#which i think should not be glossed over just because we (gay people in the us) are personally at risk in the event of a trump dictatorship

[vampyroteuthid]

going to the doctor is hilarious now i just spent like ten minutes bemoaning the state of the us government with my doctor

[sexhaver]

(totally understandable if you don't want to respond to this bc of the Everything)

i feel like there's this weird motte/bailey situation going on with a lot of the "MAP" posting on here.

like they start with the stance that this is just how people are born and can't control and it's like okay, i don't think that's a helpful way to look at it, but i can see how if you believed that it's inborn, you might want to offer them support and still be opposed to csa/sexualizing minors.

but then they're not like "hey you're brave for coping with this part of you that you can't control" "your intrusive thoughts aren't harming anyone", it's "you should be proud of this attraction", "this is just as valid as being gay", "they deserve a space to discuss their attraction", etc.

and then when someone says "hey i think we shouldn't be promoting that" they fall back to "it's a condition they can't help! you need to stand with the marginalized!"

you're not even being hyperbolic with the "just as valid as being gay" point, lol

that aside, most of the rhetoric you describe here definitely happens on this site, but in my experience (because i try to keep myself at least two degrees of separation removed from pedophiles) i really only see it from the "MAPs" themselves. the most i've seen someone outside that community defend pedophiles on here is with the "it's just fantasies, they aren't acting on them, you can't commit thought crimes" chestnut, which, 1. is not even true of "pro-contact MAPs" (read: pedophiles who deliberately seek out/interact with/groom children) and 2. frames pedophilia as a "just a controversial taboo kink" like CNC which kind of glosses over the whole "minor-attracted" part that people are mad about

[dekusleftsock]

Okay the worst part about what bones did? Like, regardless of romance, ships, whatever, this is just another example onto the PILE that already exists of people trying to treat mha like how every other shonen should act.

Shonen and shojo aren’t like… genres, but they are categories that generally follow a lot of the same tropes. The reason why I personally enjoy shojo more is because it lacks a lot of the fan service (usually) and imo is just better at adapting and evolving what it means to be apart of the category. Like madoka magica, which birthed the popularity of the psychological horror genre WITHIN shojo.

Shonen, however, has evolved a little bit, but not nearly as much. Generally, the same 10 tropes are used, no matter the anime/manga, (with some exceptions ofc okay, I’m not blind) and because of this expectation, it makes those like the director, I’m assuming, and the fandom, have certain expectations on what should happen in a shonen. When mha doesn’t follow that format, people either get mad about it, write it off, or, in bones’ case, completely change it.

Now I’m not saying they always alter things, or even that they are altering anything for season 6. I think it would upset everyone involved if they just randomly changed the writing.

What I am saying though is that they’re playing into the same toxic tropes shonen has been following for decades. Decades!

Boys can’t be vulnerable, and if they are, they are either a small child, it’s for a joke, or it’s for their female love interest. Usually the male “best friend” (or in bkg’s case closest person☺️) is only allowed to be vulnerable, touchy, outshine the female love interest intimately, etc when the female love interest either can’t, or they are helping the female love interest be intimate.

Because, god forbid we let boys cry! Toxic masculinity! I need to project onto this super strong male character, and that means they can’t be emotional OR gay!

When they did this, it wasn’t just about how Izuku is defining ochako’s character, it wasn’t just about how iida and Katsuki’s moments were completely glossed over.

It was about how we continue to let toxic masculinity define our characters and their relationships.

Ochako and her moments, her story, her character is being defined by the male main character. By her “accepting her feelings” completely dismisses her hero career, her story.

“Oh but she can learn she can be a wife AND a hero!” But does she want that? Has she actually EVER wanted that??? Or has someone defined that for her?

She’s just not the focal point of this arc, not in the slightest, and yet here we are. Here we fucking are. Is toga mentioned once in this intro? Hell no. Ofc she’s not. Because that would seem too suspicious.

Anime only’s, please just read the manga. It’s prettier, more accurate to canon, a different perspective on Katsuki, Izuku, Ochako, and Toga, and won’t pull this bullshit.

[noodyl-blasstal]

what say you about a potentiallllllllllll museum guide au

Reese, Reese, this is such a treat, I adore you. [AU ask game, send me an AU, I'll give you 5 things from it, or more because I'll fight maths and I'll win]

Museum guide AU premise: Okay, okay, so Taako's a museum guide and today he's fucking done, he's just absolutely fucking done. So he's going off script and he's telling the truth instead of the shitty glossed over versions, and he's going to make sure everyone is as uncomfortable as he is about all the bullshit they stole here. Kravitz is on the tour with his Mums and they're getting more and more gleeful as the tour goes. Raven is absolutely egging him on. 1) Taako works as a museum guide and his favourite is when he gets to work with children and young people because he can make it interactive and fun, but they don't let him do that with the grown up groups even though he knows in his bones some of them would love interactive story time and getting to do quizzes and dress up. 2) Today the fancy people guide is off and Taako has to cover the Very Important People tour, but his boss also told him to go fast through some of the indigenous exhibits and "keep the guilting to a minimum" so Taako's going to bite. Hard. He already has to fight about this bullshit all the time - what's the point in learning half a history? It might not be pretty, but it's true.

3) There's a bloke called John on the tour who is on the board and donates generously to the museum and he's getting angrier and angrier as Taako facts his way through everything. Some of the others in the group (looking at you Raven, Kravitz, Istus) ask questions which means he spends much longer talking about the context and significance of the exhibits he was supposed to rush through. John pulls him to the side and fires him in the middle of the tour, so Taako tells everyone that's what happened and that as he's not an employee they really can't stop him talking now. So he finishes up with anyone who is interested. It's most of the people. 4) Kravitz is interested in the history but also very interested in Taako. His Mums are also very interested in Taako and whether a nice young man like him is single because their very handsome son is and wouldn't it be a coincidence if two nice young men who were right here next to each other were single [pointed looks at Kravitz].

5) Raven and Istus make a big ol' donation on the proviso that Taako gets reinstated. With their help he's allowed to do some more specialist tours including ones where he does interactive education for grown ups - he gets to dress up and tell stories and people love it.

6) (I told you, I'm too powerful to be constrained) Kravitz comes on one of the grown up interactive tours and uses his feedback slip to ask Taako out, but Taako doesn't actually read the slips, Sloane in HR does and boy does she recognise that handwriting.

7) Sloane gives Taako the slip (and Kravitz a lot of shit including sending a photo of it with "I think we should just be friends (as we're both super fucking gay.)") and he and Kravitz go on a date and everything's perfect and fine forever because I can do that. The power!

[ghostintheheadset]

So I picked up a short story anthology recently, which I don't normally do, and I thought it'd be fun to go through and do little reviews of each piece. I've always been a longform fiction girlie and it couldn't hurt to look a little closer and see what makes shorter fiction work.

The anthology is Someone in Time, containing stories about time travel romance, here's the 4 that I read today:

1: Roadside Attraction, by Alix Harrow

The Time Travel: A strange rock in the woods that sends you to some random time and place in the past, then eventually back to the present. Or not.

The Romance: Floyd, a young man recently broken up with, and Edmund, the groundskeeper.

