#been a while since ive seen so many queer people in one place and just So Much Joy

[good-beans]

Went to a queer wedding today and damn... everything's gonna be okay huh

#both brides are good friends of me and my girlfriend #and theyre literally so perfect for each other #we could tell even before they made it official how deeply they cared about each other #and today they had the most beautiful small ceremony #it was so joyful #one of the brides wasnt sure if her mom would come because shes very traditional and made it seem like she wouldnt #but she did come and was very supportive #i was so happy for them #i cried through all their vows asfvvbn #(to be fair they were gorgeous and everyone was emotional) #and then i cried during the speeches #there was just so much love and support #and sitting there with my gf after months of stressing over little things in the future #i just knew we'd be okay #and though its definitely a ways off (as i have to keep reminding her lmao) i cant wait for us to do that some day #thats all im just sappy 😅 #been a while since ive seen so many queer people in one place and just So Much Joy #rose rambles

[manicpixiefelix]

and other things that happened by the red staircase

{ One-Shot for head, heart, hand. }

Summary: Like with all events at Saltburn, you take great care to learn all you can about the guests for the upcoming Catton Family Reunion, to make sure you can make a good impression. You and Venetia, however, discover that Felix may be making too good of an impression on his recently un-estranged cousin.

Need to Know: They/Them. Explicitly NB Reader. FWB!Reader/Felix. Reader is from a well off family but has pretty much been adopted by the Cattons.

Warnings: felix fingering(/possibly going down on) his cousin but its not super explicit, reader having a social anxiety regarding the social event, venetia being kind of a nasty little perv i love her

A/N: 3841 words. this was meant to just be a little something about venetia and reader teasing felix after finding out he accidentally fingered his cousin, something i could write on my phone before bed. which i did but i didn't stop writing for 4 hours and it became too long for just an answer. also because there's a bunch of catton family lore ive invented and put it all in here.

also before any discourse arises, there's a character briefly mentioned here, Marv, who is an old butch lesbian who uses he/him pronouns. he is not trans, but chooses to use he/him, look into queer history if this bugs you, or go outside and off of my blog. you're reading the writing of an agender it/its lesbian, my blog is not a place for queer discourse, it's a place for being freaks about Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan.

TAGLIST IN COMMENTS!! // TAGLIST ALWAYS OPEN ! (just message or comment to be added)

----

It's been a particularly stressful event for you; so much of Felix's family is in attendance and you're desperate to impress them. It had been called a reunion, but nothing at Saltburn was ever so simple, nor so informal. As always you've prepared ahead of time; Duncan and Elspeth, as they always did, walked you briefly through the guest list, however unlike usual, instead of leaving you alone with the detailed dossier of guests, Elspeth herself had sat with you in one of the numerous studies - the lilac one - and gone through in meticulous detail. The family friends they refer to as cousins, the family they refuse to acknowledge beyond a handshake - and why. All the Catton branches and the gossip that haunts each. Things like how it's the first event in ten years that Sir James' estranged, illegitimate half-sister and her family were invited to. She's laughing, and you act like your nerves aren't on fire, like there isn't bile rising in your throat out of fear of the faux pars you could see on the horizon.

"Oh they're going to love you, darling," she assures. The minute she leaves you start nervous crying over the dossier, which quickly becomes an anxiety attack. It's been a very long time, especially since they'd kindly set up this system to alleviate your known anxieties, that you'd been this afraid of a dinner.

None of them can know.

You're almost eighteen, you're meant to be well past this, meant to have learned to cope with it by now.

On the night of the event, Farleigh's the only one looking as queasy as you feel - the family's pitying looks and grating questions have him going for a smoke break almost every five minutes. Still, Venetia's never without a drink in hand despite her mother's disapproving looks, and Felix is nowhere to be seen. At least at this family affair there's a number of people your own age. Many related, but many not - more friends of the family, or illegitimate offspring. Still, you don't want to put your preparations to waste, want to make a good impression.

There's mean laughter from by the fireplace as you find yourself in conversation with Sir James and his second cousin Barty, praising the man for his recent and lucrative foray into financially supporting broadcast television. James gives you and incredibly surprised and approving look, while Barty lights up with delight, claiming that there was hope for the young after all it seemed. Casting a glance to the fireplace, you see a few mean looking teens all watching you with sneers.

Barty asks how you found yourself here, and James pats you on the back before you can answer, claiming you as one of the wards of Saltburn; a good influence on his dear son, Felix. Pride flares in your chest. But you can still hear the teens call you a freak.

Its taking everything in you to not try and find sanctuary in the company of Felix, Venetia, or Farleigh. Its incredibly tempting, considering the abundance of desperate eye contact you and Farleigh especially are sharing, but you worry that if you don't keep face, don't put your information to use, don't remain visible to everyone in the room who you've convinced yourself are even tangibly related to Felix and his immediate family, every single one of them will hate you.

One day you will reckon with how profoundly your upbringing effected the expectations you place on yourself. Today is not that day. So you smile at Mildred Catton - by marriage, second cousin, young widow and now spinster. Well, she has a girlfriend, judging by the way Elspeth had spoken about her roommate of twenty-five years, and she has a kind and knowing smile as she compliments you - so beautiful, what a handsome young thing you are, oh you do remind me of Marv like this, back when we first met, of that's cute, you'd love him. Marv is short for Marvel Elizabeth, the butch woman who lives with Mildred and runs a bike shop and who you'd spent probably too much time looking at in the dossier, his arm around Mildred in her photo, both of them smiling so wide.

You kind of wish he was here. When you share the sentiment, Mildred looks a little crestfallen; you get the impression that not a lot of the Cattons share your feeling.

Still, talking to Mildred helps ease your nerves considerably. At least until you realise that it's been quite some time since you'd seen Felix.

You don't need him at all times... Don't need to know his whereabouts at every second of every day... But you've found yourself trapped in a conversation with a gaggle of the newer, younger, shinier wives of Felix's various uncles-something-times-removed, and one hadn't been updated in the dossier and you greeted her as the wife she'd replaced. So now you're mortified, like a deer in the headlights as they're all judging you, and you know you're on the verge of panicking or throwing up -

"Need to steal our lovely Y/N for a moment," Venetia, your saviour. She slips an arm in yours and doesn't wait for an answer.

"Venetia, dear -" Christie, owner of a failing fragrance business that she desperately doesn't want people to know is failing, but that her husband had drunkenly, forlornly confessed about to Sir James, barely get two truly disdainful words in before Venetia brightly throws over her shoulder -

"Love your dress, matches your roots, talk later Auntie Chris," and you can only imagine the flustered fury on Christie's face as the other women try not to compare the dark dress to the woman's dark roots peeking through her blonde hair. You, however, are gone speechless in your nauseous panic, and press yourself to Venetia's side as she pulls you through the crowd, "you looked about ready to kill yourself like one of those dishonoured samurai," she says quietly but casually.

"Yeah, that was the rough plan," you managed to joke weakly. Your heart was racing; you hated being like this. It takes you a moment to properly focus back in on the moment, and realise Venetia was dragging you along with considerable purpose, "are you okay?"

"I need your robot brain to help me decide if something's funny or just gross."

"My robot brain?"

"You know everyone here because - and I say this with love - you're a freak about these things-"

"Didn't know Iona," you muttered, once again horrified, gaze going glassy as all you can think about is how you called her Misha. Her husband had a type; models from northern countries and very little sense of humour, it seemed. Venetia snapped her fingers in your face, frowning, keeping your mind from wandering too far.

"They got married a month ago, you probably won't even see her again," she rolled her eyes, taking you by the shoulders, leading you from the main entertaining area towards the main parlous, "but the point is, I know we refer to everyone as Aunt or Uncle or Cousin or whatever, but I'm not even actually at all related to like half of them," Venetia pauses, looking at you very seriously, "but you know the difference, right? Like if I pointed to someone, you'd know how exactly they're here?"

"Uh, yeah, of course," it's who you were, it's what you did, "don't you?"

"Not," she visibly hesitates, gaze shifting to look around the room, "not really," she admits, they're all just, you know, family. There's always been too many to bother with the how or why of any of them, unless mum or dad felt it was important for me and Felix to keep in mind specifically," but after a beat she met your gaze with a wolfish grin, "or if it was particularly scandalous." Okay, you think you're starting to get her intentions.

"So who are you wondering about and why?"

The way Venetia was smiling could not possibly mean anything good.

"So," Venetia took you by the shoulders and steered you through the grand foyer towards the stairs, as if on her way to yours or Felix's room. Her voice had gotten quieter, conspiratorial, "I've been watching this unfold all night," she explains gleefully, "and I did think it was rather bold to be looking to get someone in bed at a family reunion, though I supposed that there is a good chance that they're not even related; as we've discussed, family is a rather loose, fond title for many of them here tonight," she's choosing her words incredibly carefully, skirting around her point for dramatic effect, "and," she stops in the doorway by the red staircase; you think you can hear faint moaning not too far away. Venetia's voice is a whisper, "I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt, considering I'm pretty sure I've actually never seen this girl in my life, so I can't say who she belongs to here."

Around the corner there's an attempt at a shushing that sounds more masculine, judging by the whisper of laughter that accompanies it, and a young woman's giggled apology, followed by a breathy gasp, and the faint sound of wood scraping against the marble floor. You and Venetia peer around the corner like the Hardy boys, you ducking down and her leaning over you.

The girl in question is leaning back against the antique, wooden end table at the end of the short hall, head throw back, chest heaving with wanton breathes. Wearing a flowing, green dress that looked almost like silk, but was clearly rayon when you had seen her up close earlier, you knew immediately who she was. More importantly, you were surprised to see someone in a suit on their knees in front of her, beneath her dress.

Alyssa Morelli has seemed absolutely out of her mind with boredom and disdain for this entire affair in the brief few moments you'd spent with her. Like you she was seventeen, and was the eldest daughter of Sir James' estranged half sister. Having barely any information about her, and also trying to focus on not losing your cool regarding that fact, it had made conversation, at least for you, incredibly difficult.

She hated the wine, hated her mother for dragging her along, hated the way rich people talked about nothing, and thought everything about Saltburn, the Cattons, and the entire night was a frivolous display of meaningless excess and wealth. Rich people are such freaks, she'd told you, with a look that clearly said that includes you, and she's finished another glass of champagne with one large gulp and a shudder. For a long moment you'd looked at her - perhaps you could have been a little less unnerving about it, but she'd caught you off guard - as you tried to think of something to say.

"I think you'd thrive at university," you blurt out. She gives you a look like you were some kind of unpleasant bug, having the audacity to continue speaking to her. One of the staff passes with a tray of more champagne, and you pluck two glasses off, handing one to her as you continued, "however I would be fascinated to hear your thoughts on the way our classicist society prioritises and celebrates formal tertiary education" you let your gaze roam, holding your glass in both hands with the tips of your fingers, a dead giveaway of your nerves without you even realising, but for some reason she's still letting you talk, "and the idea of the pursuit of knowledge without that being a financially sustainable life choice anymore if you do it the wrong way. Why celebrate scientists when we just disregard modern philosophers?" You take a sip of your champagne and try and tell yourself to shut up, "I know the answer's 'because you can't profit off of philosophers as easily as you can scientists', but it just kind of sucks, don't you think?"

A long, uncomfortable silence follows.

"I swear at least Felix, Farleigh, and Venetia aren't freaks," you blurted out. Alyssa's shoulders relaxed just a little. At least you were self aware.

"Who?" Its... less hostile. You point out Felix and Farleigh headed out for a cigarette with a few others around your age, and Alyssa sighs, rolling her eyes. She's still clearly got Catton blood in her, her eyes and nose even remind you of Venetia. Still, she headed towards the side door; even her walk seemed to ooze contempt for the night.

Now, watching her, moonlight peaking down the stairs to catch the way she's beginning to glow with sweat, white-knuckled grip on the dark wood and her once perfectly straight, dark hair turning curly with moisture around her face and by her shoulders, you're actually a little glad to see it. At least she seemed to have found one person not entirely unbearable.

You knew all too well how overwhelming and isolating these events could be. As much as you felt you could relate, you couldn't really understand what she'd be going through, her first time at an event like this, feeling that there's people in the room who truly think you and your family outright don't belong. She should take her fun where she can get it, you think.

Shoving Venetia back to give the couple their privacy, you push her back into the parlour.

