#what’s the point of being happy if i cant be happy by myself

[eucharist-eulogy]

thoughts /neg

[zackcharine]

I need to try harder to get out of bed but augh

[elipheleh]

The truth is every queer person has the right to come out on their own terms, and on their own timeline. They also have the right to choose not to come out at all. The forced conformity of the closet can not be answered with the forced conformity in coming out of it.

-Alex, Red White & Royal Blue (2023)

i want to talk about this quote. full disclosure, it’s because i keep seeing some really frustrating takes (some of which veer into queerphobia) and i am getting a bit annoyed with people and rather than directly addressing it with them & appear to be picking a fight im going to make an analysis post in my space. (tbf. its mostly on twitter and i have a priv account so that limits me)

disclaimer; this is my interpretation, im not saying its the only interpretation just something to consider. i am queer & cognitively disabled - don’t assume malice and dont be cruel. i will ignore and block freely.

tl;dr/very simplified summary: it doesn’t mean “dont ever speculate about other people’s sexuality” but rather that ‘coming out’ in the way society understands it shouldn’t be a necessity for queer people to exist openly as queer. full context under the cut & self-exploration questions at the end.

so lets start with the context. alex is talking at a point in time when the world has read their emails and so knows both are queer (bi & gay, specifically), but neither alex/the white house or henry/the palace have commented. so more simply - alex and henry are known to be queer, but have not come out. alex uses the speech to come out as bi, and as being in love with henry. he also uses it to imply that he & henry should have the right to choose not to do this formal coming out alex is doing.

—

okay. lets get into the quote analysis.

The truth is every queer person has the right to come out on their own terms, and on their own timeline.

reasonably self explanatory. each queer person gets to decide their own timing for coming out, and the way that they want to address their sexuality.

They also have the right to choose not to come out at all.

this is where problems with interpretation have started to appear. fundamentally yes, this means people are allowed to not be openly queer/‘out’ if that is what their decision is. but it also means that they can be visibly queer - for example being in a visibly queer relationship; signalling with their aesthetic (e.g. someone being butch, someone who wears only ‘girl’ clothes despite that being at odds to their assigned gender); casually posting about queer things on social media etc - without addressing their own sexuality to others.

it does not mean that you should assume everyone is straight until they explicitly tell you otherwise. and quite frankly insisting that it does mean that is veering into homo-/bi-/queer-phobia because you are insinuating that being not-straight is a negative thing.

The forced conformity of the closet can not be answered with the forced conformity in coming out of it.

some people seem to be interpreting this as ‘you shouldnt force people out of the closet’ and i don’t think thats quite to the nuance of what it means. yes, i do think that is part of it - in much the same way as the previous sentence - but it is not really the whole of it. in my opinion this is actually addressing - at least to some degree - the concept of ‘we should assume people are straight until they explicitly say otherwise’.

the ‘forced conformity of coming out’ addresses the idea that to be “out” you have to follow these steps; that you have to make a public statement that ‘this is my sexuality and i am [queer/bi/gay/pan/ace/etc]’. you are conforming to this precedent of “how to come out” that countless queer people have followed. there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing so, but actually there are different ways to be queer - and even being “out” as queer - that don’t involve following that playbook.

here’s a hypothetical to demonstrate my point. two men, who have never dated any women, live together & spend basically all their time together over 5-10 years. they holiday with each other’s family, they’re always together at events (e.g. weddings of non-mutual friends), but they’ve never told you/the public that they’re queer and/or dating each other. at what point does one start to assume they’re together? and does the answer change if its a man & a woman rather than two men? if a man & a woman did that, people would assume pretty early on they’re probably dating. but yet when it’s two men suddenly it’s invasive to speculate. this is where this concept of the forced conformity of coming out comes in - along with the veering into homophobia i referenced earlier - why must they say the words “i am gay” for it to then be ‘okay’ to consider that they’re together? (the homophobia comes into play because if you think being gay is morally neutral (which it is) then you shouldn’t have any issue with the speculation about people being together regardless of their genders.) the idea that straight is the default is where this forced conformity starts to really kick in.

—

i guess the main things i want people to ask themselves are these (and i have been asking myself these questions, there is no judgement or censure just self examination):

1. do you think people can be openly queer publicly without explicitly sharing that they are queer? (by this i mean in an announcement or in casual conversation. can you be openly queer without ever addressing it explicitly?)

2. if you do, why do you think that talking about the possibility someone is queer is something that should be hushed up? is it because there is an internalised concept that being queer is something abnormal and/or negative? if it was a straight couple would you feel the same way?

