#nobody gets an “out” for being in the community. if you are queer and called homophobic it's perhaps time to reflect

[armoralor]

some folks are discussing fandom infighting, but I haven’t still seen any examples of wolfwren stans sending hate. I scrolled through every comment on the Ahsoka casts’ posts (yes all of them) and the only hate I saw was homophobia aimed at wolfwren.

does anyone have examples & links to wolfwren fans being toxic? so we as a community can block them + make sure they understand they aren’t welcome in the fandom? I have dozens of tangible examples of the vile hate people have sent to wolfwren stans (x x x) and a long list of transphobes/homophobes if anyone wants a block list.

#wolfwren #to be completely honest #I’m tired of the “both sides” argument once again when I can’t find any actual hate towards cishet ships #and i mean actual HATE & not silly “RIP [shipname here]” or “those characters are fam not romantic.” #so if someone is doing it I want to know so we can prevent them from being in the community because they are not welcome. #also- don't forget being called homophobic is *not* the same as discriminated against for being gay. #yes it hurts to be queer and called homophobic BUT that doesn't mean you weren't being homophobic. anyone can perpetuate harm #just like any women can be misogynist & have internalized misogyny- any member of the LGBTQIA+ can perpetuate homophobia + transphobia. #nobody gets an “out” for being in the community. if you are queer and called homophobic it's perhaps time to reflect #on if you do happen to have any unchecked biases from the comphet society around you. #text

[sassysnowperson]

How Not to Read Terry Pratchett's Discworld Novels

With the very exciting fantasy books poll bracket going on Discworld and how to read it is in the zeitgeist again. I figured I would take a crack at adding to this important topic with a guide drawn from my own chaotic mess of a reading journey:

Learn that Terry Pratchett is a fantasy author that several people whose reading taste you admire enjoy. He apparently blends comedy, good plotting, and a world that is both grounded and satirical and you're a big fan of all those things.

Fabulous! Decide to read some of his work.

Go to your local library. Love a good library. You're new to the area, so you're also exploring the library for the first time, too.

You have found Terry Pratchett! Points to you! Pull a book off the shelf at random. It's called The Dark Side of the Sun.

Start reading. Realize that this feels more like sci-fi than fantasy. Sigh in smug superiority about people who get the two confused.

Realize about halfway through that this is not, in fact, a Discworld book.

Nobody warned you the guy wrote other things!

It's still good, tho. Maybe a little rough but this was an older book and the author clearly has potential. Let's try again.

Review his works. The vast majority are Discworld. You are highly unlikely to grab another non-Discworld book. Go back to the Terry Pratchett section of the library.

Oh hey he wrote a book with Neil Gaiman! You've hears of that guy!

Grab Good Omens off the shelf.

Take it home, realize, much sooner, that this is also not a Discworld book. Still enjoy yourself thoroughly. You should read more of this Gaiman dude, too.

But okay. For real this time. Go back to the library and don't leave without *CONFIRMING* you have a Discworld book this time.

Grab a book. Look at the cover. Read the back Discworld! Ha HA! You've done it!

It's called Thud.

You are utterly gripped by a story of a man wrestling with himself, his growing child, the political tensions of a city and extremism that echoes reality beautifully while still being entirely true to itself. It's a story of responsibility and love and building communities and Fantasy Chess. You are driven nearly to tears by the sentence *WHERE IS MY COW?*

You emerge from the book fundamentally changed as a person, and finally understanding what all the fuss is about. You are now a Terry Pratchett reader for life.

You realize Thud was in the middle of a series. That was a part of another series. That explains why there was a feeling that you were supposed to know some of these people already.

You finally find one of those flowcharts and figure out a more sensible reading order.

I always sort of laugh when people ask where to start reading Discworld, because Thud would be first on absolutely nobody's sensible Terry Pratchett reading order. I'm still tempted to recommend it though!

(My actual advice: Going Postal if you love con men being stuck doing the right thing, Wee Free Men if you like YA and smart angry girls owning their own power, Guards! Guards! *and* Men at Arms if you like crime shows with heart and are okay giving earlier work a try (the quality gets better and better, but I think it needs at least two books to get you into it), and Monstrous Regiment if you like gender and queer feelings, anti-war books told in the middle of a war, and/or would prefer a stand alone novel...and, you know, Thud if you want a great read and don't mind some chaos.)

#terry Pratchett #discworld #the worst reading order #gnu terry Pratchett

[vaspider]

Splitting this off from the post it was on to say... no. Actually. It isn't.

This whole "queer is the worst word" is very recent - like decades more recent than the rise of the idea of a queer community - and before that point, queer was ... like... just... another word for us. It wasn't any worse than gay or lesbian, which is how you get a show called Queer Eye and another one called Queer As Folk and so on.

Queer as a community predates this whole "queer is a slur (and by this we mean the Worst Word, totally unreclaimable, and different somehow from all of the other slurs for us)" garbage by like... 3 decades? And the formation of that community has nothing to do with the reactionary nonsense about the word queer, ginned up by TERFs and other intracommunity bigots, which happened decades after its formation.

The fact that we've had to say, over and over, that being queer is opt-in, and no one's going to try to include you in the radical activist community against your will, and if you don't want to be queer, you're not, to the point that people now seem to think that deference to their bizarre insistence that this one word (which is an identity word as important as trans or lesbian or gay) is so much worse than all the other bad words for us (like... gay... which was The Worst Word 20 years ago)...

G-d, that's exhausting.

And yes, I'm aware that's the most ADHD sentence on the planet and that my parentheticals are out of control, and yes I actually talk like that. I wrote many words today and it's 6 am., sue me.

No, I am not deferring to the (frankly kind of bizarre at this point) hyper-vigilance about the word queer when I refer to the community which arose out of AIDS activism. I am referring to it by its historical name.

Nobody should be called things they don't like, but for fuck's sake, is there ever a point when we can get past this whole "lesbian not queer/queer is a slur" thing like I didn't meet my first homophobic violence being called a lesbo? Like, this whole thing keeps getting played very deliberately as a manipulation tactic and people keep falling for it and it's SO exhausting. I feel like I've literally written this exact post at least half a dozen times over the last few years.

[mortimermcmirestinks]

a complete list

so we got the following already:

AFAB = assigned female at birth

AMAB = samesies but for the bros

ACAB = fuck them pigs

AHAB = guy who wants to fuck and/or kill a sperm whale

so I'm gonna give you the other 22. ready? let's go

AAAB: the muuuscle in your miiidseeection

ABAB: 🔥🔥swedish band typo🔥🔥

ACAB: fuck them pigs

ADAB: world's most rad dance move

AEAB: assigned evil at birth

AFAB: doctor said you were a dame right when you slunk out the pusspuss

AGAB: what the doctor said you was when you slopped on outta the verjubit

AHAB: from hell's heart I tap that cetacean or whatever I never read it

AIAB: all investigators are bisexual

AJAB: a friendly poke

AKAB: all kops are bastardz

ALAB: like asexual but for science experiments instead of sexual attraction. short for "alaboratory"

AMAB: doctor said you were a bloke the second you shot out of the ol' utero cannon

ANAB: someone very sneakily trying to name their D&D character after a banana. don't let them get away with it

AOAB: desperately trying to remember the official Maori name for New Zealand but I'm so so bad at spelling

APAB: assigned pussy magnet at birth

AQAB: the guy from the new GAY version of Moby Dick. this version's called Moby Pronouns. the woke agenda has gone too far!!!!!

ARAB: an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the ARAB world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant ARAB diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years. In the 9th century BCE, the As

ASAB: ahh!! stinkyyy!!! aww, baby

ATAB: the thing you start at a bar when you don't want to pay up right away. ALTERNATE JOKE: the thing you hit to go to the next cell in Excel

AUAB: sound a turtle makes when it's ramming ham

AVAB: only known word to be a perfect anagram of both "balaclava" AND "baklava"

AWAB: assigned weeb at boston

AXAB: amnestic XK-class anomalous being

AYAB: alla youse are bullshit

AZAB: mystery option. nobody knows what this one is. if you know what this one is, send your knowledge to the Pentagon and they will send you a shiny American penny.

glad to help out!! just playing my small role in the queer community. fuck cops also

[gatheringbones]

[“Why not identify as bi? That’s a complicated question. For a while, I thought I was simply being biphobic. There’s a lot of that going around in the gay community. Most of us had to struggle so hard to be exclusively homosexual that we resent people who don’t make a similar commitment. A self-identified bisexual is saying, ‘Men and women are of equal impor- tance to me.’ That’s simply not true of me. I’m a Kinsey Five, and when I turn on to a man it’s because he shares some aspect of my sexuality (like S/M or fisting) that turns me on despite his biological sex.