"Who is that?" Venetia demanded in a whisper, eyes bright. You sigh, shaking your head.

"Alyssa, she hasn't been to something like this before, just let her have her fun," after a beat, you step in a little closer, hands finding Venetia's hips as you attempted to distract her, "you know we could -"

"Alyssa who?" It hasn't worked. Venetia takes your hands, "this is important." There's something that goes beyond mischief in her eyes.

"Morelli," but she makes a face like that's not enough, "Aunt June's daughter." Venetia frowned.

"Aunt June's daughter married one of those Dubai millionaires five years ago and hasn't sent her a single pound or even a message since."

"That's your Great Aunt June- Juniper," you clarified without missing a beat, "she's not even related to any of you; your mum doesn't know who she was initially tied to in the family." Venetia takes a few moments to give you a look of faint, disbelieving awe. Clearing your throat, you looked back over your shoulder as the suggestive noises around the corner were growing louder, "Estranged Aunt June."

Venetia's eyes lit up with what could only be described as malevolent glee.

"So she's my cousin."

"Yes."

"Actually? Blood and all? Not just one of my uncles' weird friends who's been hanging around for decades so now we have to call them family?"

"I'm beginning to get afraid of your intentions, Ven," despite your wary smile, you weren't really joking. Venetia completely disregards this, however, holding your shoulders so tightly it begins to hurt.

"That girl," she points sharply, the kind of intensity in her eyes that absolutely means trouble, "just around the corner, moaning like a whore, getting fingered, tongued, whatever -" she wets her lips in some kind of anticipation, "is my actual, blood related cousin? And you're entirely sure of that?"

Taking a deep breath, unsure of what the repercussions of this all will be, you slowly nod.

"Yes..."

Venetia steps back, has to clap her hands over her mouth to muffle her positively gleeful laughter. For some unexpected reason, this piece of information seems to be some of the best news she's ever received in her life. It almost brings her to tears. After she calms down, you think you hear her mutter something along the lines of I'm never letting him live this down as she fans herself, attempting to calm herself.

"Ven, are you okay?" Still utterly confused about what any of this means, you can't help the concern you feel. Venetia's nodding, fighting back aftershocks of giggles, gazing often at the doorway.

"Yes, I- you're wonderful, thank you for helping me with that-" overcome by another, brief fit of giggles, it takes her a moment to compose herself, "I love you and your robot brain so very dearly -"

"Oh my god~" from around the corner, and another, louder shush. Venetia buries her face in her hands, echoing oh my god as she chokes on laughter once more. When she resurfaces, face bright red with amusement, you take her hand and try to insist that you should give them privacy.

"Yes, of course," Venetia agrees, suddenly trying to appear as serious as she's able, "I just have one other favour to ask you."

"What?" You ask flatly, unsurprisingly wary, watching her struggle not to grin.

"Could you tell my brother?"

The question hangs in the air for a long, confusing moment.

"Tell him what?"

"That Alyssa's our cousin."

"Sure...?" you frowned a little, peering over her shoulders, "I don't know where he is though, I haven't seen him in a while." Venetia smiles like the Cheshire Cat.

Oh... no... she isn't implying -? But Alyssa's timing is unfortunately perfect.

"Oh my god, Felix~"

Your mouth drops open in shock upon hearing that.

"Oh my God," you groaned, pained by the realisation as your face scrunched up with sudden understanding and disappointment, "Felix."

Venetia is absolutely right, he's never living this down.

"You had me prattling on for fucking ages about nothing, just letting them go at it all the while? You could have just asked!" You hissed, already mortified on his behalf.

"You're letting them go at it now!" She crowed quietly, and ah, fuck. Yeah, she had a point there.

Rounding the corner briskly, you cross your arms but at the very least keep your gaze to the floor.

"Felix -" you clear your throat.

"Oh, fuck off," Alyssa, seeing it's you, groans with frustration. There's movement beneath her dress when you glance up; there's something almost comical about knowing what you're seeing is Felix sitting up straighter under there.

"I know that's you, Y/N," Felix had enough dignity to not sound ashamed or caught out. But he should, "just, yeah mate, could you fuck off a bit?" Its not a particularly sharp request, and if this were any other situation, of course you'd obligingly fuck off. However...

"Well don't fucking stop," Alyssa hisses to him, sounding almost embarrassed by the fact that he was giving you the time of day right now, "seriously, fuck off!" She tries to whisper-shout, but halfway through her voice turns to an unsteady moan and her head falls back against the wall again, "OhmygodFelix~" she whines, bringing one of her legs up over his shoulder.

"So should I wait until after you get her off to tell you?"

"Tell him what you little pervert?" Alyssa, furious at your refusal to leave, demands.

"Hey, be nice to them," you hear, vaguely muffled from under her skirt. You have to snort a laugh.

"Thanks Fi, I'll just tell you now, uh," you can't look at them in this moment, fighting off your embarrassed smile at you look to the ceiling, "I don't think this is what your dad meant when he suggested you get to know Aunt June's kids; this might be too welcoming for your recently un-estranged cousin."

Around the corner you hear Venetia cackling like a banshee, clearly having been eavesdropping.

Felix scrambles back from under Alyssa's dress, looking an absolute mess.

"You what?"

"Oh my god." There's nothing lewd about it this time, Alyssa herself sounds absolutely fucking mortified.

----

The next morning, over breakfast, the mood is... strained. Its Sir James who breaks the ice, brightly - though it's clearly forced - commenting on how the night took such an unexpected and unfortunate turn. Felix, who likely doesn't even remember the end of the night considering how thoroughly plastered he got after his unfortunate affair with his cousin, looks to his father very suddenly, the sudden fear in his eyes about what his parents may know hidden by his large, dark glasses. He'd threatened to drown himself in the lake if you or Venetia told anyone, but his memory got fuzzy from there. The hangover that he's half worried might actually kill him doesn't help.

"Such a shame," Elspeth sighed, "I would have thought June would raise them better than that."

"Estranged Aunt June's daughter, Alyssa," you leaned over to Felix to stage whisper the context to him, half worried the paranoia might kill him there at the table. Venetia does however feel the need to smugly butt in and remind him -

"Our biological cousin."

"Apparently convinced her younger brothers to riot and start breaking all the crockery," you finished. Felix frowned in vague confusion, a feeling which Farleigh seemed to share.

"And it was so unnecessary, like she knew it was the first family thing her mom had been invited to in a decade -"

"She hates rich people and thinks we're freaks," you sat back, shrugging, "she told me so herself."

"Who, June?" Sir James sounded downright heartbroken at the idea, so you quickly shook your head.

"Alyssa." It seems to alleviate some of his concerns, but not a lot, and Sir James goes back to his breakfast still looking rather put out.

"Well maybe," Venetia leans her elbows on the table, bread knife in hand that she was using to flippantly gesture with, "there's some rich people that she should hate," her gaze and smug smile lands on you, as does the nonchalant way she's pointing with her knife, right before she flicks her wrist as if pointing at her brother by pure chance, "and some of us who are freaks."

Felix glared down at his breakfast.

"I don't know why we un-estranged Aunt June in the first place," he grumbled mostly to himself, though not quiet enough that the rest of the table didn't hear. Sir James sighed with disappointment.

"I think in future we may have to limit June's invitations to only her and her husband," he says, shaking his head. Elspeth kindly tells him that it's probably for the best.

Venetia, still apparently feeling petty, threw a bread roll at her brother, who hadn't looked up from where he seemed to be trying to divine life's secrets from his plate of sausages. It glances off his forehead, but knocks his glasses loose and into his breakfast. A second later Felix officially gives up and follows suit, faceplanting into his food.

"Oh my god, Felix!" His mother gasps with concern.

Despite Elspeth sounding nothing like Alyssa had the night before, the familiar phrase sets Venetia off, cackling with laughter at the top of her lungs. While the rest of the table is utterly confused by the series of events that have just occurred, you scoot your chair over close to Felix, patting him sympathetically on the back. Beneath the table, he rests his hand on your knee to give a grateful squeeze. When he talks, only you can hear it, resigned and half muffled by scrambled eggs.

"Hate this family."

#felix catton x reader x oliver quick #felix catton x reader #saltburn x reader #saltburn imagine #felix catton imagine #felix catton x y/n #felix catton x you #head heart hand fic #manic writer

[wizardpigeon]

on austinshow (?) in generation loss

(austin viewers pls forgive me if thats not the name he actually uses bc i do not watch him so idk im using the one they introduced him with and assuming its good)

i know a lot of people interpreted austins whole thing with the wife and kids as him being forced to lie by showfall but honestly the whole time my perspective

was that he was actively lying To The Viewers because he knew he'd have a better chance if he appealed to a wider audience/didnt reveal that he was gay,

like, i know he was introduced as

Austin Show | gay

but they cant see that, and the puzzler immediately calls him out for lying, and throughout the episode repeatedly asks him the names of his children and how many he has, which austin fucks up multiple times, so i assumed that he was intentionally trying to mislead the audience to protect himself, and showfall had the everyone prompt him as much as possible (and maybe got him to mention them more himself) in order to point out that something wasn't right about what he was telling us

now, i also want to point out, (and this is from another theory ive seen tying back to the mind control) that austin doesn't have anything on his head, and one theory i saw is that everyone else, barring sneeg until the hat, had something on their head in that episode,

ranboo with their mask

niki, vinny, and sneeg with hats

charlie and ethan with their glasses

rats with masks,

and jerma/puzzler with the prosthetics although that ones a bit more meta since based on charlies commentary it actually looked a lot more real/seamless in person than on camera

but austin isnt wearing anything, and hes arguably the most freaked out, like sure niki is sobbing but she switches the second shes in the spotlight she switches to being collected and upbeat, the only other person we see as visibly disturbed as austin is sneeg during the hat sequence,

throughout the entire carousel scene austin is looking around, visibly nervous, and like others have pointed out, he kept staring at frank, who since the reveal of the filter thing, everyones been pretty agreed on is probably like, a full on rotting corpse that they were just carting around,

so i think that while showfall had some influence on austin, his actions more than anything, they didnt have full control over his words, and they were definitely letting him see at least some of what was going on,

whether they were allowing him to lie and behave so nervously is anyones guess, it certainly makes the program more interesting, but the way he talks so desperately about his many wives and children reads to me as something a queer person would probably do if placed in some kind of saw esque game show where we had to appeal to the largest majority of viewers to survive

i like the way people have taken it as showfall stripping him of his identity, but to me, i read it as them outing him, which, also in my mind works closer with the theme of what fans/fan culture will do to "celebrities" (see kit connor with heartstopper however many years ago that was), and the fact that showfall outed him without care that his situation was dangerous just drives this further home for me

#generation loss analysis #gen loss analysis #genloss austin #austin show #austin show gen loss #generation loss #gen loss #gen loss thoughts #gl austin

[slowjamastan]

hi, I like you and what you post but may I ask what your view is with trans folks? I genuinely just want to know, tbh it doesn’t matter to me your views but I am just curious because you don’t seem particularly judgy but a little more traditional

oh yeah fair question. i hope u dont mind if i expand on my life a bit, bcz my views make more sense w context i think. tldr at the end

so i identified as dif flavors of nonbinary/trans/queer for nearly a decade of my life. ive been on tumblr since 2010, i called myself "trans" since age 14. ages 18~20ish i went to art school. it was a Peak Woke environment if you will and i fit right in. i dropped out when i realized the artists life wasnt for me. I had no idea what to do next with my life, so i did a lot of serious introspection and among many things, made the conscious decision to consider points of view on trans people from places other than tumblr (there is a lot wrong with me), like, i found out that people who didn’t “get” the trans thing aren’t universally stupid and considered their concerns. crazy ik. later i conclude baby steps style "hey i think 'nonbinary' as an identity might make no sense, like at all" and officially moved my worldview away from "identify as whatever you want forever uwu" 

my opinion on nonbinary genderqueer etc people is that it was made up online in the early 00s at best. “but other cultures have third genders—“ yeah you mean like when gay men aren’t considered real men? or when theres no male children in a family and a girl has to take on that role? nonbinary folx are either children or immature adults who can barely function in society. thats not a moral failing btw but it is hard to watch

from this point forward, assume im talking about binary trans people.

