#About how actually it's more queer if there isn't reciprocation

[lesbian-kyoru]

something i love so dearly about yuzumako is how the lesbian coding of their relationship is so healing, rather than self-destructive?? by that i mean, so much queer coding is filtered through the lens of, here is this character whose queer identity is so fraught that it often leads them to lashing out and misery, & you always think how much happier they'd be if they could make peace with themselves..... but with yuzuki and makoto, the safety and peace they feel around each other always serves as the anecdote to their struggles, ESPECIALLY with boys.

in ch 20 yuzuki is disappointed with boys endlessly complimenting her painting w/o looking at it—seeing her as a romantic conquest rather than caring abt her as a person. the same chapter, it's makoto who actually cares about her painting & yuzuki's artistry EXACTLY how she hoped. the loneliness & resentment yuzu experiences is directly tied to heteronormativity, with boys assuming that they can disrespect her boundaries since she's a pretty girl to be "won over"—only for makoto's actions to parallel the same set up BUT she always demonstrates a truer understanding of yuzu as a person & friend throughout the process, and every time it brings yuzu such a sense of safety & comfort that she NEVERRRRR feels around boys pursuing her!!

there's such an intense lesbian coding to yuzu's avoidance of male romantic advances as opposed to how she leans into not only female friendship but specifically to makoto's own feelings for her shining through—and again, i love this because it's so positive & warm. rather than queerness being a source of anguish, makoto brings yuzu more joy than heteronormativity ever does.

next, after mako's date that she calls a battle, it's yuzu who says she looks cute & cheers her up! mako ALSO decides she doesn't care about being boyfriendless bc yuzu makes her so happy which is sooooo baby lesbian like are you serious! the same as the scene with yuzu's artwork, makoto's date with a boy that only brought her discomfort & feelings of unworthiness is followed by joy & affirmation found in yuzu's company—again, queerness & female connection shown as the anecdote to comphet/mako forcing herself to present hyperfeminine to fit what's expected.

also of note is makoto's recurring jealousy of yuzu's beauty—even though this is a negative emotion, i love how it's ultimately overpowered by her affection for yuzu. also the lesbian pipeline from i want to be her -> i want to kiss her is alive & well for makoto. so so obviously.

then finally, probably the crowning example of my point is yuzu's arc of being set up on a date w her new classmate against her will! as an aside these chapters depict such a common lesbian experience, where to avoid being socially isolated, we give into comphet & just go along with boys' feelings for us, thinking it's best if we don't cause issues & eventually we can get ourselves to reciprocate, giving them what they want at the expense of our repressed identities—yuzu is taught that her feelings don't matter; her beauty was made for male consumption.

now in high school, yuzu decides to speak up for herself & reject the role she's been placed into, again as a beautiful prize to be won—it's common for closeted lesbians to think they can convince themselves to like men back, but yuzu won't go along with this forced set up again. after she rejects this boy, her classmates make yuzu feel like SHE'S the one who has done something wrong & don't take her discomfort into account—it's hard for them to understand why, as a pretty girl, she isn't willing to just go along with men's attraction. ENTER MAKOTO!!!

sorry makoto is frankly so smooth for this. when yuzu leaves school early & makoto hears about her date, she brings yuzu pudding & tells her that she wants yuzu to be honest with her about when she's feeling down, even though their experiences are different. when reading both characters through a queer lens, it's very interesting to see how they've had different experiences w heteronormativity & gender up to now—yuzu is constantly fighting comphet demons whereas makoto feels less than for not being as feminine or gorgeous as yuzu.