There’s yet another twist. I have eroticized queerness, gayness, homo- sexuality – in men and women. The leatherman and the drag queen are sexy to me, along with the diesel dyke with greased-back hair, and the femme stalking across the bar in her miniskirt and high-heeled shoes. I’m a fag hag.

The gay community’s attitude toward fag hags and dyke daddies has been pretty nasty and unkind. Fag hags are supposed to be frustrated, traditionally feminine, heterosexual women who never have sex with their handsome, slightly effeminate escorts – but desperately want to. Consequently, their nails tend to be long and sharp, and their lipstick runs to the bloodier shades of carmine. And They Drink. Dyke daddies are supposed to be beer-bellied rednecks who hang out at lesbian bars to sexually harass the female patrons. The nicer ones are suckers who get taken for drinks or loans that will never be repaid.

These stereotypes don’t do justice to the complete range of modern faghaggotry and dyke daddydom. Today fag hags and dyke daddies are as likely to be gay themselves as the objects of their admiration.

I call myself a fag hag because sex with men outside the context of the gay community doesn’t interest me at all. In a funny way, when two gay people of opposite sexes make it, it’s still gay sex. No heterosexual couple brings the same experiences and attitudes to bed that we do. These generalizations aren’t perfectly true, but more often than straight sex, gay sex assumes that the use of hands or the mouth is as important as genital-to-genital contact. Penetration is not assumed to be the only goal of a sexual encounter. When penetration does happen, dildos and fingers are as acceptable as (maybe even preferable to) cocks. During gay sex, more often than during straight sex, people think about things like lubrication and ‘fit’. There’s no such thing as ‘foreplay’. There’s good sex, which includes lots of touching, and there’s bad sex, which is nonsensual. Sex roles are more flexible, so nobody is automatically on the top or the bottom. There’s no stigma attached to masturbation, and gay people are much more accepting of porn, fantasies, and fetishes.

And, most importantly, there is no intention to ‘cure’ anybody. I know that a gay man who has sex with me is making an exception and that he’s still gay after we come and clean up. In return I can make an exception for him because I know he isn’t trying to convert me to heterosexuality.

I have no way of knowing how many lesbians and gay men are less than exclusively homosexual. But I do know I’m not the only one. Our actual behaviour (as opposed to the ideology that says homosexuality means being sexual only with members of the same sex) leads me to ask questions about the nature of sexual orientation, how people (especially gay people) define it, and how they choose to let those definitions control and limit their lives.

During one of our interminable discussions in Samois about whether or not to keep the group open to bi women, Gayle Rubin pointed out that a new, movement-oriented definition of lesbianism was in conflict with an older, bar-oriented definition. Membership in the old gay culture consisted of managing to locate a gay bar and making a place for yourself in bar society. Even today, nobody in a bar asks you how long you’ve been celibate with half the human race before they will check your coat and take your order for a drink. But in the movement, people insist on a kind of purity that has little to do with affection, lust, or even political commitment. Gayness becomes a state of sexual grace, like virginity. A fanatical insistence on one hundred percent exclusive, same-sex behaviour often sounds to me like superstitious fear of contamination or pollution. Gayness that has more to do with abhorrence for the other sex than with an appreciation of your own sex degenerates into a rabid and destructive separatism.”]

pat califa, public sex: the culture of radical sex, 1994, 2000

#pat califa #lesbian literature #history stuff #gender stuff #terra preta

[decolonize-the-left]

Hey this might be a weird question but you seem to know a lot about the strategies TERFs use and what they're hiding, so I just wanted to ask and you don't have to answer.

Why do so many TERFs have this weird hostility towards bi and ace people? I don't think either of those identities have anything to do with being trans but I've seen so many TERFs who are also biphobic and/or aphobic. My gut instinct was that there was some large overlap between bi/ace people and trans people, but then I've found TERFs give shit to cis bis and aces so I'm not sure if it's that or some other reason. I'm not trans myself but I want to be able to recognize TERF rhetoric to be a better ally to trans people.

A couple reasons.

First one is that hating bis/aces is at the entrance of the TERF pipeline; they utilize this 'soft bigotry' to radicalize LGBTs and it usually looks like this:

To recruit queer ppl first they try to get us to stop considering aces as Oppressed. That's how it starts. They're aren't Doing anything so how can they be oppressed? They don't know what it's like to marginalized....how could they? They're just stealing the spotlight of Actually oppressed ppl

And once you accept that they turn to bisexuals. Who are only half gay, you know? And most of them date men anyway or end up marrying men so like? How the hell would they know what it's like to literally Live oppression 24/7? Do we we really want them to have a voice and speak for those of us that don't have an escape from our oppression?

This works because on the surface TERFS/Radfems appear to care about women and gender equality, which a lot of queer people obviously support. But they exploit those of us that don't know enough about feminism's intersectional (and very gay) history to identify them as bad actors.

From here the person they've targeted will either a- accept this and likewise will eventually also accept that trans oppression isnt real either (fulfilling the TERF's actual goal of recruitment) OR b- they'll realize they've been manipulated and try to deconstruct.

Secondly:

TERFs are white supremacist and their beliefs are founded white supremacist ideology and outdated scientific theories that Support white supremacist rhetoric.

It's called gender-essentialism which is a branch of bio-essentialism which is the belief that the biological body you have has inherent skills and abilities. Racists have used this to deny Black humanity just as TERFs use it to deny the existence of gender diversity.

But nobody is inherently weaker because of a uterus, nor are they bad drivers just because they have a uterus. All women are not good mothers just because they are women. Men are not all abusers just because they are men.

TERFs would have you swallow these beliefs; they're vital to maintaining the Core TERF Value that that trans people aren't Real and people with uteri are always helpless victims to be defended against evil men.

And as white supremacists their goal is to disrupt and destroy minority communities so that we are too divided to unify against legal attacks. TERFs do this from the inside out by putting bis/aces in a different category from the other queers while disguising their bigotry as feminist. They get us to voluntarily undermine and destroy our own movement this way by causing intercommunity "bi/ace discourse" that makes bis/aces out to be an enemy of "real" oppressed people (like transphobic lesbians for example)

Thirdly:

Lots of queer people are feminists which makes us easy targets and that's why they focus on the queer community. Additionally, the queer community has a history of being a threat to the white supremacist establishment so dividing us is vital to their goal of eventually wiping out anyone who isnt cis, straight, white, neurotypical, and able bodied

#asked #answered #white supremacy #whiteness #terf ideology #recognizing bigotry #terf bs #radfem bs #bigotry #equality #queer #lesbian #gay #bisexual #transgender #asexual #aromantic #exclusionist #solidarity #red flags to watch for #lgbtqia

[wastelandhell]

I absolutely love your character Val! I'm a newer follower so I don't know much about him, but I love whenever you draw him. could you tell me more about his story? or how he ended up with Danse or even what their dynamic with each other is?

Ah thank you <3 I used to post more "lore" stuff on here and theres a bunch if you go way back in his tag, but in the last year I've just been kind of posting a lot of out-of-context and au stuff with no connection.

Him and Danse are both very opinionated men, and those opinions rarely align. They spend about as much time arguing as they do getting along, their relationship through most of the game is equal parts mutual pining and divorced.

They are finally able to acknowledge their feelings for each other shortly before "The Nuclear Option", but mutually split afterwards while Danse tries to find himself and Val focuses on establishing a stable home for Shaun. They reconnect about a year later when the commonwealth is in less of a state of crisis, and are finally able to pursue their relationship.

You know what, I haven't posted anything about him in a while, who's ready for a

This is not going to be very edited or formatted because I am a clown so. Sorry in advance.

A brief overview?

His "real" name is Vasili Gavriilovich Andonov but he goes by Valerie Anderson wherever he can, and does his best to hide his russian ancestry. He prefers people call him Val, though most of the brotherhood soldiers refer to him as Andonov. He hates people referring to him as Vasya or using his patronymic name, though thankfully there aren't a lot of people in the commonwealth who use russian naming conventions.