i dont believe gendered pronouns are a decision you get to make, theyre when someone looks at you and diagnoses your appearance as one of two things, and trans or not you dont get to decide how other people see you. trying is an easy way to drive yourself insane and get 500 plastic surgeries and do nothing but obsess over your appearance for your short time on earth. this isnt controversial right? we've all seen trashy reality stars with fucked up faces and botched boob jobs right? trans ppl look like that to me. again, not a moral failing, but def a red flag considering, for instance, the price tag and self centeredness transitioning implies. but anyway it feels ridiculous to handle random men in skirts or women with green hair with kiddie gloves in public yk so i just gender em as i see em. i dont give them any space in my brain bcz why should i. sorry if u dont pass and are going to angry tweet ab this interaction, its not my problem

i started identifying with truscum types (because i was never doing the trans thing “for fun” ive been uncomfortable in my body and had complicated feelings on being seen as female for most of my life), and committed to being a trans man full time age 21~22. started therapy soon after while weighing the risks of T on my health and safety and what exactly i wanted from it, even tho i WOULD be kicked out if i medically transitioned and i had no safety net nor any close friends to help me, so i kept putting it off. i was saving as much money as i could from my pt job (while going to community college for my ged) but mentally getting worse and worse. so i got a prescription for ssris.

in a few months, zoloft not only helped my overall mental state but also alleviated the fixation on my body parts being somehow wrong (or maybe it was all the same thing?). it took away my ability to mentally spiral about gender for hours at a time. i dont know if thats a normal effect, or i got placeboed out of wanting to transition somehow. but i experienced the hypothetical scenario "what if you woke up one day and didnt want to be trans anymore" after 10 years of trans identity and organizing my life around transition as a goal.

it was awful but mostly a huge relief. the dysphoria (or dysmorphia or whatever it was) had felt innate and had been with me my whole life and it was just gone, age 23ish. i felt genuinely neutral about myself and my body, and didnt feel like other peoples image of me being “wrong” would make me kms. could have had something to do with my brain maturing also. (as an aside: it felt like 1/3 of my brain had been dedicated to the gender musing pathways and then stopped all at once. my head genuinely hurt. it was a bizarre physical sensation, like a lobe removal, and it took a good year for that to go away)

ive since gone on and off then quit my meds for good, and the mental spiral patterns came back, but its not strictly about my body anymore. its an overthinking pattern that can latch on to anything. (my friend with ocd described a similar cycle she gets caught in. i dont have full blown ocd but i can relate)

i realize my experience isnt universal ofc. gender dysphoria could be a result of a lot of things, but i dont think its an innate hardwired thought pattern. my take is its a result of trauma / autism / mental issues / bi/homosexuality in whatever combination. this is a personal opinion subject to change given evidence, naturally.

anyway. after the dysphoria evaporated, i moved on quick. my ideas about gender were still all over the place. i tried to be more feminine for a while to "match" how i "felt inside". i forced it, didnt enjoy it, but it was fine i guess. i was still insecure about my gender presentation. i still do have body issues, but who doesnt. i wear a mix of clothing styles these days and often get theythemed on vibes alone. im beating the tradwife allegations i promise

this is the point in the average detrans 20-somethings life where she will call herself a TERF semi-ironically and be a shithead online, which is what i did for a while. you pick up new perspectives that feel freeing and suddenly youre above all that gender drama bullshit, like finally you get to look down on the people suffering and laugh because theyre too dumb to "get it." its cathartic after a decade of feeling insane and suddenly feeling capable of living without inherent suffering. i reached gender nirvana and im better than you :3

then you wake up from that and go wait, that was fucking stupid lol. truly terminally online behavior, but i dont have regrets really. the most evil terfily thing i did, if ur wondering, was co-run a blog that reblogged selfies posted in public tumblr mlm tags. i dont think we even added commentary, but we got soooo much hatemail lmaooo. rip straightgirlarchive 🙏

even at peak terf phase i had irl trans friends by the way, and male friends for that matter.

i think the best way i could describe my feelings on trans people now is like meeting someone with a face tattoo, who also treats that tat like a religious experience. they can feel like this represents to the world who they are and are very serious about the symbolism of this tattoo, and thats fine. its trendy in many circles to have face tats rn (wont be for long) but theyre built different, they always needed this face tattoo to be themselves. bro u just dont understand the inner journey like u wouldnt GET it.... and then they complain about not being employable or single or how their loved ones are struggling to get used to their new look...you see what im saying. you get it

i dont hate people like this. i dont think trans people are subhuman or anything. but i am so so SO glad im not one of yall anymore u are ANNOYINGGGGG. I WAS ANNOYING!!!!! in hindsight i sucked so much and was insufferable to be around if u werent on My Level Of Gender Understanding which was based on nothing but social media infographics, >10,000 hours of blind introspection, and Vibes

my god if i could go the rest of my life not having to hear or think about trans stuff ever again i would. ive done my time. ive gotten my trauma. i dont wanna deal with this anymore but it is inescapable online and irl.

and of course, as a lesbian, i personally dislike what T does to womens bodies, not even getting into the top surgery epidemic.... plus theres now biological men taking over or shutting down every lesbian space. i gotta say, existing as a gay woman has never been more suicide inducing than current year /lh

but the human condition generates all types and genuinely if youre an adult and are determined to transition or microdose T or whatever, its your choice. we live in a society. im not gonna berate an alcoholic for drinking or a fat person for overeating either. hating yourself isnt a crime and i can say i find transing cringe but thats subjective and no one asked me. im just chillin, truly, and we can be friends even if i disagree with your life choices. like. its on par with being friends with someone with 200k in college debt to me. you made a dumbass decision imo but maybe to you its worth it, and what are either of us gonna do about it now? im not arguing shit brother, live ur life. manage those consequences best u can. i love u

in conclusion i wasnt born destined to be trans, im a gender nonconforming lesbian with mental problems related to gender and social roles because of the lesbian thing. this is a normal experience that i overthought into body dysmorphia and identity delusions because of the culture around me... im definitely not a radical feminist. maybe call me gender crit but i dont care. i dont identify with any labels that strongly. labels are the mind killer.

TLDR: 

-nonbinary isn’t a real thing outside of hyperonline exclusively-politically-left subcultures, which i personally find annoying since ive left it behind in the process of maturing. to each his own but im allowed to roll my eyes and not play along with larping teenagers and it doesn’t make me evil

-there are no major female / male brain differences. there are no gendered souls. gender dysphoria shouldn’t be treated with transition, because extreme body modification is a mental illness problem in every case. i can’t stop anyone with my opinions obviously but if i could talk to my younger self, id say wait until you’re 25 for the brain development, and in the meantime try less invasive/understudied treatments to improve quality of life.

final disclaimer: i am in my 20s. my views on life and social issues will continue to evolve as long as i live, but the cringe i feel when seeing visibly trans people will never truly go away due to personal traumas. and my trans exes, probably. im super over the queer scene, im a normie gay now. blessings peace love and light

#thanks 4 your patience i had a busy day yesterday. i wrote like 2 versions of this bc i wanted to get my feelings across #its still all over the place but i think it came out better than last time i tried to articulate my feelings on the trans population #mail #post #i deleted a lot of tangents. i like talking ab myself. maybe i just need to write a biography

[denimini]

This is gonna be a very long ask (sorry about that) but there were three different things that I wanted to talk about.

1. I really dislike when cishet jikookers try to assign heterosexual standards to whatever potential romantic-sexual relationship Jimin and Jungkook could have/ have had. I dont know if you are queer or not, but many queer people tend to have more *situationships* than meet-like-become bfs/gfs-love-marry relationships. When you add the layer of them being celebrities since they were teenagers I think that would only decrease the likelihood of their relationship ever being like an average heterosexual relationship. I will also add as a disclaimer that I am a queer woman and cannot speak directly on how mlm relationships develop. Having said that, my thoughts on what their dynamic is/was (if it really has been sexual or romantic) are that it was probably a combination of experimentation, convenience, and chemistry, and less serious than the average expectation of male-female relationships. During the 2017-2019 years where most of us seem to think there was undebiably smth going on between them beyond a friendship or brotherly bond, they had a lot of proximity and very busy schedules. Ironically, the two times where Jungkook has had dating rumors (with evidence) have been during times where they are not in close proximity and have different schedules (i.e., the break they took in the fall of 2019 and early this year when Jimin was extremely busy while Jungkook was not.) I am not trying to diminish their bond by saying it was purely out of convenience. Its possible for love to come out of that convenience, but what I am saying is that that type of dynamic also might have left them wondering if there was every anything more out there for them. Similar to the whole ch2 situation, when we remove the whole enlistment thing out of the equation, its probable that some of them wanted to try something different but that didnt mean they didnt like being in the group.

2. Tomdaya. Why tf am I bringing Tomdaya up? lol

Back during the shooting and promotion of the 1st Spiderman movie there were a lot of rumors of whether Tom and Z were together. Most of the gen public wasnt keeping tabs on that but Zendaya fans were quick to realize that he would often fly out to see her but they were very secretive about what they then referred to as their “friendship”. Sometime after, there were pap pics of Tom with a woman that clearly did not look platonic so her fans immediately realized that they either broke up or were never a thing in the first place, only friends. After that, they both went on to have semi-public relationships with other people. Then, a few years later they get papped kissing and are officially a couple. At that point, most people werent even aware that there were some sus things early on in their *friendship* and just assumed that they just got together much later after they met. I don’t want to over explain it, but Im hoping some of the parallels Im trying to draw are clear.

3. Finally, I am really curious about who that anon thinks Jimin might be dating. Right now the only sus thing Ive seen that could be interpreted as a “thing” is his friendship with Lee Saeon. Not only is he the only person Jimin has been spotten out with casually, but it also looks like he wears a lot of Jimins clothes. He was even spotted with Jimin AND JK a few years ago. He starred in a BL and did say that he was strictly an ally, but he would not be the first or last closeted queer person to call themselves an ally lol. Despite Jimin spending so much time with him he has never brought him up and always talks about his friends in plural even though its always the two of them alone (except for that one time with jikook in i think 2021). Im sure he has other friends so its interesting to see why its only ever the two of them going out. Him and Eunwoo have also been kinda sus sometimes but its been a hot minute since we’ve seen anything from them lol.

I do agree on your point about queer relationships. Personally, Ive been in a heterosexual one for years, but I know from friends and family that comparing heterosexual relations to queer ones isn't very fair. The challenges , expectations and risks when you're queer are completely different and the way to acceptance and a steady relationship , especially in a country which doesn't support you, is a very different than what straight people go through.

On this topic, I find something Jimin once said very interesting. He said he used to think he was just living life and having fun but it didn't turn out that way and had to accept some things and come to terms with them (not an exact quote). Many people, including myself, thought he meant coming to terms with his sexuality (for the record, I believe he's shown us clearly he is queer, possibly bi).

That being said, I believe in your theory about his and JKs relationship. Given their age, profession and country, if there ever had been something between them, I doubt it had been linear and straightforward, as some would like to imagine. Them being young, busy, and constantly together with one being bi and other (probably) at least bi-curious is not something to be dismissed. I genuinely don't think that if they had something more than friendship, it was superficial, but it most likely was complicated.

I see Saeon's name being brought up a lot when talking about a potential partner for Jimin. I don't want to speculate much about someone who said they're heterosexual, but it's not impossible for them to share something more. At least the physical stuff he has mostly gotten out of the way already 😁

Does someone know when him and JM became close?

