO MUCH of it in Ted Lasso and Shrinking-- it's so many of the same writers/directors/producers, but they're also just so similar right to their foundations. All three interrogate tv tropes and relationships (of all kinds!!!!!) and mental health through comedy, and Ted Lasso and Whiskey Cavalier actually interrogate an entire genre. I'd say that WC is more on that side than Ted Lasso even is, because although they definitely interrogate some of the tropes of sports fiction (toxic masculinity, anyone?), WC actually parodies spy fiction while playing itself as straight.

It just makes me absolutely feral to think about what more of Whiskey Cav would have looked like. A second season? A third? The development of the show from the original(-ish, one of the drafts) pilot to what was actually filmed shows so much growth and an acknowledgement that they could really work with what they had-- it turned from a show about a guy (hence the name) to a show about an entire team. Frankie took the spot as the second main character with Will once they cast Lauren Cohan (I don't think that happened before she was cast but I may be wrong) and another character was completely rewritten into Jai when Vir Das was cast. They had an entire plan for how to flip the TV trope of the will-they-won't-they relationship to a how-will-they-make-it-work relationship!!!!!! It would have been so good!!!!!! The amount of character development we got in just one season was far above and beyond anything else I've seen besides Ted Lasso and Shrinking, and honestly I think more actually happened specifically because they didn't have the assurance of more seasons (good thing they didn't assume, I guess) to build on things like the Ted Lasso Method™ but they still managed to do it without rushing it.

Honestly I feel like I could make a venn diagram of how all three of these shows all overlap and it would be hilarious. Excellent theme songs by well known artists without it feeling cheap? ✅✅✅ Excellent episodic music by well known artists also without it feeling cheap? ✅✅✅ Really well executed character development for ALL of the characters? ✅✅✅ Interrogation of tv tropes? ✅✅✅ More specifically, hilariously camp villains who still manage to take advantage of tropes to work? ✅✅ Incredibly well developed character relationships OF ALL KINDS that don't all hinge on only one romantic relationship as the centerpoint of everything? ✅✅✅ Queer characters who don't exist for the butt of a joke or solely as token queer characters? ✅✅✅ Every line is delivered with perfect comedic (or dramatic) delivery and timing? ✅✅✅

Anyway, this has been a barely coherent and very meandering way of saying that the fact that ABC put the episodes out of order really screwed things up, but Whiskey Cav really hit its stride there with the second half of season one and absolutely nailed the vibe they'd been working towards with the foundational episodes that came before them, and I just get SO ANGRY when I watch Ted Lasso and Shrinking despite the fact that they're both so good and I enjoy them so much because it makes me think about just how good a second (and third, damn it) season of Whiskey Cavalier would have been.

[mishtershpock]

.

[genderqueerdykes]

I think i am aromatic but allosexual and I'm really stressed about it bc as a cis man (for now, but I'm postponing the gender thing as much as I can) I feel like it's just going to be seen as being one of Those Guys. And so much of the little aro/ace representation is aroace or ace and never aro only.

I don't really know what I'm asking tbh but I just felt like I had to send this.

hey i get that, it's okay to be worried about that. people are literally so fucking rude to queer cis men and i'm tired of it. we've basically made a sport of bullying queer men at this point and it's time to stop. there's nothing wrong with an aro allosexual. you are of threat to no one. and i do get what you mean, as someone who's more aro than ace, it bugs me deeply that there's less aro representation. aroace rep is nice but people seem to think you have to be both, but you don't

you are queer. you are not a bad person for being an allosexual aro cis man. you're another part of the queer community who belongs. the aromantic community is very diverse. anyone can be aro. i'm part of a community where i've met people in their 40s - 70s who identify as asexual. i know there are just as many aromantic people out there. we are everywhere. we are just not taken seriously. but we'll change that.

take care of yourself. you belong here. aro cis men are not an issue

[certifiablyinsanez]

Mammon is great ace representation: an essay on aphobia in the Hellaverse fandom

I’m seeing a lot of people be mad about Mammon having a thing for Leviathan. And I’m going to need the fandom to step back and examine these issues, because they are 100% rooted in aphobia. I have been out as an oriented aroace person for over 10 years if you want to doubt my credentials, rather than listen to my analysis, lived experience and reflect.

