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forgottenspring · 4 months

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Mild rant on Alastor bc I'm tired.

*takes deep breath*

I was going to stay out of this so rip to my inbox.

Does anybody remember the whole ace doxing list on here? The whole discussion of not shipping gay characters with the opposite gender? The rep for pan/bi representation and the steps to do it right? Does anybody remember when ppl on here discussed how aros and aces aren't a part of the queer community bc they're not 'gay enough' in a way? Bc I do. That was about a decade ago. And I remember when Alastor was first introduced in the pilot and ppl not accepting he was aroace back then.

It doesn't matter if Alastor is entirely aroace and if he's capable of dating or not.

What matters is we still have so little ace representation and acceptance, especially aroace rep, that a few years ago when a real person Jaiden Animations came out as aroace, ppl tried to destroy her, bc even with a perfect valid explanation of her just saying aroaces are their own thing and she just doesn't want to date, ppl treated it like she was lying or was trying to sneak into the queer community and was straight or all the other horrible things yall might remember "fans" did to her.

Alastor being aroace isn't about being the rep of "Aroaces can feel attraction!!!" bc be real honest.

How many aroace popular characters can ppl list that a regular person on the street is going to know? Bc I've heard all their arguments to invalidate their representation.

Jughead? Oh you mean Cole Sprouse who made out and got it on with Lili Reinhart playing Betty bc he found her sexy? Oh but in the old comics he's a gay character whose in denial. Yelena Boleva? Who? Oh that woman? She's hot she's just traumatized and needs to find the right person. Charlie Weasley? Oh he was only in the books? He was confirmed as aroace through a passive comment most ppl didn't know about from the author that never used the term? Luffy? You mean one of the most shipped characters in One Piece? No he's just an idiot/childish so he doesn't understand girls are pretty. Caduceus Clay? Sorry I didn't watch Critical Role whose that? Are you sure he's aroace? He feels gay to me.

I can list more ppl, but I'm sure most ppl couldn't.

I remember the whole discussion of the pan/bi representation argument of "Yes! We know pan/bi ppl can date the opposite gender. But straight ppl don't know about pan/bi nearly at all or don't accept it," so showing it as gay, who know the term more, until it's shown clearly the character is queer and not "confused straights" they then can have opposite gender attraction. Bc sooooo many pan/bi characters end up "straight" at the end of their show/book. Bc I remember when ppl refused to accept that Deadpool is pan bc of his wife and started freaking out when he dated a nonbinary person in the comics or helped that one genderqueer person he knew.

Representation is about showing to ppl what they're not understanding about the identity in the plainest sense of the words of the identity, then when there's enough rep to show they're not all the same, then you can have the ones that break the rules.

Alastor whether or not he wants to date doesn't matter. What matters is this whole situation blew out of proportion bc ppl refused to accept that some ppl don't feel comfy shipping him. Bc they see themselves in him and don't want that. BUT! Also ppl under the aro and ace umbrella also have no rep and wanted to see him breaking the stereotype they probs have yelled at them of "You can't have a partner you're aroace I forbid it" and wanted to see thru their own experiences how that would be done.

Here's the problem.... As someone who has read a lot of aroace headcanon fanfics as an aroace....... A lot of ppl who are allo don't realize aroace "crushes" are missing emotions... That's why they're aroace. And they'll write them like they're the same just "muted" or "needs to warm up" kinda thing. Or make the character's love "childish" to explain the lack of romance/sex. Which is messed up. And that's the problem here.

Alastor didn't need to be this blown out of proportion of a situation. The problem is ppl found him sexy and the classic "But aroace hot, they can't be aroace bc why hot?" discussion got brought back up without the gentle post format discussions and instead it was a lot of shippers on tiktok with tiny word counts arguing a complex issue.

Ppl should be allowed to ship whatever (except problematic I know yall too well), especially if they see themselves in the characters and especially if they have the same identity and want to explore that!!

The truth of the matter is this is such a huge issue that just keeps happening bc ppl are too used to fandom queer spheres where ppl already know aroace means "off the table" and so they want to play with qprs or grayromantics/sexuals not knowing what that entails bc there's sooooo lil aroace rep that actually explores being aroace and a lot of ppl don't know the basics, and even how very different aroace "off the table" is when you aren't the classic "uwu I'm just innocent and have no friends or importance to the plot so just ignore me and have me be adopted by one of the main couples as a 'kid' figure."

Not to mention that a lot of ppl still think ace means aroace. That aces can't date bc there's ppl who don't know that romantic and sexual attraction are different!

I'm just.... So tired. So very tired of having ppl shout at me what it means to be aroace and being unable to look up the lil aroace rep we have bc of this issue I've seen a million times is all.

#Welp rip my inbox tagging bc some of yall might be blocking tags or are actually interested in this.#Just a tired aroace who was here for the whole tumblr debacle back in the day of the aroace community talking about their feelings.#aroace #alastor #alastor the radio demon #hazbin hotel #queer community #ose

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centaurianthropology · 2 years

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What ‘Our Flag Means Death’ Did for this Older Queer Fan

I’ve been trying to articulate what feels special about ‘Our Flag Means Death’ to me for a while. I’ve been active in fandoms since the ‘90s, back when webrings were your best bet for good fan content. I have seen a lot of shows come and go. And I got very used to my fandom experience going something like this: find a new show or movie or book or other thing, write a lot of meta about character motivation and plot structure and costume choices, and often find a pairing I found appealing. The chemistry was usually good, with variations on antagonistic, friendly, or other chemistry. And if I was lucky, the show would drop a few hints that there was something there. You learned very quickly to be grateful for scraps, and to never expect too much. There was never, NEVER an expectation that a queer pairing would be ‘endgame’, or would ever be manifested in anything more than a few lingering glances and the actors and maybe a writer or two being all for the relationship EXCEPT.

Except the producers, the studios, the audience. It would never be accepted. So it was confined to glances. And that I understood. I could appreciate that. I knew that, if they could, those writers and those actors would have gone there, but gay marriage being legalized seemed like an impossibility, queer cinema was treated as niche or arthouse, and the only queer characters allowed on network shows had to be sidekicks who never had sex.

After that came the era of the queerbait. Showrunners were more aware of fandom in the mid-2000s, and really wanted that sweet sweet audience retention. So some shows started to lean into the possibilities of queer relationships. They played up that things might happen between characters on screen. It was no longer “we want to, but the network/producer won’t let us”; it was “maybe there is something there! *wink* *wink*”, only to turn around and inevitably claim that the audience misinterpreted, that there was nothing there and never had been. It was somehow less than what we had in the ‘90s, because then at least we knew we were never getting anything, we knew that the writers had pushed something as hard as they could and they felt as shitty as we did that it wasn’t going to happen. This was, well, bait.

And yet I don’t really think I understood that feeling of being baited, because I never got the canon queer ship on screen. Whenever I saw the bait, as a fan who had been around and seen the talks in the ‘90s about queer rep on network TV, I knew that it was bait. I knew that they would never follow through because everyone was convinced that two men kissing would end their television show. So no matter how much they teased the audience, I knew it was lies, and I didn’t feel like it hit me as hard. I told myself it didn’t hurt.

Now we’re in a new era where queer relationships are directly confirmed by creators, but there’s always still this halting before the final hurdle. “These two men are in love,” they’ll say, but then turn around and say, “but it’s so elevated and pure and perfect that they would never sully it by smashing their faces together. So they’re definitely in love guys! Just don’t expect them ever to show that physically.” Because gay love is now in vogue, but gay kissing and God forbid gay sex are still that bridge too far. Even shows with great queer rep that aren’t explicitly billed as queer romances will stop before the kiss.

And this doesn’t feel like asexual rep or an embracing of queerplatonic relationships, because it definitely doesn’t feel like they deliberately set out to write that. No, it always feels like they wanted to have their cake and eat it. They want the queer fans that will come to see a queer relationship, but they don’t want to lose those fans that they are still convinced will stop watching when two mens’ lips touch (it’s different for women, because straight men love lesbians, and so they get a pass for ogling reasons, which ... is a whole different story, and a whole different long post, frankly).

And then comes David fucking Jenkins, who seems like an impossibility. He is an apparently straight white cis man in his forties. He is the exact sort of demographic that you would never expect to deliver a meaningful queer story, or a story with explicitly anti-racist or anti-colonialist beats. On first glance, he’s every other showrunner who’s tried to pull a fast one on queer audiences before.

But as this article shows, there was something different ticking away in his head. He watched Star Wars and came away with the impression that Finn and Poe were the couple with chemistry. He saw how fans treated Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega and wanted to do better. He’s almost blissfully unaware of the long history of queer fans getting ignored, then baited, then told that gay sex or kissing would ‘lessen’ such a wonderful relationship.

So he set out to write a queer sitcom about pirates. And since it was a romcom, of course the two leads were going to kiss, because that was the point of a romcom. That’s what the audience signed up for, and to turn around and give some bullshit line about how their mouths touching would lessen what they had was inherently ridiculous. A romcom has specific beats, sure. They were inevitably going to be separated by misunderstanding, but there was also an agreement with the audience that it wouldn’t be forever.

And the kiss sealed that deal. It showed that he had none of those weird hang-ups or beliefs that if he showed two men kissing, his show would be over. And you know what? He was more right than he could have ever imagined. What he was doing was, in his head, simply following through with the agreement established by all romcoms. It wasn’t remarkable or revolutionary. It wasn’t until he was surprised that more people weren’t believing it was a romcom by the moonlit scene in episode 5 that he started to understand something was happening that he hadn’t been privy to before. I think it was only after that that David Jenkins did a deep dive on queerbaiting, and realized how pervasive it was, how even the queer audiences weren’t willing to believe what was obvious on screen. That, in the words of Lucius: “This is happening.”

And they didn’t believe it until the kiss, because that’s always the line that shows aren’t willing to cross. When he stepped over that boundary he didn’t even know existed, he had an audience ready to go to war for him. Because he had delivered. There was no waffling, no bullshit. He just delivered. And after that, well ...

The audience flocked to him. They campaigned, made cakes and Twitter storms and were unrelenting. They were a groundswell for a show that had gotten no advertising, no buzz, no press before its airing. It’s clear that HBO Max had the same old attitude that he had crossed the line with that kiss, and that the show would flop. But it was the opposite, and instead of tanking his show, it got him a renewal.

And I myself felt such a lightness in my heart after seeing that. Even with the darker end the season had, I knew that this was a romcom, that our lovers would be reunited, get over their miscommunications, and would be together in a meaningful way. David Jenkins had the idea, and then he filled his writers room with people to bring that idea to life, to push back and buy in. Queer people, people of color, people of different cultures. This is the move of a man who has a dream to write a diverse, queer story, and knows that he has a good idea for it, but also knows that he needs people who have lived those lives to help him avoid stumbling blocks that he never could have seen.

Seeing this leads to the extraordinary result of writing that is well aware of how queer characters and characters of color have been treated by the media, and how queer fans and fans of color have been treated too. It also led to him going on his own journey of discovering, realizing why people reacted the way they did, why they were hesitant to believe he would deliver, and why they would fight so hard for his show when they did. It was effervescent, like drinking champagne, to finally just ... have this. For it to happen both with the writers knowing it was something special, and the showrunner not understanding why it wasn’t always so easy just to deliver these stories. Just to see the chemistry and go for it. Just to treat characters with respect and still let them be silly and ridiculous. To have an entire world that feels queer friendly, beyond the queerness of the lead characters.

It only really hit me recently, when I heard that tired old excuse of “they love one another, but kissing or sex would cheapen that relationship, so they’re in love, but not in a sexual way”, and I was finally sick of it. Because David Jenkins and his silly gay pirate show showed that it’s bullshit. He showed that your audience booms when you finally set aside the fear of two men kissing, and just pay off the relationship. When you embrace queerness not just in words, but in deeds. It took OFMD to finally rip those tolerant blinders off me and for me to think, “Oh, just say that you don’t want to show two men kissing because you think whatever audience you have will think it’s gross.” Just say it. Just be honest instead of trying to parade this as a better form of queer representation. I wouldn’t like you any more, but I would respect the honesty.

Finally getting what I always secretly wanted from a show--but would never admit that I wanted because I knew I would always be disappointed--has taken away my ability to tolerate whatever excuse showrunners trot out for not taking that final step. OFMD opened my eyes. It woke me up to realizing that I had spent twenty years pretending I wasn’t hurt when a show teased a relationship they never intended to pay off. I haven’t felt so giddy about a show in years, and I have *never* felt so giddy about a queer genre show (because I’ve never seen one before that delivered so well on both being queer and on being genre)! This was not a show billed as a romance, but a show about pirates, but it delivered such a lovely romance and such a lot of silly pirates!

So thank you, David Jenkins. As you went on your journey of discovery about queerbaiting and how it made you feel, I have been on a similar journey. And you helped me get there. You and your silly gay pirate show.

#Our Flag Means Death #David Jenkins #whoof #this was a long one #and maybe not as coherent as some of my meta #but I wanted to try to put my thoughts in order regarding what this show means to me as an older queer fan #and what it did for me in regards to my own relationships with how television has historically treated queer pairings an queer fans #anyway #thank you David Jenkins #you will likely never read this #but you helped me a lot with your show

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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The Owl House: Enchanting Grom Fright: Happy Valentine’s Gays

Happy Valentine’s Day owl ladies, gentleman and non-binary folks! It’s time to finish off this holiday in proper style with a LONG overdue review of enchanting Grom Fright and even longer overdue coverage of the Owl House. The Owl House was one of the best debuts of last year if not THE best, only in contention because Close Enough also started last year and looks to surpass regular show in terms of quality. But with stunning animation, tons of representation, and colossal worldbuilding. And given how i’m on record for thinking Star Vs went so far down the tubes they bumped into where Cthulu is sleeping, it’s nice to have another magic based show that seems to be on the right track: carefully building i’ts world, supporting cast and for today’s topic main romance. It also rather than just obliquely hint one character was bi and the other pan, actually goes out of it’s way to have a bisexual protaginst with a gay love intrest. As my good friend @jess-the-vampire has brought up quite a bit, star had plnety of options. .but no willingness to actually campaign for any queer rep, the way Gravity Falls head Alex Hirsch tried to, he still gets credit for trying, and Owl House creator Dana Terrace gets full credit for.

Terrace got her start working on Gravity Falls in line production before working her way up to directing for ducktales, being instrumental in how Webby was animated and how she moves and acts, and being the director for several classic season one episodes including “Woo-Hoo!”, “The Spear of Selene” , “Day of the Only Child!” which was one of my faviorites from season 1 and “The Beagle Birthday Massacre!”. And while I can’t 100% confirm she’s the only part responsible for starting Weblena, given she was director on an episode where a lot of the romantic subtext was in the visuals, she certainly helped so thank you Dana. Thank you a lot. Their adorable. Point is she’s a talented lady and wasn’t satisfied with directing, so she pitched her own show, combining tons of ides and stuff including of all things, Pokemon Red. I checked the article wikipedia had sourced, it was one of her happy childhood memories as it was one of the last things her dad gave her. Awwwwwww. That’s as sweet as it is painful. She’s also currently dating Alex Hirsch, something I was entirely unaware of but find also adorable. Point is i’m glad I looked into her as she’s a very nice person, and very much my kind of weirdo and i’m happy for her sucess and her singuarly weird show that sprung from that sucess.

