#who really wanted to know how to better approach interactions with us the queer and trans people they work with & consider friends

[rinielelrandir]

Love when the queer employee resource group I'm in at work puts forth the effort to run an awareness & education event during Pride month, schedules it to be part of an already occurring employee appreciation event do everyone has ample opportunity to participate easily even though it means we're doing more education than we are enjoying the event, and then when the head of our site sends out his "thank you" email for the event he takes the time to thank the folks who ran the primary employee appreciation event and instead of specifically recognizing the queer ERG he's like "thanks to all the ERGs and their members for being active & creating awareness! I support all of them!" Oh yeah, real supportive there, bud. Not highlighting the group who ran the actual queer education event DURING PRIDE MONTH.

[ultimate-shipper-trash-blog]

The Epilogue

It starts off on a simple hot sunny day at the lake.

The kids are giggling and splashing water in each other's faces.

Dustin and Steve are off to the side getting the sandwiches ready. Steve is watching Eddie flip the boys into the water.

"I'm so glad we're all like this together. I never thought I'd even get you an Eddie into the same room."

"Well he's really changed a lot. Definitely since we were kids. I like being his friend, I think we're better for it." He finishes wrapping up the sandwich he's working on and ignores Dustin's eyes piercing into his skull. Behind him he hears another splash and some screaming.

"What."

"I didn't know you used to be friends."

"Friends? It's been a long time since I've been regarded as one of those."

"Be for real I didn't know you and Eddie used to hang out."

"Yeah we used to hang out all the time." Steve looks off into the distance wistfully.

"So what happened?"

"Well, we grew up. I grew up and Eddie grew up and we both grew into different people and Eddie didn't like how different we ended up being. It happens all the time. We didn't have monsters to bond us like you guys."

"Well that sucks, maybe you guys will reconnect as strong as you used to be."

Steve rustles Dustin's hair much to his complaint.

"We'll be fine champ, we're doing well now aren't we?"

"Yeah Stevie we are." They both spin around at the sound of Eddie's voice. He's giving them a confused look. Squinting his eyes at Steve like he doesn't know how to feel.

---

A long time ago

"Do you want to be friends?"

"Why?"

"I think you're cool."

"No you don't you just think I'm cool cause I'm in 4th grade and you're only in the baby 3rd grade class."

"Am not!"

"You are!"

"UGH...I'm Steve by the way."

"Eddie."

Middle school

"Steve there's something wrong with me."

"Don't be ridiculous Eddie, whatever it is we'll fix it."

"This can't be fixed."

"Dude just spit it out I won't get mad!"

"Ok...I have a crush...on a boy."

Eddie's eyes are welling up with tears.

"Hey it's ok Eds." Steve walks closer to him, slowly, like approaching a wounded animal.

"I won't judge you."

"Really?"

"Yeah! So what if you like boys I'll kick anyone's ass who says anything bad. You're still my best friend that's never going to change." He wraps Eddie up in the tightest hug he can muster.

"I love you Steve."

"I love you too Eds."

Before high school

"I just don't know why you're being like this!"

"What Steve? You can't believe I'm mad at you for blowing me off for your other friends?!"

"I wasn't blowing you off! I had basketball practice! Tommy's mom just drove me home dude it's not as crazy as you think it is."

"Oh really?!"

"Yeah! If anything you're being crazy!"

"Oh! If that's how it's gonna be then we don't need to be friends anymore."

Eddie's stomps off. So angry he doesn't hear Steve calling back out to him. The next time they interact, Tommy is pushing Eddie into a locker.

When Steve called Jonathan Byers a queer he remembers the promise he made to Eddie and promptly throws up afterwards.

When Robin comes out to Steve on the bathroom floor he thinks he has a second chance to prove himself. When she ends up being better than he imagines he is so thankful.

God he misses Eddie.

---

"Me and Stevie boy can pack up the car don't worry munchkins."

The two try to pick everything up but Eddie gets progressively angrier by the second. Steve is trying to figure out why he has personal beef with a cooler.

When they reach the car Eddie tries to shove everything in the trunk but it all falls apart.

"What's wrong."

"Me? Nothing, why?" he hastily folds the towels again, shoving them back in.

"Well...you're all huffy."

He spins around, his face getting closer, red with anger.

"You wanna know what my problem is?! I can't believe you told him that like I was the one to break things off, like you ever missed me, like you never hated me!"

"That's ridiculous! I've never hated you! You hated me!"

"No! You're the one who changed. You made the final decision!"

"Yeah because you pushed me away."

"You didn't fight me on it."

"I fought you everyday. Everyday I thought of you. Everyday with the name calling and the lockers, I was trying to get your attention."

"You think I wasn't? You think I stand on tables for fun?!"

"...it's all been a misunderstanding?"

The two stare at each other not even daring to blink.

"We wasted so much time, we could fix that, that is if you still want me"

"I never went a day without thinking of you."

he gets shy, his face darker than his sunburn.

"I know you've changed, I've dealt with that but a part of me still thinks you hate me. For what I am. What you'll hold against me. I don't know if I can handle being friends with you with that fear in my heart."

"I'd never. Ever. Do anything. Besides," Steve flicks his hair back. "Birds of a feather and all that." The blush on his cheeks is high and getting darker by the second.

"The what?"

"I'm uh kind of bisexual."

"Kind of?"

"Definitely. Definitely bisexual."

"Oh."

"Right um...so you won't have any problems from me. I hope that won't be a problem for you."

"No! Never! I'm just...surprised."

"Yeah you would be," Steve grumbles.

"What?"

"Nothing!"

----

Steve is sleeping in his bed when he feels something wrong. His eyes shoot open and he spots a figure standing over his body.

"Jesus Christ!" He shoots out of bed and is ready to grab his weapon when he registers who's in front of him.

"Eddie?" He says softly. "What're you doing here? You had a gig tonight, how did you get in my house? Why are you in my room-"

"Steve." Eddie's face is golden. The moon is reflecting into his eyes, shining so bright. He looks so happy, like he's going to cry. His smile is so bright.

"Steve. I got it."

"You go it?"

"The record deal. I got it."

Steve runs at him and Eddie catches him. Of course he did. He always will.

"Oh my god oh my god," he mutters into his shoulder. Eddie's arms are squeezing his waist tighter. "I'm so proud of you oh my god."

"Steve. I have to tell you something, that's what I came here to say."

"What's going on Eds? You never sound this serious." Eddie lets go of him and sits him down on the edge of the bed. Eddie lingers closer to the door like he's ready to make an exit.

"The recording studio is in Chicago."

"Oh."

"I leave in a week."

"Oh."

"I want you to go with me."

"What?"

Steve feels confusion run through him but he's not complaining. He'd follow Eddie anywhere.

"Yes! Ok! Let's go!"

Eddie smiles but it looks like it's causing him pain.

"There's a condition to you coming with me." He comes closer to Steve but still keeps his distance. "You need to know the truth before you agree to leave everything behind."

"What's going on Eds?"

"Ever since we were kids I've been in love with you. Big. Gay. Feelings. I want to hold you and kiss you and start a life with you. I know you're bi but that doesn't mean you'd be into me, especially considering our history. I was going to keep it a secret, never tell you, but it's not fair for you to be with me and not know my true intentions. I understand if you don't want to speak to me anymore but I'll do anything to keep our friendship. I've tried to forget you but have you met you? You're unforgettable. You're too damn loveable." He chuckles at that, eyes darting at every corner of the room.

"Eddie..."

"I understand-"

"Come here please."

"Um...no."

"Edddiiie," Steve whines. He stands and grabs Eddie's hands and drags him back to his bed laying him down. He crawls on top of him and tucks his head into Eddie's neck.

"I am very confused right now Steve."

"Thank you for telling me, I understand how scary that can be to share your feelings. The only thing is I can't believe you don't see how I feel!" He props his head up until their noses are touching. "I love you you idiot. I've been in love with you since forever. Of course I want to start a life with you and whatever else you wanted-"

"Kissing. I wanted kissing."

"And you'll get it."

Steve giggles into his mouth and the two kiss for what feels like forever. They finally break apart and keep their foreheads touching.

"So...Chicago?"

"Chicago."

-----

Eddie's suit jacket is grabbed and he's thrown into a bathroom stall.

"Oh my god I can't believe you did that."

"Steve how did you even get back here? Bribed a guard. He knew who I was anyway, congratulated me on having such a loving partner." He ends the sentence smashing their lips together shoving Eddie against the wall.

"Mmm well," Eddie pulls away. "I didn't know the next time I'd win a Grammy I wanted to make it count."