So. Tell me Hellaverse fandom; why, when it comes to Alastor, who is a character who very clearly has zero interest in others, it is always a chorus of people saying “aces can have sex”, “aces can enjoy sex”, “it’s not harmful to the ace community to use Alastor for shipping material, he isn’t real and asexuality and aromanticism is a huge spectrum”, “Aroace people can still date and have sex”?

But when it comes to Mammon, he is “bad asexual representation”, he “clearly experiences sexual attraction”, “he can’t be demisexual”, etc.

No genuinely, why is this? I want you to examine this, think on it from a place of neutral examination and come to your own conclusions. Because this is a worrisome double standard. This can for starters, be an instance of fat phobia. Because out of the two of them, Alastor is thin, and therefore closer to the beauty standard, which is hysterical considering that Alastor canonically has horrible hygiene, and I don’t think I know a single person who thinks that stank ass body and breath is attractive. Mammon, as seen from the slovenly way he eats, can potentially be assumed to have poor hygiene as well, but it has a very different connotation because of his weight. [Research the connection between thin privilege and body odor/hygiene. It’s very real].

I can spend a lot of time and energy going into the shipping dynamics between the shows, as well as how Alastor is a more “shippable” character in comparison to Mammon, but I honestly don’t find this as interesting or as compelling as to what I’m about to say next.

Because aphobia in the real world is still very alive and well today. In my 10+ years of being in the ace community, I have genuinely spent a lot of emotional energy, time, knowledge, experience, and compassion, just fighting for the right to even be acknowledged as queer. I have vivid memories from when I was first out of the closet at the age of 16, telling ace people across apps and forums that they were valid, that they weren’t broken, that they were deserving of love, respect, and a place in the queer community. I was telling people, younger, my age, and older that they shouldn’t kill themselves, that they had worth beyond what they could do in the bedroom for others. I had to convince people that they didn’t owe anyone sex, and that they were in fact being sexually abused by their partners. I was on the phone with people in tears. I spent HOURS of my life in these DMs at an age where I was a suffering, mentally ill queer child that was also being victimized by aphobia. Still to this day people think the “A” stands for ally. And still to this day people have discord about our community as a whole. I have had to sit and watch as people went from loudly proclaiming with their whole chest that asexual people didn’t exist, or at the very least weren’t queer. Then years went by and it became less and less okay to say things like that, because asexual people finally had fought long enough and had supported each other enough that we discovered our voices and began to use them. So people were finally facing the consequences of saying bigoted shit.

And now that they can’t say that asexuals aren’t queer, they moved on to another group. Demisexuals. Demisexuals by far have it roughest, because while there are many micro labels in our community to explain our diverse range of experiences, demisexual is probably the most well known one. And every handful of months or so I have to use my voice once again to stand up for my people, because an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, and people on the internet have made it clear that they have no qualms of attacking us. The asexual and aromantic community have made extremely valuable contributions to the queer community that are entirely overlooked because we are not valued in it.

And this is why I have been an outspoken proponent of my displeasure over Alastor being a character that is the most shipped with others, and my disdain for the fanbase has grown even wider after Mammons appearance in Mastermind. It is a painful reminder of all the discrimination I’ve faced over the years, that my community still goes through. Because people are contrarians. Alastor is canonically asexual, and other aspects of his character are reflective of aromanticism as well. Well, the fanbase doesn’t like this so much. If you genuinely pay attention, you’ll notice this is a trend with a lot of other aroace characters. My favorite example is Peridot from Steven Universe, a canonical aroace character. In the show, Peridot goes through a lot of unlearning and growth. The scene where she tries to fuse with Garnet has massive implications for a few reasons. Because one, she is genuine in her desire to understand Garnet, and fusion better. And two, fusion while forbidden on Homeworld, is commonplace and normal in the Crystal Gems. As a Crystal Gem, she feels this is what is now expected of her. This is a major experience in the aspec community, as living in a cis heteronormative society means that sex, marriage and children are all things expected of each individual, which is dangerous and harmful ideology to everyone, asexual/aromantic people as well. Peridot couldn’t go through with the fusion, but that didn’t stop the fandom salivating, and foaming at the mouth over a potential Lapis/Peridot fusion. People were genuinely mad at Rebecca Sugar for never making that pairing canon, when they had absolutely no right to behave the way they did. Let’s not forget how the fans also misgendered Rebecca Sugar constantly. It was absolutely bigoted.