but even though their experiences with lesbianism & girlhood have been different, makoto wants to hear how yuzu truly feels and comfort her. once again, after seeing the horrible pressures & pains yuzu has experienced through heteronormative dating & misogyny, it is her incredibly queer-coded friendship with makoto that makes her feel safe enough to cry openly in front of her!!!!! yuzu's peers, but particularly boys, show a disregard for her emotions, and then we see makoto fill that role of support & care so easily. like the dream boyfriend she is :)

there's a lot more i could say about yuzumako & their individual arcs, but to tie everything up, it is so common in lesbian (or queer coded) media for a character's lesbianism to be something that brings them nothing but pain and suffering, either in its repression or awareness—so i absolutely love how skip & loafer showcases (through yuzumako but also the ENTIRE cast) that embracing your queer identity can be so healing & positive. the story doesn't shy away from presenting a lot of the pain that closeted lesbians go through, like struggles with their gender & how socially ingrained heteronormativity is—but these struggles are always followed up by such intentional examples of yuzumako's connection (+ lesbian yearning) being so comfortable & happy to them! i love angst too but seeing them, time and time again, know exactly what the other needs & be able to be that for each other is soooooo rewarding!!!

happiness in queer media does not need to erase the struggles of our lives, but rather showing authentic queerness not as the problem but as the SOLUTION is unbelievably impactful. long live yuzumako

#skip and loafer #sukirofa #yuzumako #yuzuki murashige #makoto kurume #skip and loafer meta #my meta #from now on my excuse of why i can spend hours writing meta about gay people is because its just brainstorming for my senior capstone LMAO #zoe.txt

[turtlesallthewaytomgreg]

tomgreg internalized homophobia theory

I've been thinking a lot about how tomgreg seems stuck in a rut this season; greg getting excited about something and tom dismissing him like it's season one all over again.

I'm hoping this is intentional; that the writers are going for some kind of commentary on the difficulty of breaking the cycle of internalized/inter-generational homophobia.

in any case, there seems to be a recurring pattern in tom/greg's relationship of tom saying something homoerotic, then backtracking to protect his 'straightness.'

the most egregious example being, of course, when tom asks greg to kiss him, only to violently rip the meaning away in a bro-y, bravado-y display of 'no homo' (i.e., "I'm joking").

the same with 'i'd castrate you and mary you in a heartbeat.' there's sincerity in tom's face when he says it, but when greg doesn't say anything back? he rips the meaning away again, re-asserting his 'cis-hetness' by asking greg to "wrestle him to the ground."

looking back, greg seems pretty passive about tom's advances in s1 - 3. or more curious, than anything else (e.g., "are you trying to seduce me, tom?").

this season, i think it's the first time we're seeing greg actually reciprocate or even initiate that energy -- what if it's not the newfound 'confidence' making tom uncomfortable, but the homo-eroticism?

greg sneaking up on him at parties, teasing him about their sexual escapades, supporting him emotionally, getting jealous of his other assistants, making dick jokes, etc.

it seems like tom's dismissal of these advances isn't about greg at all, but a knee-jerk reaction to queerness itself; a familiar habit of 'shutting that shit down' to maintain the façade of straightness.

and the more overtly 'queer' greg acts, the more triggered and dismissive tom becomes.

the mention of greg's gay dad in 04x01 sets up s4 even more to explore this theme; perhaps greg has/is struggling with his own flavor over internalized homophobia, too.

i don't want to grasp at straws here, justifying what's ultimately an unsatisfying dynamic with tomgreg this season by claiming there's some deeper meaning, but i'm trying to be as gracious with the writers as possible.

it's just so hard for me to imagine them setting up an overt parallel to 'nero and sporus' (gay?) for them to go back to 'yep tom and greg super straight yep yep yep' like they forgot or something.

#tomgreg #tom and greg #nero and sporus

[sapphic-agent]

Hopefully, this ask won’t get you in trouble. If you feel it does, then feel free to disregard this. Or if you don’t feel comfortable or confident talking about it, cause it does involve talking about ships.

But it somewhat feels like Horikoshi for the later chapters seems to be catering for same sex pairings, like Midoriya always being around Bakugou, or Ochako’s most significant moments now being around Toga. At least to me.

And the fact he seems to be focusing on same sex pairings certainly isn’t the problem.

The problem is the fact is the pairings he’s focusing on are f****** shit!