"Eddie you confessed your love for me and came out in your speech that was something...something so special. God all I wanted was to see you, be near you. I couldn't go another second not being by your side."

"A bathroom stall was the closest you could get huh?" He smirks.

Steve smirks, sinking to his knees. "What? It's not good enough for you?"

"Nope! It's perfect! Absolutely perfect sweetheart no complaints here.

----

"You want to marry...me?"

"Yeah baby why wouldn't I?"

"I- I...yes! Ok! Yes!"

----

It ends on a simple hot sunny day

seventy years later

"Hello everyone, my husband lived a long successful life. You may know him as the lead guitarist for the many bands he's been apart of during his long career. You knew him as Eddie Munson rockstar but I knew him as much more. I knew him as my love. My husband. An uncle to our little gremlins little gremlins. A friend to all. A supporter of all. He passed away yesterday from natural causes. I was asked by his Manger how I wanted to handle this and I knew I had to do it."

There are tears in his eyes as he stares down the camera but a small smile on his lips.

"He lives on through our friends and family. Through those who have watched him grow. Through his awards and his fans. Through his charity work. Most importantly he lives through his love. He loved so much. So hard. Everthing had meaning to him. Everything had purpose." He wipes a stray tear away.

"I'll see you soon my love."

The final epilougue is the next day, for the sweethearts could not live long without the other. They had already been making up for the time they did not know each other, for they time they spent ignoring each other. They couldn't spend another minute apart.

[notebookmusical]

I truly can’t pinpoint when/what exactly changed about Taylor’s fans/fandom but the last few years (especially the midnights release) has really soured things for me and it’s honestly quite disappointing as someone who genuinely enjoys her music and thinks she’s a great artists. how did we get to the point of not even being able to voice an opinion about taylor without being crucified online. or if heaven forbid you dislike a song/album or enjoy the work of one of her exes (john mayer, the 1975, calvin harris, etc)

i’ve always been very fascinated/intrigued by the relationship between celebrities and their fans. and i think it’s really interesting to look back and think about how taylor built her fanbase by making herself as palatable/relatable/approachable as possible. like secret sessions, t party/loft 89/rep room, swiftmas, lover diaries, etc — all of which allow for fan interaction — but also relies on people getting noticed which then in turn encourages people to be as vocal? extra? whatever it is. which then feeds into the "who is a bigger / better fan" competition. i'm speaking from personal experience here, as someone who has liked her since debut — but i think a lot of this is also rooted in how much of the world hated taylor swift prior to ... i want to say folklore, really — like it was deeply uncool to like taylor swift, to be a swiftie, etc. and because a lot of that early criticism was rooted so much in misogyny, i think fans felt the need to (over the years) defend her — and i was one of those! i still am, when i feel like people are criticizing her unfairly. but i think that lends into the "taylor swift has never done anything wrong, and she's perfect and if you disagree then you're against us and you're a fake fan" mentality.

and then i think there's an element of ... not necessarily a superiority complex, but a something among fans who have met taylor. it's a genius marketing move, intentions aside. taylor's music is very personal — and taylor's marketing, and persona is very personal, in a way that other artists prior to taylor weren't, i think. relatability sells. you can see it in the way that people talk about her, and her music. which is very different from the way people talk about other artists — and obviously there isn't anyone else out there with the amount of fame/popularity as her, but you don't see the same amount of fanfiction-writing personal-life-speculating-projection onto other artists' lyrics as you do with taylor. and i think that when someone is that vulnerable with their thoughts, it makes it easy for people to think that they know them personally.

and i think that — as much as i love taylor — it's important to talk about her white woman feminism mentality. and i think that also seeps into how her fanbase interacts with her. the ginny & georgia "joke" is what comes to mind the quickest, but there are countless instances of taylor's white woman feminism — and her benefiting from it. and obviously it was in her right to call out a misogynistic comment, especially one directed at her, but not saying anything when the actress got so much hate for a line she didn't write ... made me feel a bit 🥴. it's interesting to see who taylor will choose to align herself with, i guess is all i'm saying.

i've really taken a step back from taylor — not just because the fandom is exhausting ( the amount of things i've seen about her, joe, travis, etc. is ... something! it's all projection! we do not know anything about these people other than what they choose to show us! ) but also because of her saying that she wanted to be on the right side of history and then over and over again choosing to be increasingly passive and silent. she will call herself an ally but won’t even talk about queer rights; she won’t talk about the literal genocide that’s going on. gun control, abortion rights, anything at all. it's just "go vote" but even that is incredibly passive. but she will take time to remind us to buy new variants, and to stream her music, and that her ex sucks.

i think there was a huge shift that started with folklore/evermore, just given that there weren't a lot of albums being put out during that time, the overwhelming public reception to it — a lot of people who previously didn't care for (or disliked) taylor started to like her, to give her a second chance, etc. then we get into the rerecordings era/midnights/etc., which started off with fearless and nostalgia and then became "how quickly can i put out the next thing". and bailey @placeinthisworld posted this earlier, which i fully agree with. it's about the next award, the next milestone. it's just all quantity. it's overexposure.

and then we have the joe alwyn breakup and the public response to that was also ... interesting. like i saw people crying over it, or saying that love is a lie, removing things from their playlists, acting like they were the ones who had been broken up with. which is just ... odd, given that we aren't the ones in the relationship. and now there are all these comments about being a "joe defender". and then with taylor dating travis, it feels almost like some weird american pipe dream unfulfilled fantasy for so many people — the singer and the american football player. and obviously, i want her to be happy! i don't care who she dates! but i do think the public reception about her and travis has been ... incredibly odd, and i think that the way people talk about her and travis is just ... very ... off-putting and is very rooted in some weird ... stuff. "she finally gets to be small :(((((" is such a weird thing to say. it feels like there's even more projection and self-insert-y stuff with her dating travis, which is a level i did not think was possible from her fans (and more so, the general public).

i have not felt this ... detached and impassive about a taylor release, ever, and it just makes me incredibly sad because i love her music, and am excited about the work, just not excited about the public reception, the public autopsy of her and joe's relationship, or the noise, and i know that internet spaces (and spaces in general) are what we curate, but it's also difficult when she is everywhere.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for inviting my cousin to an LGBT meet up?

Cw: mentions of suicide and transphobia

I (18M) am a trans man and my cousin N (21F) is a lesbian who is very masc presenting. We're the only queer cousins in the family (at least in our generation) so weve always been good friends and shes been one of the biggest supporters of my transition, defended me from bigoted family members and always corrected family when they used my deadname/old pronouns. I lowkey hoped she would come out as a trans man or nonbinary as well. We dress in the same style which makes it so when were hanging out together one of us is gonna get misgendered since people asume both of us are trans men or masc girls. When N is the one being misgendered she doesnt bother fighting it since its more trouble than its worth but looking back i think it really annoyed her.

Earlier this year N was severely struggling with her mental health. I apologize for the wording i may have since i dont know the proper terminology for this stuff or any specific disorder diagnosis she may have (other than autism). She was having some sort of manic or depressive episode. She was dead set on pushing people away and making them hate her so she could take her own life without regrets.

I visited N once to give her my support during a struggling time but i stupidly told her there was nothing she could say that would push me away. She told me not to test her but i kept pushing it and i admit what happened next was my fault. She told me in a very cold voice that she was a terf, though that she didnt want me dead but that "we" (im guessing she meant trans ppl) made it so much harder for her to exist(???????). I didnt let her keep talking just and left her room, said my goodbyes to her family and just cried while driving home.

Im still not sure if she meant it or if it was part of her mental episode and just a way for her to hurt me and push me away. On one hand ig it explains some of her behavior? N sometimes complained when she got asked for her pronouns or being misgendered like I mentioned before. On the other hand, I gen do not believe she has been a terf all along esp with how supportive shes been of me. If she was a terf youd think she would try to subtly talk me out of it, but that has never happened. My friends have nicknamed her schrodinger's terf lol

Anyway, i went no contact with N for a few months for my own wellbeing. During this time i heard that she tried to kill herself a few times, which got her into a mental hospital. She was given higher doses of meds and seems to be doing way better.

We had a family reunion this week and i decided to approach her. N seemed a little hesitant to talk to me but stayed polite. I tried testing her and talked about the effects T has been having on me but she acted like she always had and congratulated me and even complimented me on how deep my voice has gotten. I wasnt satisfied cause i wanted an apology for what she had said to me so i pushed it more. She did end up apologzing but it was a very surface level apology. At this point i didnt want to keep pushing in case it set her off again so i just took her apology (plus i wanted my best cousin back) and spent the rest of the day hanging out with her.