I think this was a good choice to have as the first piece, because as far as time travel stories go, it's pretty straightforward. "Young man goes out into the world seeking adventure, and is still left wanting, because he doesn't realize that what he's looking for is right in front of him", but with time travel. Notably, his adventures in the past are largely glossed over, most of them being described in a sentence or less, which is to the benefit of the piece's theming. Floyd's characterized as a man looking for adventure and never finding what he needs, so those adventures being summed up as "two hours he spent swearing and almost dying", "he made out with a pirate", "he spent a week hungry" adds to that vibe.

His arc is, as an extent of this, very predictable. He spends months traveling to different time periods looking for some grand destiny, and at the end of the story, he'll realize "oh actually, I'm gay for the groundskeeper that's always here to greet me when I come home, and living in the present is all I need, actually." I don't find that to the story's detriment, though, it is a romance- it doesn't matter if you figure out the destination early.

I'm not handing out stars or rating these out of ten or anything. I liked it.

2: The Past Life Reconstruction Service, by Zen Cho

The Time Travel: A service that lets people experience half-hour snippets of past lives.

The Romance: Rui, a washed-up film director, and Yiu Leung, his ex and soulmate.

I may be a little guilty of "rating" this higher than I maybe should, simply because I like the concept of past lives in fiction a lot. Rui looks into the past five times, and each time he recognizes Yiu Leung as an important person to him, rubbing salt in the wound of their recent breakup. Soulmates can be a little hit-or-miss for me, so I appreciate that Rui doesn't try to make amends with Yiu Leung just because their soulmates, but because he sees how important Yiu Leung has been in his past lives, and the repeated encounters make him realize "oh, I fucked this up bad and I want to make amends".

Much like Roadside Attraction, the time travel functions as less of a plot element and more of a narrative tool to help the main character learn the lesson they need to learn. Plotwise there wasn't too too much going on, we learn about the fight between Rui and Yiu Leung that caused them to breakup, and Rui encounters him at the end and makes the effort to get back together. Big chunks of the text are spent in past lives, but fortunately, I found them pretty interesting. It starts with the good old "angst-filled wartime setting", but then moves on to "Rui and Yiu Leung are both women married to the same nobleman carrying out and illicit romance", and later, "Rui is a cow and Yiu Leung is a fly who won't leave him alone". Honestly that one bit is kinda carrying for me, it was very short but I'm going to be thinking about that one for a while.

3: First Aid, by Seanan McGuire

The Time Travel: An early 22nd century agency that sends people back in time to better study overlooked aspects of various time periods, to then send their observations back the long way. Operatives spend years learning about the time period they're going to live in, getting reconstructive surgery to better learn the part, and as they can't be compensated the agency instead provides for one person of their choosing for life.

The Romance: Taylor, a researcher going back to the past, and Marianne, a woman from the 90s she falls in love with.

"Hey ghost, why'd you spend so much more time describing the time travel here" because that's what reading the story's like. Marianne isn't introduced until 2/3rds of the way through the story, and so much more time is spent on explaining the circumstances and purposes of Taylor going back in time. And it's not that these things aren't interesting, but it leads to the story being so unbalanced that the romance feels barely there in comparison. If the story had opened on Taylor landing in the past, and meeting Marianne soon after, and her backstory had been explored through comparisons between her past future life and her present past life, that could've led for so much more time for Taylor and Marianne's relationship to develop.

The best way I can summarize it is that First Aid so badly wants to be a novella at least, and can't properly fold itself into the constraints of a short story. The funny twist near the end is that Taylor's supposed to go to the 1500s, and instead lands at a ren faire in 1996 with no way home. In a longer story, the repercussions of this could be properly explored, but instead, we have Taylor internally panicking about both the immediate and long-term repercussions, but the former are skipped over and the story ends before the latter can become relevant. For the purposes of the short, this didn't need to happen- if Taylor landed in the 1500s and met a woman there, the overall plot would be unchanged, and there'd be much more time for her relationship with Marianne to feel like a relationship.

4. I Remember Satellites, by Sarah Gailey

The Time Travel: A time travel agent goes to the past on a lifelong mission to alter the course of history by marrying a prince and keeping him from the throne.

The Romance: Violet, a time agent, and Dani, another agent sent on an overlapping mission.

First point, why was this immediately after First Aid lmao, if you have two "woman working for a time travel org goes back in time to spend the rest of her life there and falls in love with another woman there" stories, space them out a bit!

Of the four I read so far, I think this one did the best job of integrating time travel, making it deeply necessary to the plot and character arcs without it overstepping. Violet, leaving to spend the rest of her life with a man who sucks, struggles with having to forget her life in the future and being forgotten by the people she knew. She and Dani aren't supposed to be in the same place at the same time, interacting with other agents on missions is expressly forbidden due to the likelihood of operatives breaking character when they're not completely immersed, but naturally she holds on to Dani both as a lover and as the only tangible reminder of the life she used to live.

As such, the story takes two routes towards being a forbidden romance- which is to its benefit, because as Violet points out, it's not as if her bosses can punish her when she's already on a mission that's going take up the rest of her life. While that is initially a compelling reason for Dani, I as a reader was more open to Violet's perspective, but the fact that she was married to a shitty prince helped keep the appeal of a forbidden romance going despite that. While I'm not expecting a full capital-R Romance from short stories like these, this was the closest to it in the collection so far, and I felt Dani played a larger role in the story than most of the other love interests (though Edmund is also a contender!). I'd say this is my favorite in the anthology so far, though there's certainly plenty more to go.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Andrew Doyle: So the Gay Men's Network official response to the Cass review is now live, it is subtitled "Towards a Vision of Post-Gender Gay Rights," and it describes the Cass review as a devastating account of an unprecedented homophobic medical scandal in the NHS and private health sphere. And here to discuss it, I'm joined by Dennis Kavanagh, the lawyer and director of the Gay Men's Network. Welcome Dennis.

So, let's start with your report from the Gay Men's Network. What is your response, in a nutshell, to the Cass review?

Dennis Kavanagh: Our response is basically this. That this is a sad day for the gay rights movement. Cass is a reality check and it's shown us that for decades now, homosexuality has in effect been medicalized at the NHS. You and I've spoken before about the fact that 90% of the kids at the Tavistock were same sex attracted.

Doyle: Which has been confirmed by the Cass review.

Kavanagh: Precisely that. So, we say this. We say this is a shocking indictment of gay politics and of the gay rights movement generally. Particularly in view of the fact that the very people who should have been protecting gay youth, principally Stonewall, weren't just abandoned, didn't just abandon their post, they joined the opposition forces, when they should have been standing up for these kids.

Doyle: And what do you think their response will be now? I know Stonewell put out a kind of unclear statement, sort of saying we accept the findings of the Cass review. But it wasn't that clear, was it?

Kavanagh: They've had two statements. They put out a tweet saying that they accepted the Cass review. Their own supporters then turned on them fairly viciously to express their displeasure with it. They've now released a longer statement in which they're scrabbling around in the Cass review for crumbs of hope, saying, well it's not a blanket ban on puberty blockers because there're still a possibility of a clinical trial, for example.

But Stonewall need to get real on this. This is over now. Dr. Cass has called time on this homophobic medical scandal. The sitting Secretary of State, the shadow Secretary of State for Health have accepted Cass. It's time for Stonewall to do the same, actually show some leadership and some concern for gay youth.

I would make this point if I may, Andrew. That statement from Stonewall, it didn't have the word gay or lesbian in it once. That's a powerful indication there.