BakuDeku is an angry asshole bossing around and being a d*****bag to a boy that has been conditioned to think so highly of his abuser. This is a hop, skip and a jump away from Stockholm Syndrome.

Togachako, imo, is slightly worse than BakuDeku (but not by much) simply because it’s a very one sided relationship where one partner always has to cater to the problems of the other with no sign of returned love or reciprocated love. I wouldn’t trust Toga to know when she’s had enough of my blood. Why should I believe she would know where to stop drinking Ochako’s blood? And despite the images throughout their fight, like Toga GROPING Ochako, Horikoshi, for some disturbing reason, tries SO hard to paint this as a CUTE couple. (Hell, the dude could be showing Toga literally EATING Ochako and somehow paint it as an endearing thing…)

Why is Horikoshi banking on these toxic forms of love for the LGBTQ when he’s had more HEALTHIER couples?!?

TodoDeku? Tsuchako? IidaDeku? Minachako?

Hell, there are other pairings that were literally already there!

MomoJirou!

Mirio and Amajiki!

It’s just…it’s baffling why BakuDeku and Togachako are paraded as these fantastic M/M and W/W ships when they are anything BUT.

I have a sapphic couple in their wedding dresses as my pfp and my user is sapphic-agent... I'd honestly be impressed if someone could accuse me of homophobia😆Feel free to submit any LGBTQIA asks :)

In the case of TogaChako, I just think Toga herself is queer-bait. Among BakuDeku and other queer ships becoming popular, good old Hori probably thought to himself, "What's the best way to capitalize on this?" without actually putting any thought or care into it (like with Bakugou's redemption once he started to become popular). So he made Toga canonically bisexual (I'm like 90% sure she wasn't originally intended to be bi as she was way more infatuated with Izuku than Uraraka initially). And she's bad rep to boot. Horikoshi is making his only canonically queer character a predator... that's not a good look.

I even like Toga. Or, I liked how much potential she had at the beginning of the series. She was original and I liked her quirk. He could have given her a lot of depth, but nah let's just make her creepy and a predator mfers will eat it right up... And he was right unfortunately.

What makes it worse is that Uraraka has to be at the center of Toga's advances (again, WHY THE GROPING PANEL). Idk if it's because she's the main girl or what, but she deserved better than this.

(Tbh, I know she's Izuku's LI, but her and Tsu are way cuter and a lot healthier than her and Toga)

BakuDeku I feel like is part of that queer-baiting. Look, the fact is that it will never be canon. We know it, the shippers know it (even if they feign delusion), and Horikoshi knows it. But that doesn't mean Hori isn't milking it for all its worth. Do you see how the shippers go nuts when Izuku and Bakugou are in the same panel together? The entire MHA feed will be filled with it here on Tumblr for weeks. They eat that shit up and Horikoshi knows that. That's part of the reason why he forced reconciliation between them, so that he'd have more content for them to froth at the mouth over.

#mha critical #bnha critical #anti bakudeku #anti togachako #queer baiting #anti bakugou katsuki #toga critical

[lordstormageddidnt]

@cha0ticlesbian had this question on my last post:

Hi! Genuine question, I’m new to supernatural (I’m on season 4) and I can definitely see what people mean about dean and cas and obviously I know about the confession scene but I’m confused if it’s true that deans feeling are “up to interruption” or if he just doesn’t like him back? Also I’ve seen some people saying he’s like homophobic? Ive just really confused and dean is my favorite so I wanna know lol

So let's talk about that. Are Dean's feelings up to interpretation?

Simply put, yes.

Basically, in s15e18 "Despair", when Cas is giving his whole "I love you" speech, Dean doesn't say very much. At random intervals, he gives NPC-type comments* like "Why does this sound like a goodbye?" and "Don't do this, Cas". He does not ever say "I love you too" (unless you're watching the Spanish dubbed version, where he says exactly that).