He's an autistic, bisexual, depressed alcoholic who indulges in stimulants a bit more than he should. He's surprisingly good at playing guitar, especially slide blues with his steel resonator guitar. He loves aircraft and built/painted scale models before the war. He's very lonely, even when around people who like him he never feels like he belongs. His birthday is Jan 12th, which is coincidentally a sort of holiday for the cryonics community.

He'll spend a lot of time looking inward and ruminating, and can identify a lot of his personal problems, but is not very good at "fixing" them. So he just kind of mopes around and wallows in self-loathing and self-pity. He's very gullible, and hates people messing with him. While he struggles a lot socially he is very intelligent, and is a genius with anything with an engine. Before the war he worked on vertibirds for the us military. His support of the brotherhood has nothing to do with their ideals; just that they keep him fed, paid, and let him work on aircraft. He's not particularly concerned with "saving" the commonwealth, he just wants to hurt the people who have hurt him.

Gameplay-wise, he's a melee/power armour build, with his highest stats INT and END. He can built so many weird and wonderful things that either explode or he can beat you to death with. Maybe both. His LCK and CHR are pretty miserable, nobody likes him and things are constantly going wrong. Playing a melee character in survival with MAIM is... a task.

Some sort of timeline?

He's the son of Russian immigrants who met in the US, His father Gavriil was an angry alcoholic who worked for the government and his mother Lidiya was a stay-at-home mom and a fervent christian. He had a sister, Kseniya, who was almost his opposite; a very polite and reserved child.

Valerie was small as a kid; being ginger, autistic, queer, and an immigrant made him a frequent target of his peers. Paired with his fathers physical and emotional abuse at home this made him a very angry and defensive person.

He spent most of his time away from home, preferring to spend his time in the woods around their home or just walking around town. He started smoking when he was 12 and drinking when he was 14, stealing from his father. As he got older he missed more and more school, spending his time committing petty crimes and getting into trouble.

While his father was more directly hostile his mother was equally overbearing in her own way. Val would identify himself as agnostic and having no belief in god, but for all of her preaching he still harbors a lot of “catholic guilt”, and fears that when he dies he will go to hell.

As he got older he quickly sprung from a small kid to a tall, muscular teenager. While he never learned to get along with his peers he learned to adapt an imposing, aggressive and masculine personality to defend himself.

When Val became too large for his father to easily push around he turned his anger towards Kseniya, whom Val was fiercely protective of. This only raised tensions at home, and Val and his father would get in frequent physical altercations. He contemplated leaving when he was 16 and could drive, but didn’t want to abandon his sister.

Eventually things came to a head when both of them had been drinking and Valerie came home late. Their fight got particularly nasty, and Val broke a bottle over his fathers head. He was immediately out cold, and Val was left shocked, covered in his fathers blood, believing he had just killed him. This would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Kseniya was home at the time, and ran in when she heard the yelling. Val tried to convince her to come with him, but she was shocked and terrified and refused to leave. Fearing retribution, and before he could really process what he had done, Val took any cash he could and the keys to his fathers car and fled.

He sold his fathers car and got something less traceable, which he lived out of for the next several years while he jumped around state to state. He picked up the occasional day job, but mostly supported himself by stealing cars and running drugs.

After he left is when he began going by Valerie Anderson. At first it was out of fear that he was wanted under his legal name, but he soon realized how much better people treated him if he had an “american” name.

When he was 20 he was eventually picked up for a minor offense, but given the political climate at the time he was offered the opportunity to join the military rather than face charges. As much as Val hated the government he was still very afraid of being connected to his fathers murder, and jumped at the chance to avoid any legal issues.

In his time in the military he discovered a love for aircraft, and pursued it doggedly. He got his GED, and went on to earn a masters in aerospace engineering. He never bothered with friends or relationships, he put all of his time into education and work. Lived and breathed for aircraft.

While Val enjoyed his job he continued to struggle with his mental health and substance abuse. He would frequently get into fights, eventually he got into a bar fight bad enough he nearly killed someone, getting the scars on his face at the same time.

While he was in trouble with the law he would end up working with his new attorney, Laura Walsh. She was elegant, graceful, composed, brilliant, persuasive, someone who always got what she wanted. And had terrible taste in men. Before the case was even over they started hooking up.

Their relationship was strictly friends-with-benefits, neither of them really cared for the other as a person and it was just sex. Over time, despite their best efforts, they came to see past the carefully crafted personas that they both presented to the world and fell in love with the people behind them.

He was 29 when they met, and they married less than 3 years later. They were moved to Boston for Val’s work, and it seemed like they would be staying for a while so they tried to establish themselves. Val tried to quit drinking around this time but struggled to face reality sober for the first time, and frequently slipped back.

Laura had always wanted children but Val was initially very against the idea. He still held a lot of unaddressed trauma from his own childhood and did not feel that he could ever be a good father.

Eventually Laura convinced him otherwise, and he agreed, again making an effort to clean himself up. When she fell pregnant his anxiety led to him having a breakdown at work, afterward he admitted himself to an inpatient rehab and spent 6 weeks there. From here until the start of the game was probably the best time of his life; sober, medicated and attending regular therapy sessions.

While Val was worried about his capacity to be a father, as soon as Shaun was born he lost that. That kid was his life, he did everything for him. He stayed on a break from work while Laura returned to practice, being a stay-at-home dad and throwing himself into domestic life. He even built a robot housekeeper!

His sister tracked him down somewhere around here and they began communicating through the post. She reveals that his father survived the attack, and was still alive, though she hadn’t spoken to him in years. They were planning to meet in person in the winter, though obviously that didn’t happen.

He was 33 when he went into the vault, and the main fo4 plot takes ~3 years to complete, but I think I’ve made this post long enough and I am too drunk and tired to keep typing. Safe to say hijinks ensue.

tl;dr hes an orange cringefail loser, and im hopelessly in love with him.

#asks #val #if you actually read all of that thank you. and im sorry. #id love to say english isnt my first language but it is. im just terrible at writing. #fallout

[sciderman]

hi sci, happy december! i really admire your pride and openness about being queer, i think it really reflects in your depiction of wade and peter. i find myself relating to pete a lot. i just really wanna ask how i can be more proud of being queer and more comfortable in my own skin?

i think you’re super cool!! thank you for your comics they make me so happy 🙏

happy december, anon!! it's – it's kind of funny, actually, that you'd say that. it made me think of a distinct memory of mine, from ages ago. where someone outed me as queer in a facebook post (without my permission!) and i got so nervous and apprehensive about it that i asked them to take it down. so it feels kind of funny, you talking about my pride and openness about being queer. when i don't know - i feel a lot like peter, too. trying to embrace these truths about himself, but still not entirely comfortable yet. personally i still don't like the label "queer" - it isn't something i'd label myself - i prefer "gay" - and it's inexplicable. maybe queer has deep-seated connotations to me. when i've heard it, it's always been derogatory. queer means weird. that's not always a good thing.

i love those who can reclaim it and scream proudly, but – i'm one of the nervous ones. and when people call me "queer", i feel nervous. i don't feel proud. but gay - gay means happy. gay is a celebration. i can proudly claim i'm gay. that feels right. i'm gay. not "weird". it's so pedantic and silly. but it's where i've found my comfort.

i'm still not exactly the most out-and-proud, in my day-to-day. i really want to be. but i haven't really found a community in the real world that makes me feel that safe and honest - lgbtq+ spaces don't always feel accommodating to everyone (least of all someone as socially anxious and repressed as i am) - and i'll be honest, i'm scared. a lot of very out-and-proud people make me nervous, they're so loud. and i'm so, so quiet. up until very recently i was terrified of lesbians. they still scare me a little. on a daily basis i ask myself "am i homophobic?"

i still live in a home where being honest about who i am is kind of a complicated issue - not that i'm under the risk of being rejected but - i kind of have to always filter myself in a way to make myself simple and uncomplicated for the people i live with. trans is complicated. bisexual is complicated. just stay plain and simple, and nobody will get scared or confused.

forming this community online definitely helped with me being able to embrace myself - seeing so many people embrace and love wade and peter and all their funny gender and sexuality experiences feels like, in some way, i'm being embraced and loved too, through them.

i feel like the most important way you can learn to embrace yourself is to be embraced by others - to find people who celebrate you, for what you are. i think it's bogus, the line of thought that "you can't be loved if you don't love yourself" - it's the complete opposite. it's so much easier to love yourself when you're loved. find people who celebrate you. who celebrate colours, and celebrate whatever you are, as you are. maybe that means getting louder. maybe that means going out and meeting people like you. maybe that means finding community somewhere, somehow.

if you're looking for a place for weird, weird gender beans, the ask-spiderpool discord server is a beautiful, wonderful place full of beautiful wonderful people with beautiful wonderful feelings.