Doyle: Okay, well it might be worth just reading out what Stonewall said they said, "Dr. Cass has not called for adolescents to have their right to their Identity or autonomy removed. Nor did Dr. Cass recommend the blanket ban on social transitioning for children of any age. Most significantly, Dr. Cass did not support unilateral 'outing' of trans young people by schools. There are clear gaps between recommendations and practical policy, and we're already hearing early reports of Dr Cass's analysis of - and recommendations about - social transitioning being used to challenge trans people's right to Identity."

But it's interesting as you say, Dennis, they don't mention the key issue here, which is their failure to stand up for gay and lesbian youth.

Kavanagh: Yeah, and what a gloss on the Cass report that is. If you look at what the Cass report actually says that social transitioning, says where this occurs, there should be reference to a clinician almost immediately because it's not a neutral act. You won't find that in the Stonewall response, because Stonewall don't seem to care about concretizing cross-sex ideation, predominantly among homosexual young population.

Doyle: But they have bought into this idea that everyone is born with a gender identity and that that might be misaligned to the body. So, this is a belief system that is now so embedded in Stonewall, isn't it time that Stonewall was just no longer taken seriously?

Kavanagh: I entirely agree. In 2015, Stonewall added the T to the LGB under the leadership of Ruth Hunt, who promised everyone she wasn't going to do that but performed a vault fast. Which is why she's now facing, in the wake of this medical scandal, she's now facing a petition started by the author Simon Edge, which is coming up on, I think, 16,000-odd signatures, a petition to remove her from the House of Lords.

Doyle: I know you say that it's time's up now thanks to Cass, but isn't it going to be tough? And the reason I say that is there are still so many prominent gay and lesbian celebrities and groups and politicians, who are saying that they're standing up for Stonewall, who are standing up for the idea that kids may have a misaligned soul and body. And actually, given the prominence of those people, maybe voices like yours are the minority here.

Kavanagh: Well, that may or may not be the case, but what matters here is not the weight of numbers. What matters here is who is right about safeguarding these children. And if I'm one voice in 100, I don't care, if I'm right. I do think Stonewall are losing purchase in the public sphere, though. I do think politicians are beginning to realize that something has gone very, very seriously wrong here. It is heartening to see a cross-party consensus of serious politicians from the main, the larger parties embracing Cass and saying that a post-Cass NHS should effectively entirely rid itself of this poisonous ideology.

Doyle: And will it be taken up by the politicians? I mean, I know Alicia Kearns was adding an amendment to the criminal justice bill to try and ban what she calls "trans conversion therapy," but actually Cass specifically refers to this, saying that actually, this should not be mistaken, this should not be confused in the way that she's doing. She doesn't name Alicia Kearns, but she says that it is a common confusion.

Kavanagh: Yeah, and we've drawn this to Alicia Kearns's attention. We actually produced a briefing notes at Gay Men's Network on that amendment to the criminal justice bill. We've drawn Dr. Cass's comments to her attention. So far, we've heard absolutely nothing. Miss Kearns seems to think it's fine to speak over and speak for gay men, when gay men are telling her, look there's a problem with this piece of legislation and it has the capacity to harm gay boys.

Doyle: What I don't understand is so many of these people, they all agree that Section 28 was this terrible thing and the idea of the so-called promotion of homosexuality in schools, it should never have happened. And here they are presiding over something which is arguably even worse.

Kavanagh: Yeah, I agree it is an absurd situation and it is Orwellian, frankly, for them to be introducing such homophobic legislation and then telling us that it's a gay conversion ban. As we've discussed before, that is precisely the opposite of what it is. What it is, is state sanctioned conversion by gender and criminal penalties for doctors that don't go along with it. We call upon Alicia Kearns to withdraw this silly homophobic amendment, and we call on the Scottish government to scrap their proposed piece of legislation, which is even worse than the Kearns amendment.

Doyle: Is it time to divide LGB and T?

Kavanagh: Yes. Our interests have been demonstrated now to be entirely contrary to each other. And look, we are different protected characteristics, right. The those who have the gender reassignment characteristic under the Equality Act, good luck to them, and they of course should have rights in law. No one's opposed to that. But this force-teaming, this marriage cannot work, and it's become an abusive relationship.

Doyle: I don't understand because I saw Jeremy Corbyn speak this week, saying that there is no LGB without the T. How can it be the case that gay people who want to organize in their own interests should be connected automatically to the belief in a gender identity, which is a completely separate thing to sexual orientation? Does he not, has he not even talked to people about this, or attempted to understand?

Kavanagh: It's just another straight man telling us how to organize. How dare? How dare he stand up and say, you gays, you can't organize unless you force-team with a bunch of other people that I, a straight man, have chosen for you? Jeremy Corbyn has no right to say that to us. He doesn't understand this issue. He doesn't understand that our interests are sometimes contradictory, as is demonstrated by this global homophobic medical scandal.

Doyle: Now I wanted to ask you about an open letter that has been put together by James Esses, who's a campaigner, and this is a letter which has a number of signatories including yourself, and I should say for complete transparency, including myself. And this is calling on the government to have a full investigation into the impact of gender identity ideology in all aspects of public life. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Kavanagh: Sure, I can tell you I'm one of the three directors of Gay Men's Network, all three of us have signed this and we support James's efforts here. We also call for a public inquiry in our consultation response. We invite ministers to consider their powers under Section One of the 2005 Inquiries Act, which is established to deal with areas of public concern. Well, what more could be of public concern than a medical scandal where the harm is disproportionately visited on defenceless children? If that's not a matter of public concern, I don't know what is. We need to get gender ideology out of the public sphere. We've got an NHS calling, insulting women by calling them uterus-havers. We've got the BBC teaching kids there's 100 genders. We've got the CPS introducing-- or proposing, two-tier prosecution standards in the case of sex by deception, which we've discussed in the past. We got Kemi Badenoch saying, across the floor of the Commons, I was told by my officials, her civil servants, that I shouldn't meet with Keira Bell, and we know that that meeting had a fundamental effect on that minister.

Doyle: That's a detransitioner.

Kavanagh: That's right. Keira Bell, who heroically and courageously brought the case of Bell and Tavistock a judicial review. So, we support James's call for there to be a public inquiry. This ideology has run riot. None of us voted for it. None of us got a say in this. And yet, it seems to have infested all areas of public life. We're sick of it because, as we can see with Cass, this is not an academic debate, right. It's not the Judith Butlers and the gendercrats and, you know, the Stonewall's CEOs at their black-tie dinners who pay the price for this. Who pays the price? Vulnerable kids. Autistic kids. Kids that are looked after. This is not okay. We need to deal with this.

Doyle: And you make the point about it not being democratic. It is in both parties. You know, this is the-- we can't vote this out. There's no way. So, is it likely that a public consultation or investigation will happen?

Kavanagh: Well, we shall see. We're making the case for it, that's all we can do for the time being. James has amassed a very impressive list of signatories from all sides of the House. We've got to get real about this. This is a medical scandal without equal. This was gay conversion 2.0 at the Tavistock. Lives have been ruined by this. Evidence from the Mayo Clinic in America just last week suggests that boys given puberty blockers have testicular atrophy, so the tissue in the testicles is degrading, and an increased cancer risk. That's where "gender" has led us to. There's going to-- heaven forbid, but it does seem likely that we're going to end up with some boy walking around now, probably in America going to end up with cancer in his testicles because of these clowns and what they unleashed on defenceless children.