#jikook #kookmin #jimin #jungkook

[aartifex-a]

i guess i’m in a thinky mood today so because of some recent info on my dash, as a white canadian person who writes an asian (specifically korean) oc i think its important to address other white writers who have characters that are a different race, culture, ethnicity, etc from them:

you will almost inevitably fuck up if you arent coming into your writing with at least an awareness of the dynamics of race re: your characters or world, and even then you probably will still fumble at times. people calling you in/out, bringing this to your attention, isnt harrassment. ive been writing jin as an oc since i was 13. i have absolutely fucked up and done problematic racist shit because im a white person raised in a society that upholds whiteness, you dont leave that kind of pervasive environment untouched by the various -isms, systems, and inequalities of those societies. this isnt me trying to be righteous or “a good white person”, its just honest. you wont ever grow or become a better writer if you dont research the cultures you write and if you dont listen to the people you are portraying and affecting with what you write. be willing to make changes, drastic ones, or take breaks to educate yourself and revamp. 

i can only speak for myself, but i dont think many people would say white writers can never write characters who are of a different race, it just means you need to be more cautious because of the dynamics of how race plays out in the real world. i feel somewhat comfortable with writing jin and trying to incorporate korean culture into his character only because i’ve done both my own research and opted to take korean language and culture classes at my university. i went to the korean culture club which was run by the professor of the korean culture course, and i try to keep up with major news stories out of south korea on places like twitter. this doesnt make me an expert, and i will sometimes avoid certain topics that i dont feel adequately educated on. its something im always trying to work on, and an aspect of my writing that i welcome critiques for. 

another note for writers in a similar position as me, is that while cultural research is important it can only take you so far. remember the cultures you write about contain real, individual people with a diversity of opinions and perspectives. dont make broad stroke assumptions that just because something is considered normal or common in the dominant culture of that society/culture that everyone agrees. ill speak from my own writing experience, but when it comes to writing queer poc, just because a culture/society has homophobic elements or doesnt have legal protections for lgbtq people doesnt mean that there arent lgbtq people and allies in those cultures who are actively fighting for their rights. its important to note the affects of culture on a person, but a person can never be seen only through the dominant lens of their culture. let your characters be people with agency that are shaped by their culture, not stereotypes of a culture first and people second.

its also important, imo, for us as white writers to take some of the burden off of poc in the community when it comes to speaking up about this kind of thing. thats the whole reason im writing this at all. it isnt our job to speak over or for them, but it shouldnt only be up to poc to constantly do damage control, education, and clean up for white people. thats not fair, and it puts the weight of trying to fix harmful ideas on the people who suffer the harm rather than the people who perpetuate and/or benefit from that harm.

and as an end note, i understand that we dont get to choose the environments we’re born into. we don’t all get to be lucky and have progressive families or communities, some of us grow up with some really fucked up ideas normalized to us. its not your fault if you were raised in a way thats ignorant of or hostile to people different from you, but it is your responsibility to pull yourself out of the muck once you realize youre in it. you wont please everyone or be perfect but thats not a reason to avoid growth. your past can explain how you got to where you are but it isnt an excuse to keep going down the same path into the future.

#ooc #cw dash discourse

[ecoevoexo]

i hate the ai art debates so i dont wanna get too involved but like, ive studied art a lot, and ive been an artist my whole life. as a very disabled person i was trying to start making art my career last year, since its one of the few things i can successfully do, & im sort of giving up bc at this point it feels like a dead end.

ive also used AI art thingamabobs a bunch. its fun. its fun that you can say "femboy osama bin laden funko pop" and get something that looks like that back. at times it can be a useful way of playing around with composition, value, and palettes.

only... it's all kinda the same. because of how it works, it aggregates trends and turns them into norms. you end up with a lot of normative bodies in heroic poses in the well-lit center of a tableau.

and that's a genuine problem. not just because it weakens the visual culture & its variety, but because some of those elements (normative heroic individual) are a characteristic of conservative and fascist art.

now the question of the politics of aesthetics is a difficult one to pin down, but it's foolish to act as if aesthetics never has a political character. when i spend a lot of time engaging with AI generated images i start to have an uncomfortable nagging feeling i also get when i spend too much time looking at propaganda. i don't think this is intentional on the part of AI creators. my real worry is that it's a functional inevitable result of how AI works. the flattening of cultural output into certain unitary trends has an underlying politics, i think that can't be avoided, and that politics shows up in the content it produces.

this isn't my only problem w using AI generated images as art output, but it's one i haven't really seen people talk about. when people critique, for example, "bigtiddyanimegirltrendingonartstation" aesthetics, i notice that they rarely mention the fact that the composition of those pieces is uncomfortably uniform, and follows the same basic "heroic portrait" aesthetics one might expect from a painting of a US president, if he had big anime tiddies.

now the artist Andres Serrano is most known for his infamous work Piss Christ, but i personally find his entire output to be fascinating, because he's essentially engaging in a constant détournement of the heroic aesthetic in art. part of why Piss Christ is effective is because it is beautiful, because it shares the aesthetics of so many faithful loving representations of jesus. if you want to see what i'm talking about with fascist aesthetics, look at the pieces from Serrano's series named Shit. it's nothing but heroic photography of literal shit, and i think it's great because it enables us to examine the heroic form bereft of everything but its visual symbology.

now, there are times i quite like the heroic form. it has its place in scifi, fantasy, even in antifascist political art. i've been experimenting with using this imagery and symbology a lot in recent years while representing queer feminine otherness, as a contrast to the patriarchal world i normally find in art. the problem that i have is that our current totally-not-fascist-wink-wink era there's enough heroic art out there to dilute the reference pool. which is to say, when an AI is training, it is disproportionately exposed to art that can frequently have compositional aesthetics with a fascistic bent, and because those aesthetics are all shared (a "norm"), it will be more reinforcing on the AI's internal model than the many other potential compositional aesthetics. with a human, i can conscientiously choose to disregard the norm and try to make something different--and that's hard! it requires willpower. with an AI, everything is infected with norms.

and this doesn't just mean compositional aesthetics. it means body types, skin color, etcetera. the way these AIs currently work, at least, you have to be very skilled with your inputs to not get very normative outputs. you can see this, for example, in the nature of Loab, which essentially shows how an AI is learning to model the idea of disgustingness, and to give it a human face.

now normativity has always been a problem with art. but as we pass the creativity of the artist on to a process without conscious supervision, the risk increases.

i think some of the best most interesting AI art are failure pieces. stuff where the algorithm gets confused and limbs pop out of walls and a head is coming out of the ground, phantasmagoric morph scapes. these are things that are going to be increasingly lost with time, as AI gets more skilled. we should celebrate and explore them instead, it might help derail the machine of normativity.

i also think it's very interesting to do creative explorations of AI's internal reality, such as Loab. that's cool, genuine, creative stuff. that is, in my opinion, a good way to engage with these tools, exploring their internal structures and limits.

but i of course share concerns about the effect on artists--and it's bullshit to act like art directors won't preferentially use AI works over paying actual creatives, it's already begun to happen. the idea of the artistgeoisie that some people have is utterly out of touch with the precarious nature of creative labor in the 21st century. for more, read the book Capital Is Dead, Is This Something Worse?

i also have these aesthetic concerns. i've found most aesthetic concerns about AI to be, frankly, stupid. i don't care if it's soulless or ugly or if there's too many fingers. all those can be interesting. but i do worry that, like a lot of algorithm-based mechanization, it can function as a self-reinforcing echo chamber of some of the worst social constructs of our society.

and it raises an important question: what does it mean to bring an algorithm or a simulated neural net into the process of social construction? what are we doing to our society when we give up the reins to something that is a glorified mechanism?

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

1. I kinda hate how Hades has only had 2 relationships before Persephone and one being his brother’s brother and the other being toxic on both ends. I sorta wish Leuce was in there as like an ex with no drama like the two just didnt work out or something chill (break ups are hard but there’s less dramatic break ups). Idk I just feel like a little internal conflict like that would have some spice to the story but also make me root for the couple a bit more.

Going deeper into it, as a reader we know Minthe as his evil gf whose never gonna work out and Hera and Hades are toxic secret affair, but what if Hades did have a functional relationship with someone who wasn’t toxic but they didn’t work out and she didn’t want to stay in the underworld/be queen. I just feel like that would add a complex layer to the story, not making it all black and white.

With Persephone having more dating experience it’s kinda hard because everyone wants her BUT they aren’t allowed to date her to keep her pure/her mother would kill them/TOGEM. But if RS ever wrote more Persphone and Hermes I’d just want them together like forget hades. 

2. Ive seen some LO fans say "NOW the actual myth will begin" and it's like??? Wasn't that already done in the first three episodes? Why would you RESTART IT? More so, it is objectively awful writing to publish nearly every week for FOUR YEARS to actually get to the main point of the story, which even then will probably take month at best to even start. This is just such a train-wreck in terms of planning, writing, development, and even basic story creation yet the fan will insist it's genius!

3. What I find so aggravating about LO and its fans is they are convinced it's the most unique, groundbreaking work ever, when it's anything but that. Modern settings, Technicolor skintones, "humanizing" the gods, etc have all been a Thing for decades, sometimes even centuries before LO even existed. Even the idea it "deals with heavy topics' is false since the original myths already did so and didn't treat it as haphazardly like Rachel does. They want it to be anything but what it really is.

4. I see so many of the fans excuse Rachel making it just modern NYC as "it's a fictional world so she can do what she wants"  begs the question: do they think Ancient Greece is a fantasy land that never existed? It very much did, and had cultural and social differences from modern day. Even modern Greece is different from America. She does't even try to keep any of it intact despite it being set in that exact time and place. At some point we have to admit the "Greek" part is lip service at best.

5. the "anti" community for LO is overwhelmingly queer, BIPOC women and NBs who used to like the series who where in turn forced out of the fandom because of the almost entirely cishet, white fanbase who refused to even court the idea of differing opinions. The idea all of us marginalized people are "oppressing" a privileged white woman and her entitled fanbase because we critique how she' butchered countless real issue and a real country's stories for her white "feminism" fantasy is laughable.

6. i do not get why all the new book covers we're getting for lo are so boring?? like at least the first normal cover was visually grabbing (even if just lie about what the comic is actually about and has some questionable symbolism in it) but the newer ones are so boring. they don't even have backgrounds now and the logo is so randomly placed and I don't get why. they have book cover artists on staff surely they could help her do it? or work off her sketches and make something better?

7. rachel retweeting a single old picture from cyprus: see! i can about greece! anyway let's ignore that while I retweet 20 pictures in a row about how eris is literally an apple and how hades just needs so many babies RIGHT NOW.

8. rachel spends more time posting about her nails on twitter than even bothering to retweet even one post from her co-workers to give them a needed promo to her massive audience. it's just off putting to me how every other webtoons creators minus her, mongie, and snailords will do anything to support and promo each other while they refuse to do the bare minimum even as the webtoon company bends over backwards to make sure they get them everything they want while ignoring the rest.

9. Even ignoring the issues Rachel added into the story for her own weird reasons, how naive are her and her fans to think whitewashing and romanticizing perhaps the most infamous of all Greek myths into an idealized romance aimed towards pre-teens at the youngest wouldn't come with built in criticism? Like there's a reason the myth is so hotly debated, and it's not because of "misogyny", it's because of how misogyny is used to demonize a mother for the sake of a romanticizing a male abuser..

10. I love how LO fans say "hera only cheated with one person! so that's different from zeus's many affairs!" like no it's not lmao. a person who killed one person and serial killer both get life in prison regardless of how many victims they have. rachel also seems to be implying hera is having an emotional affair with echo which by her own in comic logic is just as bad as a physical affair, so wouldn't that be at least two people? regardless two wrongs do not make a right, hera is also bad here.

#anti lo #lo critical #lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus

[midasinc]

Asking for something is not selfish, even less after you've given us so much!! How could I be against giving back to someone as lovely as you?

Enjolras is really bad at asking for help. He keeps taking on more than he can handle, and then he goes overboard and decides that sleep is superfluous in the wake of social justice. So sometimes Combeferre and Courfeyrac come home from work and find him slumped over a table surrounded by papers, fast asleep. In those cases, normally one of them takes him to bed, and then they round up everything they can and they do their best to finish the work he was doing. Enjolras calls them "his work fairies" because of how many times he has woken up to find something he was struggling with already finished.

Feuilly doesn't get to explore his gender (or lack thereof) a lot during the week, because he doesn't want to ruffle any feathers at work, so sometimes on the week-ends he will go to Bahorel and Jehan's place and they will play dressup and put on stupid makeup and go from drag queen dramatic to actual contouring in a couple of hours, and watch queer movies, and make All the queer jokes. He always feels so much better come Monday.

Jehan has three younger siblings, and they like him, but they mostly love Bahorel so much. Whenever they come visit, they end up latching to Bahorel's legs while the punk silently tries to ask Jehan for help. The kids always end up dragging them into their games: Jehan has some great pictures of Bahorel, in all their towering, pink mohawk glory, sitting on the floor drinking toy tea with a five year old.

Musichetta is Grantaire's stepsister, and they love each other to bits since the first time they met. They tell each other everything, even when they were living on two different time zones. Most of Grantaire's favourite memories from highschool involve being on his bed staring at the ceiling and talking to Musichetta about anything and everything.