On the way home my mom said she was happy me and N had made up and that i should invite her to the lgbt club meetings Ive been going to this year. It seemed like a good idea to me, she lost a few friends during her episode and she could make more queer friends here. If N is trans and just in denial it could help her get the resources she needs to feel comfortable coning out. If N IS a terf maybe having more positive interactions with trans ppl could change her mind on it. Overall i thought it would be a win for her.

I brought it up to my friends and some of them blew up at me. Their argument was that itd be exposing the other trans ppl in the group to a terf and putting them in danger. I truly hadnt considered this angle so im kinda conflicted now. She had never felt like an unsafe person before and now that her episode is over she feels normal again. Even if she is a terf i dont think she could actually cause harm? I want N to get better but i dont want to put my trans friends at risk.

So tumblr, WIBTA for inviting N to my lgbt meet up?

What are these acronyms?

[my-castles-crumbling]

Hi cas!

Two things

1.) I asked you for advice before and I really appreciated what you said back ( it was the one talking about how to know when you're queer) so thank you for that I wish you all the best hugs and kisses

2.) I don't know if you do advice on love, or what not, but there 's this guy I have in some of my classes (I'll call him G). I noticed him earlier in the year around mid-september cause he was cute to me, and this was before I started to realize I might be queer, but I didn't pay him any mind because I just assumed he wouldn't look my way cause I'm shy and don't really interact with guys that aren't either gay or not popular? So he was just in the back of my mind for a while.

But recently around late October to Early November things have started to change. One day I dropped my stuff on a table in a class I don't have friends in to go somewhere (I can't remember) but when I came back I found that the empty table I put my stuff in was no longer empty. Because lo and behold G was sitting right next to me, and I mean right next to me no chair in-between us.

I was super confused because I know G has friends in that class yet he sat next to me with our shoulders breathing only a few cm apart but that's not the only odd occurrence.

When I was sitting with some of my friends telling them this one of them spoke up asking what he looked like and just as I was going to reply, but then G ended up being in the area we were talking in so I just pointed G out to her(though not literally). My friend didn't get a good look at him so we got up to walk around the area.

When we saw him my friend told me to just act normal (because duh) so we acted like we were getting a drink from the water fountain when we passed by G and was at the water fountain she sold me that he saw us and from her peripheral vision ( her words not mine) he glanced at me specifically. If my friend was able to see him staring at me then I thought maybe he likes me and I was really excited since I've never had a person like me to my knowledge.

So someone told me some of G's socials and when I added or followed him, to my surprise on the platforms where it's obvious that it's me he already had me followed. It got me thinking and I genuinely thought maybe he liked me.

But recently I'm getting mixed signals because he hasn't looked my way, make conversation, or sit next to me.

I'm also getting kinda insecure because there is a friend of his who's a girl and they get along a lot better than you'd think. I just don't know how to feel because I think I like him (again the possible queerness) but he just isn't giving me much to work with not to mention He's kinda one of the typical jockish looking guys who tend to party or are popular in general while I don't exactly look like I match his aesthetic

Sorry if this was a long one

HUGS AND KISSES love you dearly

Anon

PS could you give me a name I know I'll definitely ask more things later!

I mean honestly I think you should approach this from a friend perspective first. I know you said you guys are different, but that's no reason you can;t be friends or more. He showed interest for a reason, whether that's because he likes you as a friend or as something more. Try just acting friendly towards him and seeing how he reacts. It could be he backed off because he sensed you were nervous and he took it as that you weren't interested in him in any way.

Once you see if he wants to be friends, then see if there's something deeper there. But whether he's queer or not, 'matching' isn't a reason to not be friends! Opposites can attracts, even in a platonic sense!

Naming you shy anon

[perfectlyripeclementine]

Wanted to point out that there is a lot of intersectionality between being intersex, nonbinary and cis, and that your blog not being for cis men excludes a huge amount of the queer community that is in fact nonbinary. The intersexism is very obvious. Treat intersex people better.

Good afternoon! My pinned currently says this blog is “not for straight people.” I’m not sure where you saw “not for cis men”. I may have had that in a previous version of my pinned, which is what I’m guessing you found.

This ask kind of feels like you’re looking for something to be mad at, to be quite honest but I’ll take you in good faith, also bc I think it might be helpful for others to see how I’m thinking of this terminology. I know many intersex people ID as cis. Also, many trans people ID as straight. There are plenty of other ways that normative and non-normative identities can overlap.

What I mean by that phrase is that my blog is not created with a straight male audience in mind. Whether or not my content is attractive or relatable to cisgender heterosexual men is not a concern to me. Having said that, I don't mind anyone of any identity reading my work. I block people if they're underaged or disrespectful to me/interacting with me in a way that I don't want, not based on their identity.

I also ask that people refrain from sharing my content if they have a predominantly straight audience. That's because every now and again, my post will get picked up by some daddydom whose blog is mostly black and white gifs of skinny girls in bondage and my notes get really weird and gross when that happens. I block people who share my content to platforms where I see a lot of like male gaze-y content because I don't want to be on that kind of platform and I don't want the people who seek out that kind of platform finding me. So I block those people too, regardless of identity.

Me saying this blog isn’t for a certain audience does not mean I am excluding them.

My work centers queerness, queer sexuality, queer pleasure, and queer bodies. I deliberately make an effort to write about bodies in a way that can be read expansively and applied to many different anatomies. I hope this writing feels validating and representative to some / many people with non-normative bodies, and have received feedback to that effect. I don’t expect my work to resonate with every single queer or trans or intersex person because I don’t expect any work to appeal to every single person of any identity.

My pinned has in the past had more binary language, including stuff like “men DNI” or similar. I removed that for a few reasons: For one, I heard experiences from trans or questioning folks saying this language felt either exclusive or invalidating to them. I also find it ineffective bc I've noticed these messages seem to encourage rather than dissuade the types of men I am trying to avoid. Lastly, I think that men should be reading queer literature, queer erotica, and erotic content that de-centers patriarchal dynamics. I read The Will to Change and I heard bell hooks when she said that we cannot get to liberation if we decide men (of any kind) are not worthy of love or pleasure.

Gender words are difficult and people have a million complex ways of relating to them. All of the language we use to try and protect ourselves as queer people from homophobia or compulsory heterosexuality is clumsy because there is no way of excluding a group of people that doesn’t accidentally also exclude some people that we don’t mean to.

My approach to this is to try and describe my goal and work as specifically as I can, and make clear what kinds of interactions I do and don’t want on this blog, rather than try to police who’s on my blog.

I am queer and genderqueer. I write about my experiences, which are also queer and genderqueer. I do not specifically write for straight people or cis people. It is possible that my work will not resonate for some intersex people who are also cisgender or straight. I do not consider this to be a failure of my work but rather a reflection of the diversity of genderqueer / nonbinary experiences, tastes and interests.

Alright. I believe that about covers it. I’ll keep thinking about this language and potentially amend my pinned later to reflect some of this more explicitly. I also welcome suggestions (now & all the time) for more expansive language.

[echobx]

oh I'm ranting again. but ig by now you guys know that I can't keep my mouth shut. so to add to the list of all the apparently unpopular opinions that I have...

I don't actually think role play (rp) (and real people fanfic (rpf)) is bad, not if it's characters, and also not if it's celebrities.