Doyle: Finally, Dennis, could you tell us where we can read your full response to the Cass review?

Kavanagh: Sure. The full response is available at www.gaymensnetwork.com under Letters and Resources.

Doyle: Dennis Kavanagh, thanks ever so much for joining me.

[rainbowsky]

Hello RBS,

I really love your blog, my daily routine is to check your updates before I go to sleep 😍

I have sent you many anonymous questions about ggdd before and you have answered them diligently.

This is going to be a personal ask - Do you think gay men and straight women make such great friends as shown in American movies?

Hi Anon, thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying my blog! I hope my ramblings don't give you nightmares! 😅

American TV/movie depiction of queer men is overall very offensive. It's awful, fake and totally glosses over the reality of how homophobic even liberal Americans often are.

Yes, straight women and queer men can sometimes make natural allies/friends. Straight men usually make shitty friends to women, because there's almost always going to be a time when he tries to get her into bed. Straight men will often 'befriend' straight women in the hope of converting the relationship to a romantic or sexual one. With gay men, this is a total non-issue. It makes it easier for trust to take root and grow.

Gay men often enjoy friendships with straight women because women are not afraid of emotions, and there's much more freedom to break out of gender role stereotypes with women than with men.

Gay men and straight women also don't have to deal with the typical competitiveness that often exists in same sex friendships, which makes it easier to just relax and enjoy each other's company. Over time they can often develop strong sibling-like bonds that enrich both of their lives.

HOWEVER.

The depiction of gay male/straight female friendships in popular media should not be taken as reality. Those depictions often serve a heteronormative or even homophobic purpose.

It's not that depictions are necessarily always inaccurate, it's just that the depictions that are chosen tend to be very narrow and specific, and tend to perpetuate and reinforce certain stereotypes. The more these specific depictions are presented, the more the audience starts to perceive them as 'typical' when in fact they are not.

Think of all the minority group depictions in media, and how they tend to artificially narrow the public's perception of what that group is like. Muslim terrorists, greedy or comedic Jews, gang-affiliated black people, South Asian cab drivers. All these depictions are bigoted because they perpetuate harmful stereotypes and present them as representative of the group.

In that same sense, yeah, there are gay men who enjoy being 'one of the girls' in a group of women - getting manicures and facials and going shopping. Yeah, there are gay men who enjoy giving fashion advice and being a shoulder to cry on. Yeah, there are gay men who want to get married and have kids. But that by no means is representative of what gay men are typically like, or of what these friendships are typically like.

These depictions present gay men as empty, emasculated, 2-dimensional caricatures that exist only as an accessory to straight women's lives, which reinforces the widespread perception that gay lives are shallow and superficial, and that their needs/interests are subordinate to straight ones.

What does anyone walk away thinking about gay people after watching a depiction of them in mainstream media? That we are just sassy Ken dolls who are there to boost and serve straight women. It's not at all unlike how female characters often only exist as a narrative device to fulfill the story of the straight male protagonist.

All this trash also helps perpetuate the misogynistic, homophobic idea that gay men aren't 'real' men, that they are essentially just hairy women. It helps reinforce heteronormativity by depicting gays as wanting to live out the standard heteronormative fantasies - the house, the two kids, etc.

I've talked a lot about homophobia and gender role BS in the past, so I'll just give you some of those posts.

DD being into skateboarding and motorcycles must mean he’s straight, right?

Feminization of GG in Fan Fiction

Drag, Gender Identity and Queer Culture

Homophobia and oversexualization in the fandom

In general, if it's on mainstream TV you should question it. Any depiction of anyone, not just gay men. It's all written to appeal to and reinforce mainstream social standards, expectations and conceits. It's not there to show you how things really are.

And I feel the need to add - I'm not an expert on gay men and their relationships just because I'm gay. That's kind of the entire point, right? There exists a wide, broad, diverse range of people who have different personalities, values, interests and approaches. Therefore my views are not a representation of anyone other than myself.

[bulldog-butch]

I'm a stealth trans woman. My primary friend group is all cis queers historically, with one person coming out as NB a while ago. We are all trans friendly and progressive. One of them is a cis man who is currently flirting with experimenting with his gender and maybe will be a trans woman. Right now it's just experimenting with women's clothes but I can see the egg cracking lmao... Which has now placed me in a weird situation that I have no idea what to do with, where maybe I should break stealth and come out to him (and only him) if he transitions, so he isn't alone or without guidance? But part of me so deeply wants to stay stealth. I know I don't owe anyone my private medical information or anything, and I can still be 10/10 supportive as a "cis ally"... I dunno. I really just don't know. Leaving aside that I will be treated differently for being trans- not even in explicitly transphobic ways. It's just that even among allies there's generally two categories, Woman and Trans Woman, and compared to years of being Woman to them I WILL notice when it begins to be Trans Woman-, I also just don't think it is a breach of trust to have secrets, though I can imagine people will be hurt because I HAVE been keeping secrets and the little lies over the years (editing stories about my childhood, referring to my HRT as birth control to control my periods, painting all my dating history as me having been a woman, glossing over the years I spent as a 'gay man' and pretending I only became LGBT when I began dating my current lesbian partner, etc). But there's also the angle of kind of....if he transitions, leaving her without me at her side as a potential trans sister you know? Someone who can help her circumvent so much of the bs and fuckery. What do you think?

that is quite the dilemma my friend. i’m amazed that you’ve managed to stay stealth for so long with a group you’re that close with (although i suppose i don’t know exactly how close you are). i think certainly you would be doing a favor for your friend if you could let him/her know so that he could have support from someone who know what it’s like to go through that process. but i definitely think you should only do it if you’re prepared for any backlash you may get from not being out this whole time. whatever happens i wish you luck and hope it doesn’t cause you too much distress!

[larrikin-is-a-himbo]

Thoughts on rewatch of the Batman 2022

"Ave Maria" faintly playing in the background in the beginning. Hadn't noticed that before.

Gotta look fabulous before going to beat the life out of criminals.

This movie does a perfect job of separating Batman and Bruce Wayne. How different those two people are, despite being the same person.

Another aspect I love is that this is the very beginning stages of Batman's journey. He's not the "perfect, no mistakes, flawless detective work" Batman that most movies portray. He's learning, making mistakes, still needs to improve his skills and craft. And since it's the first years and he hasn't been established as an asset to the Gotham PD yet, the officers, rightfully so, *do not* like him which makes a lot of sense than letting him run amok. (Not that that gets any better with time but you feel the difference in how they take Batman's presence.)

"The city's eating itself. Maybe it's beyond saving. But I have to try." SEE that is how you characterise Bruce, hope and endurance in the face of despair.

The narrative parallel between the death of the mayor and his son finding the body, and young Bruce watching his parents being murdered. Oh, it's so good, I'm gonna eat my hand.

Bruce saying he doesn't care what happens to his family's business and all the work they've done, equating his worth to what he does as a vigilante just goes to show how much the trauma and mental anguish has taken over his life, and now the severe depression, suicidal tendencies, even subconsciously just looking for an excuse to not live hits too close to home.

Robert Pattinson's back 😳 (I am a whore, leave me alone)

Batman fucking up the twins will never not be funny.