This is happening with Alastor. Fans feel entitled to ship him with whomever, an entitlement that is not seen with other characters. When people ship Vaggie with Angel, there is backlash, and for good reason. Because people understand that despite the fact that Vivienne Medrano said people can ship whatever, shipping a gay man with a woman and a gay woman with a man is…gross. It is wrong, it is disrespectful of their identities, and is forcing heteronormativity onto characters that are strict in their sexualities. Most people are able to recognize the thinly veiled homophobia. But Alastor does not receive the same treatment, and in fact receives the opposite treatment. I don’t know what I could say to convince you that the aroace coded character in a show being the #1 most shipped is thinly veiled aphobia the same way Vaggie x Angel is thinly veiled homophobia.

Now what does that have to do with Mammon? Mammon seems to not be aroace coded like Alastor, and for some reason, that has thoroughly pissed people off. Because Mammon is not the “acceptable” caricature of an asexual person. Most allosexual (non-asexual and/or aromantic people) view being asexual as being synonymous with being aromantic, which shows a painful lack of understanding and at times respect for the diversity of our community. Alastor fits this category, so he’s an “acceptable asexual”, while also essentially being a toy for shippers. But Mammon, with his clear attraction to Leviathan, is a “bastardization” of the asexual image. When we aren’t being viewed as broken, we’re often being viewed as chaste, virginal, and innocent with attachments to infantilization. But Mammon, with his aggressive and even icky approach to flirting with Leviathan, is seen as a subversion of this, which for people who don’t understand our community, hate. And these people are blaming Vivienne for having “terrible ace rep” when in actuality, having multiple ace characters having very little in common is actually fantastic rep. Because there are many labels in our community that Mammon can fit into as an asexual. To me, he looks like a sex-positive, high libido, demisexual. He’s known Leviathan for thousands of years, of course it makes sense that he would be into her, but not into anyone else which would explain why his “posse” are just female robots. This could also be because of his classism, but I genuinely think that he’s just demisexual. And you already know how people feel about demisexuals.

If you’ve read this far and have genuinely set aside your biases and personal feelings like I requested in the beginning, I appreciate that. Because from my own lived experience, the double standard between Alastor and Mammon doesn’t annoy me; it frightens me.

Because what the fandom is actually saying when they do these things is this:

“We see you as a homogenous group. Your voices go in one ear and out the other. If you don’t conform to our values and standards, we won’t give you the respect or recognition you deserve. If you don’t conform to my view of your group, you lose my “allyship”. We do not see your identity as a sexuality in its own right, but rather a literary device we can play with. I do not care to learn more about your community, your culture, or your struggles. I barely (if at all) acknowledge you as your own sexual minority and marginalized group. I barely acknowledge (if at all) that you are queer at all. I do not care about your feelings about societal biases that I might carry, I don’t care about how you’ve lived it, because it takes away my fun and fantasies. Because I devalue your group as a whole, your voices mean little. Your narrative is mine to do with as I please.”

I really hope you can see my perspective and understand the sincere place this comes from. Thanks for reading.

[blazinghotfoggynights]

Can Team Tuck and Team Buddie please agree that both can exist and serve as positive spaces for queer male representation?

I've been thinking. Let me run something by you.

Oliver says he has always felt Buck was a bi-coded character? Right?

Does that mean when TK thought Buck was hitting on him, he was?

If Buck was always bi, but just didn't know it, are we supposed to believe he never flirted with Eddie just because his first kiss was with Tommy?

Was Tommy his bi awakening or was Tommy the embodiment of the attractive traits he has seen in a man he's been falling for over five seasons?

You can like or even love multiple people. Even at the same time! 😮

Believing that Buddie is or should be the endgame does not negate or disrespect Buck's arc with Tommy in any way. I question if Tommy was just a convenient character. He's a safe guy to explore Buck's evolution with. He has a history with members of the 118, but he is not integral to the cast. If it doesn't work out, he is easily explained away. Remember Natalia?

I think it is possible to have a Buck and Tommy centered arc, focused on Buck becoming comfortable with his sexuality and exploring it in a healthy, positive way and still have Buck and Eddie eventually realize they have been each other's person for years. Having both doesn't make the other any less important. How many people have dated others when their eventual life partner was right there? They had no idea they saw that person in that way.