#sci speaks

[canonizzyhours]

@ 342

i would have a much easier time with letting bad takes slide if izzy fans didn’t also—

a) harass cast and crew (spewing vitriol en masse at david jenkins on twitter for killing izzy, DMing gypsy taylor to call her a psycho etc)

b) infantilize con o’neill by insisting that he’s heartbroken/angry that his character was killed off and he’s just being SO POLITE/BRAVE ABOUT IT (because everyone in the canyon is a body language expert and they just know him so well they can tell he’s hurting)

c) come into my mentions and admonish me for “stirring the pot” ie posting rants about the canyon UNTAGGED to my own blog that nobody reads

d) tolerate/defend/protect a known sexual abuser in their community (and demand proof from victims of the severity of their abuse so they could decide if it was serious enough to even care about)

e) engage with a racist artist who made edward an unapologetic domestic abuser of izzy in their comic before s2 even aired, who also harassed other fans for outing aforementioned sexual abuser (who they vouched for)

f) extend more grace and humanity to izzy hands, a fictional white man, than to the actual flesh-and-blood human beings who worked on the show (“I’m glad the show was cancelled because they ruined my favorite characters”—meanwhile lots of queer POC are out of a job and you’re celebrating that)

g) call jes tom a “fucking idiot” for saying ed’s rejection of his leathers a trans allegory (which was a scene that he wrote that was informed by his own experiences as a trans person)

h) enable eachother to behave poorly because “there’s no right or wrong way to grieve” (I guess a fictional character death on a tv show you never really liked is ample justification for the mistreatment of people around you, even six months after the show ended?)

“gentlebeardies” largely want to be left alone but izzy fans NEED to be morally correct, and they NEED to be victims. they need to reinsert themselves into the discourse day-in and day-out but they also need to be handled with kid’s gloves because if their feelings get hurt or they experience any level of discomfort then they just HAVE to fight back.

sometimes I think the canyon so vehemently denies that izzy is abusive/manipulative and an antagonist (at least in season 1, less so in season 2) because they cannot (or will not) reckon with their own capacity for harm. it’s much easier to weaponize your identity to deflect any criticism at all, in good faith or otherwise.

#354.

related posts: #342

#ofmd #izzy hands #fandom critical

[hermannish]

the saltburn review

saltburn hit pretty close to home. largely because i lived it. at times it was personal and surreal, shocking and true. but in the end it was just another misguided attempt at understanding the misunderstood.

and whom are the misunderstood? the middle class and the one percent? or the soul searching queer? according to emerald fennell, it’s the latter.

for the most part i felt that oliver was created and portrayed accurately, though i was ultimately disappointed by his character arc. while the idea of him m*dering Felix and his family is darkly humorous and seems like an appropriate conclusion, i think it actually misrepresented his character entirely. simultaneously, it absolutely destroyed any sense of romanticism the film spent close to three acts persuading the audience on. instead of the psycho-erotic masterpiece you think just might serve as the male counterpart for killing eve, you get just another fuck you to the LGBTQ community and the one-percent economy. which i might add is grotesquely overdone in media, and the audience knows it by the time they reach the film’s stale ending.

and it is stale. every scene plays like a fever dream of conversations one has already heard before. with the most cliché monologues coming from Farleigh and Venetia. every word seems so painstakingly familiar one can’t help but draw the similarities to F. Scott’s Jay Gatsby. Though where Fitzgerald cuts his dreamy romance and imagination short before any nightmare can begin, Fennell embraces the demons of the night, dragging her Gatsby through the mud and the blood until he’s so unrecognizable she has to provide an alternate origin story to make up for Oliver’s unnatural behavior.

and it is unnatural. so unnatrual that by the credit roll, you’re not quite sure who Oliver is, or what his motives are. on the pretense of reality, it seems pretty rigid for a guy who grew up in a decent neighborhood to go from erotically obsessed with his classmate to a murderous usurper. a conclusion so categorically absurd, it’s impossible to believe- largely because anyone on Oliver’s spectrum would never be able to sustain the public image it takes to uphold Saltburn let alone the ghost of Felix. His nude dance around the estate might as well be his seven seconds of heaven before the vultures descend at Farleigh’s call. And who would Farleigh find? Venetia claims her family believes Oliver to be a spider while she herself is partial to the idea that he’s a moth. [though ultimately she decides he’s a freaky nobody.] i personally concluded he was a werewolf. Normal when the prodigal *son is out, but absolutely possessed at night. Oliver himself professes that he is in fact a vampire. but much to every viewers dismay, we’re not entirely sure why.

3/5 stars: guess it’s just an oliver Quick Horror movie for the rich and famous.

bonus:

which saltburn plague are you?

let me know in the comments

the vampire: dead. cold hearted. bloodsucking. manipulative. stealing the life out of everyone and everything after they invite you in. guaranteed to love you forever or your money back.

the spider: the silent observer, hiding in corners, working in the shadows, whispering half-truths to make your bed of lies. and once you’ve captured your lovely guest, up up and away they go. down your throat for dinner.

the moth: addicted to the light, and the money, and the scene, and the shiny diamond irresistible things. you do nothing but eat holes into everything and everyone until the light is yours alone.

the freaky nobody: you have an erotic obsession with the guy you met in chem class, or the 60 year old lead actress on an emmy award winning tv show. you spend your days, weeks, months admiring from afar and planning how you’ll end up being together. you like to spy on them while they masturbate and after they’re dead you wear their aromas and old underwear.

the werewolf: an absolute darling pet during the day. someone's best friend and best mate. you wait by their side and do everything they ask in complete and utter obedience and loyalty. but as soon as the full moon comes out you can't be trusted. the demon inside comes out, no one is safe, and everything is considered dinner.

would you / did you / never ever

let me know in the comments

1. lend your bike to your secret crush

I WOULD ABSOLUTELY. wouldn’t go so far as pre-sabotaging the bicycle, but if she needed a ride, i’d give her mine.

2. watch your crush sleep with another person

never ever. i don’t think i could. it’s one of those things that i think i never would want to see. I think i would black out. I think I would get jealous in a way that i’ve never been jealous before. and i think it would haunt me in a way that nothing’s ever haunted me before. i can’t see it being healthy.

3. make out with your crushes love interest

there’s a duplicity to this. maybe even a triplicity given the nature of the game. would I? yes. if the circumstances were right. have i? I have - sort of. not really. there was a guy that i knew who had worked with her previously. and they weren’t romantically linked at all. but i remember thinking when we made out, this guy has been near her. they've touched. because of my circumstances, it felt mystical and urgent, but i never allowed it to happen again. mainly because deep down i knew i was using him. and all i would ever do was use him for precisely that reason. and that wasn’t fair. so i never talked to him again. never ever? she’s married. her husband is this guy. i don’t think i could kiss him. i don’t think i would. but if i did i would imagine it being for the sole reason of missing her because she was no longer with us.

4. tell your crush you suffered a traumatic event to get them to befriend you even more

no. not to the extent that Ollie lied. that was pretty big even for me. i’d tell a white lie. I have told a white lie to get my crush to befriend me even more, but to lie about trauma is diabolical. [the lie i told, was about not having a twitter account in my crushes honorum. in truth, i really did. and i didn’t want her to know about it because it was my place to be transparent. and curious, and sexually fluid. it was my place to be absolutely mental. but i never lied about traumas. [that’s gnarly.]