Grantaire meets Joly at a dance class. R's favourite dancing style is west coast swing, and he teaches JBM a particular style called "stealing" where you try and find an opportunity to step in and take over one of the person who's dancing (like this). They sometimes have dance parties in their living room where they play at doing that.

Courfeyrac has a thing on his phone that reminds him whenever there is a new exposition at the Natural Sciences Museum. He always makes sure to get tickets for the first day. It's a Triumvirate activity, they've been going to Natural Sciences openings for years. Combeferre just gets so excited!!

Hope this makes you feel better! <3

these are all so wonderful. they feel like real people and i adore them. your musichetta and grantaire stepsibling hc is something i really like a lot and i feel like ive seen you talking about it a lot. i just think these are all great. you’re so smart

#and ty #i did really need this #the mentall illness be whoopin my ass these days #cant win every battle

[collisiondiscourse]

on the wonder duo (part 1)

(BNHA Analysis Post Ahead! This isn’t explicitly romantic, but it is an analysis of the relationship between the two most popular characters in BNHA--Katsuki Bakugou and Izuku Midoriya. Split into two posts because I realized that this was gonna be long as HELL)

yall ever think about the fact that the wonder duo is perfectly set up in so that bakugou and deku together are the better version of all might?

bc like. ive been thinking.

everyone knows the win to save and save to win parallel. How they are supposedly two halves of a whole perfect hero (which, previously, was defined as all might)

but ever since bakugou and deku started working as one—growing together to win AND save and continuously reminding each other that they shouldnt try to do things alone, ive realized that its BECAUSE theres two of them that they surpass all might. its not a case of deku and bakugou both being 50% of an ideal hero, but rather i think that they are 100% of what all might SHOULD HAVE BEEN from the very beginning.

as early as the AM v AFO battle in kamino, we see the effects of all mights flawed existence. the fact that he, the greatest and supposedly infallible symbol of peace, was destroyed—society had begun to collapse. there was suddenly no pillar to hold people together and the impacts were so severe that even in the latest chapters of mha it keeps on getting worse. the truth is, all mights biggest mistake was the burden he placed on his own shoulders

with bakugou and deku... its different.

its different for them because down to their attributions, they seem like two halves of a whole person.

i think that the wonder duo are going to surpass all might because of the fact that they work together.

@bakugoukatsuki-rising @svpercraigus @tybee​ @isaustraliaathing​

(batshit crazy and conspiratorial essay under the cut !)

1. Complementary Colors

I’d like to first preface literally everything I say by the fact that I am not an expert analyzer or literary major in any way. I am literally just some random fan on the internet who has wayyy too much time and looks wayyy too deep into things, but here we go!

A common thing we see when we talk about bakugou and deku is the way they are... sort of an inverse of one another.

Down to the design of their features and the way they move, Deku is the obviously softer of the two. There’s an intentional contrast between the two of them, in the way that Deku’s drawn with round shapes and curvy hair and the way Bakugou is literally all spikes and half-mast eyes and rough muscles. Bakugou’s movements too are languid and showy, with the way he leans when he walks and splays his legs and kicks open doors. Katsuki, in a casual sense, is loud and dramatic. 

Deku on the other hand s finicky. He jitters when he walks and he’s often fidgeting and mumbling. Comparatively, the aura he radiates is energetic and frenzied, even self-conscious to a point unlike Bakugou’s calm and confident movements.

the point is, there’s a clear difference in how either of them are designed and what exactly they are supposed to represent. They utterly complement each other down to the way they behave and even their main colors (red-orange and blue-green) being literal complementary colors.

Now, moving to my more ungrounded points, this is quite a bit of a stretch so I’ll try as much as possible to make sense of these with hyperlinked sources because. yeah.

Down to their names, I think Deku and Bakugou both symbolize something deeper. I think that the way Hori expresses characters and what they’re meant to do is something that we have to pay close attention to when we talk about the Wonder Duo’s rise to success.

Izuku Midoriya (緑谷 出久), as some of us may know, does have an interesting meaning when broken up. According to a lovely fan translation of his name, ‘Izuku’--while not an actual name used commonly in real life--means to ‘Come out’ or ‘Long time’. ‘Midoriya’ on the other hand means (Midori) ‘Green’ and (ya) ‘valley’. The translator further pointed out that his first name ‘Izuku’ could be a reference to him being the first legendary hero to come out of the long-running All Might Era. (or, if you’ve been reading @/bakugoukatsuki-rising’s posts, the first significant anime protag in a long while to come out as queer, ppfft)

but that isn’t my focus right now.

We know that Hori LOVES telling stories with names, and more often than not in the BNHA universe, names alone tell us a lot of things about the characters. When referring to Izuku’s last name, Midoriya, it’s important I think to step back and realize that hey, maybe there’s something more to Green Valley than just the fact that his motif is all green.

After searching for a lil on the specifics of green valley, I’ve found out that across many cultures, the colour green and valleys in general tend to represent life. From dream analysts, to Christianity, and even old Taoist teachings, valleys are seen as areas of fertility and escape. They are seen as safe havens and often escapes for people to come to after running away from bad circumstances.

(Sound familiar?)

Deku, in essence represents life and peace. He represents being the “salvation” that the world in BNHA needed. To me, it sounds like Horikoshi is trying to say that he is the long-awaited hero in the sense. The one that people can feel will create a society that feels safe for everyone after years of All Might just saving people from themselves as a band-aid solution.

On the other hand, we have Katsuki Bakugou (爆豪 勝己), who’s name we commonly know means (Katsuki) Winner and (Bakugou) Explosion Master. He is essentially, the champion. The power. His name means success and power and all the things that make up winning.

When putting them side by side, it then becomes increasingly... interesting to me how their names almost perfectly slot into All Might’s save to win and win to save mantra, and how they are both quintessential parts to what made All Might as a hero.

2. Hero Too!

Now, I’m not even gonna really TOUCH much of what happens in canon. If you want me to do a step by step breakdown of their arcs in regards to the plot of manga and anime, feel free to send me a gratuitous ko-fi tip so I can pay for the headache I get after trying to organize my thoughts into word vomit.

What I WILL talk about on the other hand, is the subtle shift both of them slowly have in regards to how they look. Bakugou and Deku, while growing up, seem to have MANY many parallels--but before I elaborate on all of that, I wanna talk about something else.

Detour: Deku’s Red Shoes 

We all know the iconic symbol being Deku’s red shoes. For all his life, save for some outfits like his hero one, we see Deku more often than not wearing his signature red sneakers which have become a running joke in fandom.

But the funny thing is, in Japan, red shoes seem to have an interesting connotation.

In 1922, a popular Japanese nursery rhyme was written, called “Red Shoes”. The interesting part to me about this song was the symbolism that, in my tiny pea-sized brain, I could connect to the story of BNHA.

The story goes that there was a little girl with red shoes named ‘Kimi’. She was from Shizuoka prefecture (which, if you didn’t know, is most likely where Musutafu supposedly is) and was raised by a single mother. When she was young, her mother had to entrust her with a foreigner under the impression that they would give her a better life in America. The stranger is a man named Charles Hewitt (who was described to have blue eyes) and supposedly took her away. 

The singer of the song (supposedly the mother, but some argue it was written from the perspective of a childhood friend) believes that Kimi is happy and living a better life away from them, when the reality of the situation was much worse. The young girl with red shoes in actuality had Tuberculosis, and thus the foreigner whom she was entrusted to had left her to fend for herself and eventually left her to go to America while she died alone and orphaned.

“When I see red shoes, I think of her.”

A very interesting story with very interesting implications indeed.

-

Anyway, moving on to the more... “nuanced” and connected parts of this section, I have every reason to believe that Bakugou and Deku were simply MEANT to be working together down to how they dress. Now, I’d like to discuss their hero costumes.

At the start of their series, using these godawful pics for reference, it’s clear to see that neither of them seem alike in any way--reflecting the dissonance in their relationship at that point in canon.

ough. deku why. (yes we know why its because you love your mom you stupid little bunny <3)

Anyway, we see an immediate gap in how the two of them are. Deku’s first costume is one that reflects how he treated his dream of being a hero. He was still in that childlike idolization phase, the one where his dreams and aspirations were hinged on pure feelings and inspiration from All Might. Katsuki on the other hand was a lot more tactical--professional to an extent. The gap between their respective development with their quirks is something that is clearly felt in every fashion decision they’d made.

(Notice how Deku’s green is a lot brighter and less like the green accents Katsuki has all over his costume.)

As time progressed however... their costumes changed. The colors, the silhouettes, the practical functions, most things.

(Deku’s Gamma Costume and Bakugou’s Winter Costume used respectively)

we begin to notice a few similarities.

As the show goes on and we see more evolutions of their costumes, it almost seems like they begin to look like a matching pair. Deku’s green grows darker and almost teal in nature, while Bakugou’s orange is veering towards red territory. This is important to note because red-orange and blue-green as I said earlier were complementary colors as compared to simply orange and green. The minute shift is something I really wasn’t quite sure was intentional, but something I find interesting to pick up nonetheless as the colors they used to accent their costumes begin to match up.

Secondly, I think and important thing to note is silhouettes. The way that both Bakugou and Deku’s costumes are designed follow a lot of parallels that typically we don’t see with the rest of 1-A. For one, they both have a combination of tight long-sleeved tops with a bulkier set of bottoms. They also share the use of utility belts and metal pieces typically worn around their necks. Deku has his bunny-eared hood that mimics All Might’s hair, while Bakugou has his orange and black explosion ear-pieces that mimic his own quirk.

i don’t think any other people in class 1-A match each other as subtly yet strongly as these two. Uraraka and Deku and Bakugou and Kirishima do come close however.

“But Codi, you fucking knob!” I hear you plea. “This is such a reach and tells us practically NOTHING!” And yes, I’m inclined to agree with you! You’d be sort of right in the idea that this is a reach. Maybe I am looking too much into this, and maybe it really isn’t that deep--but I do think that them subconsciously matching outfits means something quite brilliant.

In the way that their costumes are designed, each aspect of either outfits have a very logical explanation. The changes were strategic and made with their fighting styles vividly in mind, so what that tells me is that BECAUSE these costumes are so complementary or similar in nature (Bakugou’s reinforcing his arms while Deku reinforces his legs), these two are implicitly showing the audience that their combat styles are complementary as well. 

The evolution of their design choices and similarities tell us that even unknowingly, their minds line up in strategy on the battlefield--a clear exhibit for why they would be INCREDIBLY POWERFUL as a Hero Duo to begin with.

When I look at their hero costumes side by side, I see a mirror. I see the way that these two are reflections of each other and are strong where the other isn’t. The point I see in BNHA repeatedly is that EVERYONE HAS A WEAKNESS. Nothing is infallible, regardless of how hard you train or how powerful your quirk is. Everyone will always have a weakness, but the significant difference I see when fandom discusses the future of Pro-Hero Society is that the new generation is finally raising itself to be RELIANT on each other. 

Observing their fighting styles and the simple use of their quirks, its obvious that they are indeed two parts of a whole hero. Bakugou, who’s quirk emphasized his arms and hands and the power that comes from it, while Deku who’s quirk now emphasizes his legs and lower body and the way he’s always running to save people.

IN CONCLUSION:

As they become heroes, it is easy to assume that if nothing else, Bakugou and Deku will cover each other’s weak spots (especially when you consider the way Deku probably won’t be able to keep using his arms with the way both the anime and manga are going...) (also chapter 285, anyone?)