Now that we know Buck is bi, it could lead to different interpretations of scenes:

Buck is looking at Eddie. Tommy is not there and we don't know for sure who Eddie was speaking to.

2. Look at that smile and his eyes at the end. Buck positively beams and bats his eyes when he realizes Eddie is going to look at him. That's how platonic friends look at each other?

3. But we can take it all the way back if we have to. Look at Buck when Eddie compliments him.

3b. Do you know what that reminds me of?

4. If Buck has subconciously been into guys for a long time, then this scene takes on a whole new context.

Moving closer to the other man? Check.

Eye contact? Check?

Smile and shy head duck? Check.

*I'd like to state that I have no doubt Edmundo Diaz knew Buck was into him. Look at the reaction.

5. When I'm into someone, you know what I don't talk about? Someone else.

6. Wow. Look at how Buck looks at Tommy.

6b. We have never seen that before have we?

Buck x Tommy and Buck x Eddie can coexist in harmony. Life stories are long and have jumpscares, plot twists, plot holes, etc.

Buck being genuinely attracted to Tommy doesn't mean that all the scenes from the past five seasons that made us all side-eye Evan Buckley didn't happen.

If we never get Buddie, let's just take the win. ABC said, "There are queer men in the world who are masculine, hot, and relatively stable. Let's show that."

Do we really need to talk about how the LGBTQ community was represented on their former network? I could stand on that soapbox and go off for days. Let's just say I know others who also felt some way about it, whether they were straight, queer, or allies.

I am just going to enjoy what is shaping up to be an amazing season. Moving to ABC breathed new life into 911 and I am excited. (Season six? Can we just not talk about it?)

[leidensygdom]

The ways in which being asexual feels isolating

I've been pondering whether to post this or not, but I figured out I wanted to explain a bit of this experience.

So, I could go on a very long tangent on how being asexual is usually a lonely experience, and how much I've been otherized here and there- Specially in real life. How the same people that claimed to be queer (or allies) had been much weirder about my asexuality than they were about me being bi/pan or whatever.

But I think I wanna talk about how something like that bleeds in every aspect of socializing, even down to something like fandom. I stay away from fandom usually- I like to look at cool fanart and that's about it. I hate discourse, I hate drama, I hate reading people getting worked up because they're treating fanon as canon. But there's one thing I've noticed, over and over, that just sends me off my rails.

And it's how fandom tends to treat asexuality (or aromanticism). So, you get a character in some piece of media that explicitly, unequivocally, states they're either ace, aro, or both. "I do not have interest in a partner", "I don't desire to have sex nor do I enjoy the topic", whatever. And as an ace person, I do appreciate being able to see myself in media- There isn't many chases where something is established that bluntly.

Now, you decide you want to check some fanart for that. Fandoms have this tendency to make absolutely everything about shipping, even when the media they're basing it in does not revolve about that (and it's annoying, because a lot of times people aren't interested in the actual themes- It's all reduced to shipping). Suddenly, you notice people treating the aforementioned character as anything but aro or ace. It's all about shipping. "This person interacted with this other person in a way two friends would, but we gotta make this their entire personality now". Some people may instead go for "well, maybe the character is not having sex, but they're probably an absolute freak about it, studies it extensively, has encyclopedic knowledge about it-"

Now, there's of course sex-favourable aces, and that's completely valid, but it's already straying from what, canonically, the character had mentioned. Asexual or aromantic characters aren't really allowed to exist as themselves. People often see them as a blank slate to fill, to change, to fix. I could talk forever about how people react to real life aces like that. I've had people asking me incredibly invasive questions because they saw my lack of sexual attraction as something broken, something they could fix.

And I hate that! I think I'm allowed to say that I hate that! It's hard and unusual for media to cement an aro/ace character, because they're defined by the lack of interest for something, which is often hard to show. But when it does- No one seems to care. It's all shipping, it's all "well, he's gay in denial", "well, she's probably super repressed". If you took a canonically gay character and made them straight on a fanfic, you'd get angry people. Which is bound to happen when you erase representation that people identify with. But aro/ace characters are NOT even seen as queer, they're not even seen as "representation" by most people. You can erase that bit of it, put some god awful shipping on top, and people will applaud you. And it sucks!