3. what does “coming out” mean to you? why does it mean that, what have you internalised to get to that conclusion & is it something that always works or are there other ways to be openly queer (or ‘out’ if you prefer)?

4. is it possible that there are queer people living openly and happily as themselves without explicitly addressing their sexuality to the wider world, who don’t want to address it publicly? does this make them closeted or ‘less’ queer to you? if so, what makes you think that?

[mayo-is-an-instrument]

I made a boo oc!! I'll make more drawings to use them for when I start making "serious" YouTube videos :3

[hauntingblue]

Justice for jolyne wdym emporio defeated pucci

[todayisafridaynight]

i have to drive for like two hours tomorrow and all i can think of is old people

[caffeinatedopossum]

I wrote a poem

"This won't make you happy"

That's what people say when I confess

Well I know they think they're helping

But it doesn't ease my distress

This won't make me happy,

Don't you think I knew that at the start?

The goal was never to be happy,

Just to not fall apart

A gravely injured animal

Does not have happiness on its mind

And in its desperation

Will take any escape it finds

"Things will get better"

That's something I hear all the time

But it's biased information

Even if its not quite a lie

Things will always change-

That's the version I believe

But knowing things change for the worse

It's not much of a reprieve

Hope is a fickle thing

Like a shape shifting beast

It's both beautiful and ugly

Depending on which side you see

Hope is everything you have

When you've got nothing left

But with just one thing worth fighting for

Can be a flame burning in your chest

I was born with this restless pain

But introduced to something new

There are few pains greater

Than finally having something to lose

[qumiiiquinnquin]

my art will never be good enough !

[pandanscafanfiction]

🙃

[jvzebel-x]

🦋

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[bambinification]

I feel like it's literally impossible for a cis woman who actually experiences gender euphoria to exist and blog about their life without tumblr shoving one million terfs in their face per day

[mistyechoes]

I think an hour long hug while watching mutant mayhem with a friend I love dearly would fix me

[melonsharks]

MORE TRANSFEM DIPPER!!! SHE IS MY LIFEBLOOD 😭😭😭😭😭

(ur art style is so nice btw)

dipper pines and the art of repression

notes below the cut for funsies haha.

its kind of interesting to me to watch gravity falls with the lens of transfem dipper because when you watch it like that, its like. shes trying SO hard to push it down. it kind of reads like shes trying to convince not just everybody else, but HERSELF that shes a boy. like the idea that anybody could even think shes a girl is terrifying to her (this kid really does read as trans in any direction LMFAO i love dipper) but like. why transfem? right… full hc territory here, please be nice to me.

-she doesn’t like her deadname (its traditionally a masculine name, as far as i know 😭) so she goes by the nickname that as given to her because of her birthmark…

-she gets made fun of OFTEN for not being manly enough even throughout the show and so she associates femininity with Bad Thing To Be. so she CANT be a girl because being a girl would be a BAD THING FOR HER TO BE. shes 12 years old yk so like. this deep, deeeep repression sets in.

and so:

-she overcompensates. shes not just going to be manly, but shes going to be SO manly that nobody is going to make fun of her for it again. sometimes to the point where she feels like she cant even really be herself.

i feel like she doesn’t even really realize it in canon,,, its probably post-canon. but the realization would hit her SO hard. like a truck. and it would be so scary at first but then its not, then she feels Right and it feels GOOD and shes so happy and her family would love her and accept her so much and whatever WHATEVERRRR.

anyways, i was just rewatching gf and this was really making the rounds in my head the more i watched, because its kind of how i experienced being trans myself (and im transmasc so LOL) like. just repressing the thing i thought was bad and overcompensating like crazy, until i realized… that its not a bad thing to be. other people making you feel bad about it doesnt MEAN its bad. and then that realization that your identity not being what you thought it was doesn’t mean you change as a person. you’ve always just been you. but it feels better. it feels real.

[hexhomos]

I love Mel through and through but I cannot find it in myself to say that her and Jayce should’ve continued romantically in season 2, or that meljayvik/melvik could ever work.