5. spend the night over your super rich friend’s house

never ever. for precisely the reasons detailed in this film, however parody the script may have been, there’s a lot of truth to the scenario. to the reactions. I always did my best to avoid putting myself into those situations. when you’re in social settings like that i think it’s important to realize and establish your role early on. if they’re fire, you’ve got to position yourself as water, or earth, or wind and be realistic about that. if you’re not, you’re just setting yourself up for failure. you just seem delusional. you've got to be strong. be your own character. set your boundaries and don’t apologize for them. if you don't you''ll only ever be a play thing. you want to make an impression? you want to be memorable? my advice is to keep networking. don't limit yourself to one person just because they're so and so and they have connections. keep networking. make your own connections. and make connections that are outside of their circle. that way if things do go south, the most you lose is an understanding, but never your newly earned position. when you limit yourself you become dependent on others for your happiness and growth. you don't just come off as a moth, but a leech. [that's your que pamela!] it's just not attractive.

6. slurp your crushes masturbation bathwater

abso-fucking-lutely - on second thought it might be a bit too soapy for my tasting. but i’d definitely do a finger dip.

7. perform oral sex during someone’s menstrual cycle

like a full session? probably not. some people try and justify it and make it acceptable but the fact is it’s unsanitary, unhealthy, and unclean. there’s even risk of giving your partner a bacterial infection. so no. not exactly. but i know it’s possible for some women to become aroused. i’d be open to fingering long term, but nothing oral. i have nothing to prove in doing that.

8. play psychological mind games with your competition

i did. don’t recommend it at all. it’s enough to make a person go insane. and there are so many other wonderful things you could be doing. like being kind and being genuine. that’s not to say that being that way will inherently make you exempt from offensive behaviors- and by offensive behaviors i am referring to the unmentionable hazing experience wealthy young adults play on middle class young adults. that's the ugly side of ambition. the part that you’re unprepared for because no one really expects it. you're so focused on socially advancing that once you've gotten your foot in the door the only thing you can process is the success of it. the next steps of it. it's a lot. one minute you think you've just secured generational wealth for your family and the next you're standing in an arena with a sword while all the advanced gather for entertainment. it can just be impossible and manipulative, and jealous for no reason. they’ll hurt you just because they can, just because they’re not having a good day. and it can cost you everything. so don't go in it with the expectation you're going to win. the game is rigged. go in with the intention to survive. you never know, you might get lucky.

9. kill your crush after they found out about your deception and decided they no longer wanted to be in a relationship with you

nooooo!!!! never ever! if anything, i’d kill myself before i had the nerve to kill my crush. to ruin those eyes? and that hair? and those legs? and that ass? and those lips?! PLEASE. the last thing i’d want to do is kill someone i’m in love with! it's just unfathomable. i can't even imagine it. life just wouldn't have meaning without my crush. even if she is married. i don't care. i still want her alive and breathing. if anything i want her to live forever.

10. masturbate on your crushes grave.

this one made me laugh. in hindsight no. maybe you know, i’d think about us being together when i go to lay some flowers, but full on, naked and thrashing against the dirt? i can’t say that’s for me. I can’t speak for what happens in the car though- especially if the grave just happens to be by the beach...

#saltburn #gatsby #killing eve #love:andie #parasite #barry keoghan #jacob elordi #jacob elrodis bath water #rosamund pike #felix catton #oliver quick #psych:andie

[pineapplerightsideupcake]

how do you as a bisexual come to terms with the fact that the trans community has literally made homophobia much worse. ppl are proudly being openly homophobic and when you dig deeper it’s actually the “queers” and transgenders who think kids can transition who they have a problem with (not all of course but a good chunk) I believe ppl who wouldn’t otherwise be homophobic are being homophobic bc of the trans community. I use to really struggle w internalized homophobia, and still do, it was only this past year where I came to terms w it and told my sister/close friends. I wish it could be just a normal thing to be gay and you’d be left alone, I believe we were on a trajectory for that. But now things have gotten worse, and thanks to the gender nonsense, openly bigoted ppl (especially religious) are being praised and promoted. All this bc of trans activism. I don’t even care anymore about what they do to themselves, but the damage they’ve done to actual gay ppl is insane and we’re already facing the backlash. I’m not sure if we’ll ever live in a world where being lgb isn’t a big deal.

Honestly? I think the benefit of pushing 40 is that I have a wider lens through which to view activism. And I feel the same way about LGB rights as I do about women’s rights.

Which is to say, every time a big gain is won, there is backlash. There are parts of society that get worse as the culture tries desperately to adjust around the new changes.

Men today are more porn sick and sexually aggressive than 20 years ago. In some ways. People are polling less positively about the LGTBQI+ but how much of that backlash is really directed at the LGB? Are polling groups even bothering to distinguish between LGB and “queer” people?

Let me tell you what life was like as a bisexual teen in 2003. Let’s go back 20 years and I can tell you the world has changed so much for the better. 20 years ago gay rights activists started really making headway towards civil rights guarantees. Suddenly middle Americans had to confront that gay people were among them and not just haunting bars and bathhouses. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such rigid gender norm adherence as I did back then. Men couldn’t wear pastels or purple or pink. Guys got called gay for having a messenger bag. There is an entire episode of “Friends” about it. Sussing out the Gays Among Us became obsessive. Emo culture was a direct response to how frantic straight people were to appear duly heterosexual. TV shows still depicted us as degenerate freaks if they depicted us at all. A few HBO shows that were soft core porn more than anything and Will and Grace was all anybody had. Shows like Xena and Buffy got away with lesbians because men said out loud that hot women kissing was fine. These were the early days of straight men having open lesbian fetishizes. We couldn’t get married. We could get fired for being gay.

For women there was no movement to normalize our natural bodies. I’d spend hours shaving myself smooth. Not wearing makeup was unheard of. Cellulite wasn’t even a word I knew let alone knew was normal. There weren’t a million online resources teaching women that vaginal discharge is normal and I grew up thinking (as did many others) that it was a private shame.

And as far as MeToo stuff? It’s easy to feel defeated in the moment but nobody was using the word ‘consent’ in my day. Men getting women drunk was a joke. Men pushing for sex was a joke. Men calling a woman that had one too many dates or boyfriends a slut was normal. Three of my male friends pinned me down on several occasions and took turns rubbing their dicks on me to completion.

The therapist I told said I “needed to work on my boundaries”. The word rape never even entered my mind. Rape was something a stranger with a knife did. It wasn’t something your best friends did to you and then laughed about. It isn’t something you submitted to because fawn and freeze are real fear responses. No one told me my friend forcing my hand down his pants was abuse because I continued to go over his house, didn’t I? No one told me about red flags or cycles of abuse.

And the older women you told rolled their eyes. What I endured was so mild compared to many other women. Men forcing themselves onto women was just normal.

I can’t tell you what it means to me to see so many young women calling it out. Refusing to stay in a bad situation. Refusing to date entirely sometimes. Women sharing red flags and advice to stay not just safe but thriving.

Don’t get me wrong- the current gender movement is regressive and dangerous. I’m not saying it’ll all work itself out. Activism is constant work but things ARE getting better. They really are, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. 💜

#radical feminism #radical feminist safe #radical feminist community #radical feminists do interact #radical feminists do touch #radblr #radical feminists please interact #radical feminists please touch

[knifearo]

hey just wanted to ask if polls that go around like the one right now that says “are asexuals part of the community” are bait posts bc i just don’t see the point in ASKING when it’s supposed to be a given. like you can’t see WHO votes no, it’s not like this poll is going to help block aphobes- is it not just trying to incite more “discourse”?

wanna start this answer by saying that you've given like three very good reasons why these polls are bait-y and fucking stupid already in ur ask, and i think that you're completely right about them :) simple answer though. yeah. lmao.

the current wave of things (specifically the arophobia of the last few weeks of 2023) started with a post mentioning cishet aro men and then really kicked off with a "are cishet aro men queer" poll. just like you said, there is no positive impact of these polls; if you took the VERY best interpretation of it that you could, the person who made the poll would be Really Fucking Stupid in the moment that they were making it. if they think that they're facilitating a conversation, they're... wrong. and they should stop. but! if you're not willing to be the kindest, most generous person on earth, i think we can safely assume that the people making these polls are of the opinion that aspec queerness is a question (and that their answer for it is no). exclusionism still isn't like. stigmatized. really. and so people are really fucking confident waltzing out onto the mainstage to do things that are blatantly exclusionist/aphobic with a very thin veneer of innocence because they know that nobody will call them out on it. these things are absolutely meant to incite more discourse and again. the bitches spreading it around as if it's even a question are being stupid at Best.

what we can do for the moment is keep talking about how these stupid ass posts are bait and not spreading them around ourselves <3 repeat it ad nauseum and people will have to get it through their heads eventually... but yeah. block unfollow ignore. remind people that engaging with that shit is Cringe Idiot behavior. bitches never stopped being exclusionist assholes, they just got quieter about it for a while, and like hell are we gonna let them just go back to business as usual. recognize it + call it out + go engage in positive community spaces :) <3

#genuinely i offer SO much benefit of the doubt to some people that they might just Not Know. #but even then. patience runs real fucking thin and they're getting unfollowed no matter what. #even if you don't intend harm! there's a certain level of obliviousness that makes you like. NOT a viable option for me. #anyway. i think you already said everything that needed to be said in your ask. #aspec people i love you remember to keep our community strong <3 #ask #aromantic #aromanticism #arospec #aroace #aspec #asexual #ace discourse #ace exclusion #ace #talking

[dukeofankh]

Does anyone else identify as he/him primarily out of spite?