I wish people would see being aro or ace as an identity worth respecting, not an identity that needs overwriting. It feels a bit too close to how people often treat aro/aces irl, and it sucks. It reeks of this sort of exclusionism, where "aro/aces are technically queer but it's queer lite at best, it's less interesting than being gay, and we kinda don't want them near us anyhow". Again, I've had far worse experiences about being ace than I have about not being straight.

Sorry if the post got long, but I hope this experience may at least resonate with other people who have been struggling with this, too. It has always felt just kind of lonely to be ace, and see how little people do even consider it an identity, even when it comes down to something like fandom.

[gnawing-suspicion]

So I’ve had two days now to collect my thoughts and I’ll say this

I think the Agatha All Along finale was incredible for a Marvel show. Every MCU series falls victim to the Flat Ending - the penultimate one is always brilliant (7 and 8 of AAA were amazing), and then they get bogged down by executive notes and having to tie into the larger Marvel Universe. Think of Kang at the end of Loki S1, monologuing all over the show/dynamic we were actually there to see tie up.

If we set aside the Wiccan Needs To Be In Movies of it all, my only major issue was the missing backstory for Agatha and Rio. Not just because I love them, but because we needed even one scene of why their connection was so strong. How did Death discover her? It couldn’t have been at Nicky’s birth - they were already “my love”-ing each other. Did she watch Agatha for years, observing the deaths she caused, eventually revealing herself? Did she appear after Agatha drained her coven?

My guess is there was probably a plan for this that got nixed or lost to notes. Marvel is notorious for patting themselves on the back publicly for queer/diverse representation while doing everything they can to tamp it down behind closed doors. I’m guessing the AAA team gave us everything they could and I salute them for it. The leap from America Chavez’ blink-and-you-miss-it pride pin to Kathryn Hahn making out with Aubrey Plaza onscreen amidst an entirely, canonically queer cast is astronomical.

The whole show was so well-thought out and written that I just don’t buy leaving Agatha and Rio’s history as a blurry question mark on purpose. Story-wise, we needed the Why. Not just why she hates Death (we got this) but why she loved her. The betrayal means a lot less when we have no reason to root for them.

This isn’t me saying “bad job, show” because it’s a miracle it exists at all and it gave us SO much and I love it!! Best MCU show to date, and incredibly groundbreaking! I’m excited to rewatch it given the twist at the end. I just wish we’d had a little more of that.

And so off I go to my keyboard to log into the archive of our own and fill in the gaps!!

[anxietycheesecake]

I'd like to ask you a very fair question: now that they no-homoed nandermo, now that we know for certain we aren't getting any gay relationship, what makes wwdits so high quality rep over other shows that have gay sex jokes and throw a coming out in an episode? Is it because they're actually having gay sex? Because it's still just played for laughs and treated as less than the canonical straight relationships (also "haha they're pervs who'll fuck anyone" isn't peak bi representation, that said as a bisexual who is a perv who will fuck anyone). What did wwdits do that other similar shows haven't done decades ago to earn that queer media™ recognition and be packed with OFMD and good omens, two actual extremely queer shows with gays having feelings beyond horny?

Not to say I didn't enjoy the episode because I absolutely did (queerbaiting aside), and it's amazing if you find this resolution satisfying. I do too, to some extent (as a start rather than an ending, tbh). But after so many years calling out how they teased a queer relationship they never intended to portray and then hit us with homophobic "let guys be friends" rethoric (you don't have to be homophobic to say homophobic shit) and getting absolutely dragged for it... was it all worth it? Don't you feel a little TJLC? Aren't you kind of mad that nothing has really changed since the days of Sherlock and Supernatural? Or, even worse, that now showrunners can point at characters, go "haha these bitches be gay af" and get awards for queer representation?

I love wwdits, even when I hate it. Nobody forced them at gunpoint to write season 3 and 4 like that, or be purposefully vague about what they were going for, or teasing the possibility of nandermo all over the marketing. If things have continued to go like in season 1 and 2, I'd be more than cool with this ending. If they had gone "holy shit, we didn't want to make it seem like it'd actually happen, we just thought it was funny that they acted so gay" and course-corrected after season 3 instead of doubling down, I wouldn't even call it queerbait. Sometimes people making media don't know how it's going to be received and that's okay. It becomes bait when you refuse to clarify and after pulling all that shit you act like fans are insane for noticing.