While she def did love Jayce in season 1 she did use him and viktor for political and financial gain. And her and viktor always hated each other (also viktors 100% a gay man)

Also I think even tho canonically labels and homophobia don’t exist in arcane it was def some form of heteronormativity that caused jaymel maybe like…. Classism or smth…. Idk 🙏

Mel and sevika is my favorite Mel ship because Mel should be with someone who won’t fold as easily as Jayce 😇

imho jayce/mel was always a relationship of convenience with a very clear economical stipulation of success that is planted all throughout s1 act 2 (mel literally walking out on jayce when he doesnt present his new gizmos on progress day bc she had already promised them to investors. lol. later on pressuring him to do a whole round of black market shakehands under HER inherited opera house which is used as a meeting point between all the corrupt topside politicians. do i even need to expand.) and its only made worse when the phony-ruler training stuff comes in and both ambessa and mel start competing to see who can manipulate jayce into making weapons for the empire faster. I've always said that storyline was inconsistent as fuck and it does a lot of flip flopping near the end of s1 (do you want weapons or not? it changes every scene.) but at least people cant call me crazy anymore bc they WERE grooming jayce into being the pliant triggerfinger figurehead and once that fails all the attention is shifted onto caitlyn, who's just so ready to fall for the bait.

Like this is why jayce brings up the investment stuff during the breakup scene. this is why mel is fighting with caitlyn against her mother at the end of the series as a complete reversal of her goals. This was supposed to be a Thing. Character development for this bit in specific was RUSHED AS FUCK since they wanted to put all of the political tidbits as far away from the core plot as possible but its still there when you look. The ''empathetic'' political stringpulling ambessa does with cait is one she has taught her daughter, and she perpetuates with jayce, who is ofc upset at all the bullshit when he realizes what's happened in the end. And that it didn't just impact him, but also viktor and the cities at large!

clean break was actually the best thing they could have done with both of these characters and for a second I didn't believe they'd HAVE the balls to do it, but I'm happy to be proven wrong lmfao! if jayvikmel has no haters im dead. I'm not even getting into that whole thing but it bothers me *so deeply* to see viktor defanged and made into a fogbrained centrist yes-man when his entire arc is about the fatal consequences generations of these rich oligarch games have had on the low class people of the undercity. One of the only scenes of him raging in the entire show is him showing his disgust for mel's weapon proposition, and we just forget that happened? nuh uh. not on my watch

[ene-ask]

Alright, you know what time it is, NERD RANT TIME! Cause omg I'm literally in tears from that last comic, the feels! 😭❤️

So! We finally get to see what happened after Insignificant before Jazz's arrival, but not in the way we think! Orion, or in this case Optimus, is most likely telling D-16, who I assume is now Megatron, that he did hear him and tell him how he felt. Optimus says that Orion(easier this way for me) at the time felt like he should've "known better" than to wallow over D's words about him when speaking with Elita, taking note on how D-16 still stayed to comfort him despite it not being his character at all, and how D-16 wouldn't leave no matter how many excuses Orion gave.

D-16 knew where to find Orion(in this little secret spot), the way D-16 gently cups Orion's face to wipe his tears and ask what made him this way, or who made him cry. Then D-16 most likely tried to take Orion elsewhere to calm him down, cheer him up, or to take him to get some rest. Then it starts raining, and this is my favorite part cause now it makes sense

In I Wore Yours Before, that wasn't a face of exhaustion, that was a tired face that became surprised/shocked at the gesture D-16 did. D is the one who follows all the rules, including the ones about the garment, and wouldn't dare break it. Yet, in that moment Orion is at his most vulnerable, D-16 himself too decided to let himself be vulnerable for a moment just to comfort the mech he loves.

And this shocks Orion at the time! Cause he did not expect that, but as Optimus continues to talk, saying that's how he knew when D put his garment over Orion, that he knew he always come first! Ugh! My heart! No matter how selfish, stubborn, or just ignorant D-16/Megatron is, he will always put Orion first when Orion needs someone to lean on. Even Optimus tells Megatron to just say his feelings, saying it wasn't hard. While Megatron could take it as a way of Optimus mocking him, he knows it's not, Optimus probably finds it silly that it took Megatron this long, even when known as D-16, to just say he loves him, and Orion most likely happily accepted that love.....unless this is a doomed yaoi by narrative but HEY WE ALL LOVE THESE TWINKS AND WANNA WATCH THEM MAKEOUT!

Also, just point this out cause omg

This part right here, added with Orion trying to tell D to not worry is what really got me. It got me in tears cause the amount of times I STILL DO THIS MYSELF UGH IM A CRYBABY I KNOW BUT I CANT HELP IT THE PAIN IS SO RELATABLE!

We love you energ00n! Can't wait for more!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Thank you so much for your love!!!! This comic draft has been sitting in my folder for like over a month (before Jazz's arrival was drafted) and I'm happy to finally draw it. I thought that it might not matter but I think it's necessary to explain why Orion was not avoiding D or confronted him. Not that he "should've known", Orion knew!! Orion knew those were just bluffs!! He knew D cared for him despite everything because how could he not? It was obvious!

Tho I'd note that Optimus was simply making Megatron admit his guts on that particular event. It's a confession, not the confession.