Like, if I was being exhaustively accurate I would probably call myself genderfluid. I've got seasons where I'm much more feminine, I do feel dysphoric at times, and even when I am in a masculine zone, a lot of the time it can veer more towards what would probably be a femboy vibe if I wasn't built like a bear and fully in my thirties.

But I do have large swaths of my life where I lean into full blown mascy masculine male man vibes, and that does bring me gender euphoria. When I want to be in that zone and I am struggling to pull it off, I feel dysphoria about that.

So yeah, if the purpose of pronouns was to give every person you meet an exhaustively accurate description of your gender identity, then I'd probably go with something like he/she or a more homogeneous "they", but like...

I am six feet tall, I'm almost 250 pounds, I'm covered with hair. I've worked almost nothing but blue collar jobs. Regardless of what I say my pronouns are, people see me and have a pretty straightforward and durable idea of who I am. And it's one thing to say that about the conservative people in my life but it's not like it's any less true about the queer community. Non-binary folks get invalidated to shit all over, but the "woman-lite" shit is a different flavour from what folks who look like me get. So why fucking bother? Pronouns are an act of communication. Why would I try to tell people who I am if nobody is listening or cares? They think I'm a dude. They're not even wrong a fair bit of the time.

Like...I have been hanging around tumblr queer feminist circles for about a decade at this point, and at some point it just becomes pretty obvious that the highest I could aspire to for most people in "my" community is to be "one of the good ones." And it's because they do and always will see me as a dude, and the default for dudes is to be irredeemably evil. Okay, fine. I'm a dude. I'm not going to try and convince you that there's more than that, because that masculinity is absolutely still there, and I'm not going to pretend that it isn't to be accepted into a community that doesn't want me there. If you can't handle me at what you consider my worst, you don't deserve what you consider my best.

#me writing stuff #he/him

[olderthannetfic]

What word should I use? Biphobic? Heteronormative? Homophobic? Exclusionary? All this to ask, what should I call it when people call M/F relationships "straight" as a default? Even with confirmed queer characters, people always default to calling it straight. Some even using it derogatory, as if being in a M/F relationship as a queer person makes you dirty or less of a queer individual. Like you're giving up your "bi card" if you dare date a opposite gender person. I mean I've also had some mild issue with calling same gender relationships gay as a default, even if the characters aren't actually gay, like bi or pan, or whatever the fuck. But at least some bi people do use gay as a term for their relationship, and at least it doesn't "shove you out off" queer spaces. You're still acknowledged by the communities.

But "straight"? It's like one of those terms that's used to invalidate queer dating, and is like THE buzzword to belittle other queer people.

Also hate the term "straight passing" like it's some kinda honor to have your sexuality denied. Don't get me started on how many facets of "straight passing" or "straight passing privilege" pretend like not being allowed to live your true self is somehow a privilege instead of taking a huge mental toll on you, especially when the people who should be part of your community want you to piss off because you're doing your own sexuality "wrong". And that straight passing, if we go "passing as a straight person" could just as much apply to literally any other queer identity if they're just "normative" enough.

--

Nobody likes being painted as straight when they aren't, but plenty of bi people do call their m/f relationships "straight relationships". I don't think you're ever going to eradicate this one.

[shadowetienne]

Lyrical Analysis of OnlyOneOf's "dOpamine"

This is based off the official translation of the lyrics provided in the CC on the "dOpamine" MV. I did transcribe them so that I could look at them all at once, so any errors or mismatches in what I have quoted here are transcription errors (or something having changed in the CC since I transcribed it).

General ideas that I've taken away from the lyrics of "dOpamine" are that this is a story of first realizations of queer love/attraction, and that it deals with the obsession and fascination that can reside within that initial realization.

I think that there is also a question posed within thinking about this song: How can you have a fully happy and healthy love when the world/society seems to be entirely against it and the one possibility you are grasping at feels like the only possibility in the world?

[Note: this is long, I've gone through the lyrics in a lot of detail. I'm really just spinning off my thoughts on what story I think that this is telling. I would love to hear what other people think too!]

I know that we've all seen it at this point, but if you've stumbled across this and want to know what I'm talking about (or just want to watch it again, I get it) here's the MV:

Now that we're all on the same page and thinking about the lyrics, lets break this down!

FIRST VERSE

The song starts in an introspective place with:

Rummaging inside my head When I see you, my neurons wake up.

This introduces us to a place where the narrator is very much in their own head, but he has an immediate, instinctive/not thought out response to the object of the song.

This is followed by:

Like breathing, I want I want, I want, I want What you got

This particular set of lines is really interesting to me because breathing is a need, a very fundamental one, not a want or desire. It frames the entire song that this desire is being compared to breathing. It's sudden, necessary, instinctive. It also isn't normally something that you think about, breathing happens in the background, until you struggle with it and it's all you can think about. As a set up to the ideas of obsession, and potentially unhealthy love, further in the song, the feeling of this love as a need, of this ability to know the self and love in the way that comes naturally like breathing, is an understandable impetus to getting to that obsessive place.

A fantasy called love wakes me up Nobody knows, broken my heart. I used to be so bland But it completes me in a flash.

Calling love a "fantasy" makes a lot of sense in the context of queer love that is just being realized and that can't really societally be spoken. This is something that is heartbreaking to realize when it feels that no one can know you, can understand you, can let you just be you as a person with this sort of feelings of love.

But at the same time, it brings this idea that this love completes the narrator. Before knowing and understanding this about himself, he was "bland" and perhaps just going through the expected motions.

Let's get into it deeper, Even if it gradually ruins me.

This is where I start bringing in my question of "how can you have a fully happy/healthy relationship in these circumstances?" There is such an intense desire to have that connection, to get into a deeper, more fulfilling relationship, even if it ruins the narrator. There is no good option here. Will that relationship ruin the narrator from inside or outside the relationship? Who knows! But this relationship is on some level dangerous to the narrator. There's the danger from society: ruined career, ruined relationships with family and community. And there's the personal danger of an obsessive relationship, one that ends up hurting everyone involved. This is something that is a bigger danger in a relationship with the fearful rush of secrecy.

PRECHORUS 1

The prechorus has small changes each time, and this is my breaking up of the verses, but it feels like it goes here to me.

I can't control, I lose control.

I feel like one of the big things in the process of coming to terms with one's own queerness is losing the need to control and instead moving to accepting and understanding oneself. Feelings get away from you, and if you are trying to control them instead of work with yourself within them, they become this thing that can run away with you and your ability to make good decisions. I feel like that is sort of a part of what this song is about!

Adrenaline circulating in my blood vessels Blood that's gotten hotter.

I think that this framing is interesting because adrenaline can come with excitement, but it is also very much tied with fear, and there's an undercurrent of fear that sort of runs through the sound and the lyrics of this song. The fear of losing control, the fear of not knowing how this is going to go, the fear of wanting so so much that it consumes you. But that fear is also exciting!

Touching, just our reaction Feel it ecstatic emotion I want a stimulating moment. More intense, Endless thirst.

Ecstatic is a very strong word here, this is such an intense feeling, and how much better could it be? How much more could it be. There's definitely a feeling tied in here of finally having experienced something that really reaches the narrator, that makes him deeply feel this emotion, it's not just a physical response to this touch, it's hugely an emotional one. It brings us to "endless thirst" which again, like breathing earlier in the song, "thirst" is a need, not a want. It's also of course used idiomatically. The intensity of these feelings, of encountering this sort of love for the first time, is building into this all consuming need, instead of just a want.