"How can you say that? What's wrong with you?" I mean, there's plenty wrong with me but not here. Especially not here. I'm aware of my "controversial" takes when it comes to fandom, but honestly, the only reason you find them controversial (if you do) is because you haven't been in fandom long enough. Which, I will grant, is difficult if you are 1. not old enough to know better 2. are in a fandom that is rather young, like OBX is. But telling people what to do and not to do, simply based on you not wanting to see it, is simply and clearly an act of censorship. Now I'm not saying that it equates to the censorship our governments are trying to put on us in online communities (especially in the US recently) but it lays a ground for the politicians to base their argument on. Because when you go and spread around that some things "shouldn't be done" and "shouldn't be written" and "shouldn't be drawn" that creates a base layer of what politicians will take and say "see, they want us to censor them" and that is never ever good. bc it might at first be role play and "dead dove, do not eat" types of content, but it will really quickly lead to the banning of queer content, and I won't fucking stand for that.

so, yes, you might cringe at RP and other things, but you also have the possibility to simply block those accounts, to block the tags to filter your own online experience, especially on tumblr since it's the only truly user friendly social media site that we have left.

and on the fact of people bringing up Chappell Roan in this discussion. Chappell very clearly said that she feels uncomfortable irl bc it happens IN HER REAL LIFE. if she cared about people just talking online about her without any irl reason for it, she would've said that. but she didn't. she was rightfully pissed that people approached her irl and didn't take no for and answer and only after that they went online and talked shit about her. this is entirely different to RP. (it also reminds me how straight people forced Kit Connor to come out and then blamed queer people for it, when no queer person ever made him feel the need to come out because we accepted him even when he was in the public closet)

RP is clearly tagged as such, the people who do it are very much aware that it's a game, and not real. if you can't make that distinction, that's on you. not the person who RPs or the people who interact with the RP.

side note: if RPing is bad, why are you watching historical dramas based on real people? why is it okay for the industry to make bank on the lives of dead AND living people, but a normal person can't do the same without getting paid? maybe you should also think about that, because it's literally the same. y'all watched Elvis and Bohemian Rhapsody and The Crown and so many more shows and movies that are based on real people but aren't what actually happened 100% and that is okay, but when fandom does it you want it to be wrong and a moral failure? get a grip.

there's a clear line between fiction and reality and it's not the creator's fault for you to go and blurr that line because you don't understand the rules. RP and RPF have been part of fandom culture since the beginning, and just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it will go away, because there's nothing wrong with it.

just do with RP/RPF what you do with more important things in our daily lives, more serious matters. Look Away. bc clearly you are good at it any times else.

[wild-wombytch]

Hey ladies 💗!

You can call me Tañ. I'm a 24yo European disabled dyke with sometimes approximate English. I'm also an anarchist and believe genders and sexual exploitation are as oppressive as (and products of) patriarchy.

I'm a veteran of the Reddit misogyny and purge against "TERFs" for saying neo/microlabels and bi/pan "lesbians" are harming real lesbians and bi women. I was already starting to be skeptical and tired by trans women talking over lesbians with pretty misogynistic takes, so I decided to look into the so frowned upon radical feminism and gender critical ideas, sensing this Reddit drama was just the tip of the iceberg. That's after years being a TRA/libfem.

I'm tired of the marketable liberal feminism and queer communities and catering to males' feelings, when they're actively hurting lesbians to satisfy their ego and so called feeling of erasure (forcing females who want nothing to do with males to cater to their mental health still or trying to coerce them into sex). I'm also tired that "lesbian" is always associated with porn, especially porn for straight men. So I hoped to get to know the radfem community here better, because you are the only ones who seem to give a fuck about women at all these days and trying to keep women from mutilating their beautiful bodies instead of caring for their mental health. I almost did that to myself due to the trans agenda convincing me that I was a "nonbinary transmasc" and not just a good ol' dyke not aligning with heteronormativity, so here I am. I'm still reading and learning about radical feminism. To be frank, I've been quite brainwashed into the TRA/pop feminism cult bs and genuinely have to rebuild myself psychologically and get all these things I interiorised (to be honest, mostly out of fear of being thrown out of my own lesbian community, leftist and "feminist" spaces) out of my head. Including things about my body and the "queer community" pushing for us to cater to men and shutting ourselves up instead of saying things as they are. I hope I can learn by interacting with the community here. I frankly need some sorority to help me out of the patriarchy and its genderist Hell. This ideology definitely made feminism go back of 50 year. Males can wear dress and be feminine without needing to get into our locker rooms and females can be butches and bind to alleviate dysphoria without being men.

What else to say? I don't want to say too much for now, because the world is so fucking dangerous for women, especially if they go against the men ideology. I really hope to find a peaceful corner here where I can interact with other lesbians without getting witch hunted for stating science and that I'm not into penises and without fucking men filling up the only internet spaces where we can just have women talks about women issues without always centering or integrating men.

I also discovered things like the Moon School, which helps me healing my relationship to being a woman and starting to accept again that I'm a lesbian and don't have to convince myself I'm either trans or having to be exactly like straight women or that gender matters. I'm learning to get rid of the internalised misogyny and feeling like I can't love what I want to love, especially if it's "girl things" or be emotional...etc I'll likely open up more and act more like my confident self once I'm used to be able to state my opinions without getting banned. Probably expect some NSFW and New Age content here. I have a spiritual approach to what it means to be a woman (exploring Wicca and the Dark Goddess).

I'm still learning to use Tumblr, so apologies if the tagging is shit or if the reading is hard on my blog for whatever reason (tell me if I can make it more accessible!). I'm still not confident being here, hope I'll learn. Feel free to DM or send recommendations in asks (about how to use Tumblr, radfem communities, radfem books/Youtube channels, women-centered spirituality...anything really) or just introduce yourself! Straight women have valuable inputs too, but I'd prefer to interact with other lesbians and ex-TRA, since we have more shared experiences. Hope I'm not being weird by spam liking and reblogging your posts there!

Also warning word that my beliefs are bound to adjust as I learn about radical feminism and heal my own relationship to being a woman. I'll still navigate radical feminism leaning, but might go more tirf or other orientations over time.

⚠️ Everyone except the dni can follow, I won't tell you "pro TRA kys" like people say about TERFs 🤷🏻. If you don't want gender criticals, misandrists possibly in the future TIRF, TERF, SWIRF, Dianic Witches or whatever to follow you, you can block me. ⚠️

Again, I'm too new to know exactly what I'm going for except radical feminism.

DNI : Men in general, bi/pan/male "lesbians" (febfems are cool, I refer to mspec "lesbians"), conservatives, alt right, the genderist/MOGAI crowd can respectfully interact and is welcome to like and reblog, but you're on thin fucking ice

[gatalentan]

We love and support your AvaMel side but I always laugh when I see something about them bc I remember that Janelle’s tweet 🤣🤣

Ok so for those who don't know, Janelle got tagged in an AvaMel ship fanvid, and replied to one of the quote retweets on that fanvid. I've censored op here for privacy:

Two things can be true:

1. Janelle is allowed to be weirded out by being tagged/seeing ship content. That's her face & those are her co-workers. She's a very private person who mostly keeps fans at arms-length and that's healthy. Ava isn't Janelle, but she has her face (and so does Lisa), so fanvids in particular when accompanied by an explicit caption I can imagine would be really weird to see. As fans we know the diff between real-person and fictional shipping but from her perspective you can see how that would be more nuanced and complicated. Unfortunately, the Twitter algorithm now puts stuff on your feed - regardless of if you follow them or not - based on how it has pigeonholed you, and as a person who sometimes tweets about Abbott/Ava because it's her job, the algo assumes shes a fan and dishes up Abbott fandom content to her whether she likes it or not, so she sees stuff she doesn't wanna see even if she isn't tagged; she wasn't tagged in that QRT, but she still saw it, so we can see that's what happened here. A big problem there is that seeing stuff that makes them uncomfortable can make actors change how they approach the character(s) in future which sucks for everyone. We can't control the algo but on the whole it's better to not try and expose actors to ship content as much as possible because there's scores of ships where the actors became hostile to shippers as a result of being repeatedly exposed to content they don't want to see, or even just getting fatigued by an unintended ship overshadowing the rest of their acting effort. Unfortunately social media giving a lot of access to celebrities is a very double edged sword and difficult to balance, especially when some actors (cough lisa cough) are so far over the line of what's considered normal fan interactions that it gives unrealistic expectations for celebrities that are more private. Actors aren't your best friends, they don't owe you interactions or unconditional support just because you're a fan, they're strangers and real people with their own thoughts and feelings. Everyone has their own limits and boundaries and are allowed to express that and they're entitled to not be comfortable with fan work that uses their image.

2. Actors/creators not supporting a ship doesn't mean we still shouldn't be allowed to play in the sandbox. Work Wives isn't gonna be canon either, but that's not going to stop me from enjoying it. I'm 32 and if I didn't ship stuff just because it didn't have creator support I'd have spent twenty years with nothing to ship at all. As queers we have to carve our own space out where we can see people like us and make a meal out of scraps because otherwise we wouldn't get to engage with media the same way cishet people take for granted. Unless a show is Queer™️, a vehicle for a character's queerness and a major topic of discussion, we rarely get canon queer characters, let alone characters where it's treated respectfully without one of the pair getting fridged or dying. Even The L Word, Queer™️ as it was, killed off one of a major pairing. We deserve to see ourselves across the whole spectrum of genres, not just in Queer™️ TV, but it simply isn't there, so we make it for ourselves in fanwork. In fanwork you can play with these characters however you want. You can give them a soft landing where they're safe (or the opposite, explore darker themes for a light-hearted show). You can give them the type of stories that would never have the space to breathe in the works they came from. You can take them out of their environment completely and put them somewhere else, you can change one thing that changes their whole dynamic, or you can just write absolute filth. Either way, fundamentally they're fictional characters, they do not exist and they don't have free will, only what you put into them as a viewer. We're not about to make Janelle make out with Lisa, but in fiction, Ava and Mel can, and as fictional characters they represent a dynamic we don't see a ton of with two older women, not teenagers/young adults which is the predominant type of representation we get for WLW in TV. So I'm gonna keep shipping AvaMel, I'm just, y'know. Not gonna put it where Janelle might see it. Easy.