Now that part of it’s out of the way the episode itself was an uphill battle as you’d expect. As anyone familiar with this blog is aware, but just in case your new, you tend to hear me bitching about Disney’s handling of queer represntation a LOT

For the most part Disney’s pretty bad at it: There was the string of “FIRST GAY CHARACTER IN AN X” they had going for a while.. that consisted of a character I dind’t realize was gay, a kiss I didn’t see, and a talk with a character who I honestly wouldn’t of been looking for had disney not patted themselves on the back with some giant sized hands because htey saved some pym particles for that occasion. Ducktales was unable to have Penumbra come out as gay more clearly because I don’t know Ducks can’t be day.. but they can be IMPLIED to be gay or pansexual as hard as the crew possibly can so they win anyway. Pixar was able to have a gay lead character for one of it’s sparks shorts out and even focused on him coming out of the closet and it’s very good and something I WILL give Pixar credit for... but not Disney Plus who go out of their way to not mention the lead being gay.. despite the fact the short opens with a gay space cat riding a gay space dog out of a rainbow and then it being revaled our lead is in a relationship not long into the short. My point is the idiots who won’t watch this for having gay characters are just going to turn it off, who cares what they think, why are you like this Disney. They need to do better, and be better and i’m getting tired of this shit.

That being said... this episode is a step in the right directoin as despite having to get past one obstructive asshole, not her words but damn if it isn’t the truth, as the rest of hte execs were fine with having a gay character, Terrace fought hard for it and WON, having a clearly gay character, and a clear road to a gay romace as the lead one, all because she wanted some representation in her works. So to honor this, I present this review in honor of love, effort and saying screw you to not having represntation because money. Join me under the cut and allt hat.

We open in the owl house, in the owl house, duck dodge push and shove, it’s how we show our love in the.. you get the point. Luz is learning yet another Rune, this time plant runes.. and already something I love about the series pops up: the fact Luz’s rise in skill is gradual but noticable. Each spell noticably improves in potency with time, going from simple lights to shaping them into simple constructs, and learning to control or time her spells and glpyhs so they launch she she says so, with each one getting more powerful the more she learns. And on top of that osmething I just noticed on rewatch of this episode is her tecnique in finding them evolved, something I dind’t notice the first time because I hadn’t fully caught up and checked this one out to see if Disney would actually let them go through with it.. and they did. Point is her first spell is found by accident, her second by realizing how her magic works fundemntally, both require skilled deduction and on the fly thinking and casting, so she’s already pretty skilled.. but now sh’es ACTIVELY seeking out a new spell here for the first time. She knows how she gets them, she knows each school is tied to a form, and she likely got the plant from williow since that’s her thing and she’s a saint. A demon but also a saint. They can have those too. It’s what I assume relicor is.

I miss that goblin demon bat man. Point is it shows an evolution in Luz’s thinking: while it’s a subtle thing she took a more proactive approach this time even if it took a lot of practice.. and it pay soff as by the time of her next rune, while it’s once again sorta handed to her she has less time to learn it, almost none, and finds it singed onto a ball.. and learns it effortlessly to the point where by the next episode it’s a crucial plot point. IT’s subtle but clever character progression, and stuff I really enjoy, showing our hero going from a bit inept but not helpless or incomptient.. to a force to be reckconed with and far more clever and strategic than yo’ud expect given her sometimes reckless and almost always happy go lucky attitude.

Luz worries teaching King about the internet was a bad idea because he gets excited about a literal cat fight which .. yeah... it was a bad idea but not because of that.. but because next he finds someone saying the earth is flat and she wisely yanks it away. It’s.. very sad that the absolutley maddening and easily debunked flat earth theory is still RELATIVLEY more sane than the stuff we’ve had pop up during the trump era and the cornoavirus pandemic.

But one of the main conlficts of the episode pops up as Luz’s mom messages her and Luz can’t bring herself to tell her anything and just sends a thumbs up. I do think this episode helps even things from the pilot a bit as it was a bit lopsided: While I got that Camillia was genuinely struggling with how to deal with Luz, and was offered an out and had to take it... the fact she sees NO problem with the normalcy camp, which comes off intentioanlly or not a sa parallel to conversion camps or camps to make autistic kids “Normal”. And as someone whose both bisexual and autistic, I naturally relate to luz way more as someone whose intrests sometimes just don’t quite fit with everyone else, and who dosen’t get how bad some of their actions were. THat’s why this episode feels like a necessary course correction: Luz is shown to genuinely love her mama and feel guilty.. but we see camilia genuinlely loves and supports her daughter a bit more. While it was clear from the pilot this shows it more, with her genuinely just wanting to know her daughter’s okay and checking up on her, and giving me the feeling that possible consequences or no if something bad WAS happening or she didn’t hear from her for a long time, she would’ve drove up there to get her. It feels like the writers realized the implications they accidently created and wanted to fix it, though I can’t say for certain. But if so good on you for course correcting, not every show does that.

But King encourages her, telling her she’s doing the right thing by lying and to “trust the demon on your shoulder”. Keep this in mind for later, but that joke is great on it’s own. But soon i’ts time for school and Hooty.. barfs out Luz’s books for her.

I haven’t been this disturbed since.. (Looks at the clock) About 2 maybe three hours ago when I watched a man have, if apparently shorter than the oriiginal cut as I wanted to see everyone else’s reactions dammit, sex with hiis car which was possesed by the mad ghost of his dead wife. Because that’s the kind of stuff i’m into when i’m not reviewing stuff. And before that Tinky.. just everything about tinky.

I do not have enough time to get into TInky here or why he exestially horrifies me. Or why Jeff blim is a living god. I will save that for a proper review if I have the time tomorrow. Point is I saw a lot today and that still tops it. Willow and Gus are likewise grossed out and want to leave.

Cut to school where Luz wonders what’s with all the decorations.. that remind me of this honestly

And frankly given the whole state of the boiling isles it REALLY wouldn’t surprise me if the decorations were indeed well cooked faces. But i’ts Grom time, which means elaborate gromposals (Some Dude asks Skara out with a beating heart and an elaborate medical proposal.. which.. points for effort. And for using an actual heart. Couldn’t get one for mine. ), dancing and someone being chosen for Grom Queen. WHich Willow hints isn’t as nice as that sounds. Before we can get into that though Amity bumps into them and gets into a tizzy before meekly greeting “Luz.. and Co”. which.. not going to lie.. is my faviorite gag of the season. Just htw way she adds them and just the way Willow and Guz both smile widely at it as if to say “That’s us!”. Amity drops a note and snatches it back. This will be important later, you all know why, point is Amity becomes Grom Queen.. and is heavily depressed with Luz following her to find out why. At the gym.. she does indeed ifnd out why: Turns out Grom is not some mutation of an earthname but is based around a horrifying entity lurking beneath the isles, Gromethious the Fear Bringer, who emerges from his slumber once a year and must be fought back and brings out his target’s greatest fears. Just like groundhog day only with less time loops and rodent abuse. Amity is scared of hers, and i’ll obviously get into this more later, and Luz simply suggests asking bump to opt out and Amity appricates the support. Awwww.

Luz heads home and we find out Eda is chaperoning and King is mcing. Eda is also rocking a suit. Just damn girl, damn. But Luz considers taking her place.. and gets laughed at, with Eda assuming she’ll have to save her and King just being kind of a dick. I mean he’s a loveable thoroughly cuddly dick but he’s still a dick... just more like a stuffed plushie of one. So basically exactly like Tinky. Look I mention him more than once in this review he dosen’t put me in the bastard box. It’s a great system. Naturally this makes Luz more determined than ever to prove herself and she finds Amity in the night, with Amity having been unable to get out of it.. and Bumps a resonable guy, he just wants a substitute and no one wants the job.. except Luz who galdly volunteers and insists ntohing scares her before the giant spider on the back of her head proves otherwise. Because of course it does, spiders are fucking terrifying. Kill then all.. except the pokemon ones. Galvaltula are sweethearts. As are Ariadoses. Sweethearts who can elctorcute or poison you but still.

So the next way Luz begins preparing.. and by that I mean it’s time for training. Sadly we don’t get an episode of Luz and Amity getting trapped in an 80′s fashion montage... I mean yes Rise of the TMNT also did that plot the same year, but we had two diffrent plots about someone getting trapped in an eldtrich sitcom and a THIRD this year, all entertaingly unique. Though we do get Luz pulling out an otter suit that’s adorable and she sadly still hasn’t worn yet. “This one says i’m an otter, with a dark side”. She also got thrown out of a school dance for.. wearing an otter suit. Okay the other things we saw in the pilot were understandable but htis is just.. baffling. Who cares what you wear to a dance as long as it isn’t horribly racist of nothing at all.

Damn you flanders and your glorious ass. Point is Amity shows up and threatens hooty’s life because.. he’s hooty. The fact he isn’t dead already is a testiment to how badass he is and how much money he’d cost Eda to replace. Owl Tubes don’t come out of a stygian hole in the unvierse every day you know. That’s only every three years. It’s basic styigan owl tube science.

But Amity wants her to be ready and that she’ll have to face her greatest fear.. and cue hooty popping up, poking amity in the face and asking if she wants to know her greatest fear. Really he can clearly hear everything in the house given he heard that, so he heard the death threat he just chose to ignore it. That.. was a mistake. And by mistake I mean we get a hilarious cut to the outside of the house as Luz tries to stop her love intrest from murdering her second mom’s tube monster. The result is some bandages and an eyepatch. To be fair that last one was just flaring up from a previous beating.

For this solem task of training, Amity has brought in her local disaster bisexuals.. aka her twin siblgins Eldric and Elmyra, whose greatest fears are dying alone and being stuck with Eldric. Both understandable. They conjur luz’s greatest fears which are.. some of the funniest shit I heard all year.. and also very relatable. Human souls in cat bodies, which is genuinely terrifying good job Luz, Jerks on the internet who mansplain things, relatable, and soy milk.

But Amity knows this is just the openign act. it needs to be something deeper.. so while Luz dosen’t realize it’s probably her mom issues she brings up her issues with her other mom: that Eda dosen’t think she can do this. Hence we get a giant eda putting Luz in a babychair. Before we can unpack how wrong that sentence sounded, Eda comes out, and marvels at how hot giant her is. But she’s quickly distracted from sex with a giant version of herself, which is not an easy feat, by the relization “Wait Luz is going to fight grom isn’t she.. fuck i’m going to have to save her”, though Luz holds firm on doing it to prove she’s fine and dosen’t need to be saved constantly. it’s a good conflict. Eda IS right that Luz is not ready for this alone, that she’s overcompensating and that Eda would, in normal circumstances be the one to rescue her. As we’ll see it’s not her who does it but still, were this any other foe she probably would be. But Luz’s motivations are equally understandable: She wants to help her friend not have to do this and she wants to prove she can do it. She just wants her mentor, the only person in her life up to meeting her that GNEUINELY supported her in magic to respect her. To have faith in her and actually see how far she’s come. And given how her own mother writes off her dreams, if not unrealistically, and before this she had no friends or support system to speak of outside her mom, it’s easy to see why this is so improtant to Luz: she just wants to make the one person in her life whose ever support her actually think it was worth it when in truth Eda already thinks it does and just dosen’t want her to die.

She’s just not good with talking to her or not condescending to her as her own ego is stacked sky high, probably because the whole curse thing meant Eda was an outcast by default and the system wants to either chain her to one form of magic and one only or shackle her to them as a hired goon. Her ego, while justified, is also a defense mechanism: a way to shield herself from the fact almost no one cares about her and one of the few people who DOES, dosen’t care what she wants or needs. Once the curse happened she lost just about everything and had to rebuild and thus build up walls around herself and kept everyone else at arms length till Luz changed her for the better. It’s just a tragic clash of two wills both with similar problems but both unwilling to talk about them.

But with time up, our heroes need to get to the diggity dance. So they indeed do and we get some fun sight gags, Willow makes corsages, that one girl with the cresent head somehow ended up with Mathomule and is not happy, as anyone who ends up with him should. And it’s time for Luz to face her destiny.. in a tux with a tutu because of course, and Amity likes it because also of course.

IT’s time to rumble, with King getting nervous due to eda’s prodding about mcing since his co-mc gus is really good at it, and introducing our champion.

No wait sorry he’s still trapped in Mojoworld. no it’s still Luz who shows off a seasons worth of skill by easily dispatching the first few fears and saying to grom let’s finish it.. before grom puts a tentacle on her head.

It’s to downlaod her fear.. which is Camillia. Granted we could all see it coming but still Luz obviously can’t fight her own mother or her own overwhelming guilt.. her mom did hurt her.. but she gets why and just loves her and wants her to be proud but dosen’t know what to do: tell her the trutha nd possibly loose a happy and fufilling life or wait until it all blows up. It’s a painful choice. So luz and king end up running. King runs first because he can’t handle it and Gus talks him back into the groove while Luz runs away because she can’t fight her own mom, understandable, and Gus encourages king to lead the crowd which he does. Amity and Eda follow Luz.

So Luz is backed down, facing down a monster tha’ts going to go on to everyone else next if she fails... and Eda prepares to interfere.. but it’s AMITY who faces her fear and dives in. And we find out just what her fear was as grom turns into a humanoid shape and rips the letter in half.. it was a grom invitation. Though conviently the who it’s adressed to was ripped out.

And yeah not going to save this one: It’s Luz. You know it I know it I didn’t even hide it in the intro. Even before the reveal in a bit it was obvious. But it also makes perfect sense. I’ve avoided talking about her character arc up to this point because I was waiting for now. Amity’s growth is the third major arc of the season behind Luz’s slow learning of magic and eventually induction into hexside and eda’s curse, which I lump in with Lilith chasing her since both were mildly entertwined and then entirely are once the reveal hits in the finale. When we meet her she’s an outright bully.. but we slowly see there’s more there. That she’s not really HAPPY or content, is contstantly under pressure by her family name, is outright bullied by her own siblings who don’t understand her. So Luz coming in, seemingly only being intrested in magic because i’ts neat.. understandably bothers her. She’s not a great person, bullying her old best friend because tha’ts what’s expected and being close with outright bullies because of that.. but it’s through Luz she starts to grow, realizing Luz is genuinely nice and genuinely sorry for any trouble she caused Amity, and evne then both cases were causaed by Amity’s own dickishness and outside forces, so it’s easy to see why she defrosts faster. Her siblings realize they’ve genuinely hurt her, and actually try to be good siblings from then on and help her, and slowly Amity learns to truth luz, trust in her, and accept her... and thus accept her feelings for her. There are gradual hints she’s growing attracted to her.. but her walls had to come down first, and it wouldn’t of worked from the outset. The show cleverly has the two build a genuine friendship, two opposities who work well together, so when feelings do happen it feels natural. It’s not “I’m in love with this person because I have to because you can’t be friends with someone your attracted to” bullshit or anything like that, cough star vs cough, it’s just well built catching feelings. I’ts how this kind of thing SHOULD go: niether went in intending for this to happen.. it’s just happening.

And Amity’s reluctance is painfully understandable, as Luz is the ONLY friend and support she has. Sure she and willow are patching things up, but WIllow would understandably choose luz over her and she’s terrified of loosing the one good thing in her life. Of course Luz would either say yes, and probably will some day, or let her down gently, she’s nice.. but it’s also understandable to be afraid that someone won’t take the reveal well. I’ve been there trust me, it’s easier when you let it out even if you get rejected, but I get it being hard to let out because you don’t want to loose a friend. I did not, and niether would she, but I can see why she wouldn’t want ot take the plunge. At least not yet. We’ll see this summer hopefully.