CHORUS

This is what brings us to the titular idea of dopamine, and definitely the framing that this has fully gotten into unhealthy territory, though I'll circle back to that at the end.

You're my dopamine, dopamine Spreading and spreading, throughout my entire body Addicted (Addicted) Addicted to your love Addicted (Addicted) Addicted So beautiful.

This framing of love as an addiction, as something all consuming, and also the focus on dopamine (in itself neutral, but with the idea of chasing "dopamine highs" that you have to do more and more to achieve, which they've discussed some behind the scenes) brings us this idea of the love that is being experienced as overwhelming. It feels good, but it's taking the narrator away from everything else. It's too much for him. It's really interesting to end that chain of "Addicted" with "So beautiful," because it does sort of imply that it's not necessarily fully a bad thing either.

You're my dopamine, dopamine Cutting off and cutting off my rationality Addicted (Addicted) Addicted to your love Addicted (Addicted) Addicted Losing everything.

This half of the chorus does frame the potential problem, the reason this is an addiction, something that is concerning to the narrator: "cutting off my rationality" and "losing everything."

The feelings that the narrator is experiencing are overwhelming to the point that he can't think. He can't make good or clear decisions, he's just chasing the feeling that this sort of love is giving him. He's not sure if he's making good long term decisions because he is so overwhelmed. And that potentially has him making huge decisions that could change his life, that could have him lose a lot in his society, without actually giving it proper thought.

And that is scary! That brings us back to that adrenaline from earlier. And here, the message sort of feels like, the narrator needs to think! He might not even be making the wrong decision, but it's not being made in a way that will help him long term.

SECOND VERSE

This verse really digs into the way that the narrator feels (at least initially) in this relationship/encounter, this dynamic that is making him realize his queer feelings.

I can feel my heartbeat Like walking on a cloud Everything from the tip of my feet feels so light It feels like a dream.

This sort of feeling in a relationship feels incredible, it doesn't feel real! The narrator is almost relieved in how he is feeling light! But still, it doesn't feel real. In the moment of the connection, the relationship overshadows all those fears that we were just talking about.

Perfect visual stimuli I can't keep my two eyes away, I can't concentrate on anything else Feeling dizzy all day If I get to know you deeper I know I won't be able to get away.

Very quickly, we get back to those overwhelming feelings though! This dream is incredible, but it's also frightening, it's something that sucks the narrator in and he can't get out of. He can't step back from this realization, and it's making have hesitations. But even so, he can't back away from this realization.

PRECHORUS 2

This is mostly the same as the first prechorus, but there is an important change in the discussion of adrenaline that shows the progression of what is going on in the story of the song.

Can't stop the adrenaline Engraving it in my cells.

At this point, there's no stepping back. The narrator has learned about himself, about what he wants, about what it feels like. He can't back away, the knowledge is filling his understanding of himself. And he just wants it more and more, to the point of it feeling like a need.

CHORUS 2

We at this point can see a little more about what the narrator means by the love that he is feeling cutting off his rationality, but the bridge/third verse is what all of this is really leading into.

BRIDGE / THIRD VERSE

There is obviously a shift in the music here, also a shift in the tone. This is where we can really see that the relationship has run away with the narrator, what he's been saying about losing control, and losing rationality. This is where the utter overwhelming nature of it, and what is frightening the narrator becomes clear. This is really the pivotal point of the song.

I want you I stay up-up-up-up-up-up-up all night Getting thrilled Feel like Can't live without you, You're my only one, hana [one]

We can see how this is consuming the narrator. I think that the "Can't live without you" like is the one that really got to me. It's this idea that there is no other person who could make the narrator feel like this, and he feels like he needs to be able to feel like this now, now that he knows that it's an option. There's all this fear, all this need and want, and right now, it's all focused on this one person, this first person that the narrator has been able to feel like this with.

And that's a relatable, understandable queer feeling. Up to this point, the narrator has been repressing that sort of emotion and want, not daring to even really think about it, let alone experience it, and now he knows what it's like. But it was so hard to get here the first time! How could there be someone else that he could feel this way with?

What makes me laugh is only one Everything's interesting if it's you Especially, even more so, Just like this, more It's OK for my uncontrollable heart to ruin me

This set of lyrics is so overwhelmed, but it's interesting to me that the narrator is saying that "It's OK" that he's accepted the potential for ruin. I think that there's an element of in all this overwhelm, which is probably too much and not healthy in the long run, at least, finally, this feels right in a way that nothing like this has before.

PRECHORUS 3

We've lost the lines about control, and the lines in general have just changed a little bit, but we come back to our chorus lead in, if abbreviated. We have an interesting changed line:

Touching, new reaction Feel it intense emotion I want a stimulating emotion More intense So crazy oh.

It's interesting to me that at the end, we move to it being a new reaction. The narrator is realizing more and more about his feelings, and maybe starting to see a little further, but this is still something new and growing and evolving for him. It's what keeps him absorbed in all this. It's just "intense" here, not ecstatic anymore. There is no more adrenaline mentioned here, but that sort of build up of fear/adrenaline is remembered here.

CHORUS 3

With the final chorus, we are left on the line to finish the song:

I'm losing myself

I'd say that in a way to lead into the rest of the album, we're going to think about figuring out who the narrator is after this realization and intense, overwhelming set of feelings. The narrator has learned something about himself. He knows now that he has this attraction, that it's intense and feels incredible, but it also scares him, and it leaves him uncertain of who he even is now, of his relationship to his past self and society.

CONNECTIONS AND CONCLUSION

I think that this song is a really interesting counterpoint and echo of "libidO" because it's about instinct and unrestrained feeling, and how frightening and overwhelming they can be. When we look at this song in the body of OnlyOneOf's work and in the context of the rest of the album, and it's eventual conclusion in "gravity" we know that OnlyOneOf is leading to the message of "it's OK" and "you're allowed to feel the way you feel." Even so, these are some really understandable, big feelings for our "lovers who have not been blessed." It's good and scary at the same time!

I also think that this really ties into new relationship energy and the realization that you have to find a place of balance, to negotiate and stabilize the relationship after that initial burst of everything being new and exciting. It can't build forever, it's unsustainable and unhealthy. This song is very open ended, where will this go? It's all so new to the narrator!

I do think that it's also in conversation with many of OnlyOneOf's songs about guilt around attraction, and I like that this song isn't guilty textually, even if it is afraid! That's a feeling of progress in the overarching narrative voice of OnlyOneOf's albums.

#OnlyOneOf #dOpamine MV #dOpamine lyrics #lyrical analysis #hey look it's the first essay #yes I have a lot more to say #this is just the start #Youtube

[entropy-sea-system]

OK OK impromptu rant but I need to get this out there as I still feel somewhat connected to the aro community-

I have been watching the tags, I've been talking the people in my local a-spec community and I think it amazes me just how incredible the relationships put forth by aro and aces are, while the communities just don't reflect any of it.

I've stopped identifying with the aroallo label because there was no sense of community associated with it. The a-spec spaces are made for aces only and the ace stuff in them is abhorrent. I am tired of people passing it off as repulsion, while still seeing people saying "hookers" are disgusting in a-spec tags. I'm tired of people saying PDA is bad. I'm tired of people acting like aros and aces can only be clueless cinnamon rolls. I'm tired of people being so so so stuck in their own perspective of the world they act like people in romantic relationships can't be happy. So on and so forth.

The concepts we have are passionating. They're the coolest ones I've been exposed to in queer communities. However, nobody thinks about them. Nobody speak about them. All we have is endless messages about how the world is so so confusing or hatred directed at sex and romance. I get that but I wish we went even a tiny bit past that really. It's a community filled with adults that feels so immature and I honestly think there is some sort of self infantilization going on. I don't like that I don't have symbols that aren't associated with uwu smol bean dragon lover stuff. It makes me sick and is why I don't identify with it anymore but it's genuinely sad to see because technically that's still the people who will relate to me the most.

It feels like people are always desperate to understand how the norm works and how they can best align with it instead of fully experiencing their identity. And that's an understandable thing to do but the community is just that with sex and romance negativity sprinkled on top of it.

I wish they were angrier. I wish they were more introspective. I wish they thought about breaking the norms more instead of headcannoning every female character without a love interest as aroace and talking about how gross sex is. I wish I felt like I can connect with the people who are supposed to be at least partly like me.