So by all means, continue to enjoy wwdits. This show means so much to me and if it had remained a plotless sitcom without character development that is just meant to make me laugh, I'd call it one of the best comedies I've ever watched. It's just that, in retrospective, they took the show in a direction that made no sense for them, ran with it for far too long and then asked why people expected so much from a show that wasn't meant to have any depth, despite all the times they tried to make it look like they knew where they were going.

[the-breath-in-air]

Just saw a post of someone saying that Daniel (from Interview with the Vampire) is so far into the closet that at the time of the Dubai interview he doesn't even realize he's queer.

And I really don't think that's true for his character.

He wrote articles about AIDS in the 1980s (later published in a book). He frequented gay bars in the 1970s (and possibly later). He's had sex with men. He's not repressed. (ETA: not repressed about the gender of people he's attracted to, anyway)

Now there's a lot we don't know about Daniel's life, so it is open to interpretation, I'll admit. But it really feels more to me that he's written to be someone who's, like, a 1 on the Kinsey scale. Like, his longest romantic relationships were with women. His primary motivation for being at gay bars in the 1970s really was to score drugs. (Tho that wasn't his only motivation). When he tells Armand "I can be on my knees in a minute" it really is just him "bargaining with desire" not expressing his own desire. He was definitely attracted to and intrigued by Louis (and flirting with Louis) in San Francisco, but the promise of sex alone probably wouldn't have convinced him to go to Louis' apartment. And for sure there is so much tension between Armand and Daniel in that Dubai apartment, you could cut it with a knife...it's just, y'know, both sexual and angry.

Daniel's a character with a lot of nuance in his sexuality. His sexuality is fluid. He's a character for whom his motivations for having sex are not always purely about desire (though desire is wrapped in it). And I love that! Finally a character whose sexuality is muddled...who doesn't fit into any boxes (not even those created by other queer people)...and yet who doesn't seem to be at all confused by himself. By the time we get to Dubai, he knows who he is, in terms of his sexuality.

And that doesn't make him less queer. His muddled queerness isn't a problem to be fixed. Hell, that's true even though Daniel might not even call himself queer or bisexual. This show has earned having a character do that. Like, the beauty of there being so many queer characters on this show is that no single character has to carry the weight of representation. So their sexual identities can be muddled and stay muddled.

[aroaceleovaldez]

one of the things i'm most disappointed in HoO with is how the series sets up a really beautiful continuity to the first series but now extending from a primary focus on disability to a wider focus on intersectionality (which in itself is a REALLY fascinating place to discuss particularly Percy's character and the overlap between his experiences as a disabled student and how many readers interpret his experiences as him experiencing racial bigotry in part due to his racial ambiguity and how those experiences have overlap and what does that look like for specifically a disabled student of color, etc etc) - like, there is so much set-up for so many things: we have the introduction of a bunch of new major characters, the majority of whom are explicitly not white. We have set-up for queer intersectionality topics (Nico, Jason's bi-coding, Piper being mspec as well eventually). We have set-up for gender intersectionality (all of the girls and the intersection of their disabilities and gender and for everyone other than Annabeth also the intersectionality of gender and race). We even have other forms of disability than just the primary focus of ADHD/dyslexia coming to the table with stuff like Frank having dyspraxia coding, Frank and Hazel both having childhood terminal illness survivor coding, Hazel having seizure coding, Leo having autism coding and Nico's autism coding making a comeback, Percy's book 1 PTSD even gets some references in Son of Neptune, Leo and Nico's depression get big spotlights, also Nico's general grappling with becoming weaker and new physical disability. Heck you could even dive into Jason grappling with gifted kid syndrome and how that plays into his experience with ADHD/dyslexia versus someone like Percy whose same learning disabilities present differently. There's so much set up right at the beginning of the series to dive into...!

...and then Rick does literally nothing with any of that. and it sucks. and then in TOA he does even less with it and just drops nearly all of the disability stuff in general which sucks even MORE. Also it's all made even worse by dropping or magicing-away the existing disability coding because Rick changed his mind about it (Frank's dyspraxia and Hazel's fainting episodes going away, etc etc)

Like, TKC emphasized the themes about how the Kane Siblings grapple with colorism a lot! MCGA talks about queer topics and disability and how those intersect with homelessness! The entire first series has SUCH in-depth metaphors about disability! But HoO and TOA just totally drop the ball about it and don't even try! The most TOA ever gives is the world's blandest directly-spoken-to-the-audience one sentence blurb and pretends that qualifies as representation and that they've fulfilled their quota. TSATS is even worse about the disability erasure and speaking directly to the screen and calling that representation, not to mention how little the TV show erased the majority of references to disability from TLT alongside Percy's PTSD and made Sally an autism speaks mom while they were at it. And while I haven't read it yet I hear CoTG is equally not great about how it handles Percy's disabilities (or Annabeth's).