-

Part Two: Interactions, OfA

kofi || commission details

#idk maybe this is obvious and im just Slow on the uptake #but yeah #delete later #bnha #wonder duo #bakudeku #bkdk #codi.txt #bnha meta #mha meta #long post #tw long post #cw long post #THIS IS PART 1 DONE ILL TRY N FINISH PART 2 SOMETIME THIS WEEK #izuku midoriya #midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #katsuki bakugou #kacchan #deku #dynamight #dynamite #codi.docx

[nathansqueak]

many years ago, i was in a coven.

i joined when i was about 12 or 13, having found them through a classmate of mine that i found wearing a pentacle necklace. for many years it was a safe haven, a community that opened my eyes and my mind and my heart and poured in song and dance and hikes through the forest. these people became my everything, and in this community we had each other’s backs. together the coven were there for each other’s divorces and marriages, births and deaths, and anything else that could possibly come up. determined to be a caring and supportive community, radical against the capitalist mold of independence.

all this to say that it was beautiful. it truly was. and then it wasn’t

i left the coven, personally, when i was 20. this was a couple years before the inevitable downfall of the rest of the coven, but even then i think it was already coming. i had been living amongst them for a little over two years at that point. i moved in to the home of a priest and priestess of the coven and their toddler child only a month and a half before my 18th birthday, though it didn’t occur to me until a long time after that my first red flag should have been that they were taking in a minor. i had left my parents home for their transphobia and the members of the coven were just trying to be helpful....but still. They took me in as a child. I suppose this is important to keep in mind

over the course of my living with the coven i would experience some of the absolute worst anxiety of my life; i felt every single pressure to conform and perform, to do what was asked of me and to hold the same opinions as everyone around me. at this point in time the lead priestess had already begun her own downward spiral, in that she was beginning to be caught up for her history of transphobia and for asking for too much money from congregates, and then that she was caught turning people against each other and actively trying to tell members of the coven to cut off family and friends outside the coven, to devote themselves ONLY to the coven, to devote themselves to HER. while it hadn’t always been this way, she had begun disencouraging people from seeking proper mental health guidance, saying that there was nothing that other coven members couldn’t help with. she began delegating labor, physically and emotionally. she began to excommunicate and isolate coven members.

when i was 19, my mother died. as they had many times before with many other coven members, the coven rallied around me and showered me in affection and comfort. given my extraordinarily complicated history with my mother, her death impacted me in a severe way, and half a year later i was still depressed and nonfunctional. it was at this time that the covens compassion for me ran thin. first i was kicked from the room they had given me, that i had been paying rent for, into a corner of the living room with the promise of putting up curtains for privacy, and then later i was given an ultimatum to either find a new home or be homeless. no one in the coven would speak to me. im still not entirely sure why, except that i was in a vulnerable place and questioned the decision to put me in the living room and take my privacy, which then blew up in my face...but soon they would literally not speak to me. coven meetings would be held in the very home i was staying and they would all enter in and refuse to look at me. i was in the living room! there was no way to enter the home without seeing me! and yet.

so a month or so after my 20th birthday, i shoved all of my things into a 5’x5’ storage unit and began couch surfing. i would later go on to be actually homeless. i am now doing great and living in a stable home with my partner and his mom, but there were many years where i was very much not okay. in my mind i think, why did they take me in? why would they take in a vulnerable queer youth, only to then throw him out on the street when he became even more vulnerable? they should not have welcomed me into their home.

when i left the coven, i lost communication with everyone. these were people who had known me since i was 12. these were people who had watched me grow from a child. and suddenly it was as though i were dead to them. it should not have come as such a surprise to me, because i was not the first person they had excommunicated, but it hurt. my best friends mother, who had in some ways been like a mother to me as well, who had been close with my own mother and who had tried her best to help me when it was clear my mother was severely unstable, was among them to just drop me. im now 25 and i have not heard from any of them, even to check in that i am still alive.

anyways. a couple years after all of this fallout, i happened to be looking at facebook’s memories feature when i came across a comment on an old post of mine from one of the coven members. i clicked to her page out of curiosity, i suppose to see how she’s been doing. i quickly found a piece she had written detailing abuses she had seen within the coven, and specifically calling out the lead priestess. i did more digging and found a statement on the coven’s official page denouncing involvement with the now previous high priestess. as though washing their hands of her. as though she had been the problem.

and she was. don’t get me wrong. but every single one of those fuckers participated.

they helped excommunicate and isolate other coven members. once when i was 17 there was a campaign against one of the lead priests, and maybe they were right that he was making some people uncomfortable, but he had never made me uncomfortable. they convinced me that he was predatory. they convinced me that he was an issue. the next time he tried to interact with me, just to say hello and ask how i was, I ignored him and found a priestess to say that he had approached me and i was uncomfortable. i was the final straw for their decision to excommunicate him. he’d been a part of the community since the beginning. i still remember feeling weird and guilty as they stood me there in front of the others and had me repeat what id said, frenetic gleams in their eyes. i was their evidence that he was untrustworthy and unsafe.

he had never made me feel unsafe.

i still feel guilt that i participated in that, even if it was practically fed to me.

as far as i am aware, the coven still does not take responsibility for their part in everything that happened. it’s much too easy to point the finger at the person in charge! last i heard, they had rebranded and renamed themselves to disassociate with that priestess, who has, herself, gone on to continue her practice through online seminars. no idea if she’s still hurting people or if she changed herself at all. i hope so.

all of this is to say that, ive been watching the situation around @simonalkenmayer unfold from a carefully kept distance, and i am so fucking disappointed in all of you. y’all participated. if you’re mad, look in a goddamn mirror. if simon is an abusive cultish creep, y’all participated until this point. what did you do while apart of that space? what are you now not taking responsibility for? even i often think of myself as a victim in regards to my time with the coven but then i have to stop and remember that im the reason that man lost his place in his community.

on top of that, half the evidence y’all are using to say that simon is shitty is coming from...questionable sources, to say the least. people who are either outright creeps themselves or who have proven themselves as holding that same frenetic energy that the coven did when it was seeking out reasons to isolate members. if you’re angry, that’s understandable. if you’re seeking comfort from shitty people, you’ve completely lost me.

what the fuck y’all.

and for the record, the coven that i had been a part of was Come As You Are (CAYA) Coven in the San Francisco Bay Area. i don’t remember what they rebranded to. I think they may call themselves Wildflowers now or something like that.

#ive had so many thoughts the past few days because it just keeps reminding me so thoroughly of the coven #and how it collapsed #if you come to my inbox to fight i will probably ignore you #im not interested in debating. these are just my thoughts on the matter #as someone who had been following simon since 2016

[mathom-house-curator]

Focus on the Fan-mily: Community Archiving and the Archive of Our Own

A five-part series on AO3 as a community archive, considering how archival theory and fandom history meet to create a ground-breaking fan archive experience like no other, and the possibilities this has for the archival profession moving forwards.

Full essay (with citations) here

Part I   |   Part II   |   Part IV   |   Part V

Part III - Chasing the Ephemeral: An Overview of Fan Archival Activities

To understand AO3’s insistence on enabling the creator with full power over their works, it is important to understand the fan culture and context that AO3 developed out of, as well as the complex history of fan archival activities.  Since the early days of modern fan culture, with Star Trek fans in the 1960s, fan spaces have been a place of sub-culture and secrecy, with transformative works and fan fiction —the dominant form of record on AO3— being particularly revolutionary.  Fan academics such as Abigail Derecho often identify fan fiction as a form of societal criticism, predominantly created by women and people from minority groups.  Using fan fiction, fans from marginalized groups create content for themselves that reimagines the hierarchical and societal norms reflected in the original media and wrests control of storytelling and creativity away from mainstream capitalist studios and publishers.  This content often contains themes and subjects considered counterculture or radical by mainstream society — for example, until very recently (and arguably in some corners still), this included any queer interpretations, feminist discourse, or erotica.  At the same time, fans use the spaces in and around this content —the writer-reader relationship, the aggregation of stories with similar subjects, the use of particular tropes and specialized lingo— to create a community and culture that reflects their own, often marginalized, experiences.  Particularly with the connectivity of the Internet, Abigail De Kosnik observes that digital fan fiction archives become “safe spaces” where fans with similar experiences can “come together, sharing ideas and experiences without fear of silencing.”

This “fear of silencing” has long plagued fan spaces and has come both from within and without communities.  Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, fans largely shared their content through zines and amateur press associations, relying on conventions and meet ups to come together with other community members and distribute their work.  With the advent of the Internet, fan communities —known as fandoms— began to attract a new and wider scope of members.  Now younger fans, international fans, and even people who had never heard of fandom before, could connect with existing communities so long as they had access to an Internet connection.  A fan scholar by the pseudonym of Versaphile observes that early digital sites were particularly ephemeral in nature — posts and discussions on forums had a lifespan of days or weeks, and it wouldn’t be until the mid-1990s that sites began retaining user content.  Major archives dedicated to fan fiction began emerging in the mid 1990s, usually centred around stories from a single fandom.  These early archives would perhaps be more recognizable to archival professionals — users posted their content or submitted them to the web archivist, who would format, file and preserve the materials they received in order to make them available to archive users.  Creators could request that their content not be archived, or that their previously archived materials be deleted, but generally, archives retained their materials until they were dissolved or deleted.

While there were technical issues with these early archives, such as poor accessibility and search functionality, one of the greatest threats to these archives was the loss of their archivists.  Once an archivist lost interest in the fandom, or was no longer able to manage the archive, the entire site could disappear as maintenance ceased, domains expired and were not renewed, and reorganization destroyed years of existing structure and links.  This is a common concern with community archives, particularly those of the Do It Yourself variety — as Rebecka Sheffield observes, the loss of interest from archive members or the inability to maintain the existing collection has led to the disappearance of many archival projects.  With the disappearance of each archive, years of fandom discussion, content, and community were lost forever, unless individual members made a special effort to preserve certain elements on their own ends.  Fans began to learn an important lesson that would continue to shape fandom for years to come — their communities, the stories they created and shared, the unique fandom cultures and relationships that they had developed, even the shared memory of their own history, was only as stable and permanent as the whim and will of the site administrators.  

As fans explored different methods of communication and content sharing into the early 2000s, the role of the administrator remained a question.  Mailing lists centred around a particular theme, genre, or relationship provided a decentralized and highly tailored fandom experience at the cost of accessibility.  Links to content were closed to non-members, who had to apply for membership with the list’s moderators just to access a single story, and moderators had the power to delete entire lists whenever they pleased, thereby deleting all the works preserved within.  The popular journaling website LiveJournal dominated fandom communities through the early 2000s, granting creators seemingly exclusive control over their own content.  Creators could make their journals public or private, and rename, hide or delete them altogether.  Accessibility remained an issue: content was poorly and inconsistently tagged, the search function was nigh non-existent, and users had to develop through experience a knowledge of which journals might contain content they were interested in and what terms a creator might use to describe their work.  Although some users began developing general guides for creators to describe and tag their work, compliance with these guides depended on the individual creator.  With the rise of the creator’s autonomy over their own work came issues of organization and management, and the ever-present question about the preservation of content. 

While fans wrestled with the question of intracommunity preservation, outside forces began emerging as threats to fandom communities and creators, as litigation, censorship, and commercialization began targeting fan spaces.  In the late 2000s, LiveJournal saw several waves of migration to other sites as website staff began banning users en masse and taking down content which they judged to be immoral or illegal.  These takedowns, supposedly aimed at sexual crimes, could affect any content that involved sex — from age-restricted adult fan fiction journals, to sexual assault survivors’ spaces, to queer fan fiction, which was seen as inherently sexual regardless of content.  Similar censorship restrictions affected other popular fan hosting sites, such as Fanfiction.net, which was in many ways a precursor to AO3.  As a centralized, multi-fandom site with a relatively organized structure, Fanfiction.net provided fan creators with the ability to format and post their own stories in one place, and enabled users to find and access those stories with comparative ease using a controlled vocabulary with its descriptive elements.  However, throughout the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, the website began imposing restrictions on the kind of content that fans could publish.  Adult fan fiction was banned, as was any content which could potentially result in litigation from a studio, publishing company, or author.  Creators issued lengthy disclaimers with each post, making it clear that they did not own the original media or characters on which their fan work was based.  It was vital that no one could argue in court that they had given any impression of owning the intellectual material, as there had been high profile cases of authors suing and harassing fan writers.  Works containing quotations of more than a few lines, such as a stanza of a song or a paragraph from a book, ran the constant risk of sudden deletion by administrators.  Users became increasingly disgruntled with the censorship and the constant fear of deletion by site staff.

The intrusion of mainstream capitalism also began to challenge the sub-culture of secret community that many fans had become used to.  As “fandom” became increasingly prominent, corporations saw fan communities as a potential resource.  For media companies, fan content produced through free fan labour increases the presence and reach of the original media.  Popular fan sites were also profitable places for ads, and web servers and companies benefitted from the increased traffic.  In the eyes of many fans, this was nothing short of exploitation.  Coming from a strongly decentralized period in fan history, fan spaces were seen as personal and counterculture — fans made the content they wanted to consume for their communities, not for their own profit, and certainly not for the profit of large corporations.  The increasing presence of commercial ads on fan sites such as Fanfiction.net was insulting, and the creation of the notorious FanLib.com in 2007 was even more so.  If the presence of ads on sites like Fanfiction.net —where users feared that failing to write a clear enough disclaimer could be interpreted as an intent to profit by lawyers— was controversial, then FanLib, which was designed to profit off of fan fiction and which boasted paid promotions from media companies, was intolerable.  The FanLib debacle was the last straw, and outraged fans, frustrated with censorship and corporate intrusion and the loss of communities and cultures over the years, began to organize.