Some good vids on this topic: Is Shipping Gay Culture? (James Somerton) | Artists & Fandoms (Philosophy Tube) | Parasocial Relationships: Strangers Aren't Your Friends (Naomi Cannibal) | An Exhaustive Defense of Fanfiction (Sarah Z) | Why We Ship Characters (The Take)

[box-dwelling]

This may be the autism speaking but I genuinely think that a really useful skill in not being an open minded and tolerant person is learning to acknowledge that you are not going to know or understand everything about the people you interact with, are friends with or even love.

Like people are complicated. The world is complicated and you are never going to be able to empathize or be knowledgeable about every experience. And I mean that with empathy being literally being able to directly put yourself in their shoes and know how it feels.

And the instinct that we have to kind of has two outcomes, either your instinct is reactionary and because the experience is unknown to you and therefore it scares you or you presume the other person must be wrong. Or you decide you have to know and pester them about the experience in a way that they probably aren't comfortable with or tire of easily.

But if you just accepted, hey I don't get this. This isn't something I have knowledge or experience of and then just take that as a fact you can just be normal with them. And then that's actually a way better gateway to learn about the experience because either it will just come up as you talk or they'll tell you stuff at a point where they feel comfortable. Now it's absolutely you'll put your foot in your mouth and slip up but then you're already in a better mental position to deal with that because you aren't going to blame yourself or insist the other person is wrong. You already have accepted that this is something you don't know about and can better take mistakes as an opportunity to learn.

It's like to take this at its absolute most basic uncontroversial, I'll give this example. If my dad gets in a conversation where he doesn't know someone's name he absolutely freaks and he has to end the conversation as soon as possible because he's terrified that hes going to mess up and then only tried to talk to them again when he remembers. But I have managed to have multiple friendships with people irl who's name I never learned or learned very late into the relationship because the reality is that you don't actually need to know it that much about someone to get on with them. You don't have to understand the complete workings of who they are. Youd be surprised how little you actually do need.

And this kind of goes the same for other aspects of peoples identity. You just have to kind of yes and it. Like ok, you know more about your experience and who you are than I do. You always will. I can learn from you but I don't need to know. Anything I do learn is cool but I don't need any more information than the stuff you want to give me. Don't try and logic it out or generalize, just take everything they have said as fact and leave it at that.

Then with the reactionary sentiment, that's got lots of other problems for obvious reasons but let's devils advocate here and take the presumption that it's correct. X person has X identity and they are either wrong or its harming them in some way. You aren't going to talk them out of that. Especially when you have no knowledge yourself. They will have heard it before. A lot of time they will have thought it before. You can't change that. So it's best to just accept it and if you're right let them figure it out themselves.

There is kind of this semi deserved backlash to liberal tolerance. Like the kind of "I tolerate queer people and I tolerate Nazis" approach is obviously harmful. But I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bath water either. Because expecting that you must immediately be able to understand, empathize with, know and properly advocate for every marginalised experience is naively optimistic at best and completely impossible at worst. Tolerance is a good first step but you have to recognise it is the first and be prepared to learn more. But being at that step shouldn't prevent you from being decent and normal to the people in your life who do have that experience in the meantime. They aren't there to teach you, but if you're patient you might learn something.

[aqueeracademic]

morse being queer (and other commentary) pt. 9:

season 3, episode 1, “Ride”:

- here we go season three‼️‼️

- give me some gay shit

- i just SMASHED an angel heart and an iced coffee so i am ready to go

- i do recall this episode being very gay in a very Gatsby way so i’m feeling excited

- i love rich people they’re so terrible

- winnie not saying “come home safe” to thursday because they’re all still shook up over what happened

- thursday assuming jakes would be the person to see morse

- “not since he got out.”

- ^jakes picked morse up from prison and also visited him in prison confirmed

- this whole episode proved that morse was well liked even though he doesn’t like being around people

- people. like. him.

- he’s a loner because he chooses to be. because HE thinks there’s something wrong with him

- they were not subtle with their plagiarism of Gatsby and i respect them for it

- going all in on the dark academia vibe

- thursday misses morse so much im SICK

- morse got invited to a party which means the gay stuff is gonna start happening

- monica deserved better ‼️‼️

- “he doesn’t want to be found”

- do you mean physically or spiritually queen?

- morse walking through this party has me cackling he’s so buttoned up

- roddy is gay for bixby

- i have 0 proof i’m going on vibes alone from a 0.2 second interaction

- thursday is wild for just breaking into morse’s house and waiting

- morse is absolutely gorgeous in maroon

- the way morse is so obviously trying to flirt with bixby and is confused when he doesn’t flirt back

- “and what’s the truth of you?”

- king CALM DOWN

- morse looks at bixby like hes another mystery to solve which means he is immediately obsessive and attached

- “you hardly know me!” “gamblers instinct”

- this translates directly to “ur hot”

- morse taking on bixby’s mentality to decide how to approach his life is so…

- “how was it?”

- strange i need you to reconsider the questions you ask

- he was a COP in PRISON

- this woman is awfully quick to assume morse is attracted to her

- the way he’s so uncomfy 😭😭

- given that jakes is the one who went to go see him in prison and given that he is clearly upset that morse is gone and given that he thinks he won’t be coming back…

- jakes is the only one who knows what morse went through in prison

- he knows!

- and he’s mad morse isn’t coming back

- “i wouldn’t hold your breath”

- he’s mad

- i need answers ‼️

- morse looks jealous asf that bixby’s attention is tacked onto Kay instead of him

- it is so unfair that both Kay AND bixby are using morse to get to each other

- like literally using him and for what

- “are you falling in love with me? men do.” “i can see how that might happen.” “then why don’t you kiss me?”

- i fucking HATE these manic pixie dream girls in the sort of episode

- like shut up

- no girl acts like this

- immediately jumping to his boyfriends protection 🙄🙄

- munch.

- “bix, you could have any woman in the world.”

- and then IMMEDIATELY looking ashamed for having said it

- he is basically saying “you could have anyone. you could have me. so why her?”

- them on the dock together is so intimate

- you can tell they feel it’s the last they’ll see of each other

- even though they don’t know why

- a romantic opera playing during this scene (depicting a forlorn man finding his lover dead)

- jakes being the only person to try and talk to him after he finds bixby 🥲

- morse trying to express to thursday why he feels like he doesn’t wanna come back and thursday being like “stop being a pussy and get used to it” is so insane

- bright is doing his absolute best to apologize and i gotta respect him for it

- my mom giggles every time thursday speaks (she has 0 clue what’s going on idk why she’s watching w me)

- morse opening up about prison makes me 🫤

- he didn’t know whether thursday was alive or not for so long 🫤🫤

- rich people in this time period really just stood around in silence drinking and smoking and thats all

- wish i was them

- ope nvm they also got abused by their husbands i do not wanna be them

- thursday WOULD love magic shows

- he is that bitch

- after morse got shot he reacted poorly to everything from a door slamming to a car backfiring; thursday gets shot and he lets a magician fully point a gun at him and fire for FUN

- heroin feels like such a random tie in to this episode

- like it makes sense in the plot but why

- morse is awfully quick to defend bixby despite not knowing him at all

- little bit 💅

- i know he met bixby in a vulnerable state and was glad to have that sort of attention but he is soooo determined to prove bixby is a good person despite FULLY knowing it isn’t true

- which is insane

- and gay

- you gotta be some kind of freak to have a portrait of someone you have no official attachments to hanging above your bed

- i know kay is supposed to be a sort of rattled and traumatized character but i don’t like the way they wrote her at all

- her entire character feels misogynistic

- even my mom doesn’t like it and that’s telling

- “bixby” being alive is so fucking funny to me

- gay people don’t die ‼️

- roddy deserved better! he was j a lil gay guy there was no need for all this hatred

- morse and jakes are so cold with each other this episode i hate it

- i know we don’t get to know anything about jakes as a person in this show but listen

- i feel like he’s intentionally really closed off and defensive and that’s why he’s especially defensive to morse

- morse is able to figure people out so easily and jakes knows that and he doesn’t like it

- he doesn’t want to be figured out

- so it makes sense that he would be particularly cold to morse (especially given that morse is presumably the only one who knows about his Blenheim Vale background)

- jakes just appearing in the shadows while morse is talking

- like what r u doing babe??