But we do get a shiptastic, gorgeously aniamted scene of the two dancing an fightin gin perfect synch, combinging luz’s new use of plant magic with amity’s mastery of abominations resulting in the two utterly decimating grom, likely in part because with two fast moving targets he can’t get a lock on and likely nees more fear and mass to attack multiple targets at once. Or just more tendrils. it’s a quick, beautful sequence that’s utterly glorious, being framed as romantic as any hetero scene of the type and rightfully so. A triumph and well deserving of this praise.

Our heros have won, get crowns, and King gets praise. All is well.. except Luz drops the crown once she gets home because she feels like she failed and feels lost about her mom.. though at least king gets it “I’m king and queen, best of both things!”. You tell em sister.

So we end with Luz genuinely responding to her mom, with some montage stuff as we see Gus and Willow poke a fear blob, willow fears bugs, understandable and Gus fears clowns...

Also understandable. Though I didn’t put up a bug picture because

And Amity looks out folornly into the night. Camilla responds to Luz.. and mentions letters.. which while Luz brushes those off.. we see someone sent them. And by someone I probably mean king since we now know only eda and him had acess to the portal, and given he was actively encouraging her to lie.. yeah i’m supscious. But we’ll see next season. For now this episode is fan fucking tastic, showing off tons of character development, being representative and sweet as all hell.. and being really funny. Tons of great gags in this one including the turtle guy from an earlier episode being forced to be adisco ball. This is easily the series best so far and if you haven’t checked it out, please do it’s fantastic as is this show. Check both out. Until the next rainbow i’ts been a pleasure. Tommorow more disney shenanigans this time with pete. And also more of this possibly we’ll see what I get done.

Goodnight everybody!

#the owl house #lumity #luz noceda #amity blight #willow park #gus #eda clawthrone #king #principal bump #grometheious #enchanting grom fright #lbgtq+#disney #disney plus

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tthankstoyou · 2 years

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Hey! If I’m not mistaken, you’ve mentioned before that you’re religious and I was just curious on how that affected your sexuality acceptance and how your sexuality if in any way affected your relationship with God? As well as how the community typically has a bad rep for being homophobic? Touchy subject, please don’t answer if it makes you uncomfortable, again I just really really enjoy reading your queer related thoughts.

It doesn't make me uncomfortable at all! I'd be more than happy to share :D Thank you for being interested in my words <3333

I’m sososo grateful to have made it out of Catholic School without having any religious trauma (that I know of at least)

I was baptized Orthodox and am currently practicing that (or at least trying my best askjfak. Really hard to when there's no Serbian Orthodox churches close). BUUUT I went to Catholic school for all of pre-school, elementary school, and middle school. Since I basically grew up with the Catholic Church, I know much more about that than Orthodoxy and that played a much bigger role in accepting myself than Orthodoxy ever did.

I think having a mix of Catholicism and Orthodoxy in my life helped me create a much more personal relationship with God. While we'd be learning about Catholic practices at school, I would feel like none of it really applied to me since that wasn't my religion. I was even excluded from some lessons, like I was told to sit out when we were learning about the First Communion in the 2nd grade since in the Orthodox Church, you have your First Communion and Chrismation (Chrismation is like the Orthodox version of Confirmation) when you’re baptized. So I was able to build a relationship with God without really feeling a connection to the Church. He became more of a friend to me than anything else. And having that personal relationship with God made it really easy for myself to accept my sexuality while also loving him. Like whatever the Church said about him, I felt like it didn’t apply to me. To me, what has always been the most important teaching from God is that he loves all of his children no matter what. He made all of us exactly the way he wants us to be, including if we are gay or trans.

(When I say “Church” in here I mean specifically the Catholic Church)

And yeah, my teachers were homophobic. I was REALLY vocal about my views about everything in the 8th grade to where it got to a point where I had to be pulled out of class and told to stop talking about gay people because that’s not “What the Church believes in” but that didn’t faze me bc I didn’t care about what the Church said in the first place.

If I’m going to be honest, I found MUCH MORE trouble finding acceptance within the LGBTQ+ community while being religious. I understand that people in the community have religious trauma and their way to cope with that is to make fun of God and say blasphemous things, but that really affected me with finding people. Now I know people (on Tumblr) who are also religious and queer, but I still feel like it’s hard to meet queer people irl and talk about my love for God. In high school I tried to not be religious for a while because of how all of my queer friends constantly bashed religion, but that just made me depressed lmao.

So while I felt somewhat welcome in the Church... I didn’t feel welcome in spaces with other queer people. I was one of the few people in my middle school to go to a public high school and I vividly remember my religion teacher telling me that it will be tough to not be constantly surrounded by people who believe in God and that my faith will be tested. OH BOY I did NOT expect for it to be tested that much. I never would have guessed that people that were supposed to be apart of my community would make me feel shame for loving God.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s completely valid to not believe in God and share how the Church may have traumatized you!! Those are such important conversations to have. They’re really essential in the LGBTQ+ community. I just wish that people were more tolerant to those who do choose to be religious because that could EASILY turn into anti semitism, islamaphobia, etc etc

#I HOPE THIS ANSWERS THAT WELL #also my parents aren't religious so I never had to worry about the religion aspect with them accepting me #asks #nonny #tw religion #long post

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representativecharacters · 3 years

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Characters: Castiel, Dean Winchester

From: Supernatural

Representation: mlm (*see “issues” section), abuse survivor (Dean)

Their Importance: Dean and Cas are two characters that many in fandom viewed as LGBTQIA+, with the common belief being that Dean Winchester is bisexual.

There’s a lot about Supernatural and Destiel, and Dean in general, which I’ll go over in the “issues” section, but I think many people in fandom didn’t expect for the show to actually go anywhere with them - until 15x18, when Cas confesses his love to Dean. It’s riddled with issues, yes, but just speaking as a bi girl who’s been watching Supernatural for a decade now, watching Cas confess his love for Dean was just so incredibly validating. It validated that I - and other fans - weren’t delusional when looking for representation from Cas (and Dean). Cas is a wonderful character and gave a new life to the show, and has been a fixture of the show for 10 years. While like with every character he has his ups and downs, he is a kind, loving character, and the only main character who actually survives the show. Despite the issues on the show, knowing that Cas is canonically LGBT+ is something that’s comforting and validating to me, and continues to be so even as Supernatural kind of trainwrecks around everything else.

For myself, watching the show, I saw a lot of myself and my journey in Dean. Watching him grow and develop as a character, and try to experience happiness and find comfort in his found family was wonderful for me to see. I started this show when I was a young closeted kid, and I clung to Dean in a way that I didn’t fully understand until years later. I didn’t actually expect him to be explicitly mlm in the show, and for the most part, that didn’t happen - until the Spanish dub. There, we see the romantic reciprocation to Cas, and that’s something that is real and cannot be taken away. In fact, although it was said that it was a “rogue” translator, the episode will not be redubbed, so it is canon in a version of the show. Despite the fact that he didn’t get canonized in a way I expected or would have ever hoped, it still does give me some joy to know that he is canonically LGBT+ (and in my opinion, bi, although there is no actual label given to Dean). Even if it’s not in the version of the show I watched, I can go back and watch the Spanish dub of the episode and see that representation happen onscreen, and that means something to me.

Issues: The issues list for this show is a mile long, so I’ve split it up into sections and put most of it under a read more:

Dean + Canon Rep: Trying to wade through if Dean is actually canonically LGBTQ+ was....a struggle, to say the least, and I almost didn’t put him into this submission. If you watch the show in English, Dean never once actually reciprocates feelings for Cas, states that he’s into men, or is even confirmed to be in a relationship with other men. Although for many, it is implied, the average audience member may not see Dean as canonically LGBTQ+. However, in the Spanish dub of the show, when Castiel confesses his love to Dean (which is an explicit romantic “I love you”), Dean says “y yo a ti”, which is a reciprocation of Cas’s romantic confession. This post is very long as it is, so I want to link to @destielintheimpala’s timeline of events that occurred for Supernatural and I think it best lays out all the issues about 15x18-20, why it’s been so difficult trying to figure out Dean’s sexuality in canon, why fandom is upset, and can clear up any misinformation. This situation also goes into queerbaiting quite a bit (something Supernatural is infamously known for), which you can read in this article from @thecoolestfreakyouknow.

Reading Dean as a queer character as well - having a character who is queer (or queercoded) and an abuse survivor and then immediately killing him off is also a huge problem. As mentioned in the link above, Jensen Ackles himself felt uneasy about Dean’s ending, and many Dean fans felt the same way. To have a character suffer through abuse and traumas for 15 seasons, imply or straight out have him be LGBT+ (depending on the canon), and then immediately killing him off in the finale is needless to say, an odd choice.

Also, with Dean being an abuse survivor - his father, John Winchester, is commonly shown to be neglectful throughout the show, and Dean has to raise his younger brother Sam by himself most times. He expresses trauma from the experiences he’s had growing up with their father and being forced to hunt at a young age. However, the show weirdly seems to flip flop on their portrayal of John, despite also specifically stating that what he put his children through was child abuse. They have Sam telling John that he did the best he could, they have characters excusing away John’s actions, etc. - it was like the writers themselves couldn’t figure out if they wanted John to have been an abusive parent or not. The show ends with John in Heaven with Mary - thus absolving John of his actions and putting him in the same Heaven with the children he abused.

Castiel: Cas confesses his love for Dean in 15x18, but gets dragged away to a void called “The Empty” immediately afterwards, where he’s meant to be suffering for all of eternity. Cas does get out of The Empty, and even helps to rebuild Heaven - he’s actually one of the few characters to survive the finale - but he never appears onscreen again after 15x18, so fans’ last image of him is getting dragged away to The Empty. Dean never has a follow-up conversation, and there was only one line referencing Cas’s fate, so many fans believed he was still in The Empty suffering.

As the timeline linked above shows, the situation around Destiel is an odd one - the Spanish dub, cast’s overall silence, the lack of Misha Collins in the finale all led fans to believe that something was switched around last minute in terms of Dean’s sexuality and Destiel as a general ship. Obviously, this is speculation unless someone from the show explicitly comes out and says that fans are correct, but it’s included in the issues section because - regardless of it it turns out to be true or not - it’s such a big part of the issues currently surrounding Supernatural and canon representation. In any case, however, Castiel’s confession in 15x18 gave fans hope where they may not have had hope before, and then it was unceremoniously dropped with no real follow up - from a writing standpoint, it isn’t good writing to confirm a major character as queer via a love confession and then never go back to that plot point. While I’m happy that Cas is canonically queer and I’m not trying to say that I would rather not have more representation, I do look back on the show and wonder, with the story that made it to screen, what the actual point of writing that in was.

As mentioned before, Castiel was a main character on the show for 10 years - while I’m glad that his character survives the series, to not have him show up in the final two episodes (particularly the finale, and especially after canonically making him LGBTQ+) felt like a slap in the face to both the character and the audience who loved him.

Miscellaneous treatment of characters: In general, Supernatural has many problems in its treatment of female, characters of color, and LGBTQ+ characters. Alongside being incredibly underrepresented in the show, if they do show up, they are commonly tortured, treated poorly, and/or killed off (if not all of the above). Even thinking about their recurring characters who are also representative - Kevin, their only recurring Asian character, is killed off and appears as a ghost multiple times, Charlie, who is a lesbian, gets killed off and replaced in the show with an Alternate Universe version of herself, Eileen, a Deaf woman, gets killed off and then is brought back and is implied to survive the show, but like Cas, never actually shows up in the final two episodes even though she’s Sam’s girlfriend. I can think of very few minority characters in the show in general, much less those who got any type of happy ending.

#spn #supernatural #castiel #dean winchester #deancas #representation: lgbtqia+#representation: mlm #representation: abuse survivor #issues: ambiguous rep #issues: content #issues: character death #Issues: queerbaiting #submitted

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topaziraphale · 4 years

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so fucking tired of people defending queer baiting in this fandom. like hello the TV show literally is. but people hiding behind “progressivism” say that it’s fine the way it is. a relationship is never explicitly shown and it is teased so the network gets the best of both worlds. i.e homophobes and gay ppl being able to consume the same content and be okay with it. with homophobes, you can claim they are “just friends” but gay people always have to delve deep into subtext to get an ounce of rep

I have mixed feelings about this. I am a person that is very picky and hyper-critical of the media I choose to consume. I went into this show expecting queerbait, and I lowered my standards substantially. I expected nothing but teasing and the characters being very coy with each other and absolutely no deliverance on their relationship. I watched it for the interesting apocalypse story, and for the first couple episodes, found myself groaning and thinking “here we go” the moment they started to interact with each other in a lovey-dovey way. I’ve been queerbaited before. I’ve had my heart broken time and time again looking for at least decent rep in shows. I can always call it, and know it when I see it. When I finished that last episode, I somehow wasn’t left disappointed like previous times. I was happy, but also confused. That’s not a good thing either. For the first time ever, I actually had to ask myself “Did I get baited?”

At the time, I figured “If I even have to ask that question, then the answer is yes, I was baited.”

Then I gave it some thought, particularly as to why I felt so confused in the first place. The rest of this is under a cut.

I realized that Aziraphale and Crowley met all the qualifications for not being queerbait except for having an explicit declaration of love - an “I love you,” or a kiss, or even a hand hold. Then I realized, wait, if they were a man and a woman, no one would doubt that they love each other for even a second. There wouldn’t be an inkling. Not after everything these characters went through, and how they interact in that last scene of the show, where they say To The World.

The way Aziraphale and Crowley interact with each other is romantic in a way, and it’s hard to deny. Find your closest yet entirely platonic best friend, and say some of the things Aziraphale and Crowley said to each other in the way that they did, and it’ll definitely feel like you’re trying to go for something other than a platonic friendship. I’ve seen homophobes argue that they’re not a couple, that they’re just friends. And I’ve seen homophobes turn their noses up in disgust at this show because they noticed the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley. I’ve seen queer people across the spectrum - not just cis gay men - feel so represented and estatic at this show and how Aziraphale and Crowley are portrayed. And I’ve seen queer people angry and frusturated that there was queerbait.

It all comes down to if you think everything they went through, and said to each other, etc, was not romantic in the slightest. If you can watch all 6 hours of the series and not even pick up an inkling that they care for each other in a way that is loving, because there is not a kiss at the end, that’s on you as the viewer. I always ask myself this: if straight couples can be represented like this, why not queer couples? Why can’t a queer couple have a romance that’s portrayed in a different way through their actions and words toward each other? Straight romances have those everywhere. Homophobes will see two men or women in real life kiss each other, say “I love you” to each other, and live together, and still think that they’re not actually in love, that they’re just friends going through a phase - of course they’ll be just as inclined to argue the same thing in a show that does things differently.

I think we see them get their happily ever after at the end there. A lot of people have noticed it. This show has an entire reputation around them loving each other. I have told my cishet acquaintances about this show, and have seen them squirm to change or ignore the topic, in a manner because I can only assume they think of it as the “gay angel demon show,” because that’s what it’s literally known as, and they don’t wanna watch a show that’s predominately what they think is “gay.” The way I see it, if so many people think it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, well, then, you know the rest. And that isn’t about “headcanon,” that’s about the actual dialogue and actions and other things we see visibly on screen.