You've gotta be honest, our edgelord's entrance into Penguin's lair is nothing short of iconic.

I love this version of Penguin so much, he's the right amount of menacing and goofy.

THE FIRST MEETING OF BATCAT. Love-at-first-sight if I've ever seen it.

I fucking LOVE seeing Catwoman in action.

If I don't meet my S/O with us having a 1v1 and them manhandling me, what even is the point of it all.

Selina and Bruce's socio-economic background play such a big role in their reasons and aspirations to be heroes (or vigilantes). Glad this movie doesn't gloss over that.

Batsy is such a bastard in his early days. Selina should deck him.

He has so much to learn and grow, not just as Batman, but as a person. Yes, this is about him sending Selina as a spy.

Bruce Wayne looking like he's having the worst time of his life when he's in public. I love this socially repulsive man with all my heart.

Bruce seeing his child self in the mayor's son, but now with new responsibility of solving this mystery, just wow. A lot of movies, at least the live-action ones, tend to not prioritise portraying Bruce's childhood or the trauma he experienced with the gruesome murder of his parents, because at his core that's what led him down this path, it's just as, if not more, important, to him being the saviour, the knight of Gotham.

Him getting jealous thinking that's Selina with Falcone. Somebody's in love.

Riddler and his stupid love letters. Get a life.

Batman, you idiot, why would you stand with your face right infront for the bomb.

The police station scene is so funny. Poor Jim is losing it. "Great, now I got you on assaulting an officer." "You got me on assaulting three." Bad bitch energy.

"We gotta get you out of here buddy." "🥺" Gay behaviour.

OOOOOH. THE ESCAPE SCENE. Can't wait to see Batsy hit the ground and eat shit. THERE IT IS.

The fucking chase scene. Hell yeah. Emo Batman has some of the best entrances and chases in this movie. It's actually fun to watch and isn't cringe. What a refreshing change.

"Good cop, batshit cop." Jim shoving the pictures of the mutilated face into Penguin's face. I can't breathe.

Jim and Bats interrogating Penguin. Penguin roasting the fuck out of them. "No habla espanol, fellas?" "Shut up!" FUCKING HILARIOUS. Them leaving his tied up, and him waddling while cursing. THAT'S how you do comedy without breaking the tone of the movie, especially for dark superhero movies.

I know Alfred doesn't die but godsdammit I hate seeing him hurt.

Bruce lashing out because he feels betrayed but also reeling from getting flashbacks to his father's death while seeing Alfred in that bed, my boy was in the worst emotional state. I forgive him for being a little bitch to his dad (Alfred).

The heart to heart between Bruce and Alfred is such a tender and love-full moment. I needed that :,)

Selina should have just killed Kenzie before Bats came around. I support women's rights, but more importantly I support women's right to murder.

Carmine Falcone is such a sleazebag character. He gives me the creeps.

I love Jim Gordon. No particular scene inspired that statement, I just love him.

THE SECOND BEST HALLWAY FIGHT SCENE IN THE WORLD. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. I want it injected in my veins.

When Falcone is arrested and Penguin speaks against Carmine, I love that scene because it's a subtle indication to the end of the movie, where we see Penguin will now take over the criminal underworld of Gotham. The mighty Falcon has been taken down, the city is drowned. What better opportunity for a flightless bird to takeover?

Riddler with his dumb ass jokes and reddit lives. What a clown. He's dangerous but I can't take him seriously.

Batman appears and he just [starts screaming] peak teenage boy behaviour. Cringe lord. Be better.

Starting the movie with "I am darkness", contemplating if Gotham can even be saved, and ending it with Batman lighting the way, leading Gotham out of the destruction. GODS. Him coming to the realisation that Gotham, and by extension himself, need hope and change, not clinging to the past, not vengeance. That is so poetic.

In regards to BatCat, the last meeting really signifies their love story. He loves her, he truly does, and maybe in this version of the story they end up together despite all the, but Gotham will always be his priority. She wants him to live, not just exist, but live, but Bruce gave up on that idea long ago.

"The Bat and the Cat, its got a nice ring to it. [Pause] Who am I kidding? You're already spoken for." OK, Mr. Matt Reeves, why don't you just shoot me between the eyes?

[ilovedthestars]

thoughts on "Significant Other" and ambiguous relationships in fiction (they're great)

Some thoughts I was having in the tags on that elphaba post that got a little too long for tags, and then accidentally turned into basically a whole essay. Oops. Don't let the length fool you into thinking this won't be mostly a stream of consciousness ramble of my feelings.

One of my favorite types of relationship in media is two characters that love each other, and are clearly incredibly significant in each others' lives, but the type of love or relationship they're in is never specified. I feel like this about a lot of non-canon queer ships, actually, and there are times when I personally am very happy with those relationships remaining in the nebulous realm of non-canon, because becoming "canon" means becoming romantic. And one of the things that I've started to notice as I question more and more whether I might be somewhere on the aro (and/or ace) spectrum is that I vibe with this sort of undefined relationship a lot more than I vibe with a lot of fictional depictions of romance--and when I vibe with romance, it's because the romance also includes this feeling of significance, like the characters are actually deeply important to each others' lives.

Which brings me around to the other thought I had, because it occurred to me that using "significant other" as a term for "romantic partner" is...honestly very limited, and kind of makes me sad. Here's this phrase that could mean "person who is really important in my life," no matter what that relationship looks like. But it's become pretty much synonymous with romance. Absolutely no shade to anyone who uses it for their partner--it's sweet, and gender neutral, and it has a nice ambiguity about how serious or official the relationship is. But I think there could be even more room for ambiguity about what kind of relationship it refers to, including relationships that wouldn't necessarily be defined as "romantic" by the people involved. I'm not saying we should, or could, change the way we use it, but I just had a moment when I looked at the phrase "significant other" and thought "why do those words have to mean 'romantic partner'?" and the answer is, of course, amatonormativity. Sigh.

Anyway, to go back to relationships in media, I've noticed this pattern in stories that I identify with (although that might be too strong a word, but stories that I enjoy and have feelings about). I love the ambiguity of a "significant other" relationship in a less traditional sense of the phrase, especially as I'm still questioning where my own feelings and attractions fall. There's room for the relationship to be interpreted as romantic, but there's also room for platonic, or queerplatonic, or found family interpretations of those relationships, and there's also space for using none of those labels and simply letting it be love, without any extra boxes.

However, I've also noticed that often a lot of fans insist these kinds of relationships are romantic in a way that doesn't leave room for other interpretations. And at least in the online spaces I frequent, I see this especially with same-gender or otherwise not-straight-if-it-was-romantic pairings. And it makes me very sad, and often frustrated, when I see that ambiguity glossed over with the idea that significance must equal romance.

Look, there is no easy answer here. There is not enough explicit representation of queer relationships in media. There's also basically no explicit aro and/or ace representation in media, at least in mainstream media. So sometimes all we have are those characters who could be either, or both, or neither. And of course the people who are starving for representation of gay people in love want to claim those characters as their own. And of course the people who are starving for a-spec representation want to claim those characters as their own. And the former have louder voices, most of the time. And sometimes if you're starving for stories like yours, then it feels like other interpretations are trying to take that away.