- this man killing his son after everything gets found out is so??

- and not a single person did anything about it

- jakes 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

- finding out where the coin flip thing came from is fucking sickening

- i will say that i enjoy the notion that morse falls in love really easily and that BECAUSE of that he’s a loner

- also the camera lingering on bixby’s face and morse just staring after they lead you to think he’s watching the film for kay???? that’s queer cinema

- “bixby didn’t belong in their world anymore than i do. did. i wanted to tell him that the last night i saw him. he was better than that.”

- morse convincing himself he could have saved bixby if he told them that neither of them belonged in that world

- because he thinks bixby would have gone with him

- like??

- “there’s no real magic in the world. only love. the rest is just smoke and mirrors.”

- him saying that all that was real between them was the love 🫤🫤🫤

- 10/10 for gay this episode

[denimbex1986]

'"Maybe I didn't hold you / All those lonely, lonely times

And I guess I never told you / I am so happy that you're mine…"

An adult Adam is cross-legged on the floor, gazing upwards, child-like. His deceased mother mutters the words, never once breaking eye contact, while decorating the Christmas tree.

On the surface, the candles and fairy lights should have evoked a homely warmth, stirring early memories of festive joy. But in this scene the air is thick with regret, and the song's poignant lyrics say more than dialogue ever could.

All of Us Strangers first introduces Adam (Andrew Scott) years after this, in his London tower block, with little but his laptop for company. That is, until his neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal) arrives at his door. What unfolds is a cross-generational gay love story, both heartbreaking and beautiful.

But when Adam decides to revisit his childhood, the film also hits home in another way. Watching through tears, in the dim of the movie theatre, I'm struck by how profoundly it resonated with me, as a mother to my boy.

Motherhood is a redefining experience, one that pushes you to reflect while also looking forwards through new eyes. The film articulates that reconnection with your inner child, and the notion of wanting to do things differently for the baby who's now in your arms.

All of Us Strangers captures a weight carried through to adulthood by many queer people: the distance that can be born from your parents not really knowing who you are. The film arrives as a new generation now starts to navigate its own approach to parenthood, determined not to repeat the past.

All of Us Strangers is steeped in grief. But for a story that orbits a man who lost his parents at the tender age of 12, it's far deeper than a physical absence.

Stuck in a sort of purgatory, Adam is seeking out things that make him feel closer to what he's missing. Against a score of '80s hits, which would have formed the soundtrack of his formative years, Adam arrives back to his childhood home. From the wallpaper to his record collection, it's just as he remembers. His parents are still there too, just as they were on the day they died.

Through Adam's conversations with his dead parents, it becomes clear that even in life they were out of reach.

A father, too repressed to comfort his son when he was crying; a mother, too overwhelmed to centre the needs of her child.

In these new interactions Adam's instinct is to suppress his feelings, comforting and tending to his parents' emotions instead. It speaks of a child who learned that his own feelings were a burden, that vulnerability wasn't welcome.

These post-mortem exchanges offer a chance for catharsis, though. Adam is given the opportunity to come out to each of his parents in turn. Their responses are filtered through the moral panic of their time, but having them meet this older, more worldly, version of Adam allows for some growth.

Adam's inner child continues to push through, still yearning to be seen for himself rather than the image that his parents once cultivated. Much like the film's own use of reflection, his parents saw what they wanted to see mirrored back at them, projecting their own expectations rather than truly seeing Adam for the boy he was.

It's a generational cycle that needs to be broken, and this is echoed in his mother's own regret. There's a push and a pull, as his parents start to realise that they were themselves stuck in a pattern passed on to them.

As Adam crawled between his parents in the middle of the night, in his childhood pyjamas that no longer fit, she told him of her yearning to get better, with time.

But of course in reality, a fatal car crash robbed her – and Adam – of these chances. The thought of the childhood that could have been still continued to tighten with that knot in his chest.

For those of us now trying to parent more consciously, to be led by our children, giving them space to discover exactly who they are, free of assumption and expectation, All of Us Strangers has struck a chord.

Our sons will not keep their tears hidden away, un-wiped, behind closed doors. Neither will they be given a complex about sitting with their legs crossed, or burdened with the presumption that they should surely have a girlfriend. Their childhood home will be a sanctuary, removed from those that don't understand, not a place they want to run from at the first opportunity.

The film and the thoughts it has provoked cling as tightly as that final farewell embrace between Adam and Harry.

Days after sitting in that movie theatre, now two-stepping and twirling around to The Housemartins with my own baby, who loves to dance, in his childhood home, these feelings are further solidified.

"Let's build a house where we can stay [ba ba ba ba build], add a new bit every day…"'

[leandra-kinard]

I would like to add something to the last bit, the need for a ship to become canon.

I think it's a perfectly reasonable wish that a queer ship becomes canon because straight ships become canon too. Not every ship you may want, but TV shows are full of those slow burn romances, the "will they, won't they?" scenarios between two characters. See Mulder and Scully, for example. It's a very common and highly popular trope that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats and engaged over seasons, because everybody wants those two people to get together eventually (everybody ships them, in a "rooting for" meaning of the word). And the same applies to same-sex couples. Just that it's so far unheard of to ever be fulfilled.

People want representation, and have been getting more and more of it in recent years, but they do not simply want any kind of queer characters and relationships, they want the same treatment as straight characters and relationships would get, the same diversity of stories and concepts.

There are also many examples where the basis for a shift to a romantic relationship between two male or two female characters was there. (I am thinking first and foremost of Destiel, which sort of halfway did go canon but also not really because it could still be read as a platonic love confession by people with heteronormativity goggles.)

Buddie was one of those examples. The breadcrumbs were there (and it actually pisses me off a little when some Bucktommy shippers who only joined the fandom because of Bucktommy deny this). There were many moments and interactions between Buck and Eddie in the past seasons that were layered with subtext and with a valid, credible potential to read more than just friendship into it - not just some shipper goggle head canons, but genuinely valid interpretations. There were moments that were similar to those between straight characters who later got together. There were prominent tropes and framings often used (and more often so) for romantic purposes. Those things were there.

(Personally, I believe as a sort of 'backdoor' IF they ever could and would decide to make Buddie canon; there needed to be a few of those breadcrumbs that would make it credible in hindsight, which from a writer's perspective makes sense: you don't know if you're ever going there, but you might, and if you do, you need there to be a basis for it).

MOST of all, 9-1-1 was a show that already proved it knew how to handle queer characters. There are Hen and Karen, and there's Tarlos on the spin off; there were tons of side characters or guest characters that were/are queer. If any show was ever to give the fandom a slow burn queer romance, it could be 9-1-1, and it could be Buddie.

So with all those - entirely not unreasonable - hopes and expectations present in the Buddie shipper portion of the fandom, it is of course a somewhat difficult situation to see one half of that ship be confirmed as queer, but then get together with someone else. I can empathize with that.

Personally, while all of the above applied to me, and while I, too, thought at the beginning that this was somehow a catalyst for Buddie to become canon (in the euphoria of "OMG Buck is actually bi??? This is canon??!!"), I realized that Bucktommy may not have been what I wanted all these years, but it's what I needed.

To me, this budding relationship is beautiful; it has a rich potential for so much to explore; it seems mature - not just regarding the emotional maturity in how these two characters communicate and approach each other, but also storytelling wise. It's easy, too. It's not some big dramatic and difficult realization (which it would have been for Eddie, most likely. Look at all his baggage!) but something that Buck slips into, like finding a particularly well-tailored glove all of the sudden.

It wasn't what I envisioned, but it turned out to be better, for me personally. And in regards of Buck and Eddie, I kinda do love the fact that they can still be close friends who love each other beyond what regular friends usually feel for each other, but it's only platonic. Ryan had a point there when he said that it's important to show that a straight and a queer man can still have such a close (and very tactile) friendship without the revelation that one of them is queer changing anything between them. That's also important representation!

That maturity may very well be the crux of the matter. Younger people tend to lean more towards drama, towards angst, and big soul-crushing emotions (and in fic I enjoy that too, to an extent). Older people with more life experience (and often enough drama in their own lives, lol), tend to prefer something that's comfortable, that feels good and right because it's so mature and easy. So maybe that's part of why there is such a rift between some Buddie shippers and others who were content to embrace this new canon relationship.