Anyway you're cool and I hope you're doing well! Sorry to drop all of this onto you but yeah I trust you with my ranty feels about the community.

We didn't really expect this ask but thank you for sending it!!

There are a lot of issues with the aspec community, especially online, (we have no experience with irl ones yet). And what you described here explains the issues with it quite well.

I feel like most of the aspec community ends up catering to mainly aces, and to a lesser extent aros, and slightly to apls, while other atertiary is hardly discussed (and agender ppl often just lump w gender stuff instead even though its aspec). I think the community is also rather divided, personally.

We're in some discord servers w mostly other apls and aros/run by other apl aros (often also romo aro) and they tend to overall be normal about aspec identities without being negative about attractions or actions or gatekeeping aspec labels. Currently we logged off discord a bit but we have in the past been in aro spaces that had many of the issues you mention , and still come across people being that way on tumblr.

I think there is a problem where some aros think that calling romance inherently toxic is somehow "activism" and deny that romance negativity exists, then claim that they "don't have to consider every culture ever" when people state that some cultures are romance negative and do harm people for engaging in romance.

They seem to think its "punching up" and some alloaros in particular try to justify it by acting like the united states is the only country that matters and citing sex negativity as a reason for romance negativity "not existing". When aces do this about sex its harmful, but thats not supposed to be a reason to deny that being romance negative is toxic and harmful to others even if their country doesn't persecute people for engaging in romance.

I also personally see a some aros hesitant to id with ace or acespec terms that technically fit them because of how bad the ace community has been about sex and anyone who isn't ace, as well as aces and aros generally forgetting about atertiary ppl. Some of them prefer terms like lightspec or such or allospec partly because of that.

It's understandable that some people feel a disconnect from labels like aro and ace as a result of how the communities tend to be tbh. I've had moments when I didn't want to id as aro because of this, and I consider myself both aro and alloro due to my arospec orientation.

Also being tertiary repulsed and being repulsed by sex repulsion (it just happens to repulse me a lot to read about even if not stated in a sex negative way), makes it a bit hard to be around other aspecs. I feel really disgusted and triggered when other aros talk about squishes and qprs and friendships, even if I think they should be able to talk about that. Which makes it hard to be around some other aros.

I also get what you mean about people trying to align with the existing norm. I'm seeing a rise in people maligning labels they don't understand and this attitude of "the only kind of weird thats fine is the kind of weird I am", which the aspec community has certainly not been immune to either.

I feel like for some reason most aspecs I see online, especially aros, are minors? Maybe because the aromantic label only really caught on after 2005 iirc so older people less likely to have heard of it? Im not a huge fan of how aspec tends to be infantilised either. I find issues with how some of the aro symbols are very derivative of ace symbols because we are not some extension of ace we're our own community. I can also see how ppl may find it too infantilising to have symbols like frogs and griffons etc.

Also yeah what is with people doing that about characters who are women or girls and express that they don't want to get married??? Or even just don't have a love interest. I understand if aroaces want more headcanoned rep or non-aspecs I guess idk want to fill some headcanon diversity quota without actually supporting aspecs but.

Not wanting marriage or not having a love interest is not inherently equal to not wanting romance and/or sex. I feel especially that people like to assume not wanting to have children means not wanting sex (which I find pretty reductive in that its acting like thats the only reason ppl have sex, especially as a sex favorable person who doesn't want kids). And all aspecs deserve more canon rep to begin with. I think I have a gripe with ppls aspec headcanons almost always being alloace or aroace. It's like they forget other aspecs like apls, alloaros, neu aros, non sam aros, atertiary, etc. even exist!

Additionally I think its partly because romance is emphasized more for female characters that even fans decide to make their interpretations about romance/a lack there of as if its the character's only personality trait. In my opinion its just as obsessive about romance if someone thinks all there is to a character is not engaging in it. I also see people act like they're solely worried a woman/girl character is going to fall for a man/boy character they hc as aro but not often the opposite like. Just say you see romance as gendered/feminine in some way and go I guess lol.

I also feel like mainly allistic non-aspecs do this but when ppl hc an autistic character as ace or aroace it feels infantilising if theres literally no other rationale behind their headcanon. I feel desexualised at times as an autistic and thats mostly bc ppl pick up on some kind of nd thing and they assumed I'm too "innocent" to like romance or sex, or because they view us as "unable to consent"(which can be true of some people if their neurodivergence affects their ability to consent to things even as an adult, but isn't universally true.) . I think some of this perception is also rooted in eugenics (due to people equating sex with having kids and viewing disability and/or neurodivergence as a tragedy and thinking its 'bad' for disabled and/or nd ppl to have kids).

So I don't really appreciate implications that someone is ace just by virtue of being autistic. I think its also unfair to autistic aros and aces because our neurodivergence can influence our orientation, but being autistic does not mean that makes someone inherently ace and/or aro.

My physical disability is relatively mild and less talked about (chronic pain and fatigue), and I don't reveal it to most ppl(ppl who dont live with me won't know I get exhausted from non-taxing to abled ppl activities, and chronic pain is not visible at all and we can't get mobility aids due to not being independent yet) so Im not fully aware how people view my apl and aro identities in that regard.

And there is definitely an issue with aspecs trying to enforce NEW norms. They cry about how people are forced into performing romance and sex to fit in but then turn around and tell people they need to love or have friends or family or pets in order to be a good person. It's also very harmful to aspecs bc some of us are loveless or atertiary etc. in ways that aros and aces apparently hate lol. A lot of aros in particular are very platonormative.

The aro community is also rather hostile to romo aros. There are still people who exclude romo aros from the aro label or act like we have to bend over backwards and acknowledge that we are "amatonormative oppressors" for liking romance or feeling some connection to it.

I think also the meme about putting a box away on a tall shelf away from a child is relevant here. The word amatonormative is constantly misused by a lot of aros. I've seen aros call alloromantic apls "amatonormative" and act like "amatonormative" means 'person who engages in romance'.

Its not a term abt engaging in romance or liking it. It's also not an excuse to pressure people to have or like friends either. I think aros should have actual discussions about amatonormativity that aren't just US-centric and about romance(wow do aros love to ignore that monogamy, non-queer, cis, etc. are social categories deemed more valuable under amatonormative societal norms), instead of using it to describe anyone they deem as interested in romance .

On that note, a lot of them use some examples of toxic relationships as reasons to call romance toxic and almost advocate for romance to never exist(which is especially disgusting to see for me, as in my country a lot romance negative conservative rhetoric is literally worded the same way). These people almost never acknowledge that other relationships like friendship can be toxic too.

I think some of these people believe in 'morality of repugnance' in that they think if its something they personally find repulsive in some way, that means its inherently immoral, which is not conducive to having unbiased views of the world, or critical thinking. I think a lot of ppl my age and younger are especially trying to do this because Ive lost count of how many I've seen be like "ewww thats gross/weird and so its wrong/immoral", and literally spouting conservative rhetoric while thinking they're politically liberal/leftists, perhaps with different wording but yeah. (I think that one tumblr post abt ppl in that age range being 'conservative on accident', especially in the united states- though that is concerning given the way ppl from other countries tend to absorb american opinions and such too much, describes this phenomenon)

I think some aros are also still so caught up in how much of a tragedy they think their aromanticism is, and I feel bad for them but thats not all there is to being aro and its a bit weird when ppl act like it is.

I think one of the best things about being aspec for me is feeling more like I can engage in and not engage in relationships (Im only favorable to sexual partnerships w no label other than 'sexual partner', and romance only w two partners as of now, and completely averse to all tertiary/nonrose. before I fully realised my aspec identities i pressured myself to have friends and felt like I'd be obligated to be favorable to nonsexual romance if someone wanted that with me, to 'be an ally to aces', even though it repulsed me. I also felt obligated to want qprs especially after realising Im aro. Realising Im atertiary helped me stop forcing myself to want nonrose relationships.)

Anyways that was a lot of rambling but probably most of my opinions on the aro and some extent aspec community.

#aspec #aro #also lol if any aspecs see this and disagree w me just block me I dont need the drama #aromantic #actually aromantic #platonormativity #aplatonic #actually aplatonic #alloaro #aroallo #asexual #ace #arospec #queer #aspec community #aro community #atertiary #actually atertiary #nonfriending apl #asks #entropy answers #sonia-wah-wah #apl