I get it. I really get it. But also, this isn't a zero-sum game. There doesn't have to be a right answer. I think there's something really special about ambiguity, because it means that everyone can take what they want from it. People who want to see queer love, people who want to see intimate close friendship, people who want to see aros in a QPR, and people like me who are most comfortable outside of all the boxes can all see themselves reflected. And we absolutely need more representation of all kinds of relationships, so that people who want to see them explicitly spelled out on-screen or on-page don't have to make do with hints and possibilities. I want that to happen, and I think it's getting better, and will continue to. In the meantime, though, I wish there was less fighting over the scraps. "They're important to each other" can mean so many different things, and all of them can be true at once.

[papirouge]

"l also think they went hard on her bc she's very beautiful and nothing angers conservative men more than attractive liberal women lmao"

You are onto something here. I remember once in my country there was this polemic because a right wing politician said in a show he hosted that a female leftist politician had stated that pedophilia "had to be reinstated", which turned out to be false. This sparked a conversation in which a member of his political party (and also ex co-host of the show) also spoke up. He talked about how many middle aged men from the right would obssess over the young women from the left. He said that this guy was like this; he would say a lot of outrageous things about pretty leftist women just so they would go to his show and be near him. He also said even right wing women though he was too much and too sexist and pervy.

He also expanded on the right wing's men obsesion with young leftist women, saying how many of their conversations would focus on these women physical appareance. He also commented that male right wingers also had this delusion/fantasy where they believe they can 'save' these women from the left with their masculinity and rationality, and they compare themselves to the 'effeminate, somewhat homosexual" men from the left, believing themselves to be superior to these 'soyboys'.

Funnily enough, this same dude who would antagonize the young pretty women from the left just so they would pay attention to him, also tweeted something like "teen girl first anal", apparently confusing Twitter with the search engine. Once he also told a reporter he was attracted to her since she was 12 years old. He was 19 when she was 12.

Conservatives? Being hypocrite sex freaks? Color me shocked ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

This also confirms my theory that conservatives are ultimately only attracted by liberal women to have the satisfaction of taming/humbling them. Such gratification is impossible when they date doormat conservative pickmes. Look at all the women fawning at Musk or Andrew Tate... they aren't those they pick to date or breed with.

This obsession with tranny groomers and gay pedo of conservatives is peak projection. It's insane how the straight up pedo narrative of some conservative figures is glossed over, but someone being gay or with a gender identity is enough for them to suspects them of being a predator... I always said conservatives didn't care about pedophilia unless it was to dunk on liberals or "progressive" symbols (Epstein, Balenciaga, etc). They won't peep a word about conservatives caught with teens if not defend them (isn't Russell Brand -although not conservative got into conservatives good favor ever since he got vocal against the c0vid vaccîne- is accused of dating/sexually abusing a minor? and yet they're defending him like there's no tomorrow). Lately there's a twitter account who got suspended for accusing Musk of being a pedo (to get back at him after he accused a marine dude of being one when he refused his held when rescuing kids lost in a cave in Asia). I really think there's something to dig with him about it.... I'm still not over how fast Musk simps shrugged off his twitter side account where he role played as his own child and made sexual tweet.... His laptop should be investigated. Unfortunately the Musk savior syndrome is so strong, I think he could be caught raping a child people would still defend him, so.....

Sexual offenders & pedophiles are in the majority cis straight male so their obsessions to paint LGBT as these predatory groomers is lowkey insane. I've always said that since rape and sexual abuse stats disproportionately incriminate MEN they are desperate to find way of other'ing the issue. They'll either point fingers at non White men (so ugh, still men) or promote the idea that these stats are over amplified by false rape allegations 🤡

Aren't most father of teen moms grown adults? But suuuure, we should be focused on trans people in schools... controversial opinion but a drag doing a lecture in school is less concerning than grown men impregnating young girls...

I think the obsession with AOC of many conservatives also reeks from the fact they lowkey want to bang her.

[drst]

Nate Shelley should DIAF and suffer forever

I remember thinking when S2 of "Ted Lasso" ended that they were definitely going to try to do some sort of redemption arc with Nate as a key part of S3, and also dreading it because I doubted they were going to pull it off successfully. I wanted to be wrong, because I really hated Jaime during S1 and they managed to get him through a good redemption arc and turn him around. But Nate's actions were much more repulsive than even the worst of Jaime's behavior in S1, and I got the feeling the writers weren't going to understand Nate's arc was going to have to account for that.

What I didn't expect was the show to just chuck all of Nate's character development through S2 out, pretend he had a personality transplant, and expect us to just forget. I have no idea why the writing tanked so hard on this but it did.

Nathan Shelley is a sexist and a bully. He always was a bully. The very first thing we see Nate do? He runs across the pitch to scream at Ted and Beard for being on the grass. Nate can't yell at anyone who actually works for the team, but he sees an opportunity to yell at people who aren't part of the team and he leaps at it, almost literally. (Should he be telling unknown people not to be on the grass? Yeah. He doesn't tell, he runs and screams.) It's played for laughs, of course, that the guys he thought he could chastise without repercussions are his new bosses. But we see this pattern with Nate over and over. As soon as he feels like he's in a superior position over anyone, he bullies them.

The whistle he gets at the end of S1 when he gets promoted? Ted has to take it away. I noticed when I was rewatching, Nate keeps blowing the whistle indoors. He's so addicted to having that power, Ted has to take his whistle away and give him one that doesn't work to stop him from doing it inside.

Obviously right off the bat in S2 he starts bullying Will, which just gets progressively worse during the season. He publicly bullies Colin too, and only apologizes because Beard makes him do it. It's a credit to the acting that we can feel how much Nate is seething through the apology and the scene with the jersey afterward, but Nate, the character, is enraged that he's been made to apologize.

Nate's also a sexist asshole. He makes a number of comments about women that are gross as hell during S1. The episode where he's promoted to being a coach, when at first he thinks he's being fired, he turns to Rebecca and calls her a "harpy." The OWNER of the club, he picks a specifically gendered insult to throw at her in his rage. And of course, he assaults Keeley. I know a lot of people don't want to call it an assault, but he knows full well Keeley is not interested in him, that she's in a relationship with Roy, that she's not coming on to him and is in fact going out of her way to do him a personal favor, and he forces her into a kiss anyway. The magnitude of that fuck up was really glossed over on the show and, unfortunately, by quite a few of the fans. Keeley being hot, or physically close to Nate in the scene, or open about sex and her sexuality, doesn't make it okay for a guy who knows 100% she's not interested or available to force sexual contact on her.

There's more evidence of Nate's sexism too. When he gives the speech before the Everton match, he specifically uses gendered insults on Colin and Issac, but not on Sam or Dani. He says Issac has been playing like a "big dumb pussy" and talks about Colin waxing his pubic hair (something associated with women and gay men, ironic given what we later learn about Colin). And again, this is played for laughs at the time. Colin and Issac were bullying Nate pretty badly (which is terrible! Not making excuses for that) at the beginning so we understand why Nate has an extra animus against the two of them. But he doesn't use gendered insults when he has a go at Dani or Sam, or especially Roy.

His speech to Roy actually made me think the show had a better handle on Nate than it turned out to have, because while he insults Roy, he adds the bit about "I'm worried what it's going to do to you if you keep it all to yourself." It made it seem like Nate does care, at least about some of these guys, which is important to being a good coach. But that care doesn't really make another appearance, and by S2 he's decided all the players are idiots and anything that goes wrong is their fault, or Ted's fault for not listening to Nate.