It was against this backdrop that the OTW formed, and it was in light of these discussions around the preservation of fan culture and history, the questions of censorship and profit, and the rights of fans, that fans created AO3 in 2008, with the site going into open beta in 2009.  Their rallying point was the idea of “owning the servers,” creating a centralized space controlled by fans where their communities and creators could exist in safety and stability, creating the content that they wanted without fear of deletion, censorship, or exploitation, which by its long-term preservation would help keep alive the fan cultures and communities that produced it.  With personal experience in fandom and previous fan archival projects, AO3’s creators were familiar with what fans needed or looked for in an archival space.  Accessibility was a must.  To that end, AO3 maintains a highly sophisticated descriptive tagging system, with volunteer “tag wranglers” interpreting and linking unique creator tags with larger related tags, preserving the creator’s descriptive intent while facilitating access to their works.  Autonomy was balanced with archival preservation — creators can submit and describe their works however they feel is best, and retain rights of deletion and anonymity, while leaving the archival work of preservation, management and accessibility to site volunteers.  Crucially, and sometimes controversially, AO3 permits fan content containing any subject without fear of censorship or deletion.  While users may submit complaints about individual works, and creators must still abide by the laws of their jurisdiction, AO3 enforces the rights of creators to create without fear of censorship or arbitrary deletion.  AO3 also operates entirely as a noncommercial and nonprofit organization with no ads or user fees, relying on a fan volunteer staff and annual fundraising drives.

Despite all the answers AO3 proposes to issues such as fan preservation, censorship, accessibility, and rights, many questions remain from both an archival and a fannish perspective about AO3’s role and functions as a community archive.   Just who is included in this community “of Our Own?”  What kind of cultural memory is being preserved, and how?  What is included and what is left out?  How does AO3’s commitment to freedom of the author relate to offensive content?  If the subculture being documented in these records is, by nature, counterculture, why seek legitimacy from mainstream institutions?  And in what ways does AO3 actually serve its users as a community archive, apart from making it easier to find a good read for a few hours?

Part III Sources

De Kosnik, Abigail. Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2016.

Derecho, Abigail. “Archontic literature: a definition, a history, and several theories of fan fiction.” In Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, edited by Hellekson K and Busse K. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Quoted in A. Lothian, “Archival Anarchies: Online Fandom, Subcultural Conservation, and the Transformative Work of Digital Ephemera,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 16, no. 6 (2013): 545. Accessed December 10, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877912459132

Johnson, Shannon Fay. "Fan Fiction Metadata Creation and Utilization within Fan Fiction Archives: Three Primary Models." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 17 (2014). Accessed December 10, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0578.

Lothian, Alexis. “Archival Anarchies: Online Fandom, Subcultural Conservation, and the Transformative Work of Digital Ephemera.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 16, no. 6 (2013): 541–56. Accessed December 10, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877912459132

Sheffield, Rebecka. “Community Archives.” In Currents of Archival Thinking, 2nd ed., edited by Heather MacNeil and Terry Eastwood, 351-376. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited, 2017.

“Strikethrough and Boldthrough.” Fanlore. Accessed December 10, 2020. https://fanlore.org/wiki/Strikethrough_and_Boldthrough

Versaphile. “Silence in the Library: Archives and the Preservation of Fannish History.” In "Fan Works and Fan Communities in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," edited by Nancy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 6.  (2011). Accessed December 10, 2020. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0277.

#ao3 #fan archives #fandom history #archival theory #essay #long post

[captainimprobable]

Ive posted a lot about Judaism over the past few days, so when I turned on my computer after shabbat I anticipated antisemitism, as usual.  I did not expect what I found instead. I didnt expect nice messages.  I didnt expect so many non Jewish people telling me they’re mad, and want to fight, and want to help.  I fully expected to lose followers, so when I returned to a surge of new ones I misread it for a second because it never even occurred to me that people would care.

Im so used to Jews being ignored and belittled, Im used to horrific messages in my inbox, Im used to having the word “Israel” lorded over me as a reason I shouldn’t be listened to.  And I need you guys to know: Im used to the virulent antisemitism in the real world, because things like this happen ALL THE TIME. I’ve seen multiple Holocaust memorials vandalized, I’ve seen countless Jewish cemeteries desecrated, I had to watch when, last December, there was a violent antisemitic attack in NYC every day for a week.  This happens ALL. THE. TIME. According to the FBI hate crime statistics from 2018, religion based hate crimes have gone down by 8% overall since 2017, yet nearly 60% of hate crimes committed in the US were against Jews and Jewish institutions.  According to the Global 100: Index of Antisemitism, it’s also rising globally, with 27% of people who have never even MET a Jew having prejudice against us regardless.  

But nobody knows any of this. Nobody hears about these things, because the media doesn’t report it. I’ve been told multiple times that I have “Jewish privilege”, and I genuinely cannot express how antisemitic that in itself is.  The common misconception is that Jews have it made in the US, that we run the banks and the media and the country and the world.  People think we are treated better than everyone else, because we are Jewish.  That’s the lie. THIS is the truth.   I straight up DID NOT mean to go off for that long, but my basic message is this: None of this is new.  We’ve been screaming for years.  What is new is the amount people actually listening for once, and the amount of support I received over the last few hours, and I just wanted to say how grateful I am to see people standing up for us, because I’ve honestly never experienced that on here before.  if you’re reading this and you’re not Jewish, thank you for seeing us.  If you are Jewish, know that I see you.  Thank you guys so much <3 (That being said, fair warning that this isnt all that I blog about, while Im actively an advocate here against antisemitism, and also for queer Orthodox Jews in particular, this is otherwise a straight up fandom blog.  I apologize if you’re expecting something else lol I am always up for talking about this stuff, I love to have these discussions!!! But also this place is mostly fandom garbage. Sorry!)

#jaytp #that being said i DO benefit from white privilege #but jewish privilege DOESNT EXIST #ok back to your regularly scheduled blogging #im just #so pleasantly surprised

[enbyboiwonder]

Tagged by @frozenmemories1987

So I don’t really understand how this one works, so I’m just gonna answer all the questions and number them consecutively. Upfront I’m gonna say that I’m not tagging anyone, but as always, if you wish to do it, consider yourself tagged. Also, this is going under a read more. Save the thumbs of any mobile users

01. What was the last movie you watched in theaters?

It’s been months, so I can’t remember, sorry

02. What’s your favorite game to play?

Currently it’s Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2. I hadn’t played it since I got it (and beat it all in one go), and I forgot just how much I love this game. It’s like Pokémon meets Dragon Quest, and it’s amazing. On the one hand, making a team entirely of dragons might be a bad idea, but on the other hand, I freaking love dragons. I should probably synth one with a healing skillset if I’m gonna do that - possibly Cure-all since that’s got Multiheal. My current party is a Lv 20 great argon lizard named Rory, a Lv 24 slime stack with Cure-all named Sticker, and a Lv 19 aquestrian gladiator with Huntsman named Mizuno. When I leave them to their own devices, Mizuno really loves using Penny Pincher, which tbh I cannot fault him for - normal damage plus the chance to pinch a few gold coins? Heck yes. At least he’s got 44 MP, so I haven’t had to change his tactics to “Don’t Use Magic” yet (the skill costs 2 MP)

03. Chocolate or vanilla?

Chocolate

04. What’s the last show you binge-watched?

NUMB3RS (though I’m still working on that one)

05. Do you have any pets?

No

06. What’s your favorite fairy tale?

I dunno. I don’t actually read very many fairy tales

07. Who’s your favorite superhero?

Superhero stuff doesn’t normally appeal to me, but I do like Cisco Ramon/Vibe and Ray Palmer/The Atom from CW’s Arrowverse

08. Who’s your favorite Disney princess?

Erm, Rapunzel, I guess?

09. Where’s the first place you’re going to go after social distancing is over?

I know I’m gonna hang out with my friend like we were planning to before this started, but as for where... probably Barnes & Noble since that’s where we usually go, but who knows (I say, knowing full well that neither of us know where to go, and we go to HPB when we’re specifically looking for a book but default to B&N bc of the café and seating area)

10. Cookies or cake?

Cookies

11. What show could you watch over and over?

Monk, CSI, and Psych, to name a few

12. Favorite song lyric?

See, I have to believe that there’s more than this seems More than a soul in a boat in a sea of sinking dreams And I have to be sure that there’s gonna be a cure ‘Cause, somewhere down the line, I lost that part of me that’s pure

 - Where We Belong by Thriving Ivory

13. Favorite season of your favorite TV show?

S14 of CSI, probably

14. What never fails to make you smile/happy?

Seeing I’ve got a comment on AO3

15. How are you doing with all that’s going on in the world (coronavirus, having to do social distancing, etc.)?

My lifestyle hasn’t changed at all, though for some reason I’ve actually been getting way more crocheting and video-gaming done than usual (at the expense, of course, of less reading and writing and TV-watching. Unfortunately). But we have lost business at the doughnut shop so I haven’t been working as many days - usually I work Monday and Friday - which, on the one hand, less money, but on the other hand, I’ve gotten more rest so my bruised ribs (from coughing; I had strep about a month and a half ago, and that always leaves me with a cough for a while, though it’s never been this bad before) are mostly healed now

16. We all love new music to listen to. Name an artist that is underrated/you think people should check out:

Thriving Ivory/Midnight Cinema (same band, different songwriters; Thriving Ivory is more piano-driven and leans more toward alt/alt-rock, while Midnight Cinema is more pop)

17. TV shows or movies?

TV shows

18. Favorite holiday?

Halloween

19. A song that describes you:

I’ve always related to Some Kind of Home by Thriving Ivory

20. Describe your tumblr in three words:

“hella queer animal-lover” idk

21. What’s your favorite hobby?

It depends on my mood, but rn it’s crocheting!

22. What’s your favorite book and/or a really good book you’ve read recently?

CSI: Miami: Cut and Run by Donn Cortez is amazing. I read it back in January and then reread it this month. Probably will be rereading it again before long tbh

Another really good one I’ve read recently is How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse by K. Eason. It just came out like six months ago, so the second one won’t be out any time soon, but I am ready for it when it does (more than ready, actually; I can’t wait)

23. What’s your favorite ship that will never happen (or hasn’t happened yet)?

I really wish they had done something with Greg/Hodges. I mean, they had the perfect setup for it in 11.07 Bump and Grind, what with their “man-dates” (that never get mentioned again)!! Their man-dates become a regular thing that they do like every week or whatever, eventually they realize that they’re actual dates and have been for a while and they start consciously dating. Maybe Greg already knows he’s bi and is totally cool with it, maybe David’s been repressed and realizes that, oh, that’s why something’s always seemed like it was missing when he tried dating before: he’s gay.

Unsurprisingly, I have a few 11.07 fics in my WIPs

(But also, considering CSI’s track record with respecting queer people [poor], I’m kinda glad they didn’t. Woulda been nice, though, long as they'da done it right)

A ship that I’m really hoping will happen is Penelope and Schneider from One Day at a Time. I love them so much

24. If you could spend the day with any living celebrity, who would it be?

I would rather meet a celebrity in passing than spend a day with them. I am far too awkward and anxious, and I’m afraid it would not be an enjoyable experience for either of us

25. The best worst movie you’ve ever seen - a movie that you know objectively is trash but you can’t help but really enjoy it:

I don’t think I have any like this

26. When you read, do you prefer an eReader or an actual, physical book?

Paper books all the way, baby

27. Favorite movie?

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, probably

28. What does a normal day look like for you?

I stay in bed reading or playing games on my phone (or, more recently, on my DS) for as long as possible, dick around on here for a while whilst also trying to get at least some SwagBucks in another window, try not to forget to eat lunch, play the free money apps I have on my phone while either listening to music on my laptop or watching shows either on my laptop or the TV, try not to forget to eat dinner, watch some more TV or get some reading or gaming in, try not to stay up too late, take over an hour to fall asleep, maybe if I’m lucky get some writing done at some point during any of this (and if I’m really lucky it won’t be while I’m trying to sleep, but usually it is, damn brain)

29. Have you ever watched a show/movie for one character? If so, who?

Normally when I watch something specifically for someone, it’s for an actor I like, but I started watching CW’s The Flash specifically for Cisco Ramon (well, and Harry Wells and their relationship, but mostly Cisco) and Legends of Tomorrow specifically for Ray Palmer, whom I fell in love with in his ep on The Flash lol

30. What is your ultimate concert (musicians/bands from any period, alive or dead)?

I don’t go to concerts (they seem like they’d be very overwhelming), so, none, I guess

31. Book that you were forced to read in school that you hated the most:

God, I fucking hated To Kill a Mockingbird. Actually, I think the only one I actually liked was The Importance of Being Earnest

#mine #thx for tagging me!