For those that can’t see it, idk what else to say other than maybe take a step back and see how this challenges some predispositioned views on how one can view romance in a television series, specifically between two queer characters that don’t fit the conventional “cis gay men/women who kiss at the end.” The book confirms that they’re genderless beings. Fans have called this show a good slate to see different kinds of queer rep - ace people feel explicitly represented by them, bi/pan people feel represented, nonbinary people feel especially represented. There’s a reason for that. Hell, I’m trans and had to work through my own internalized transphobia to understand why so many trans folks enjoy this rep, even if there’s nothing in the show to explicitly tip us off that they’re genderless. I, a queer person, had to sit back and take a deep dive into my own understanding of what is “queer enough” to be called rep in a show where the characters aren’t exactly allosexual cis gay men, like most queer rep is these days. Let it be a lesson.

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #derpy answers #anonymous #long post #queerbait

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kob131 · 4 years

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https://rwbyconversations.tumblr.com/post/626550438587678720/the-scarlet-letter-lets-talk-about-rwbys-male

Can’t even say I stan RT since I helped in developing your own break in RT’s abusive business practices.

So let’s start with a blunt statement: RWBY’s male LGBT representation has not been good. If the series’ handling of female LGBT rep is good (which… well there’s worse shows) and the general standard for how you write LGBT characters in a show like this, its handling of male rep has been… how not to. And Before the Dawn kinda solidified the idea in my head that the show’s handling of its male LGBT cast just isn’t good enough, either by the standards of when RWBY began in 2013, or today in 2020 when compatively massive steps have been taken over the past decade to show a more diverse list of characters… or at least a more diverse list of female characters.

So how do you make good male LGBT representation? If we’re talking about how something is done badly, you’d think some ground rules would be established. ... Yeah, he never does that.

It’s big romance is (unless the writers are very stupid) going to be between Blake and Yang, their first out character was Ilia, Coco got sent to the Book Dimension where she confirmed “I use my sunglasses to perv on women without their knowledge” which uh… yeah you can definitely tell RWBY is written by men… and Volume 6 had Saph and Terra being a good example of an LGBT couple without any real drama. In the last three years alone, the show has drastically increased its lesbian and bisexual characters, alongside even including its first out trans character in May Marigold (albeit only revealed on Twitter). In general, these depictions of sexuality have been pretty OK. Would have liked it if Ilia wasn’t immediately written out of the show after Volume 5 as it made her feel a bit more disposable than intended but whatever, subject for another day.

A. What examples do we have of Bumbleby being canon? One or two animation things and voice actors? Cool, when’s White Knight becoming canon.

B. I’ve heard Barbara say similar shit. Acting like that’s a male thing is fucking sexist.

C. I’m sorry but by every single standard of LGBT writing I’ve heard-wouldn’t they be considered tokens and flat caricatures? Since they’re so irrelevant and have so little character? They’re barely even characters INCLUDING their kid.

Sorry but considering how there’s no ground rules made for what is good LGBT rep- I can only go off what others have said. And so many, OVERWHLEMINGLY MANY, people have said Saphron and Terra aren’t good.

D. Okay the Illa thing is yet another example of why ground rules need to be set. Saphron and Terra BOTH are written out in Volume 6 so wouldn’t they get chewed out too? What makes Illa getting written out different or more disposable?

RWBY’s male rep though is a bit spottier. There’s the plant bois in Volume 5’s premiere, we nearly had Pilot Boi until some last-minute revisions, and… Scarlet.

Look about the same as the female LGBT audience to me. Why is this so bad?

“Why Scarlet’s a bad launchpad for male LGBT rep”

I don’t like Scarlet or how his sexuality has been handled. Scarlet’s homosexuality wasn’t revealed in the show, or by the writers, or even in anything that’s actually canon. He’s confirmed gay in his sole of dialogue in a non-canon fan anthology, where the manga’s Twitter team had to say that Miles suggested the idea and approved of it.

In short, Scarlet is Dumbledore’d, where his sexuality is revealed in out-of-show material and in a way that doesn’t make it supremely obvious (Miles himself never commented to confirm this so this news was limited in how far it could spread. I’m genuinely curious how many people still don’t know Scarlet’s gay), and Scarlet himself is a nothing character who was written out of the show after Volume 3 and only reappeared in Before The Dawn, half a decade after he vanished. Compared to Ilia, as this came out after Ilia’s entire arc in Volume 5, it’s not a great starting point for mlm rep. But things would have been forgiven if it had gotten better, if the show did have more male LGBT characters introduced, even just on the Saphron/Terra level of just being around for a few episodes before leaving. Then it would have been a misfire but then we could all say “Things got better.”

Why should I care?

See, part of the job of a critic is to make the problems understandable to the audience. I emphasized ground rules because it gives the reader a base level understanding of what constitutes as good in this case. Why should I think Scarlet is bad when Saphron and Terra are on the same level and you said they were at least acceptable?

It… didn’t. Which is why when Before the Dawn released in 2020, a full two years after Scarlet was first confirmed gay, while the franchise had more than doubled its wlw rep, Scarlet remained the one male character in the entire franchise who had a name and liked men. I remember vividly a fake leak for After The Fall which claimed Yatsuhashi would come out to Velvet and admit to having a crush on Fox. And I remember as well how many people were disappointed when it was said to be false, because it would have been nice for Yatsuhashi’s character, especially after the fleshing out he gets in the CFVY books. If Yatsu had come out as gay in the books I’d like his writing enough to say he’s a good case for rep, albeit with the caveat of “This is all in side material.” But in reality, the leak was fake and Coco was confirmed gay instead.

I remember the same leak. Yatsuhashi also disappeared at the same time and even if he was fleshed out-he’s still irrelevant to the show so wouldn’t he be bad? And if it’s about having fleshed out characters, why did Illa whose a fully realized character get shaded while effective background characters praised?

Unfortunately, Before the Dawn proceeded to ruin Scarlet and made me at times feel genuinely uncomfortable as a queer man! Let’s talk about that.

And people said the same about Saphron and Terra and people get backlash for praising them over other lesbian characters.

I hate Before the Dawn. It’s… bad. I read it while on a vacation and the only solace I had about the entire thing was that I’d bought an M&M chocolate bar. The bar was finished before the book. That bummed me out. It’s not a very well written book, the prose is very Early 2010s YA Writer, none of the characters are memorable and there’s various Fun Incidents like “NGDO using children as bait for Grimm,” and “Neptune’s hydrophpobia being used as a threat to torture him and the scene is played for comedy.”

A. NDGO is repeatedly shown to be massive assholes in the book.

And B. I can’t really find anything wrong there. In one of my favorite shows, Justice League Unlimited, criminals get threatened with actual torture and even death and it’s treated as a joke. Yeah the context is different in that the victim are criminals but both the villains and Neptune get over it so quickly I see no real problem here. Especially since Jaune’s own low self worth was a joke up to Volume 5.

Theo was cool. I can’t wait to see him as written by good writers, he should be a highlight of the Vacuo arc.

Don’t go blaming E.C. Myers for this- Miles and Kerry helped. You’d have to call them shit writers too.

I had two hopes for Before the Dawn- “Don’t be bad,” and “Let Scarlet and Sage be well written.” I’d liked how After The Fall had handled some of its characters (barring, y'know, Coco perving on women), especially Fox and Yatsu who were surprising in how much I liked them. I was looking forward to seeing Myers give Sage and Scarlet similar treatment- two relatively nothing characters meant he’d have a blank slate to write them however he wanted, he could give them unique personalties and if nothing else it could be cool to see their Semblances.

You know how frustrating it is to see people blame Miles and Kerry for shit that Monty had a hand in and may have even been responsible for?

Yeah well we finally found the flipped version-

Miles and Kerry worked with Myers on the book. Just as Monty is just as much at fault as Miles and Kerry, they’re just as much at fault as Myers.

And then I read the book. (Sage fans I am so sorry for you, you got baited harder than Johnlock fans)

I thought we were talking about male LGBT rep.

Scarlet’s a giant dickhead in the book. It’s his sole character trait and his inner monologues go on, and on, and on about how much he hates Sun, how he revels in mocking him. Most of his dialogue is sarcastic put-downs about Sun and how lame he is, and Sun is never properly allowed to defend himself or point out how going with Blake meant he was able to help save Haven Academy.

You mean like how character criticized Yang for being so reckless even though she was trying to save Blake?

It shouldn’t matter what the intent or results are- Sun and Yang still did bad things and affected the people around them. They should be criticized, especially Sun here since A. He’s still doing it in the book, B. He hasn’t had any real flaws in the show which means his dynamics and interaction are limited and C. This addresses what people bitched at him about in Volumes 4 and 5 thus robbing them of the excuse to chew him out anymore.

(hey remember when Sun in Volume 6 expressly says to Blake “I was a bad leader for ditching Neptune and the others, and I need to work on that” only for Before the Dawn to have him staunchly refuse to accept that he let the team down? I don’t think Myers did but I do)

Remember how characters in RWBY don’t always learn their lesson, especially when it’s related to mental issues like...say....losing their parents and trying to run from their problems?

Also remember how MILES AND KERRY ALSO HELPED WRITE THAT BOOK?

Scarlet being a ratty bitch would be one thing if, again, the franchise had done more rep. He’d still be a badly written character, but it wouldn’t sting as much. But because Scarlet is still the only expressly confirmed male LGBT character in canon (the book teases that Nolan is gay but there’s never confirmation either way beyond him smiling at Scarlet), it means that he has to represent that entire ideal. So when the one gay man in Remnant is being an asshole and a snide loser, that means that by extension, this is how the franchise sees gay men. And that fucking sucks! I wanted to come out of Before The Dawn singing its praises, I wanted to like the book, but it was a massive letdown, especially coming off of the other big 2020 RWBY controversy involving gay characters.

Fun fact: LGBT people can be assholes.

In fact, Scarlet would be the ONLY LGBT character to be snide in the show. Kind of makes him unique in that regard. ...If he was an asshole in canon. When in canon, he’s portrayed as hurt and bitter over Sun’s repeated irresponsibility and doing what anyone would do in his situation.

So honestly, he’s pretty fucking human which I would praised BEYOND being LGBT.

Yeah. We’re doing this.

Remember, you choose to do all this.

Clover and Fair Game: Technically not queerbaiting. BUT:

But nothing. Once again, without any ground rules for what you constitute as ‘queerbaiting’- I only have myself to rely on. And just about every serious definition says Queerbaiting is baiting LGBT rep or pairings to get people to watch the show.

Issue? Not only was Fair Game not used to promote the show, there are other LGBT characters in RWBY. You can’t be queerbaited anymore than a straight person can be ‘straightbaited’ (We’ll be getting into SO MUCH MORE than this later...).

Let’s pre-empt this: Clover wasn’t queerbaiting, and Fair Game, while cool and I dig it, kudos to them for becoming one of the top 5 RWBY pairings on AO3 in one year that’s fucking impressive (I say with mild malice as an IronQrow main), never had a chance. The writing never seriously boosted it barring one interaction which was flirty (them talking in the lobby of the Schnee Manor), and everything else was out of show boosting through the social media teams and CRWBY hyping it themselves by saying they liked it. If you wanna blame people, blame the animators who went off-script with stuff like Kim Newman adding the wink as a deliberate nod to the Volume 4 waitress, or the social media team deliberately using the same policies for Fair Game as they do for Renora and Bumblebee.

So nothing I should give a shit about since marketing teams often work detached from the actual product and are notoriously CUTTHROAT.

It wasn’t Eddy’s fault that things escalated, and he himself has said that in retrospect, he should have warned people that this never had a shot.

But I can’t blame the Fair Game fanbase. Because Fair Game took off like wildfire. It came right as the fanbase began seriously asking for more male rep, Qrow’s pretty hot, and the Clover wink came right after the Great IronQrow Reawakening of November 9th, 2019. The rocket was primed, and they rode it to the moon. Finally, to these people, after seven years RWBY seemed to be doing something with mlm rep in show. People started getting into RWBY just for Clover and Qrow’s interactions. And if heroes were boring, Watts and Tyrian also had a fantastic dynamic that made Nuts and Volts one of the more popular villain ships overnight. Things seemed to be turning around! RWBY was remembering that gay men existed! You could hear the choir sing!

... You JUST said that show didn’t bolster the ship aside from one interaction (one that pales to the shit I use to say in private to fuck with people). It was obviously NOT meant to be a serious component of the show. If people got into a show for something it was never meant to stick to- it’s their own fault for when that part falls away.

… And for those people, that meant that episode 12 hit like Truck-Kun.

People got pissed. People were horrified. And it didn’t help that some members of CRWBY had said in the build-up that episode 12 would have some shots that made them nauseous (probably the Tyrian thumb thing) Out of context, it looked to these fans like CRWBY were basically laughing at their suffering, like they were saying “Lol, you thought you had a chance, get fucked, I hope your vomit burns on the way up.”

Yeah, Fair Game was never gonna be canon, and I think some people ran too far with it. But in the wider context of how desperate RWBY’s mlm community had gotten for basic crumbs of content? I can see why they’d run with what they had. The writers aren’t at fault for what happened, but CRWBY didn’t help matters. And that desperate mix of what felt like official backing from the crew, jokes about how cute the ship was, and the hope that finally the show would have onscreen rep? I can see why people ran with it.

Ah huh ah huh ah huh-

Now do that for the first three Volumes of the show with a bigger fan favorite, more build up and kill one half of it off at the end of the show’s big dark turn while the creators are even MORE unsympathetic.

Sorry but when compared to Arkos, this looks fucking minscule. And you invoked the Arkos comparison due to the numerous parallels. And just like with the Arkos fans, I’ll disregard this without a second thought.

‘But Mlm are STARVED for content-’

Then go somewhere else. I’ve been saying this to your Wlw AND Straight counterparts for years. You are not entitled to have ‘a meal’. The show didn’t advertise in universe around rep- That is not the point. This is like saying you hate nachoes because it dares to have chips instead of more toppings.

So why is the show more lackluster in depicting mlm characters?

I don’t think you ever answered that the question ‘is the show’s mlm lackluster?’ because you spent a third of this post talking about something you basically admit doesn’t count.

Money. Let’s be honest, most RWBY fans don’t care if the show doesn’t have good male rep. I’m willing to bet some of you reading this won’t care and just dismiss it as not being that big a problem.

I dismiss all the romance related shit as not being that big of a problem, so what?

I don’t think the writers care if the show doesn’t have good mlm rep because they’re not poaching that market. They’re after what they see as a bigger, more lucrative market, which in this case is female LGBT rep. That gets people buying games, watching shows, raising awareness and boosting awareness of your property, which means you make more money. In short: Two women kissing hits more markets and generates more attention than two men.

I’d believe that if not for the fact that there is barely any lesbian merch for RWBY, which would be the key way to cash in on that market and squeeze them for as much money as possible. In fact, there’s barely ANY shipping merch from Rooster Teeth. Rather unusual if they’re trying to cash in on a market.

‘Well what’s YOUR explanation?’

Easy: Misandry and moving goalposts.

Guys notoriously get shat on in the fandom more than women. Jaune is STILL being called a spotlight stealing MAry Sue and numerous people are siding against Ironwood because he’s a man. So making good male LGBT rep would just be inviting more pipe bombs in the mail.

And a large amount of people like to claim RWBY has yet to give GOOD female LGBT rep, constantly raising the bar to get what they want. And considering they make up the original hatedom in the show- they naturally hold more power.

Tl;Dr- You fucked yourselves out of good male rep by having male characters having any focus whatsoever be a death sentence.