(While that's a rather charitable reading of the emotional reactions by some of those shippers, I still have very little patience for people who use their frustration to rain on everybody else's parade and display genuine toxicity towards other fans, and most of all to the actors!)

To circle back to the anon's question, I, too, don't think this is unique or new. But I think that from all the shows that had seemingly straight characters who got shipped by fandom, 9-1-1 had the biggest and most realistic potential here. As we saw, the potential was fulfilled for one half of the ship. We weren't wrong to read Buck as bi. And precisely that established fact is reason why some people find it so hard to separate canon and fanon this time around, I believe.

I'm asking this to you because you're the only person I know who's been around fandoms for so long — do you find this shipping-situation weird? I've been in many fandoms but I've never really seen this insistence on there being only one acceptable ship for a character and encouraging the idea that anything other than the norm is almost sacrilegious. Almost every big fandom over the years have had multiple conflicting pairings, take for example, Marvel. Even works of media that have a canon romantic pairing have had fans who ship others with the leads (that was what shipping was tbh) and no one has ever shown up to their doorsteps with pitchforks in hand, at least not that I'm aware of. So I guess I'd really like your opinion on why you think this is happening now? Have things always been this way, just not in plain sight? Is this just the new fandom culture that is developing now with the influx of younger people? Or is this fandom an aberration where a group of people are so used to being the majority that they simply aren't taking well to things not going their way?

I've been thinking about this today, and I'm still not sure what I think.

I've been in fandoms with a hugely dominant ship before. I've been in fandoms that had ship wars. I've been in fandoms with a lot of peacefully co-existing ships. I'm not sure this fandom is really all that different. To answer your first question, no, I don't find it all that weird. In fact I sort of expected it.

Let me tell you a story about the Brokeback Mountain fandom, which managed to have a ship war despite having really only one ship, the canon ship. So BBM fic fell into several broad categories, the biggest of which were fix-the-ending/canon divergence fics and the straight-up AU fics (I wrote one of each, lol). Post-canon fics weren't as common, because you had to deal with one half of the canon pairing being...well, dead.

There was a post-canon fic that gained a lot of fans...and when I say "fic" that's really an understatement. It was a SAGA, and I don't use that term lightly. It was a series of like...6 or 7 epic 100K+ word fics and it was over a million words total. The author would put out more than one 5K chapters per DAY. I'm still in awe of this woman's output. But it was the content that created the issue.

(Brief recap for those who have not seen BBM - two ranch hands in the 1960s, Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) spend a season herding sheep together, have sex, form a bond, then separate to go about their expected hetero lives but get together for fishing trips every year or so to have sex and spend time together. Jack wants more, Ennis is terrified. Both marry and have families. Eventually Jack dies in what is implied to be a gay-bashing but who knows, and Ennis makes his peace with the love he'd felt for him)

The saga picked up a couple of years after the film's events. Ennis decides to tentatively explore what being queer means, goes to Laramie, finds a gay bar, and very cautiously enters. Through a Series of Events he gets mixed up in an assault there and befriends a local sheriff's deputy, who is also gay. They begin a relationship.

Now, this series was COMPLEX. A huge cast of characters, a long and thorough evolution of this relationship, a lot of angst over Jack's memory, and it really worked for a LOT of readers. The new love interest she created was a really great character.

For others...it did not work and they hated it.

The animosity between fans who loved this saga and those that did not grew pretty heated. This was like '05 so there was no twitter or tumblr, this was all on LJ and dedicated fandom forums (some of which banned discussion of this fic for this reason), but there was doxxing and namecalling and real vitriol.

I guess my point in all this is that when there's strong feelings, some fans will find a way to be horrible to each other.

I was in the Sherlock fandom, another fandom 98% dominated by one ship. There were other ships, but somehow they seemed to co-exist mostly peacefully barring some snide remarks and rude comments (I could be wrong about this, if you asked someone who shipped a non-Johnlock ship they might have a different answer). No, the insanity in the Sherlock fandom was not ship-war-related.

I was also in the Criminal Minds fandom, which has a whole bunch of disparate ships and no ship wars that I can recall.

Then there are other fandoms, like Avatar, with TERRIBLE ship wars that are still going on.

I don't think the situation in 9-1-1 is as unique or different from other fandom wanks as has sometimes been asserted. I think terrible fandom wars are sort of inevitable, whether they're ship related or not. But for what it's worth, here are some of my thoughts on what's going on here.

A loooooong time (5.5 seasons) with one very dominant non-canonical queer ship. No other ship really ever approached the level of saturation or devotion of Buddie.

A pervasive belief that this ship might possibly become canon. That's a feature a lot of other ships do not have.

A lack of intense devotion to any of the other love interests. BuckTaylor was never a challenger to Buddie. Neither was Eddie and Shannon, or anybody else. It's hard to fight when there's no worthy challenger.

But now? BuckTommy is not only canon, but it has a lot of fans. It's a threat. And it's not only a threat in a feelings kind of way (as in, people like a thing that is not the thing I like and it makes me upset) but there's a perception that it's an ACTUAL threat, as in if people like this ship and promote it, it could cause it to become a permanent relationship (the degree to which fan response actually affects how the show unfolds is...debatable).

I do not personally think this is the case, but some fans strongly believe that Buddie could still happen if it weren't for BuckTommy. So if you're still wanting Buddie and believe it will or could happen, the existence of an alternate love interest represents a direct obstacle to that happening. That's a heck of an incentive to hate that competing ship. I get it.

That...might be a somewhat unique situation. There's a fight now because there's a challenger who might actually stand a chance.

This goes along with what we saw in the immediate aftermath of 7x04. I read someone else say (apologies, I don't know who it was, feel free to @ me if it was you and I'll credit you) that the early post-7x04 enthusiasm and acceptance of Tommy reflected the belief that he was temporary. A lot of folks thought it was just a way for Buck to get with Eddie, like, very soon after that. But the more time went by, the clearer it became that this was not the plan or the intention. So the mood soured for those who were still pulling for Buddie.

Other fandoms I've been in with a hugely dominant ship...Sherlock and X-Files are the two that spring immediately to mind...there was never a challenger with any legs. X-Files fandom wank was between the ship and the...lack of ship, shall we say. But a concrete, tangible "opponent" makes a fight so much more visceral, doesn't it?

I do think there's been a fandom shift towards needing ships to be canon that I don't really get, but it's there. There's been a lot written about fandom culture in the last ten years, the breakdown of boundaries between fans and creators, the access to those creators, a sense of ownership/entitlement, purity culture, obsession with shipping "correctly" (which leads into wanting things to be canon for the validation)...these are all newish features. So pile that on top of 9-1-1 having a longtime single ship that's legitimately threatened for the first time in its existence by a competing canon ship and it's kind of a powderkeg.

No wonder it's caught on fire.

[mcmorare]

knowing your partner well can potentially make writing a lot easier! repost, do not reb.log.

name :  quinn!!

pronouns : they/them, she/her, anything really

preference  of  communication : ims or discord

name  of  muse(s) : katrina, tally, & ana!

experience / how  long  ( months / years ? ) :  i’ve done some rp on forums and discord in the past, and i’ve been on here for almost 2 years now!

best  experience : uhhh i guess all the fun i've had writing on here!

rp  pet  peeves / deal  breakers :  honestly, the main one is just intolerance. especially as someone who’s autistic & queer, if someone holds racist/sexist/homophobic/ableist/etc views it’s an automatic no.

muse  preferences  fluff,  angst,  or  smut : both fluff and angst are really fun! i personally don’t write smut though (but no hate to those who do!).

plots  or  memes : both! i know i need to get better at plotting and approaching people because i am Painfully shy but i promise i do not bite and would love to plot with you all! and memes are always a great way to start an interaction!

long  or  short  replies : short replies are usually easier, but i’m fine with both!

best  time  to  write : for me, probably the afternoon/night.

are  you  like  your  muse(s) : in some ways, but i think in terms of how we come off externally and our demeanor katrina and i are very, very different. and i'm definitely very different from ana. tally and i do have more similarities, but i don’t think i’m really just like any of my muses. i can see and understand and even sometimes relate to them in certain ways - for katrina and ana, more in the way that i use them to explore character traits or emotions that don't come as naturally to me. i think i'm very different from them as people.

tagged by: stole it tagging: anyone who wants to!