[hakuteeth]

Harry Styles and the Concept of Gender

I have a lot of thoughts and I wanted a place to lay them all out so I’m sorry this is gonna be probably indecipherable but disclaimer I’m not saying harry is a gender he’s not this is just really exploring the concept of freedom with or without gender and expression of oneself thru clothes not so much about identity but the wider concept of the binary based around my own interpretations of it. A femme take on femininity thru a white man’s exploration of gender if u will so if u dont like that i dont care

also.... ive never taken a queer studies class but I love sociology so..... all these connections I make are from my own knowledge and arent meant to box harry in...

Gender defined from a sociological standpoint is based around how we behave and what actions we are expected to perform and for the most part a little give and take people can stick within this binary as it can be safe and comfortable and black and white. What’s interesting is when people step outside the norm and are more willing to explore that grey area that most people simply dont understand. This is interesting because it extends beyond clothing or makeup as most people don’t realize a man wearing makeup does not subvert gender because the gender binary is also inherently shackled to the concept of heteronormativity just as a woman completes a man, the soft counterpart to his masculine ways. 

Harry Styles and the concept of gender started for me with a dress. It never quite occurred to me that harry would wear a dress and reading the rolling stone article that harry had worn or would ever wear something quite as feminine as that. I think for a lot of people solo Harry Styles was a strange and beautiful uncharted territory of course many people came to suspect the new age rock n roll harry had to usher in but what’s fun is not so much deconstructing Harry as a soft rockstar but the idea that Harry has a femininity to him something I never saw until I noticed it everywhere in his clothing and even more interesting his actions.

The most interesting thing is Harry doesn’t quite believe in a gender binary when it comes to fashion possibly attributed to Alessandro Michele’s take on gender or perhaps the work of a really good stylist but I think if anything Harry also believes in that mission that gender could be redefined within the confines of fashion.

Harris Reed described his vision and Harry ended up wearing five different looks on his world tour introducing a student and relatively unknown LGBT designer to the masses and Harris has went on to say that Harry completely understood the connection clothing gender and sexuality have all shared since the dawn of fabric and it’s interesting when one also thinks about the time and effort this collaboration took considering Harris designed all these looks himself over a very short period of time. Harry wasn’t looking for somebody to dress him as what we normally see male popstars wear onstage, he was looking for a risk.

Gender like most things is more complicated than somebody might think. It extends beyond putting on a funky print before leaving the house it’s about the mannerisms, the actions, the behavior of the individual and the overall societal imprint. And Harry’s always been a bit softer than most. He’s always displayed his self as overwhelmingly kind to the point it makes my teeth hurt sometimes and he’s never overbearing. He’s quite quiet and subtle for somebody who can wear a loud pink custom gucci suit. 

Since 2013 he never shied away from looking or being a bit more feminine and he’s always exuded this calming energy or at least I believe if he had an aura it would definitely be soft pink. During his 2018 tour, every night he would tell fans that they were allowed to be whoever they wanted be in that room and it was all about fostering this environment where crying is manly and babies could choose their own gender  (which he said twice on tour). Also something that sticks out quite vividly is when a fan told him his mermaid has saggy boobs and he replied that everybody should love themselves. 

“We are men!” Then he prances away. That’s always how I picture Harry now him using his kilt to curtsey or him twirling like a ballerina on a football pitch. The concept of gender has extended more beyond fashion and into comfortability but also exploring what somebody may not be comfortable with at first but finding they quite like it. 

When men wear nail polish or when you gift your boyfriend flowers for valentines day. It all lies inside the confines of gender. Subverting gender doesnt mean men should wear makeup but it encompasses a vast majority of actions AND behavior or as I like to call it being a bit softer than most. Men have a tendency to bathe themselves in aggression and to assert their dominance and I’m not saying Harry can’t be masculine as well. One of his favorite hobbies is boxing but even then I’d argue that’s less about aggression and more about control and analytical power where taking down an opponent requires more than brute strength.

I believe there’s power in being feminine and there’s power in owning yourself, 100%, and what’s interesting is Harry is the one who taught me that. I think a lot of people see Harry as this mysterious figure and while he is more private than some people would like I also think he’s shown us a lot about himself and it all depends on us to draw our own conclusions. The thing is I don’t like Harry cause I think he subverts gender or I think he’s feminine. I like him cause he’s authentically himself without any concern for others and he’s different. I’m not a man I present as a woman so I’m subjected to an oppressive environment. I am wary at people who are unwilling to learn who are afraid of stepping outside the box ANY box and hold themselves so tight they can barely move. I see Harry as somebody who moves freely.

I could make an entire essay on Harry and the concept of heteronormativity but I’m going to stick with toeing the line on gender for right now but I do believe a lot can be said for cis heterosexuality and attending a harry styles concert. It felt a bit like a pride parade which was interesting how somebody who essentially had for years this show of heterosexuality somehow ended up being followed by lesbians and bisexual women as well as many gay and trans men fans. 

Well it’s not that hard to see. Harry’s concerts are more celebrations of being yourself and I’ve never seen Harry ever discourage that or shy away from defending his fans to him we are a group of strong men and women and girls are the future. Once again bringing the concept back to the gender binary, girls can do anything despite being told they are only good at some things.

I don’t think this vision of Harry is a product of fan pressure. I think Harry genuinely supports things like LGBT rights and I think he believes in it just as much as we do I can’t ever imagine him not doing so. He made pride merch and wasn’t getting a cent of it because it was all donated to an LGBT charity to benefit youth in schools. If we’re talking in the ways in which Harry explores gender the number 1 community for that has always been the LGBT community historically we tend to fuck around with the concept of gender so it’s not surprise to me that’s a community Harry advocates for. 

Harry’s solo career from the beginning has been about reinventing masculinity. He wore a women’s suit for his album photoshoot and bathed in flowers and pink lemonade for his album cover and though his album had some rock n roll tropes he’s never shied away from talking about women’s rights or lgbt rights. And even within One Direction Harry never felt like just another man to me. He’s somebody special. Not afraid of vulnerability, not afraid of being called gay, not afraid of expressing who he is thru clothing. 

To me it’s always felt like Harry wanted people to know this is who I am you can take me or leave me. Harry I feel is somebody willing to take risks putting himself in a dress in a booklet as tour merch. Saying we’re all a little bit gay on tour. Like moths to a flame outsiders are drawn to him at least I was. 

To me Harry Styles is carving out a place for himself in a world that can be very rigid. Harry isn’t following anybody’s path but his own setting out to reinvent rock n roll and always and forever being a bit softer than most. It’s an admirable trait in a world that has become quite scary as of late. 

#i got bored #so yall are gonna deal with this #long post

[800-dick-pics]

White wlw you have let me down, and will sadly continue to do so

durring the past few months ive really woken up and seen how much white wlw are quick and ready to throw both cishet and lgbt black and brown women under the bus, so ready to believe that they are not coming from a racist place, so ready to ignore our pleads of help and our demands for better treatment

recently i left my ex girlfriend because i saw/felt that she was not treating me / giving me the same quality of attention as her white partners, and that i wasnt being included in her life like her white partners were. I was being called “wife” but i didnt feel like i was getting the treatment a wife was susposed to get. I felt like a token and a diversity quota for her larger that humanly sustainable polycule.  when i did bring it up to her wrote tons about how i felt and what i was seeing/feeling 

“[...]I feel like the space i take up in your life is smaller than i would like it to be and it hurts

 It hurts when we havent talked in a long while but i still see you interacting with your other partners and/or going on tinder dates, I feel like the level of care attention interaction/ love you give to your other partners or other people who are mainly white is a lot more than i feel than i get from you 

I just want to do more coupley relationship things with u, and i understand like im far away but we still dont discord/rabbit or like talk in general a whole hell of a lot, and it really just makes me feel like “ just some thing to be had and called “wife” bc you dont have a black one yet”

When i see all the other parters who get called wife getting the attention i wish i had from you i just makes the hurt feel even more intense bc i know its not distance bc you date people from all over it just really makes me feel like its my blackness that makes you give me less than what your other partners get 

Even if youre not doing that conciously, i still can see and feel the differnce between the level of care interaction attention and overall energy you give to white partners vs me, this may not be something you can clearly see and feel but i can see a herierchy even if its an unintenttional  subconscious one Reguardless of your intent id really like to be/feel like im more to you/your life[...]” this was only a portion of what i wrote but really conveys the other side of the coin of racism from white wlw, because even after i brought this up to her nothing changed, and then i decided i was going to leave because I realized i dont have to endure racism/racist treatment in a realtionship. and when i did finally have the courage to tell her how i feel again a very important thing i included was 

“My self censorship around white people is very real and i realize that i've been not expressing how i fully feel for fear of making u upset/addressing race and like I felt / feel like a token bc i see all the very visible appreciation you give to white partners,It makes me feel and known im loved and appreciate when its visible, and i see how visible it is/has been for your white partners, tinder dates and tumblr fans.I don't wanna feel hidden from your lifeI've felt very hidden with my white partners just in general, felt very kept away from their families, friends, and other relationships, and seeing that unfold in front of my eyes again is very painful,I feel like an outsider to your “group” (friends/partners). Just like you have to actively go out of your way to unlearn your racism and anti blackness you have to go out of your way to active make sure your black partner is getting attention and is feeling included in your life/community/world and i have not felt as included in these things as i feel like your white partners are.It's heartbreaking when i see the patterns over and over of you treating me differently than your white partners, heartbreaking when i feel ignored and excluded from your life while you are on a tinder date or flirting with ppl on tumblr and i can't get a “hey babe how ru?have you eaten today?” I'm not even getting the bare minimum,I get less, less time, interaction, less you, i feel like get a censored cut off dollar tree version of Franziska” but her response was saddening and just gave me a smack in the heart, i realized that white wlw arent going to unlearn their racism for their partners (friends and fuck buddies) when we address it , that if we (black and brown wlw) advocate for ourselves and treatment we will be ignored it hurt more that she didnt want to accept what she was/is/has been doing is racist, that she didnt want to make her only black partner more included in her life, that she wasnt going to unlearn the racism/race dynamics that made me a “second class” partner than the hurt of actually breaking up with her ive been through this many times before of white women esp white wlw who have excluded me from parts of themselves their lives and community but expect me to be ok isolated while also being an open book

white women have excluded me from friend groups and social circles, have stopped their niceness when i speak up for myself, have given up on working on relationships bc it involves changing their behavior, have denied me medical access when i needed it the most, have bullied me for my body, my blackness and my culture  my bestfriend is white and shes let me down too, just like ive been let down by white past friends and partners, just like im being let down by racist white wlw and lgbt folks

ive learned to accept that white (ppl) women letting me down is something i will face for a life time, that being lesbian bi trans queer doesnt change how whiteness interacts with blackness, that i will always be the bad guy in a white womans story or her fetish or her item to fawn over  ive learned that asking for basic treatment and for white women to unlearn their racism while changing their behavior is too much to ask for  white wlw yall have let me down, and continue to do so

weather is outcasting and overly criticizing black n brown wlw esp if theyre trans, only boosting white wlws donation posts, forgetting you still can hurt us and not realize it, mocking features found on woc esp since yall get real transmisogy/noiristic real quick an just by ignoring the struggles we face because we are people of color and gay!!!!

[this post is not for reblogging, do not ask me personal questions about my past relationships thank you]

#dont rebloop #me #personal #vent #im not gonna date white wlw anymore #im happy with my sweet butch and being in love with another dyke of color really helped me see how happy and fulfilled i can be #she makes me feel like im special #like im truly a treasure #and ive never felt that before