Am I saying that Miles, Monty and Kerry deliberately sat down seven years ago and said “We’re not doing gay men because it won’t generate enough ad revenue and traffic to be worth the loss in revenue from homophobes?” No, that’s silly. But I’m saying that it’s less important for them, and it shows in the things that are small and add up. Things like Miles not verifying Scarlet’s sexuality or retweeting the manga account’s confirmation to spread the message (compared to how he enthusiastically confirmed Ilia being a lesbian himself during the Reddit AMA). It shows in how Pilot Boi would have been the first mlm character only to die in his second full episode until M&K were told about the Bury Your Gays trope. It shows in how Shannon believes that Ozma is “megaqueer” and Miles jokingly laughs it off instead of confirming it, leaving it to just be Shannon’s headcanon. It shows in how actor shipping is compared between the mlm and wlw ships, where Arryn and Barbara’s frequent pushes for Bumblebee are seen as “official confirmation that it’s endgame” while Michael and Kerry saying they enjoy Seamonkeys is treated as “well it would be cute if they did it, but they’re never going to.”

The whole point of AMA is answer questions, one of which was ‘is Illa a lesbian’ among SEVERAL others.

Yeah and Illa gets called a psycho lesbian.

Yeah and no other voice actor headcanon has been accepted. In fact, Kara pushes for White Knight and the writers don’t even so much as acknowledge that unlike Shannon. Also I dunno what ‘megaqueer’ means but his only on screen relationship was straight so that’s probably why it wasn’t confirmed.

Not the creators, don’t care.

I’m not gonna say anything like “CRWBY are gonna have Qrow end up with a woman like Robyn out of spite against the bad apples of the Fair Game crowd.” I’m not gonna say that I don’t think CRWBY cares about male representation in the series. It is, however, definitely a low priority for them, and because that leads to gaffes like Scarlet’s writing in Before The Dawn being offensive in his depiction, it only makes the contrast between the sexes all the more painfully apparent.

Again, the female side ain’t much better. Fuck, the straight side isn’t much better. This was never a focus of the show.

I’m kinda tired of waiting for Rooster Teeth to show that they do care about mlm. I’m kinda tired of RWBY’s male rep being written like it came from a 1993 time capsule where I have to enhance the screen to see a guy holding a sign of Sun’s abs or be content with the only onscreen rep still being the plant bois in Volume 5. I’m tired of how often the crew dances around answering basic questions about sexuality (and age, and birthdays, and heights, and so on) by treating it as a spoiler question, as if just wanting to know what way people swing would ever be a spoiler. I’m just… tired of all this. When the best mlm rep in Rooster Teeth’s history remains the two dads in Camp Camp who show up in a few episodes, that should say something really bad about your company and your biases (To say nothing of the recent Red vs Blue seasons and their blatant queerbaiting for Grif and Simmons and the whole can of worms that is Donut).

And their best rep in wlw according to some people is a psycho lesbian.

This is all just personal opinion that is next to useless without the basis needed for clear understanding. I don’t know what you would consider good male LGBT rep aside from a squeaky clean good guy...and many would decry that as condescending and unrealistic.

What can they do except ignore EVERYONE and just do whatever they feel like?

P.S. Someone’s representation is NOT their view on LGBT people. Especially since, as I have said, the reception of said rep can be outright contradictory.

I’d like to not feel like I’m borderline unwelcome because I’d like to see two men in this show kiss, and that the sole thing that represents people like me in this show is some British twat who complains about sand.

Oh fuck off. I’m also apart of a minority group (autists) and yet you don’t see me winging about how unwelcome I feel because there’s no autistic characters. I relate to characters like Ruby not because they have shallow autistic traits but because I constantly struggle with the same ideological dilemma Ruby does: the struggle to keep doing good in an uncaring, cruel world. THAT is what you should find relatable and welcome. Not something like sexuality.

I’d just like to feel like my sexuality isn’t a joke to Rooster Teeth (or at the very least, be like Donut and have it be a funny one). But at this point after the last few years? I feel like a very uncomfortable punchline to them. And it just sucks.

Cool-Welcome to club. You know, since EVERY sexuality has been used a punchline by Rooster Teeth.

Your sexuality should be the LAST thing that you use to find being welcome, especially with a god damn company. And you have no one to blame for your feelings but yourself here.

Your post is damn near useless and I don’t even know how honest that RT stuff is considering Miles and Kerry get away while E.C. Myers gets blamed for stuff you don’t like.

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almaasi · 5 years

Text

reaction post typed while watching SPN 14x14 “Ouroboros”

conclusion: yes, apparently feet can look gay, and Dean and Cas are both queer by proxy

04:35pm

me: still v magnesium deficient, sick, dizzy

LET’S WATCH A THING AND THINK ABOUT IT WITH MY PUDDING BRAIN

any thoughts stated here are run through a pudding filter so please do not be alarmed if they are incoherent or a weird colour

okay it’s a Steve Yockey episode so i guess he’s gonna give us a great character and then kill them before the title card

04:41

hang on i need to eat and i can’t eat and think at the same time so i’mma go watch an episode of shaun the sheep brb

04:46

okay well i watched half an episode and ate half my food so,... yay

LET’S WATCH THIS OTHER THING THEN

04:48

sam’s “i believe in us” *PUNCH* still makes me laugh

04:49

the body on the AAAAAAAAAAAAA I’

M SCREAMING NOPE NOPE NOPE

can i just watch this whole thing with my hand over the screen

because that is what i’ doing rn

oh god i hate this

actually you know what

i just skipped to the title card

cause fuck that haahahhaah nope

oh lord it didn’t skip to team free will

how much of this do i have to take

oh okay tfw are here already

WELL GREAT NOW I HAVE TO FIGURE OUT WHERE TO SKIP BACK TO

ASJFSDFHSFHSJ

04:54

i fuckin love rowena and how much they ask for her help even though they’re “enemies” except they’re clearly lowkey Fond of each other

also i like how this ep started in the middle of the case

04:56

rowena: “hello castiel” ;) ;) ;)

okay well

this pleases me

because i know the only way this ends is that cas is not interested and that’s the Point

because he <3s dean

but also why the hell is rowena into cas....... surely she knows he loves dean. unless she’s just into starting shit, i wouldn’t be surprised

04:58

the way jack says “i’m not dying”

10/10

04:59

cas: “he’s now claimed the lives of six people in northern new mexico”

why does he say “people” like that

05:01

dean’s throwing a looooot of salt at rowna. maybe because she keeps flirting with cas

“everything means something”

YEAH EXACTLY

DEAN’S SALTY BECAUSE ROWENA’S FLIRTING WITH CAS I’VE DECIDED

05:03

sam says dean can keep michael locked in his head “because he’s dean and dean is dean”

yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah okay

expert closet curator, you mean

05:05

dean has a good feeling about bringing rowena in on this one??????????????? after all the snark????????????

cas: “they do have many books”

me: *squINTS REALLY HARD* i feel like they’re implying something else and neither of them are talking about the same thing. did dean set sam up on a date with rowena????????????

also?

DEAN AND CAS ARE ON A DATE. DEAN AND CAS ARE ON A DINNER DATE IN A DINER. ALERT ALERT ALERT

paralleling rowena and sam perhaps

05:08

concerned head tilt

oh god their love and mutual understanding and trust in each other is killing me with its softness

i’m so so so glad we get to see them in some downtime at fucking last

05:10

oh no jack’s coughing again

why can’t he have nice things

05:10

dean: “that’s what i’m supposed to say, right? i’m fine? keep on moving?”

cas: “no, dean”

the fact dean lets his guard down only with cas in private ;~;

sidenote, this episode is giving me my bloody valentine meets hunteri heroici vibes, which is nice because they’re two of my all-time fave episodes

but god i wish it would go easy on the cannibalism

05:14

dean: “i’m barely even sleeping” :D

THAT PAINED GRIN OH GOD

but also

i’m so emotional because he told anyone at all, but especially that of all people he told cas

of course he told cas, cas is his emotional sounding board

if this were a fanfic cas would offer to share the bed with dean and help him sleep

....but i mean, who knows, maybe dean was secretly hoping for that anyway

05:19

that’s the face of “dean doesn’t know what liturgical means”

05:22

jack: “what’s an av club?”

cas: “it’s a special club for people who do not play sports”

dean: *points at cas* “him. he’s av club”

mmmmmmmm yup

autistic nerd

dean’s baseball and track team, cas is av club and student tutoring

but also if dean ever got cas onto the baseball field cas would hit every ball first time

and dean would be swooning

BUT ALSO DEAN WOULD FUCKING LOVE AV CLUB ARE YOU KIDDING ME

he’d be in there with charlie every fuckin day and leaning seductively on furniture while cas does his nerd thing, until the point where something properly capures dean’s interest and then HE WANTS A GO and bats away everyone else’s hands and hogs the contraption for 3 hours. also he’d fix things when they break

DEAN TONE DOWN THE PROJECTION A NOTCH WOULD YA

JEEZ

look i’m just gonna count dean calling cas “av club” as flirting, because hello yes there is no way dean doesn’t find that interesting

05:30

i fucking knew it

the moment this episode opened and i saw the guy’s bare feet in the kitchen somehow i knew he was queer ??????????

i can’t explain it

but the fact there was a shot of his feet and his feet looked gay i can’t even

anyway this probably doesn’t even count as legit queer rep given he’s seducing guys and killing them so

stupid gay feet

sidenote: did ANYONE else get queer vibes from that opening scene? CAN PEOPLE’S FEET LOOK GAY OR IS THAT JUST ME

maybe it’s like... the sensuality of bare feet + cooking, breaking pointless gender roles n stuff, my brain has been coded by society’s bullshit to perceive sensual men as non-heterosexual

idk

but also. the foot-upward view of a new character... male gaze, right? and seeing the male gaze on a male character makes it queer

goddamn

it’s a thing

it’s a thing and the directing got the point across and it took me until now to work it out

GAY FEET

also

now i’m going back to cas’ line “six people”

my initial understanding of that line was that they weren’t all men

but the thing was the people didn’t need to be said that way if it was just men and women

my immediate instinct said the victims were non-binary, but i didn’t type it because i had no reason yet to believe that might be true and it seemed unnecessary to say it

but at this point, as the baddie hits on a guy at a truck stop in exchange for a ride, they’re clearly potentially queer victims

yeah that explains the inflection

05:41

on the one hand, i’m seeing a connection to that time dean was seduced by a siren

but see my problem with this is that the guy’s either gonna end up dead or saved and i don’t know which yet

i just want happy queer stories

so i’m pretty divided about this

but on the other hand, please, god, let this gorgon guy “sense things” about dean

ALSO WAIT

IS THIS THE FIRST GAY KISS ON THIS SHOW?????????? 90% SURE THIS THE FIRST GAY KISS. there might have been a background one once

PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE

EVEN IF IT’S EVIL AND TWISTED AND MAKES ME FEEL WEIRD

05:44

i feel like there should’ve been an optic nerve attached to that eyeball.. and a lot of gross stuff

but also thank goodness there wasn’t

ohdfjfdg i really hate this

but also i’m smiling?

05:46

cas: “is this amusing to you?”

the guy called him sir!!! eeheheh

05:47

cas: “you’re not standing alone, why doesn’t he mention me?”

dean: “maybe you’re not his type”

i mean. guess he can’t see angels. BUT ALSO

CAN WE UNPACK HOW UTTERLY QUEER EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS

WE NOW UNDERSTAND THAT NOAH’S TYPE IS QUEER GUYS

AND DEAN KNOWS THIS

SO BY SAYING CAS ISN’T NOAH’S TYPE THAT MEANS HE’S IMPLYING THAT HE HIMSELF IS

BECAUSE HE’S QUEER AF

steve yockey, this is the episode i was waiting to see from you

team free will working a case together, dean and cas on a date talking about their feelings, on a case about queer stuff

hell fucking yes

05:52

rowena: “need anti-venom in case one of you boys gets sloppy”

wouldn’t that mean noah kisses either cas or jack

god i’m so glad rowena’s there too

this episode is great sdgsfkg

05:53

ROWENA AND SAM FAKING A RELATIONSHIP + A DOG OH MRJGJD IFUCKING LOVE THIS

WHERE DID THEY GET THE DOG

WHERE’S THE BIT LATER WHERE DEAN AND CAS ~FAKE~ A RELATIONSHIP PLEASE

05:55

OH MY GOD THE VET STUCK A THERMOMETER IN JACK’S ASS

OH MY GOFH D:

06:00

noah: “then he doesn’t have to die like all the other men”

hmmmmmmm

okay so all the victims were men

which makes me even more curious about why cas used that inflection on “people”

cas also looked like of amused? definitely a misha expression rather than a cas expression, the little lilt of a smile on his lips like the way he says any word starting with “h”

maybe some of them were transgender men and cas didn’t know them before they died so could only guess as to their gender? maybe some of the bodies they found were not gender-conforming

it also kiiiiind of sounded like misha changing the script after a discussion on set about it

but if that were true then that means someone on set doesn’t believe gay or queer men are men? maybe? maybe i’m reaching there

but i’m genuinely caught up on that inflection and the use of that word, it really stood out to me

and it stands out especially, now, because like i said, we know the victims were men, we know team free will found them all, and we know they were queer.

but also it’s not dean saying it, it’s cas

and i can’t imagine any scenario where cas would have trouble with non-binary pronouns

if anyone has further thoughts on this, please direct me towards them

06:23

my browser broke?? and i lost a chunk of this post, but i had the above stuff backed up in email

i'mma go back a bit and try and remember what i typed

idk i think it was just about the fact noah confirmed all his victims were men which further confused me

and then said he also eats ladies

and then said some feminist stuff which made me sad that it came from the bad guy

but also that i could imagine cas saying something similar, deadpan, and then reaching for dean’s burger

* schmooch *

whEN DOES DEAN GET TO DO THAT

06:28

okay YES

I KNOW WHAT I WANT TO SAY

NOAH SAYS HELLO TO DEAN

WHY JUST DEAN

WHY IS HE FIXATED ON DEAN WHEN THERE’S 3 OTHER PEOPLE IN THE ROOM? and why only write the letter to dean?

I’LL TELL YOU WHY

BECAUSE DEAN’S BISEXUAL AF

AND YES HE IS HIS TYPE

REPRESSED “STRAIGHT” MEN WHO SECRETLY LIKE GUYS

CAN THAT BE ANY MORE OBVIOUS?? I THINK NOT

i love how this episode refers back to some of the older episodes, in the best possible way

conclusion: dean is bi

06:32

noah took the bag with the snek inside but i guess the snek esckep

06:34

maybe true love’s kiss will wake dean up

CAS QUICK

MIGHT AS WELL TRY RIGHT

06:40

hurts my heart how cas has apparently made peace with the fact he’ll outlive dean and sam

i guess it’s good but

can’t help but believe deep down he would rather die than live without them

and now i’m crying because cas says the point is that you got to know them at all

suddenly catharsis for future pain

06:47

oh NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MAGGIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THIS IS THE WORST

06:47

rowena as michael??? okay, that i can get behind

ooh

BUT ALSO

OH NO

06:49

michael (about dean): “it didn’t work out. it was him. not me.”

flip of a classic dating line, making this QUEER AGAIN

06:55

JACK THE LIL HERO

WHAT DID YOU DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

//waits for the silence to be over

06:56

oh boy

06:57

OKAY WOW

WHAT AN EPISODE

i was really hoping it would turn into a plotty one, the way changing channels does at the end

this was really well done and i enjoyed it a lot!!!!!!!!! i mean, besides the squicks, and the fact the queer rep and feminist lines came from a bad guy

dean was 100% noah’s type

jack is the bestest baby bean

i feel so bad about the thermometer thing..... like, i’m not sure if it was meant to come across as funny? but there was no indication it should be... which is good i guess? but also i feel secondhand violated

DEAN AND CAS’ DATE AND TALKING ABOUT FEELINGS WHEEE

i like that this episode actually came full circle on that “dean vs michael” point, rather than having it be a one-off conversation and things aren’t resolved until a later episode

i think i’m gonna enjoy rowena as michael. and i like that she said yes because she does care about team free will

sad about maggie :c

but also all those other extra hunters were changed out pretty much episode so there was no real way to know who they were. they seemed pretty diverse though, across various episodes

i liked the asian lady vet!!!! she was fun. and i’m glad the asian gay guy didn’t die... where did he even disappear to though? who knows

overall 10/10? it had all the good shit i like so. yep.