Bullies are always very aware of the heirarchy and where they are in it. They always know who not to piss off and who they can attack freely. Nate is like that from Day 1. And like most bullies, Nate cannot stand to be made fun of, and he cannot ever admit to a mistake. They run with the whole "wunderkind/wonder kid" thing and he repeatedly denies that he misspoke, because his ego can't take it.

What frustrates me is the show seems like they set a lot of this up on purpose. S1 Issac and Colin don't stop bullying Nate until Roy (at Ted's urging) headbutts Colin and orders them to stop. The bullies continue bullying until someone in power steps in and makes them stop. Nate bullies Colin in front of the whole team (Nate's a coach by then), but Beard (higher in the ranks than Nate, who also has the "I haven't told Ted yet" card) orders him to apologize, which he does grudgingly. Then he takes the fury he's feeling out on the person who can't fight back, Will.

The thing is, there is NO WAY ON EARTH Nate's bullying behavior stopped just because he became a head coach. There's no way his ego suddenly became capable of tolerating people saying negative things about him, especially on social media. Put a bully into a position of power over more people, they get worse, not better. I know they retconned this whole "oh Nate's a certified genius!" thing in there, but there is no way Nate, who was obsessively scrolling Twitter in S2, just got over that in S3, when he was running a whole team, which probably lost some matches, when presumably the fans blamed him as the head coach. But we never see that happen. There's no way he had an entire team and staff under him and he treated everyone nicely. This isn't how actual bullies work, especially when they are in an environment where the person in power above them is encouraging the bullying, which is exactly the kind of guy Rupert is.

We see a bit of Nate being a dick to Ted in S3, but no indication that he's struggling with managing the team or the coaches. All of that power-hungry, ego-obsessed behavior just kind of goes poof. It makes no sense. And somehow I'm supposed to not only care but be happy with all the time wasted on this bullying, sexist asshole dating… the woman from S1 who correctly rejected his attempt to pressure her into giving him his number?

And of course, Nate's ultimate sin, betraying Ted's personal medical information to the press, just sits there. Unaddressed. Never adequately dealt with. Trent pays more of a price for what Nate did than Nate himself does. I guess we maybe were supposed to infer that Nate regretted it? But we're never told it in any meaningful way. We're never shown that Nate grasps that what he did crossed a line from personal insult to risking the team's well being, as well as exposing Ted's private information to the public in a way that is wildly unethical and terrible behavior for a SPORTS TEAM COACH who has to manage personal information about other people all the time. They just handwave it as "Ted forgave him so it's okay."

Beard seems to be the only one who grasps the magnitude of it, and then Ted shames him into forgiving Nate near the end - and for no real reason. Nate contributes absolutely nothing to the team's overall status and success by being there at the end. The play Jaime uses, which Nate came up with, was from S1, so Ted would've used it even if Nate hadn't been on the sidelines. Having Nate in the clubhouse again helps nobody, makes zero difference to the team. My assumption is that Apple was already pressing to try for a spin off and they needed to somehow bring Nate back to Richmond.

Nate's dad also has a total personality transplant along the way here too, so it's a larger problem that makes me think they had something else in mind for how Nate's arc in S3 was going to go that had to get rewritten, but it's one of several pieces of S3 that were really badly done. Maybe if S1 hadn't been so well written it wouldn't stand out how uneven S3 was, but here we are.

Anyway, no redemption for Nate Shelley, sexist bullying asshole. May he die violently in a fire and burn forever.

[tiktaalic]

i have a question for u (dabb expert) i didn’t watch s15 bc i watched moriah live and jack dying made me so like. real life upset. then the finale happened and it seemed not worth it to watch the season just for the terrible finale. i still haven’t watched the final season at ALL. idk i guess my question is do you think the grief and the divorce arc is satisfying? so much time has passed i don’t think ill be real life bummed anymore but idk i might be if jacks death is like glossed over or treated shallowly yk? i get this is completely subjective im just curious ab ur thoughts

well! well. um. no. prior to getting through 13-15 i thought divorce was something that happened solidly in the middle of things. really threw me when they did a divorce speedrun in s15. i was like. but this is the season of gay love confession. i enjoyed season 15. also i am coming at this with the context that i have never watched unity. not because ithink its bad i think its a really intersting episode and im sure id have tons to sayabout it. but. its the only episode of supernatural i havent watched because of the way my live watching/rewatch was structured and so im keeping it stored away so that i have New Supernatural i can watch at any time if i want to. um. it's not really dealt with All That Much in my memory. like 15.01 cas is clearly upset and then there's the break up where jack is mentioned and there's a scene where dean walks outside in the dark and starts sobbing about his mom being dead before straightening up and walking back inside to Deal With Things. actually idk if thats s15. its somewhere. my point is. theres a reason people are always like Man this would be so good if it was good about jack and dean. because. if there was any sort of continuous narrative thread instead of a flip switch every few episodes of "not evil anymore i want to love my son" "evil again i think he should be killed" . it WOULD be so good. i can see the wires behind the episodes so i find it compelling. i would not. necessarily. call whats in the show. good. or satisfying. but. there is last holiday which makes me crazzzzzzzy. what love does then love does now. what love does then love does now. what LOVE! does then. love. does now. and then ofc theres the finale where everyone is very chill about the fact that jack disappears forever to be god. also s15 once he's back they're like we need to turn jack into a bomb. and again. everyone acts very chill about the fact they're gonna blow him up. so .

[munsons-melody]

steve isn’t coded queer, but it’s undeniable that there are signifiers of eddie being queer, the biggest one being the bandana in his back pocket. hanky code was used in the 70s and 80s to signify certain queer sexual proclivities. i think it’s unlikely that this detail would have missed by a costuming team that specializes in 80s attire, especially based on the research they put into eddie specifically because he was part of a very specific subculture. i think people are entitled to believing what they want about his character, but the default for a character should never be heterosexual. just because a character hasn’t explicitly shown interest in the same sex or uttered the words “i’m gay” doesn’t mean they should be assumed to be straight. all of this to say is that i think joseph quinn has electric chemistry with all of his costars, and people can draw their own conclusions based on what they notice or enjoy. also, attraction to a woman doesn’t mean you can’t also be attracted to men, bisexuality exists. there’s something to be said about how rude it is of nancy to be leading steve on anyways, but that’s a separate thing.

hi! thanks for your input! like i’ve said in my last posts, everyone is entitled to believe what they want to believe about characters, ships, and their sexualities, and, like i said, I personally do not believe steddie is real

i also do not believe steve is bisexual or gay (like I’ve said) due to the heavy amount of what was in the show of him, being in love with women, being a “womanizer”, always flirting with women, being in love with nancy, etc. 

but when it comes to eddie, the bandana thing is valid, however in his novel Flight of Icarus (that is canon) he does sleep with a woman- so there is the potential he could be bisexual, and I’m not saying that’s not real- but also saying that someone watching the show who doesn’t know about the fashion choice of a bandanna and what it symbolizes in the 70s and 80s would gloss over that

we didn’t get much screen time with eddie, bottom line is that the only facts about a sexuality that we know about come from his book when he does sleep with a woman which means he can either be straight or bisexual but again, we don’t know for sure

when it comes to my last few posts, i’m mostly talking about the fact that some people are pushing for the idea that canonically steven and eddie are in love, they’re both gay, and they’re dating each other

and like you said, joseph quinn has a lot of chemistry with his co-stars with the little screen time that eddie had, however, people shouldn’t be basing the characters feelings for each other based off what a character does with their very little screen time, and in this case, eddie had like one or two short conversations with steve about real life that wasn’t about the upside down- when he was telling him to get nancy back, and when they were discussing going to the war zone -> so in this case people shouldn’t be assuming that eddie is in love with steve or his sexuality is anything more than straight or possibly bi, just because joseph quinn himself had great chemistry with joe keery 