[nikadd]

i do think that ultimately the whole "don't assume someone is straight" IS a positive thing to internalize but i also do think that the sentiment has somehow transformed into ppl applying certain provisional gay culture qualities upon strangers who might just be hot/creative/funny in unconventional or fresh ways (in kind of a similar way to ppl pointing out how someone is physically attractive if they are perceived as unproblematic ("look how you can age if you stay in your lane" kind of thing), which is a whole issue on its own but i digress) or even if they somehow are adjacent to the culture itself by either being close friends with or dating queer ppl or even creating queer-friendly content.

and i DON'T think that assuming someone is gay or bi is the exact same thing as assuming someone is straight (even though the whole private life thing is like. still very important yk??? it still feels invasive) due to the generally heteronormative world we live in but ALSO i think it's weird to build a certain queer mythos around a person regardless of their own personal identity and experience ESPECIALLY in the age where we are so concerned with observing each other in the digital panopticon. like yeah sure public figures are forced to come to terms with some level of their personal life being open to the public consumption, but popular culture and the way the audiences interact with the celebrities have changed Dramatically in the last few years for better or for worse. the mere idea of celebrity is now so much more casual and approachable and accessible to the masses (both due to the predetermined and the natural developments in social media as public forums) and it's insidious how gradual it feels to become fully succumbed in it.

all that is to say... obviously i can't stop you from considering someone bisexual until proven wrong - i'm not going to posture here and say that i don't have these kinds of thoughts about some people - but it's also important to be careful about the way we kind of tulpa ourselves into building an entire personality for someone most of us would ultimately never know in a private, personal manner (and even then!!!! but this goes without saying.) this kind of thing often turns ugly not just for the person (though they might not be too affected due to the still remaining distance which is honestly a great thing to have, as i've mentioned) but also just for the general tone of conversations ppl have every day online. ppl - yes, even the famous ones - are allowed to not have to contend with the private matters in their public identity, whether it's something that's partially created by their marketing team OR their following. annoyingly, even the idea of someone being a really good ally is being built into some kind of deific martyrdom. i just want ppl to relax and become less concerned with other ppl's personal sense of self.

[itsclydebitches]

Oh I also like how the anon was like "you all keep calling us the 'Anti-rwde' or whatever" as if we are not specifically referring to a specific subsection of the fndm that specifically has labeled themselves as Anti-RWDE and has specifically used that tag so that they can make it easier to turn harassing people over Fandom opinions into a groupwide party game

So not only is anon blowing smoke when they say that YOU of all people "never post anything positive" (a straight-up lie if I ever heard one lol, you are an incredibly positive and upbeat person who clearly loves rwby and are only getting hate because certain sections of the fndm have decided to punish all who stray from the groupthink) but they're also displaying their ignorance by talking as if "Anti-RWDE" is a term we made up to describe people who casually like rwby, rather than the fact that is a label a specific group of people chose for themselves upon deciding to intentionally cyberbully and abuse total strangers because they don't like our opinions about a web cartoon.

Unfortunately, that twisted logic regarding names has been going on since the start. Though I didn’t experience the beginning of all this first-hand (since I came into the fandom a little later), my understanding of the history is basically that:

Fans posted content that existed under the hugely broad category of “negative” opinions (as every fandom does). However, unlike other communities, RWBY defined “negative” content as anything from a horrific, anti-representation rant lacking all evidence and deliberately attacking others… to someone going, “I preferred A over B and here’s an analytical examination as to why.” Anything deemed negative was considered equal, regardless of what should be the very obvious problems with that approach.

Thus, “critics” quickly became “haters” and all attempts to explain the nuances of criticism fell flat.

Purity culture reared its head, emphasizing that haters weren’t just people posting opinions on a webseries others disagreed with, but morally heinous asshole who were actively harming other fans and the creators. They were rude.

Since this is a fandom built on canonical acronyms that function as other words, they’re RWDE.

(And because they've always been haters, it's also the HTDM.)

So, after a long time of trying to explain things—no, just because one asshole is sending RT mean tweets doesn’t mean the majority of us do that; no, that rant isn’t the same thing as posts trying to deconstruct the show; no, a desire for better queer rep doesn’t make us homophobic, etc.—fans basically threw up their hands and went, “Fine! If we’re so rude to you then we’ll embrace it. We’re RWDE now. Might as well adopt the name you all keep calling us since we can’t get you to stop.”

Tumblr’s RWBY community demanded loudly that all criticism be filterable. Or better yet, removed from the site entirely. So, critics started using the RWDE tag in part so others could easily circumvent it.

Then fans got mad that the RWDE tag existed. A space dedicated solely to criticizing the show? The horror! Did you all miss the part where we really just wanted you out of the community entirely?

A lot of critics were successfully harassed into giving up on posting about RWBY, which is ironic given how often we hear the accusation that we harass others. I’ve personally never come across a RWBY fan who left the community because of RWDE. (Or, to be more specific, people who left because of actual RWDE posters. Plenty of fans will claim they were harassed by RWDE, but really they're referring to a handful of specific, bigoted assholes with no association with the rest of the sub-community and using "RWDE" as an inaccurate umbrella term for everyone in the fandom they dislike. As you put it, anon, it's a group-wide party game. "RWDE" has become the catch-all name for anyone you hate and more often than not, people ignore the legit RWDE posters going, "We don't know this person? They've never interacted with us? And we don't approve of their actions either, so why are you lumping us in with them??"). Meanwhile, I know many people who have left the community because of other fans targeting them over posting their disappointment and grievances with the series. And many more have come forward to basically say, “I never posted in the first place because I know the shit that'll get me.”

Because RWDE continued to exist, anti-RWDE then became a popular tag to combat it. They VAST majority of RWDE posters have never even interacted with the crew, but the claim that they're harassers became so ubiquitous that harassing them in turn was seen as justified. You criticized this public, paid-for product of a major corporation and posted it somewhere the creators will never see? We'll send you death threats to your personal inbox. Yes, those are absolutely the same thing.

“But you started this term,” we’ve said. “You created RWDE and then we adopted it precisely because you wanted to filter out our content. We want you to block us if you don't like this stuff. Why would you create a new tag that is specifically all about engaging with opinions you know you disagree with?”

There’s never been an answer to that because it’s really just about feeling superior and enjoying targeting the “bad people” online.

Similar stuff happened over on Reddit. A RWBY sub was made, the community decided they didn’t want anything they deemed as negative, eventually in an effort to carve out their own space/avoid the instant down-voting/appease the fans who very clearly wanted a strict separation in content, the RWBY Critics sub was created.

…and then that was used as evidence for how horrible those fans were. It's become go-to “evidence” presented to new fans as a way to deter them from going to the dark side, so to speak. “Look at how they created an entire space solely for hating on RWBY! RWBY Critics and RWDE are proof that they’re all horrible fake fans who only want to ruin others’ enjoyment.” Which, of course, misses the crucial context that from the start critics have always wanted to be a part of the main circles—I still post in “RWBY” because that’s what my posts are about—and we only created these niche, highly critical-focused spaces because others demanded that separation in the first place. However, I can't really blame new fans for buying into all that. If I came into a community and the majority immediately started warning me about this sub-group, painting them as every horrible thing under the sun (they're racist, transphobic, they hate the canonical queer rep, they're constantly harassing RT, they're the reason all these bad things have happened, etc.) ... I'd be pretty wary too. It speaks volumes that I've encountered a lot of people over the years who have gone, "I legit thought that RWDE was the devil until I was disappointed in something myself. Then I realized just how fast the rest of the community can turn on you if you criticize RWBY - even while still loving it! - and as a result I discovered that the vast majority of RWDE posters aren't like what the rest of the fandom paints them as." There are always exceptions on both sides, of course. You can find asshole RWDE posters and asshole non-RWDE posters, but on the whole RWDE is pretty extensively misrepresented and a lot of that stems from being able to push fans towards specific actions (a name, a new space, simply getting so frustrated that you explode in a private post that then breaks quarantine) and then being able to say, "See? They're so awful."

Though from what I've heard things have been better over there as of late, for a time this misrepresentation became so intense that the RWBY sub attempted a blanket ban on the critics sub, because guilt by association and all that. Luckily, the majority of the fandom realized that this was ridiculous, one step way too far, and it was revoked. But the fact that this happened at all is a good summary of how critics are often perceived in the community.

So yeah, this keeps happening. It's become a predictable cycle. Critics of all varieties are a part of the main community, they’re derided, they eventually get sick of that treatment, they carve out a space for themselves… and then that’s used as “proof” that they were always RWBY-hating assholes. You can’t win when either choice is automatically framed as wrong. The only correct choice, according to fans like that anon, is to stop engaging with RWBY entirely. Which, you know, is advice I personally don't plan to take lol.