I WANT MORE EPISODE LIKE THIS. QUEER CHARACTERS (PREFERABLY NOT EVIL), MORE ASIAN CHARACTERS, MORE TEAM FREE WILL ON HUNTS, MORE LADIES GETTING COOL ROLES AS PART OF THE TEAM AND/OR AS AN FRENEMY, MORE JACK SAVING THE DAY

MORE ROWENA IN PANTS

yeah

but more of all

MORE GAY KISSES FOR DEAN AND CAS

i love that the fact noah was fixated on dean put him in the “noah’s type = queer” category, and when noah kissed cas it did the same thing

so really, by evil proxy, noah made a point of showing us who’s queer

i mean we already knew

but HE SHOWED US

yee

no conclusion on why cas said p e o p l e though

#14x14 #ouroboros #spn spoilers #Steve Yockey #season 14 #Elmie watches things #post of postiness #Destiel #my meta #meta #Dean is bisexual

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junietuesday · 5 years

Note

For the Arospec Headcanon Game ummmm whoever ur fav is (sorry i dont know what things u watch or read are i just found u in the AAW tag)

aaa thank you! I’ll do Michael Mell, he was the first character I ever headcanoned as aspec

What arospec identities do they have? (Can be as specific or vague as desired)

I headcanon him as aroallo, gay and aromantic (or depending on the fic he might be grayro or demiro, if you absolutely must ship him -- he’s confirmed demiro in the one romance I’m writing him in)

How proud of being arospec are they?

very fucking proud, 100000/10

Do they prioritize their arospec identity over any others?

hm I’d say no. being gay and aromantic have pretty much equal importance to him

Are they out? If so, how did they come out, and to whom?

he’s super out! if we’re being canon-compliant Michael probably found out after the events of the musical, but I also like the added layer to Michael’s characterization during canon if he knows he’s aro because

1) he’d be seen as even stranger to his classmates -- he’s not just gay, he’s aromantic and gay, which is probably even harder for homophobic high-schoolers to understand

2) Jeremy is his best friend and most significant relationship, if Jeremy decides to up and leave Michael doesn’t have anyone to turn to, not even a potential boyfriend; an alloro might try to find someone to date to fill that gap but Michael doesn’t have that option, or well at least he wouldn’t want to take it

3) Jeremy taking a squip, choosing Christine (his crush) over Michael (his best friend) would hurt even more because Michael would feel like no matter how much he loves Jeremy it won’t be enough for him because it isn’t romantic

oof this went off on a tangent. um to answer the actual question: Michael came out to Jeremy through a stupid pun (“i’m straight as an arrow” / “uh you’re gay??” / “which is to say i’m not straight because aros aren’t straight and i’m an aro!! booyah” / “that was...so forced”). He has two moms and a pan ace sister so his coming out barely even counted as a coming out because “anak, we’re all gay, you’re not special”

How do they feel about romance? Romance-favorable? Romance-neutral? Romance-repulsed? Or does it fluctuate?

He’s romance-repulsed usually, sometimes it goes down to romance-neutral, but thankfully the repulsion doesn’t affect queer romances because that’s the only way he can get any rep as a gay teen. He gets really annoyed when his franchises shoehorn a romance into there for the sake of it, especially a straight ship -- usually it makes him sick enough to have to give up if the romance is too focused-on and detailed, even if he loves where the story was going before the ship came in. and he especially hates shipping culture because any positive relationship is turned into romance, and sometimes he just wants to read some platonic fic but well, who writes about platonic relationships when you can have ~+~romance!!1!!1!~+~

Have they ever experienced arophobia? If so, how?

his moms try to push “maybe you could have a QPR?” once they learn about them, because they want their son to have some kind of monogamous significant relationship even if romance isn’t in the cards for him, despite Michael telling them that he doesn’t want one, but other than that people are pretty supportive. Look he goes through enough already he doesn’t need arophobia on top of that, I can’t bear to hurt him any more

How do they show their arospec pride?

he has aro and aroallo flag patches along with the gay one on his hoodie, no question, along with fun patches with puns and cool designs on them. for pride month he paints his nails first rainbow, then aro colors, then aroallo colors, changing every week of June (for the last week he did bi colors on one hand and ace colors on the other in support of Jeremy). one time he layered a bunch of green, white, and yellow Slurpees at 7-Eleven to make a cup in the aroallo flag; it tasted awful but so worth it

Do they actively try to combat amatonormativity in their daily lives or elsewhere? If so, how?

probably he just gets mad inside but doesnt do anything. it’s not like he ever reacts to all the homophobia around at their school and tbh he probably sees it as something that is just the way it is, hes a “just keep swimming” kind of guy despite his rise above racism patch from what we see

Was it easy for them to label themselves arospec, or was there a long period of questioning? How many labels did they have to try before landing on the one they use now?

it was pretty easy, it didn’t click immediately, like as soon as he saw the word, but after looking into the community a little bit, he connected deeply with the aromantic label because it explained so much of his childhood

Would they be interested in a QPR? Why or why not?

he thinks he’d be interested in a somewhat more committed friend-with-benefits relationship, and he likes the idea of a relationship where the boundaries are clearly set as nonromantic and sexual, but it also might feel too close to romance for him depending on the day. and his moms push him toward a QPR as a “if you can’t have romance at least have one of these!” type of thing so he might try to avoid them for that reason

Final thoughts?

there’s no option of Michael being alloro, he’s Filipino and gay and lives in New England and is that weird kid no one wants to be friends with, how can I not project on him

also Michael and Jeremy are aroallo/alloace solidarity, sorry I don’t make the rules

#aggressivelyarospecweek #aro #bmc #michael mell #be more chill #@help-i-need-a-cool-username #asks #june speaks

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hi-i-love-u-bitch · 6 years

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Okay, let’s real talk about Voltron S8...

This is probably gunna be a long SPOILER FILLED rant so I’ll just leave it under the cut. But before I do that let me just throw out one truth bomb...

Y’ALL MOSTLY HATE S8 BECAUSE YOUR SHIPS WEREN’T CANNON!!!!

Though I know that’s not ALL that you hate about it, I’ll get to that later, but it’s the main that’s made this fandom so infamous. Look, I’m gunna be real here, I knew (we all knew) since the beginning that Allurance (Allura x Lance) was going to be end game. There was literally no other option (*cough*yes there was *cough*) other then for them to get together, it’s a very common and basic formula used for all romantic tropes in cartoons. When two people from the opposite sex so much as glance at each other in a semi-romantic way (even if it’s only just one of them) they WILL most likely get together. It’s just cartoon logic. This formula has been used time and time again so I wasn’t very surprised when Lance and Allura got together. Even when she still had that thing with Lotor I KNEW her and Lance were still gunna end up together, some how.

Now I have nothing against Allurance, I think it’s a cute ship and the moments they had together during S8 were nice but I just don’t like HOW they got together. This was obviously a rebound relationship for Allura because she was emotional and heartbroken and needed someone who loved her unconditionally. That being said I’m pretty sure Lance also knew this was a rebound relationship, they’re in the middle of war, emotions are high, and he was so in love with Allura that he was desperate to take what he can.

So does that make them bad people by forming a relationship in the midst of a war just to gain a little emotional support? No. In fact, it could of been a very interesting concept to play around with and help both characters grow. Lance could have seen that he didn’t need someone to feel whole and accomplished in life, while Allura could have healed from the heartbreak and come out a much stronger person. HER AND LANCE COULD HAVE EVEN BECOME CLOSER AS FRIENDS WITH MAYBE A HINT OF A RELATIONSHIP SHOWN IN THE FUTURE IF YOU’RE REALLY TRULY DESPERATE FOR THAT SHIP!!! But the way they got together was so...sloppy and rushed and forced. Nothing was natural about it because since the beginning the only one who has shown interest in a relationship was Lance. If Allura had also shown interest in wanting to be with Lance earlier on (even if it was during s3 or s4) they could of had time to develop into a more believable romance.

The reason people gravitate more towards Klance (Keith x Lance) was because it had believable chemistry that we liked. Be it platonic or other wise, Keith and Lance help were very important to each other for their growth throughout the series. It was a natural growth that was interesting to watch which is why people latched on to it even though we knew, deep down, it was never going to be nothing more. I know there’s this whole thing about “queer baiting” but let’s be realistic here, this is a cartoon show made for kids, run by a company who only confirmed Gobber (from How to Train Your Dragon) was gay in one interview and nothing else, and killed off Adam (Shiro’s supposed fiance) without even confirming in show that him and Shiro were even together. It was never gunna happen and we should all just get over it. The moments we got with them were only there to either move the story along or appease us and nothing more.

Okay so moving on, story wise it was alright, nothing spectacular but I found it interesting. Granted they diverged from their original story in S1 a whole hell of a lot but it was sort of interesting to watch. Sometimes seasons were very inconsistent with what has already been established but the overall plot was somewhat engaging. This season I thought was pretty decent enough, but the ending just...wasn’t as grand as I was hoping it to be. I mean the whole battle scene with Honerva was amazing but the ending after was just very...meh.

ALLURA SERIOUSLY DID NOT NEED TO DIE!!!

I’m just putting it out there now! There could have been a million different ways to execute this if really did want her to die but this just felt half assed! You know why? BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T NEED TO DIE!!! You’re just gunna put a character through all that suffering and NOT give her the happy ending she deserves? You know who SHOULD have died?

HONERVA! HONERVA SHOULD HAVE DIED! I DON’T CARE IF ALLURA OR THE PALADINS WERE BEING THE “BIGGER PERSON” ABOUT IT, SHE SHOULD HAVE DIED! SHE WAS GOING TO DESTROY ALL OF REALITY AND EXISTENCE! ALL BECAUSE SHE COULDN’T LET GO OF THE PAST AND GET WHAT SHE WANTED!!!

I have no sympathy for her, I have no sympathy for Zarkon, and I have no sympathy for Lotor! I don’t care that they have tragic, misunderstood backstories THAT STILL DOESN’T GIVE THEM THE RIGHT TO DO THE THINGS THEY DID!!!

Don’t get me wrong, villain redemption arcs are totally valid in any other context but sympathy or pity for genocidal maniacs IS JUST SO MANY SHADES OF FUCKED UP!!! (ex. THE FUCKING DIAMONDS FROM STEVEN UNIVERSE).

So yeah, Honerva should of died, Allura should of lived, and many more things before this season could of been planed better. Also that ending scene with Shiro getting married I thought was pretty cute. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not really a TRUE form of lgbtq+ rep, it was rushed and probably a sloppy form of an apology for killing off Adam but I don’t think we should hate on it. It’ll only discourage other creatures in the future from truly making representation we deserve. Plus, I’m glad that Shiro was able to find happiness after all the shit he’s gone through! I thought all the little glimpses in to the future end cards were very fitting and nice. Well, all except foR LANCE!!!

SERIOUSLY?! SERIOUSLY, YOU GUNNA DO MY BOY LIKE THAT?!

Like, I’m glad he stayed with his family on Earth (I know a lot of people think he left to settle in Altea but checked back and am here to confirm that is NOT true) but did they seriously had to make him a farmer?!?! Yes, I wanted him to be with his family and stay on Earth BUT there is so much more they could of done with him! Pidge stayed on Earth with her family and made huge technological advances and you’re telling me Lance couldn’t have done something similar? I mean, I get that after all of it he’d want to spend time with his family and get away from the war and adventure of it all but there was still so much that needed to be done! Coran, Keith, Shiro, Hunk, and Pidge were all still trying to bring together a broken universe because, as anybody could tell you, just because the war is over doesn’t me everything is fixed. And like HELL would Lance just take a seat while his friends were out there rebuilding! It is like a MAJOR disrespect to Allura’s memory! One that Lance has made very clear that he want’s to HONOR in the best way possible and the writers thought that him having a FARM was be best thing to do that?!

NOT A FUCKING CHANCE!!!

Okay, so after breathing for a moment, I have to say that I actually did enjoy this season. Sure, then ending of it was lack luster and the whole Allurance thing was cute but poorly done but other then that I really, really liked it. Could it have had a better send off? Yes. But the one that it got WASN’T the worst thing in the world and I would gladly watch Voltron all over again. In fact I’m going to because I like the show and it’s characters and even the shitty fandom it has. Sure, it’s flawed but so is everything else in life so there’s no use in crying over something that is over.

Either enjoy Voltron for what it is or just put it out of your life if it’s causing you that much misery. At the end of it all it’s just a show.

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sideofwritingsandramblings · 6 years

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A little salt, A lot of Sheith Meta

Alright... So there’s just a lot of things that have been on my mind since the big reveal. (Updated with even more meta!)

Beware there are some s7 spoilers under the cut. (And since I wrote this instead of the prompt for sheith month today I’ll use this as my entry instead @sheithmonth if it is considered appropriate / next)

So as probably most everyone in this fandom knows by now, Shiro has been confirmed gay with the release of the first episode of season seven. As I explained in a previous post, Shiro being confirmed queer has made me beyond excited, simply on the basis of what incredible representation this is.

However, once again I have heard a bunch of people (honestly... probably not actual sheith shippers) yelling “Sheith is dead” because of Shiro’s ex-boyfriend. Well, first of all, it is an ex-boyfriend according to the vld staff. And, while I will admit I have not seen the full episode nor will I seek out any more spoilers, I can still say with full confidence that Sheith is not dead. Which, honestly, I think most Sheith shippers would agree.

(Also, side point: a ship cannot even “die” like... the point of shipping is looking at two characters and thinking they would be interesting together regardless of canon.)

Anyways, I’m just going to go ahead and break down exactly why I actually believe Sheith to be closer to canon than ever before.

I usually never have hope for a canonically queer ship, mostly because I’ve learned to not expect it. Voltron, however, has amazingly made me hope again. And I even dare to hope that the canonically queer ship will also be my otp.

However, my bias aside, there is plenty of evidence pointing to canon sheith. Starting with the entirety of season 6.

Like, don’t get me wrong, I was shipping Sheith from seasons 1-5 too. Keith’s very first scene in the show is his rescuing Shiro, followed by tenderly touching his face while saying his first word of the show: “Shiro?” Following this scene we see how Shiro and Keith have the deepest bond of the group and are consistently looking out for each other. In season two we have Shiro trusting Keith to succeed him as leader and the Blade of Mamora trials with the famous “Your friend desperately wants to see you.” Since then we’ve gotten hugs, tender looks, and promises of: I’ll save you “As many times as it takes.”