[tetsunabouquet]

God, I just read a second post about sensitivity readers (this time fairy tales, obviously the first ne being Roald Dahl), and I am already tired of their existence. Can we leave older authors and cultures' their stories alone? Roald Dahl literally didn't wanted his stories to be edited by publishers, and fairy tales are centuries old. Besides, the talk about inclusivity falls flat when you're talking about fairy tales. Where are gay couples in fairy tales supposed to exist, considering that in the times these fairy tales were written you could get locked up for life or even killed for it. What else are you going to add from modern day society to fairy tales? Human rights? (funny how sensitivity readers don't bother with adressing the lack of human rights women had at the time in fairy tales, but blame it on a lack of agency from the heroines. Which gets me to the rampant victim-shaming of these sensititvity readers). It's very clear these sensitivity writers don't even get the POINT of these fairy tales to begin with, so how can they condemn fairy tales when the moral of the story clearly eluded them? Take their criticism towards Cinderella, for instance. The emphasis of transforming into a beautiful princess is deemed as problematic, as well as her falling for the prince on first sight. Cinderella, is a VICTIM OF ABUSE, in a time where women literally couldn't have their own assets or properties and she's dressed in filthy rags compared to everyone around her. ANY victim of childhood abuse wanting to have a better life for themselves and things like nice clothes without holes after being so horribly neglected should NEVER be shamed for it. If there is anything that is problematic, it's the sensititvity readers victim-shaming Cinderella.

The prince just happened to be handsome and kind too, because guess what, fairy tales are supposed to give hope and install morals in young kids. A handsome, rich dude that helps you escape your abusive childhood was literally THE dream of any real girl put into Cinderella's position at the time, it was their fantasy to keep them going. And it taught them morals too, because Cinderella received help because she was a kind-hearted, good girl who didn't allowed her terrible life to shape her into a terrible human being. Not because she was pretty. There are still childhood abuse victims who depending on their childhood relate to what Cinderella went through, and had similar escapist fantasies to her fairy tale. Are these girls problematic too? Get out of here. Don't even get me started on the lack of racial inclusivity. DUH, fairy tales were mostly written in the Old World, these are homogeneous countries that in these historical times seldomly had any person of a different race in their country, several writers probably never even saw a person of another race before! Why advocate rewriting history for crying out loud?! There is a lack of diversity, because it reflects the ACTUAL historical time period. Also intersting, how this article solely talks about the lack of diversity in European fairy tales, and not fairy tales that became more popular across the globe in recent years from non-European cultures like Princess Kaguya (which also lacks racial diversity. Funny how none of them is crying about the Japanese). If they want fairy tales to be fitting in with the times, how about people wrote new fairy tales, or their own reimagenings instead of bashing on centuries old stories. If they think kids could get the wrong ideas from it, put a disclaimer in the book saying this story takes place centuries ago and does not reflect current society if that is SO important to you. Also, how about uplifting more non-European fairy tales? They lack diversity as well but it would add more variety to the popular fairy tale catalogue. I'm not even going to go deeply into some of the points they raised, like the emphasis on beauty when they literally gloss over Cinderella's pure heart themselves or the stupidity of saying beautiful people are priviliged to a happy ending when most of the time at least half the couple was priviliged because you know, they are a prince/princess and not because they are good looking? Sure, Sleeping Beauty and her Prince are priviliged because of their looks, not their wealth and status... Or the 'ageism' issue when many of the villains aren't just old, but they are step-parents, evil mother in laws, etc. Because evil stepmoms and evil mother in laws apparantly aren't a real thing, huh? (I suggest them to go to Reddit and read some crazy, entitled MIL stories, they do exist. Same goes for people like stepmoms who give zero shit about their stepkids, I could direct you to my dad's wife for that one).

[anthraxplus]

ok whatever im gonna ramble about that stupid disco elysium take

what shocks me, truly, is that all these wholesome witchcore uwu beans should really... like what DE discusses. what i got from the game was a story about change, growth, choosing to be better even when it's hard. it's a game about discovering (or rediscovering) the cruelty of the world around you and choosing to act in opposition to it. it's a game about how our past doesn't have to dictate our future. it's a game about the world that is possible if we believe in it and act on those beliefs. all these narrative foci would be right at home in some wholesome story about witches, but the difference is that the wholesome story jumps straight to the conclusion - DE doesn't. in DE, you have to do the work.

this, i think, is what gets the wholesome-brained to shut down. they love the witchcore stuff because it's pure escapism. i can't really fault people for wanting to get away from the grim reality we find ourselves in, but too much escapism gets you to a point where you forget some critical points about our world. the escapism doesn't change anything about the world - it keeps getting worse as you distract yourself. eventually it might get to be so bad that you can stand it less and less, and you try to escape more and more. before you know it, you're looking at the world through the lens of what you escaped to, and you become upset when it isn't (and can't be) as tidy. this is how we get people with extremely rigid morals obsessed with purity/wholesomeness.

oddly enough, this is basically what happened to harry. he couldn't handle what he was dealing with and fell headfirst into addiction to escape his pain. but every time he sobered up, he would have to face reality yet again. it got to be too much and he drank himself into nearly total oblivion. this didn't fix anything, though, as he still had to face reality but with none of his previous knowledge. this is why he can react with shock and horror to things people tell him are a part of daily life. like, "sorry that this is the first you're hearing about this, but we've been dealing with it every day of our lives."

and, yknow, this probably wont be news to anyone who's reading this, but DE is one of many victims of a sanitization that all RPGs with sizeable reach end up going through. the actual story, the actual content, is glossed over for the possibility of using it as a loose AU framing/projection for your own thoughts. it's best exemplified by all the fanart that pushes the focus as being "funny game where the two main characters are gay 😳" and stopping there. or worse yet, they view the game as a delivery system for funny jokes and other stuff on the side. it's almost a conscious refusal to listen to what the game is talking about. this, too, is escapism. the thing from which the audience member is escaping is a serious exploration of serious topics. that isn't as fun as saying "i want to have fuck with you." that isn't as fun as using harry and kim as dolls you push together saying "now kiss." that isn't as fun as going around screaming about the end of the world to everyone after you pop back three different pills.

ultimately, i just think it's interesting how the refusal to engage with DE on its own terms is itself similar to the core issue harry faces. it's really a testament to the greatness of the writing, similar to how the changes ZA/UM has gone through are echoes of discussions the game had. it sucks that we see these parallels with stupid bullshit though, as opposed to, like, the revolutionary politics.

side note: i'd almost be interested in this hypothetical wholesome witchcore DE-style game if the scope expanded beyond that and the wholesome nature turned out to be something only the upper class gets to live with, and our wholesome witch has to grapple with the fact that her comfortable living is only possible due to unspeakable amounts of exploitation and abuse of lower classes. they'd never make that game, though. but a girl can dream.