HoO could have given us so much but it didn't and i will never forgive it for that 😔 also the fandom could stand to talk more about intersectionality cause it's a really interesting topic and there's so much opportunity to explore it in the Riordanverse that does not get nearly enough discussion.

[danielsarmand]

ugh yes you get it it’s not ABOUT ships being endgame i feel like ppl have come to expect that nowadays and it’s really weird. whatever happened to scraping for crumbs of interaction and running 20 miles with whatever we got?? and even if a ship does become ‘canon’ it’ll usually never happen in the way you personally want anyway. they’re NARRATIVE FOILS babe it doesn’t get much better than this i am eating it UP

i swear the new season has been EXASPERATING from a fandom standpoint. i think in retrospect it was like this with season one and the whole mel thing, too, but enough time has passed that my brain conveniently forgot about that.

i don't want to make this about age, but when i was growing up in fandom we used to have maybe a 1% canonization rate when it came to queer ships, which forced me to develop an array of skills i don't see much of anymore. queercoding and queer characters were there still, regardless of how canon or not a ship was, and everyone agreed that canon love interests mattered very little when the dynamic of two characters was the core of said characters.

i genuinely could care less about mel and jayce when they uh. got together i guess??? and i say i guess because we barely know anything about their relationship and dynamic. which is the point! we know way more about him and viktor, so that's where my thoughts go.

people were making a fuss over jayce and mel fucking, meanwhile i was going insane over their sex scene being paralleled to viktor coughing blood, and about how afterwards we see mel waking up in bed alone because viktor wakes up in bed and jayce is beside him. now, people are making a fuss about viktor and sky and i'm over here thinking of what sky is: a symbol, a representation of viktor and jayce's dream, of viktor's humanity and of his remorse. because that isn't even grief—he barely knew sky, didn't even look at her once in season one, he cannot grieve someone he didn't care for; he grieves her POTENTIAL, what she could have been had he let her, he feels guilty for being the cause of her death and he clings to his humanity through her.

arcane is all about visuals. every single frame. none of it is left to chance. and this is unfortunate when its viewers seem adamant on not turning on their brains whilst they watch.

[autistic-ben-tennyson]

I have a lot of things to say about this character. I used to identify with her a bit but I no longer do and a lot of the writing in her “arc” has aged poorly. The narrative wants to portray her as just someone who longs to be understood. What we got though is a character who never grows and remains selfish and inconsiderate. I respect and understand that she’s important to a lot of people who are queer and neurodivergent as I am too but I don’t think she’s as good as her stans say.

I’m going to contrast her with two protagonists I am fond of. The character I named my blog after, Ben Tennyson, and Akko from Little Witch Academia which I just finished watching. I actually compared the former to Luz in a more positive post back when I liked her but I think a more critical comparison is needed now. Some have said it but TOH is just an isekai anime for queer people. Any development Luz may have had regarding being less impulsive and selfish got dropped in favor of her just wanting to be understood. She gets everything she wants, to be the hero, to date the rich popular girl, and never be criticized or challenged by anyone.

If Lumity was a cishet ship, it would get a lot more flack from people. Amity herself is woobified by her fans when she was often nasty to Luz or Willow for no reason and didn’t do much to redeem herself for the latter. Luz chose to keep lying to Amity and kept secrets even after she promised to do better. Despite suffering from bad writing in UA, Ben/Julie was still better than this. Julie actually held Ben accountable when he lied or screwed up and she never bullied him, Gwen or Kevin. Ben does try, even if he’s not very good at it to be a better boyfriend and spend more time with Julie as seen in “Revenge of The Swarm” after promising he’d do better.

Some other things that make Ben better than Luz is that his hero fantasy is actually deconstructed. He learns he can’t mess around and do what ever he wants. While he jokes around and acts like a brat, he admits it’s because he’s scared because of the stakes that come if he fails in the episode “The Forge of Creation”. This is not to say Ben 10 is great as it does slip into isekai territory as well with that disgusting harem episode in OV, but it does a little better. He’s also actually bullied as shown in the OS and AF which makes him a bit more sympathetic whereas fanon is used to make Luz more likable than what just the show itself tells.