Despite all of this I still doubted they would become canon, but then season 6 came along.

First of all this post which is not mine but goes in to all of this a lot, talks about how many of the romantic scenes expected for other ships happened for Sheith instead. Things like: Sheith’s bond being the focus of the season, Keith’s mom picking out Shiro because Keith told her so much about him, backstory, sacrificing themselves for one another, and even an emotional confession of “I love you.” Honestly, if we were looking at any sort of heterosexual ship, they would already be considered a couple by now.

Additionally we have seen some incredible parallels for Sheith as well. Both with Sheith and Keith’s parents and with Zaggar. On one hand we have the very similarly animated rescue scene between Keith’s dad and Krolia vs Keith rescuing Shiro in episode one. On the other hand, we have the very telling jaw-dropped reaction of Shiro with Keith and Zarkon with Honerva.

And now, with the new information from season 7, it adds a whole other layer to Shiro’s reaction. We were joking about his stuttering and complete focus on Keith during that scene was him being a gay disaster. But the truth is he is a confirmed gay disaster. Literally, how else do you explain that scene? Plus, while I know the 2 year jump wasn’t some move by the showrunners to address the “too big of an age gap” claims, I still think it’s an important moment for Shiro. Shiro has never treated Keith like a kid in the series, and they have been shown to be best friends and reliant on each other since the beginning. But I genuinely believe that this moment was when Shiro realized that Keith really has gotten older/more mature/(hotter). “You really have changed,” Shiro said.

And, if we take the parallels a step further (and while some people may call it a stretch, I personally really enjoy this one). We all know how Lauren and Joaquim also worked on Legend of Korra, another show that pushed for lgbt rep and that ended with canon Korrasami The ending scene of which had a very visually similar theme repeated in Voltron. A pillar of light between the two queer characters.

But, regardless of all the observed parallels and incredibly heartfelt moments, we now have an interesting problem(?) on our hands: the introduction of Shiro’s ex-boyfriend Adam. I will reiterate that I have not actually seen the new episode in full (and correct me if I’m wrong), but a lot of the episode’s focus is on pre-Kerberos backstory.

Within this backstory we meet Adam, someone Shiro loves and cares for deeply, to the point that they were practically (if not actually?) fiances. However, as Shiro deals with a chronic illness and pursues his dream of piloting in space anyways, Adam leaves Shiro and tells Shiro that he will not wait for him.

Now, from this information alone I immediately believe that Adam is meant to foil Keith. Where Adam (for whatever reasons, good or bad) could not stand by Shiro through everything, Keith has repeatedly proven he will do anything to protect Shiro and stay by his side.

Additionally, from a narrative standpoint, it really wouldn’t make sense to make Shadam endgame. Now it is true that anything is possible in 26 episodes. It could turn out that Shiro will have his reconciliation with Adam on Earth and they will get back together. In the event that this happens, (and if it happens in a way that is healthy and is good for Shiro), I hope everyone will support the relationship regardless of ships. Because that will still be amazing representation!

However, I doubt that would happen. Simply because we have never heard of Adam before. If the vld staff was shooting for this big queer couple for a while, why only mention him in the last 26 episodes? Especially since a majority of the episodes of season 7 (I assume) will be them just trying to get to Earth, leaving very few to flesh out a Shiro/Adam story. From a story-telling standpoint Shiro should have been talking about or mentioning Adam from the start to more easily introduce this couple to the audience. However, Adam only gets brought up when Shiro has to face the reality that he is making it back to Earth and there is a chance he will see Adam again.

[Edit: Plus, just think of how much has changed since Shiro left. He has been imprisoned for a year by the Galra and forced to fight, had his arm replaced with a robotic prosthetic, been experimented on, has become part of a universe-defending team fighting in an intergalactic war, literally died, spent who knows how long as just a consciousness in a giant robot space cat, and then revived and given the memories of a cloned version of himself. He’s been through a lot. And who knows what Shiro’s gone through better than Keith?

Adam, on the other hand, has most likely had no idea what happened. If I assume this correctly, for this entire time Shiro’s been gone, Adam has believed Shiro to not only be dead, but responsible for the Kerberos mission’s failure. I would assume when the mission was called Pilot Error, Adam would have had his fears confirmed: by taking the Kerberos mission despite being ill, Shiro put his life and the crew’s lives in danger. I honestly cannot even imagine how Adam must have reacted when he heard the news. I honestly can’t wait to see how he reacts to Shiro being alive.

After everything they’ve gone through, will they really be able to rekindle that old flame so easily?]

Additionally, we can argue that season 6 was one of the biggest Sheith seasons of the series. We got that two year age jump with Keith that has Shiro reacting like the disaster gay he is. Plus, Shiro’s reaction to Keith saying “I love you” (while not reacting to the “you’re my brother” line) still sticks with me, along with Keith refusing to let go and accepting to fall to his death with Shiro. We got Keith astral projecting himself by screaming Shiro’s name and then cradling Shiro in his arms in the last five minutes of the season. And to now immediately follow up that season (that was so focused on Shiro and Keith’s bond) with a confirmation that Shiro is gay? I really don’t think that’s a coincidence.

[Edit: Not to mention how I’ve seen multiple posts going around talking about the different dubs. One being the German dub’s ich liebe dich, which is apparently for a stronger/more profound love than ich habe dich lieb. And of course, the Japanese dub’s aishiteru which is also much deeper than the more commonly used daisuki. Like, if you’ve ever watched subbed anime, confession scenes will almost never use aishiteru. Aishiteru is rarely used because it denotes a deeper love akin to saying “I am in love with you from the bottom of my heart.” It is almost exclusively used between romantic partners, and rarely (if ever!) used between family/friends. The choice of aishiteru over suki/daisuki is honestly incredible.]

[Edit: Also, something I wanted to add before but couldn’t find a source at first: I found this article by DenofGeek from this past February very intriguing. It said that quote:

“Montgomery adds, ‘When we set out to make this show we wanted to make one where no one character was solely defined by being in a relationship.’ She’s quick to clarify that the Avatar and Korra characters were of course incredible and fully formed characters themselves but, ‘when we really looked at what was at stake with this show (Voltron) the relationship or romance aspect of it just didn’t feel as important as the work that they were doing to save their universe.’ Both showrunners don’t rule out the possibility of it happening down the line, but only if it happens naturally within the story. ‘We’re not going to try to just put it in there for the sake of needing romance in the story,’ Montgomery explains.”

The parts I bolded were what stood out to me from this article/interview. The showrunners have never wanted the focus to be just on relationships. The focus has, and always will be, on these characters defending the universe together. However, they will include romance if it happens naturally within the story. I really believe that if we were looking for a naturally developing relationship in the show it would be Sheith, and not between Shiro and some brand new guy (or at least new to the audience). In order to truly convince us Shadam is a good ship, the showrunners would have to focus on it a lot in the remaining two seasons. Why go through that effort when they could instead develop the relationship Keith and Shiro already have in the show?]

Not to mention, despite the introduction of Adam in the episode, the episode’s main focus was still on Shiro and Keith. The new episode has yet another Sheith hug, Keith worrying over Shiro in a pod, and many pre-Kerberos scenes (without Adam) that feature Keith and Shiro’s history. (Oh and I just got spoiled this next screenshot, there is apparently a rainbow above Keith and Shiro in one scene?! Also, it’s yet another example of a sunset as a romantic backdrop between them.) In other words, I really believe that Shiro will ultimately have his reconciliation with Adam, but they won’t get back together. Shiro will probably end up having feelings for Keith instead.

Although, I can’t know that for sure and anything could happen. But then, I can’t help but go to stuff outside of the show as well.

The staff have repeatedly shown support for Sheith or at least the bond between them. We have the famous “Shiro Loves you Baby #he’s looking at Keith” from Chris Palmer:

Art supervising director Kihyun Ryu drew this miracle:

And Eugene Lee’s recent Keith he drew on Chris Palmer’s Shiro’s chest like some kind of romance novel:

[Edit: And I almost forgot these two gems (which, while I know voice actor’s don’t have much control of the show’s story, they’re still great): The fact that Josh Keaton (Shiro) at the very beginning of Voltron coined the ship name “Sheith” and Bex Taylor-Klaus’ (Pidge) famous snapchat and quote:]

The staff’s support of the ship, in both fanart and interviews has been incredible. This post has an entire masterlist of the support the staff has given Sheith or their strong bond.

But, anyways. Overall, regardless of where the story heads I will always ship Sheith. If the staff decides that Shadam is the way to go for positive representation I’ll happily take it, but it doesn’t end my love for Sheith.

Honestly though, I think Sheith’s chances of becoming canon are better than ever before and I’m so excited to see how these last two seasons play out.

#voltron #sheith #sheithmonth #sheithmonth2018 #shiro #keith #meta #takashi shirogane #vld s7 spoilers #voltron spoilers #adam #shadam

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nikfehu · 6 years

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Season 7 Thoughts

Hey there y’all. Bought time I shared what I thought of the new season now that I’ve been able to think through everything. Remember, these are my opinions, so of course y’all don’t have to agree with me. And go ahead and send me whatever you feel like you gotta because of what I said, hate, agreement, whatever. Also, this will not be spoiler free. Let’s goooooooo (Also, apology ahead of time because this is going to be loooooong)

So I personally thought this season was actually really good. I liked the fact that it was split into two different sections - the space trip arc and the saving Earth arc - with a two episode connection between them. To me, it made it a lot easier to follow what was going on while the Voltron crew was making their way back to Earth.

There was a lot of action happening in just the trip back. Having the game show in there definitely broke up the trip, keeping us interested in what was going on. The part where they were left adrift in space got really real, letting us see what the Paladins thought about each other and about being Paladins.

I’ve seen a lot of posts about how Keith and Lance spoke, and the way I see it is that Lance had finally snapped about how Keith had left them for the Blade. It was said that Lance had a void from where Keith had left. Keith was frustrated with everything, and snapped too. I don’t think they were trying to be mean to each other. I think it’s that they got overwhelmed with everything and snapped.

The part where they were captured by Ezor and Zethrid was super interesting! I viewed it as our first canonically LGBTQ+ couple in the show, and it made me really happy to see it. I really loved how as soon as they decided they were going to torture Pidge, Lance shot up to protect her, even if he knew he probably wouldn’t be able to do much. The fact that his first instinct was to charge them makes me really happy.

Axca coming back against Ezor and Zethrid was really shocking. I hadn’t thought she would ever turn against them. I don’t remember if it ever explained why she did, but I really want to know. I know people are freaking out about Keith and Axca now being written as a couple. But honestly? I don’t see that happening. But I guess we’ll see in the next season.

The saving Earth arc was so action packed and so emotional for everyone. I’m glad that James got his chance to redeem himself from the Garrison for Keith (though we only saw him being a jerk at the very beginning of the season, so he may have fixed things with him before hand). The Garrison working with Voltron was literally the coolest thing ever.

Lance and Pidge reuniting with their families got me in the feels. I almost cried during those scenes. The Holt family reunion was so precious, cause Colleen finally got her family back. Lance’s family, oh my god, that was such an amazing reunion. Lance’s niece and nephew calling him Uncle Lance made me smile so much. I got really sad when Hunk couldn’t find his family, but I was proud of him for being so determined to find them that he was able to override his fear.

I was really happy to see Keith making up with Iverson, and then later coming to Hunk to talk to him about his family and offering to help him find them. Keith himself said he was bad at this stuff, but the fact that he was willing to help means that he’s making an attempt to open up (I’m assuming it was because of what had happened while they were stranded in space). I also think this was his way of trying to make up with Hunk about the things he had said earlier on in the season.

I’m really happy we got to see Lance acting like a brother with Veronica. We always knew how important his family was. But it wasn’t until he was willing to die to protect her that we realized just how far he was willing to go to keep them safe. That part had me on the edge of my seat because Red wasn’t responding to him and I was so scared that something bad was going to happen.

I definitely wasn’t ready for Admiral Sanda to betray the Paladins to protect Earth. I know she was doing what she thought was best, but I think if she had listened to what everyone was saying about the Galra, she would’ve realized that the Galra can’t be trusted to keep up their end of deals. And even though this made me hate her, I definitely did not want to see her die. I wanted to see her get a chance to make things right with everyone back on Earth for betraying them.

Psychic connections with the lions?? What?? I knew that the Paladins had to capable of some amazing things in order to gain the trust of them. But I didn’t know they could essentially project their spirits into the and pilot them! Even Shiro didn’t, and he was stuck inside Black for 4 season! I’m so proud of them for being able to do something so amazing!

Okey, but the Atlas essentially turning into Earth’s Voltron because of Shiro? How freaking cool is that!! It makes me wonder if that means that if Voltron goes back into space if Shiro is going to stay on Earth (along with if Hunk, Pidge, and Lance will). Shiro was able to do so much without having a lion this season, it was so amazing. I will admit I thought Sendak was going to kill him if the crystal lightening didn’t, but I’m so glad Keith was able to save him. I was also sobbing during Shiro’s speech because the Paladins were no where to be found and they had been hit with something that should’ve killed them. I thought they had died and I was so heart broken.

I have so many questions about the final robot and the Altean that was found to be piloting it. I have a theory that it’s Haggar’s doing, that she found the Altean colony and, using the knowledge and magic she learned on Oriande, was able to convince them that she was good and that Allura and Voltron are evil. I’m pretty sure Romelle is going to be the only person who will be able to convince them that Haggar is the evil one.

So, now onto the touchy subject - LGBTQ+ Rep. I think even though we all wanted Lance to talk to Shiro about his sexuality and have Shiro and Adam reunite, having what we did is a start. Ezor and Zethrid having an entire episode is absolutely amazing. We’re all assuming they died in the explosion, but it was never confirmed that they did. So while we might think our canon lesbian couple is dead, they may not be, and they may show up in the next season. And if they don’t, the fact that we got it is so amazing.

The Shiro and Adam situation is a very touchy topic. I think killing Adam off was a bad call, but I can make some assumptions as to why they did it. Killing him meant that Shiro had a personal reason (other than saving Earth) to do everything he could to defeat Sendak. I’m really hoping they touch on it in the next season, because Shiro needs a chance to grieve for his boyfriend/fiance. Just because we didn’t get the interactions between them that we wanted doesn’t mean we didn’t get any rep. Shiro himself is our rep, whether it gets focused on or not.

Now onto the most touchy topic - Klance, Allurance, and Kaxca. People are saying that Klance is dead because Axca suddenly shows up and Ezor made a comment about her being in love with him. I really don’t see this as ever happening. I get the vibe that Axca is somehow related to him (maybe she’s Krolia and Kolivan’s child? They seem to be a thing when they’re in Keith’s room)

Allurance is also something I don’t think will happen. It’s been 7 seasons and it’s just now that we’re seeing Allura seeing Lance as more than the goofball he is. I think she’s a little desperate to feel something in her heart again after Lotor, and that she’s seeing Lance as that person who can do this. She knows that Lance has feelings for her, but I don’t think Lance has realized that Allura really isn’t the person he should be with. I think he’s scared to accept that. And then to have her being the way she is might be making him think she really is. I think the next season will let us have more insight into this.

I think Klance still has a really good chance of being a thing. It may not seem like it, but there was a lot of character growth between Keith and Lance. Keith trusts Lance enough to not only have his back during missions, but to lead the team while he went off to do something else, like helping Axca. There was clear concern on Lance’s face when he left, but he trusted Keith, and Keith trusted him.