On the surface, I know my friends (who only get their spn info from me holding them hostage in my discord server), took issue with the line "don't do this". They kind of read it as Dean not respecting Cas in Cas's final moments-- in their eyes, Dean didnt want Cas to confess because he's uncomfortable with Cas's feelings. But the speech isn't about Dean-- it's about Cas giving himself permission to be happy.

That line of thinking plus the past allegations of Jensen Ackles being homophobic is usually where people get the idea that Dean is homophobic. From what I can see, the "Dean is homophobic" is mostly part of the meme of the scene in general, and not something most people actually believe, but some people do genuinely believe he is homophobic. This belief is also supported by Dean's hypermasculine personality in general and the comments he makes; we never once see him outwardly homophobic to any of the openly queer SPN characters, but especially in earlier seasons, he makes jokes (like Sam being a girl because he has long hair) that you would expect someone homophobic to say.

I do think homophobic Dean a valid interpretation, but the logic kind of ignores some of the context of the scene.

For one, there's a moment after the confession where Dean gets a call from "Cas" (it's Lucifer) telling him that Cas is outside the Bunker and needs to be let out. Dean breaks into a sprint to get to the door, and I think this action speaks louder than words (or, lack thereof). Whether or not Dean reciprocates, he cares about Cas as a friend and he wants Cas to be alive again.

For two, when it comes to "don't do this", the more common interpretation is that Dean doesn't want Cas to sacrifice himself. Again, Cas starts the speech by explaning that he will die during his happiest moment, and then transitions into saying that confessing his love to Dean is his happiest moment. Dean doesn't want Castiel to defeat Billie by sacrificing himself.

As a destiel shipper, my interpretation of this scene is a slight variation of the previous one. In my general view of SPN, Dean has known he's in love with Cas since at least s11, and he's known Cas has loved him back for a while, but he's just never felt like it was the right time to start a relationship (constant apocalypses and everything) and he's worried that he'll screw it up. In my head, when he says "don't do this", it means more like "don't do this [love confession like this]". Like, Dean doesn't want their first ILYs* to be marred by the fact that Cas is sacrificing himself.

So, last question-- how do people read the scene as Dean liking Cas back when he never verbally reciprocates?

Some people see Dean's silence as him either not liking Cas back or not realizing he likes Cas back yet, but there's another option here. The reason Cas is dying is because he believes this is his happiest moment. His speech outright states that he believes Dean does not love him back ("the one thing I want is the thing I cannot have"). It's totally possible that Dean reciprocates, but in his mind, saying that really would trigger Cas's happiest moment. There are some great fix-it fics built on the premise of "Dean insults the sht outta Cas to spoil Cas's happiest moment and stop him from being taken by the Empty".

* okay last point. I wasn't sure where to insert this but I think it's insanely interesting. The scene in s15e18 is not actually the first time Cas tells Dean he loves him. In s12, there is an episode where Cas believes he is dying, and he says the line "I love you. I love all of you" to the small crowd of Dean, Sam, and Mary. NPC behavior from Dean ensues as he insists Cas isn't going to die without ever acknowledging the "I love you". The common interpretation is that the first ILY is for Dean, and the second ILY is Cas speaking to the Winchesters as a whole. Do with that as you will lol

Anyway, that's all I got :D thank you for the opportunity to rant about supernatural and feel free to ask me if you have any other questions!

#alfie #tayclown #destiel #supernatural #dean winchester #castiel's deal with the empty #red string era

[afniel]

Realizing that I went and wrote a bunch of intentionally aro relationships and my partner was like, "Idk, it seemed like normal relationships to me," and I was like, "I mean yeah it's not that different from ours, I guess, I was kind of going for 45° off from 'normal' romance," and they're like, "Okay, but ours is also pretty much like that," and I'm like, "Yeah, true," and now I'm like, damn hold up, are we both some kinda arospec and THIS is how we figure it out? Because I wrote a long-ass fic about intentionally queer-coded (among other things) robots? Life is weird, man.