Regarding Akko, she’s similar to Luz in that she’s impulsive, selfish, rude and wants to be a witch to live out some fantasy. The difference is that Akko learns to be more responsible, that not everything is about her and that she can’t just get whatever she wants. While patience is still something she struggles with by the end of the series, she still grows and becomes a better person. Whereas Luz was willing to abandon everyone while wallowing in self pity, Akko ran away for a few hours after learning that Chariot, her mentor, idol and friend was the reason she was struggling but a quick talk with Diana brought her back. The thing is that a character who’s not a noble saint but still very sympathetic can work such as Shinji Ikari but not if they’re framed as heroic like Luz. That’s why a lot of the show’s writing has not aged well.

To recap, this isn’t to bash people who do identify with Luz and like her. I used to as well, but she’s got some flaws that are often brushed away and the narrative seemed like it wanted to have its cake and eat it too. Wanted to challenge traditional fantasy tropes while ultimately turning into a chosen one wish fulfillment for Luz. TOH was praised for its representation as well as by people who view it as the anti SU but its not the greatest show ever and there are some troubling implications.

[lenaboskow]

now that filming for s8 has officially started, a friendly reminder: don't settle for a half baked romance just because that's what we're given, and we're apparently starved for representation (which is true, to an extent, but you can find better representation than what bt is giving us elsewhere). it's okay to want more; in fact, i encourage it! when was the last time we had a slowburn mlm (or any queer) romance that wasn't originally planned? oh, that's right. never

so don't forget that buddie would quite literally be setting a new standard in representation. there are so many straight slowburns that were created because the audience saw the chemistry and the writers picked up on it; having a queer romance because of the same reason? unprecedented. so again, don't settle for less just because it's what we've been given. especially when the showrunner has stated before that tommy is just a plot device, a means to an end.

[mementomoriwithacherryontop]

This article about Dead Boy Detectives and Netflix's stewardship of LGBTQ+ shows is my Roman Empire

I'm linking the article below, and it's one of the best analysis' out there about both the significance of Dead Boy Detectives' being cancelled, but also the bigger picture of why this is so significant to both fans and the LGBTQ+ community at large. Please read (and share!) the article, Why we need more queer art, not less-the case of Dead Boy Detectives, written by Karla Elliott.

A damning excerpt, and article linked below:

"Netflix has long tried to market itself to audiences just like this as an alternative to more traditional media companies. Yet its cancellation of Dead Boy Detectives is another in a long line of queer shows and shows with queer storylines – such as Sense8, Julie and the Phantoms, and Shadow and Bone – to be axed by the company before their time.

The showrunner of Warrior Nun, another of Netflix’s prematurely cancelled shows, even revealed that Netflix pushed back against the writers developing a queer romance for the show’s second season.

Meanwhile, the streaming service continues to platform performers such as Dave Chappelle, who used his latest Netflix special (his seventh on the streaming service) to double down on jokes made about the queer community, particularly targeting transgender folk.

It seems, then, that companies such as Netflix are still largely only interested in token queer representation, and only if and when it aligns with ever-shifting profit goalposts."

She goes on to talk about the crew and fans rallying around Dead Boy Detectives and taking a grassroots approach to save this show. She links IG and Twitter posts (it'll always be Twitter, to me), and she includes The Petition in her article.

She also accurately addresses the NG elephant in the room, pointing to his limited involvement in the show and how Dead Boy Detective fans have "resolutely condemned his alleged actions and stood with the women speaking out against him. Their outrage perfectly aligns with the core lessons of the show, which counters harmful gendered stereotypes and advocates for men to take responsibility for their actions, hold one another accountable, process anger, and open up to feelings like love and empathy."

She concludes, and I must admit, this brought a tear to my jaded 'lil heart, that "[t]hrough its community-building, energy, and activism, the fanbase is proving to be the living embodiment of the lessons Dead Boy Detectives has to teach us about solidarity, love and care."

So, go us. Keep at it. Don't loose hope. And please check out this article. I gave you a sneak peak, but it's chalk full of really good information and I promise you'll be glad you read it.