We were told that Lance would be someone’s first choice, and he was. Remember the game show episode? Keith immediately wrote down Lance. Despite what he said, we all know that’s not the only reason he chose to write down Lance. Lance was Keith’s first choice to lead the team to the lions. He could’ve asked Shiro or Allura or even Krolia. But he chose Lance without a second thought. He called out for Lance first when they were stuck on Sendak’s ship. Lance was, and is, Keith’s first choice.

We may not have gotten Klance like we wanted, but we were far from Queer Baited like everyone seems to think. The show isn’t over. We’ve had two (2) canon queer couples in the show, and there may be more in the next season. Our Rep may not have been shown the way we wanted, but I really don’t think we were Queer Baited. We have another season. We’ll see what we get in terms of Rep.

So, parting thoughts: I actually really enjoyed this season. There was so much action, so many emotional scenes, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It had me holding my breath and sitting on the edge of my seat during a lot of scenes. It had a lot of scenes to help us with the sadness and seriousness. This season was a season showing us what war is like, and I think the crew did a phenomenal job at this. I’m very excited to see what the next season will give us.

#heyyo here are my thoughts #if you hate me cause of this then okey #each of us have our own opinions on this season #if you feel the need to argue your points with me go ahead #send me whatever you feel you need to #ill take whatever you throw at me

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lainahastoomuchsparetime · 5 years

Text

So that’s what I’m gonna do.

Let’s get the Night Vale presents stuff out of the way because I think those are the most well-known things, and, while good podcasts, probably the least interesting for a rec list.

Welcome to Night Vale is probably the podcast that got a ton of people, including myself, into podcasts in the first place. If you don’t know, WTNV is a fictional radio show about a little desert town and the strange things that happen it. It’s super queer, quirky, and has some really good creepy moments. Librarians scare me because of this show.

I don’t really keep caught-up on this, but I do listen to a bunch at once every so often and catch up. With 154 episodes, a couple bonus episodes, and a bunch of live-shows, you’ve got a lot of backlog to keep you busy. Start at the beginning, though.

Alice Isn’t Dead is a horror podcast about a woman who sees her supposedly dead wife on a news broadcast and sets off to try and find her. And it only gets weirder from there. This series has an episode that has creeped me out more than anything else I’ve probably ever listened to. There are three seasons with ten episodes each, plus some bonus episodes. The series has been completed.

Within the Wires is a dystopian science fiction series about a strange alternate reality world. Season One is told through a series of relaxation tapes. Season Two is a set of art museum tour tapes. Season Three is a collected group of audio notations from a man to his secretary.

I’m a pretty big fan of this one, honestly. I don’t love the second season, but it’s still very solid and the third is super interesting. This is a very strange world, and I really like it.

Each season tells a separate story, but they do all take place in the same world. Very queer, as expected from Night Vale Presents, honestly, with a neat bonus being season 3 being narrated by a trans narrator. Ten episodes each season, and season four started September 2019.

Let’s talk about some of my other favourite things!

The Black Tapes was one of the first non-Night Vale podcasts I listened to and it’s still one of my favourites. Funny story, I thought this was going to be a non-fiction podcast. I mixed it up in my head with… Lore! It was totally Lore. Oh, I forgot I listened to a bit of that. So, in my head, this become a non-fiction podcast about urban lengends the way Lore is non-fiction about scary stories/historical events/whatever Lore’s deal is, I didn’t actually listen to that much of it.

And, boy, was I confused after the first episode. Or two. Eventually I realized this is a fiction horror podcast about journalist Alex Reagan’s research into Dr. Richard Strand’s work debunking paranormal activity – specifically the cases he has not been able to debunk. (Strand is basically a fictional version of James Randi, who’s an interesting dude.)

It begins as kind of a Monster of the Week story, but eventually expands from that into bigger arcs in a very natural way. It’s one that manages to balance telling the story without losing sight of where they started out. The third season is a little underwhelming, which sucks as it’s currently also the last season, but I suspect they might be working on things behind the scenes. There’s rumours about NBC working on a TV series, and also rumours about a fourth season. I would support that. It’s one of my favourites.

There’s also a series that takes place in the same universe called TANIS, and I think RABBITS is in the same universe too, but I wasn’t really super into either of those. This, however, is a big favourite.

The Bright Sessions is a science fiction podcast about therapy for people with psychic powers, or as the podcasts says, the strange and unusual. I am also strange and unusual, so I liked this. This is a very positive podcast. It does go a whole lot into a strange world and has some really exciting plotpoints, but a lot of it is just about healing and growth. It made my heart do things a bunch. Not a scary one.

Relevant to my book people, there is a YA book featuring two of the characters coming out (whenever) and I have an eARC of it so you might be seeing a review of that soon. Hopefully.

This also has a ton of queer rep, including an explictly ace character. It also has a musical episode. Yes, that’s as cool as it sounds. There are 64 episodes, plus a bunch of bonus episodes. There’s also a spin-off series but it’s behind a paywall so I haven’t checked it out. This is a satisfying complete series without it.

ars PARADOXICA is a science fiction podcast about Sally Grissom, a physicist who accidentally invents time travel and sends herself back to 1943. And then it gets really weird. If you really like science fiction, this is the one I’d recommend the most. It’s very important to listen to this one in order, as it’s very plot heavy.

This is also way more queer than you’d expect a podcast set in the 40s to be. Sally is explictly asexual and heavily aro-coded, and there are several other major queer characters. Honestly this just has decent representation in general, and most of it is handled in a very sensitive way. A lot of things like racism or antisemitism aren’t just brushed aside as being “Well, it’s the 40s”.

Partway through this, there is a plot involving gun violence. The creators talk about their decision whether to include it or not, and they begin to give content warnings before each episode when needed. I really appreciated that.

This series is complete at thirty-six episodes, with a couple bonus episodes. There’s also a crossover episode between this and the Bright Sessions.

Now, if you’ve never listened to a podcast before and you’re a little intimidated by the idea of getting into something really long and involved, I’d recommend this next podcast.

The Message is basically a mini-series. It’s a science-fiction podcast that, and no one is going to get this reference, kind of reminded me of the movie Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invasion. My brain makes weird leaps sometimes. We all kind of just need to run with it.

Produced by GE, it tells the story of a college student making a podcast following the team tasked with decoding a message sent to earth by aliens seventy years ago. There are only 8 episodes, and most of them are only about 10 minutes, so this is a very good beginner podcast.

Not a super queer podcast, but there is a nonbinary character among the main cast.

I also listened to GE’s second podcast, Life-After, but I wasn’t as big a fan of that. The two are not related storywise.

The Far Meridian is another one I think is pretty approachable for beginners. The episodes tend to be under twenty minutes. And this one is more of a fantasy podcast than science-fiction like a lot of the others have been. I would almost say this has a bit of a magical realism theme, and the writer has talked about being influenced by that genre.

The main character of this, Peri, is an agrophobe who wakes up one morning to find her lighthouse has begun traveling the world. Over the course of the show, you begin to realize how weird the world she’s exploring actually is. The second season especially does some things I personally found super creepy, and I loved it.

It deals with a lot of trauma and anxiety, especially in the second season, but it’s handled so well. They end every episode with “May you always find your way”, and I find that really fitting and also comforting. It’s not a fake Instagram type of positivity. It feels hopeful.

Peri is a Latina woman and I believe most of the cast are people of colour. Peri is also queer, but generally does not want labels put on her yet. She’s okay not knowing. This, also, happens in a scene where another character defines her own bisexuality as being attracted to “cool girls and people who don’t really subscribe to that whole gender thing” which is great.

Overall, I’m a big fan of this one and I can’t wait for the third season in January 2020. Oh, hey, pro-tip: The Google Play feed for this doesn’t have the full second season for some reason, so you have to switch to iTunes or Spotify for the rest of it if you listen to your podcasts there.

Now this one I just finished listening to!

The Bridge is a science fiction podcast set in an alternate-world 2016 where a giant bridge (shocker) has been built across the Atlantic Ocean, taking place within one of the watchtowers on said giant bridge, which has been mostly abandoned and left to rot by the mainland.

Okay don’t make fun of me, but I’m kind of a new introductee to the idea of Lovecraftian lore/mythology? For some reason I kind of missed that whole thing until pretty recently. I only got semi-familiar with it because a Let’s Player I watch played a Cthulhu game, and then a youtube channel that talks about book adaptations I also watch did an episode about one of Lovecraft’s books.

So I’m gonna say this is kind of based on Lovecraftian stuff, but I don’t know enough to say if it’s inspired by it, or actually based on a specific work, but it has that kind of feel. The world in this is really interesting, with things like haunted houses and possessed puppets. They also do a great job with world-building of the way things were back in the heyday of the bridge.

One of the main characters, Bertie, is canonically queer, and talks about his fiance who passed away, and others have been confirmed queer by word of God, but I can’t find said word of God, so I don’t know who they mean and therefore can’t really talk about that. There’s been basically no focus on romance, though, so it not coming up hasn’t felt unnatural.

This has 14 episodes and a bunch of mini-episodes, and while there hasn’t been an update since October 2018, their twitter leads me to be it will be soon. I really like the world of this one, and can’t wait for there to be more.

Parts of it actually reminded me of:

Girl in Space, which is a science fiction podcast about a girl (duh) in space (duh) with only an artificial intelligence system, various birds, and a goat to keep her company… until she sees something on the horizon.

This is still a baby podcast, with only one season (the last episode of which I still need to listen to) but it’s interesting. There’s some things they’re hinting at that I am super excited about seeing explored in season two, and the worldbuilding is really fun. The sun is probably alive, y’all. And I mean, like, it might be sentient.

I have a couple of minor gripes with a similar thing to the Bridge, where characters have only been said to be queer outside of the actual show, but if the words “Cheese is delicious science” appeal to you, check this one out.

And speaking of mixed feelings:

The Box! The Box is a horror podcast about a college drop-out that finds a strange box (again, shocker) in the bookstore she works in, her discovery that it’s full of strange journals, and her search to uncover the truth about them.

There’s a lot I actually like in this. When I started listening to it, I was really missing the Black Tapes and they have the same sort of feeling at the beginning. I like this kind of podcast where a narrator tells you a story every episode, and then the world builds on top of that. It’s not everyone’s thing, but I’m into it. It’s a good premise, and for quite some time into the show, I enjoyed it.

And then it gets weird. And obviously it starts weird, most of these podcasts get weird at one point, but it starts to be strange in a way that I wasn’t enjoying. I started to find it more silly than scary.

There’s also a romance that I found dull as doorknobs, and there’s a thing that I would like to complain about, but I can’t confirm it exactly, and there are not transcripts so I can’t check something without re-listening to the whole podcast. As there are forty episodes and bonus episodes, I’m not about to just jump into that. So I’ll just complain about a lack of transcripts instead.

The Box also has times where the sound design is just terrible. There’s one episode where, in-world, it’s being recorded on a broken recorder, parts of it from another room. And, yes, it makes sense in-world. But to actually listen to it, I had it on full blast as high as I could and I still could barely hear it and missed a lot of the episode. And, again, no transcripts to read with it. And my hearing is okay. If you have any kind of auditory processing issues, that episode basically just says “screw you”.

However, I do like how they work social topics into the stories. At times it can be a bit clumsy, but I give them kudos for trying, at least. There’s an episode that includes real-life audio from something related to a real death of a black person by police brutality. I believe it’s in the episode Strange Fruit but I don’t remember and again, no transcripts. I find this especially frustrating when it comes to potentially triggering material.

This one’s currently on hiatus and I’ll probably check it out whenever it returns (it’s a show prone to long hiatus), but I wouldn’t recommend it unhesitantly. It does a lot of things I like, but I definitely have mixed feelings overall.

Palimpsest is another horror podcast. It tells a new, standalone story each season, with all their stories relating to memory and things that haunt us. I liked both, but especially the second season.

Season one is about loss and memory and forgiveness, and what it means to be haunted by something. It’s largely about the relationship between the MC and her sister and the romance is very minimal, but there’s some (what I call) incidental queerness. It’s not in a way like a Night Vale Presents thing is, or the Bright Sessions, or something like that, but it’s nice not to have it ignored.

GIANT trigger warning for gun violence and child death. Also, there’s thing on-going theme about the creepy sound of a wooden swing in the backyard and, as I was listening to this when I went for walks, I realized I walk past three different wooden swings.

Season two is set in the late 19th or early 20th century or so, and is based in Irish fae mythology which is totally up my alley. This is also the series where the idea of immigrants and people being raised by immigrants having accents confused someone so much I almost didn’t listen to it based on their review. I’m not salty about that, obviously.

Season two is also really freaking queer. Overall this isn’t a really scary horror podcast – it’s more eerie and a little sad. And eerie and a little sad is my favourite mood for ghost stories. My only real complaint is this also doesn’t have transcripts available.

Spines is a pretty recent listen for me, one I really enjoyed. This is kind of like a mash up of all the things I liked about The Box and Darkest Night and Archive 81 without any of the things I didn’t like in any of those. It’s definitely horror, with some body horror elements, and some… is tasteful gore a thing? Body horror and gore elements are used very tastefully and sparingly, and to great effect.

It’s the story of Wren, who wakes up in an attic covered in blood, with no memory at all, and some weird cult ritual surrounding her. She runs, and starts the podcast in an attempt to find her friends, who she’s sure were in the attic with her, and her other half, Zachary, the only name she can remember.

It’s weird but good weird. Solid world-building and really good character building. There’s a particular message that I appreciated that being someone’s “soulmate” didn’t mean you didn’t have a choice in whether or not you wanted to be romantically or sexually involved with them. It’s subtle but again well-handled.

Also, Wren is queer and this is really trans inclusive. There are several times where the show goes against the usual cisnormative thing most media would say in a similar situation, which honestly makes sense as it’s written by a trans writer. There’s also a very significant canonically intersex and nonbinary character, voiced by the writer of the show.

This is a creepy, weird little podcast that made my heart very happy. It’s complete at three seasons of eight episodes each and honestly quite underrated. Big recommend.

Finally, let’s talk about my favourite podcast.

I recently learned that the term “weird fiction” exists as a genre label. Mabel is very much weird fiction. In Mabel, Anna Limon begins a new job as a home health caretaker to an elderly woman named Sally. The house is… strange, and Sally is strange, and Anna probably shouldn’t look too deeply at any of that, but of course she does.

It is a horror podcast with deep folklore/mythology roots, possibly also somewhat Celtic/fae based, but it’s such a blend of things that I can’t draw any hard lines of things I specifically recognize besides one or two things, and that makes it so unique.

Listen to Mabel in the fall. Listen to Mabel when it might rain, when it’s a little windy, when the leaves are crunchy under your feet. When the air smells just a little like decay. Or, you know, whenever, because it’s great, but it is an amazing fall podcast. It’s also super queer, fyi.

Mabel has forty seasons currently, with I think five seasons? There is also a five-part bonus series. It’s really cool. If you don’t listen to anything else I recommend, listen to this.

I also listened to Limetown but I feel like everyone’s heard of that one, and I’m currently listening to Ghosts in the Burbs which so far is kind of interesting, but I’m only like two episodes in.

Alright! Have you listened to any of these? What did you think? What podcasts would you recommend for me? Did you enjoy this post at all? Comment and let me know!

Peace and cookies, Laina

I kinda just wanna talk about podcasts So that's what I'm gonna do. Let's get the Night Vale presents stuff out of the way because I think those are the most well-known things, and, while good podcasts, probably the least interesting for a rec list.

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