Like I've been prone to extreme long-term crushes on a very few (mostly unattainable) people over the years, but I wouldn't have known what to do with them even if they worked out, and cough my ex was not even one of them. I just kind of assumed I was failing to feel a thing I was totally supposed to feel, there, and quite a lot of that relationship emotionally was me going, "Okay, I care like This, but I think I'm supposed to care like That? I'm pretty sure he cares That way. I'm not sure I do, but I mean, there's really only one way*, so maybe I'm just misreading this and actually I do care like That, I'm just bad at it."

*This was me being very incorrect, it turns out. There's all kinds of ways to love someone. It's a very inadequate and nonspecific word.

When I confessed my feelings (which I'd been sitting on for a year) to my partner, their reaction wasn't to be particularly romantic about it. In fact they told me they'd help me move to California if I wanted to. And after I got over my initial confusion of being kissed on the forehead (which is also not super romantic as a gesture and I couldn't decide how to even read that so I kinda skipped over even trying for a while), I was thinking, Awesome, that is a yes. They have promised to assist me with difficult stuff, and said nothing at all about emotions, because that's not a big deal anyway. The important thing is that I can rely on them and vice versa. Cool. We are basically together forever now. Which ended up being true. I just never moved out and now it's like 13 years later, go figure. But that's not what I think actually passes for reciprocating feelings for most people? Worked great for me though.

Anyway I feel like I have accidentally learned something about myself, lol. I guess romance is okay I guess, like it's not repulsive, but seriously, it's WAY more satisfying to me to guess someone else's Quiplash answer because you know they know you would think it's fucking funny, and you do, and because you think it's funny and you're well aware they know your type of humor and you know theirs and that you wouldn't expect them to use "cum" as an answer because that's not usually how they roll, so of course that is the only answer they can possibly give, which is instantly evident to both of you with no conversation whatsoever on the topic. When you got just one brain cell and it's quantum entangled with their just one brain cell so you have a lot of null discussions where nobody has to say anything but it's fully understood anyway, that's The Dream, if you ask me. And like I don't really think that's romantic by the usual definition. You can have that with friends and family, too. But that is what it turns out I prioritize in relationships, which I'm starting to feel like isn't what the majority of people are here for?

TFW it's hard to tell because I've been assuming I'm totally alloromantic so everything I experience must be typical totally alloromantic stuff too, but I'm starting to think it isn't maybe? But how do I even tell, this is like being colorblind, lmao.

#tfw you based a completely ace/aro relationship system off what ends up just being your normal IRL relationship #my partner read Failure To Compile and just went 'so we're coprocessors right' and I said 'yeah basically' #it was apparently not at all subtle to them and why would it be lmao they basically just Know What I'm Thinking #we have a lot of conversations that are just...*several facial expressions and a glance or two* them: 'no.' me: 'OH COME ON' #and yeah that's The Experience. 'what if an entire subculture's relationships were all like that' well it'd be great that's what #and also evidently immediately recognizable to a bunch of arospec readers #making me have to also question some long held assumptions about myself #well that's cool though. I'm always down to understand me better. and hey what a funny way to do it too #what's the point of writing something and trying to get kinda deep with it if you aren't learning from it really #this just means I'm so successful I even got myself somehow #flawless victory #aromantic #arospec #also yes the Quiplash thing happened for real just last night #I said their answer before it was even revealed and they just assumed I had somehow loaded the stream faster than them #because obviously I know what they put right? #I laughed my ass off tho

[guriyuri]

School Zone/「スクールゾーン」

🌸9/10🌸 (HIATUS)

A quirky yuri comedy about the chaotic daily life of high school girls! Yokoe and Sugiura have been together forever, and they've mastered the art of making trouble when life's a bore. High school might be a drag, but these girls in love know just how to inject a little chaos and comedy into their sloppy school life.

(Seven Seas Entertainment)

*occasionally listed as ‘School Zone Girls’

I fuckin LOVED school zone, man. There isn't a single character in it that isn't eeping out of their minds at all times. It throws almost all normal shonen/male-targeted troupes off of their kilter and is incredibly refreshing to read. One of its best qualities is its ability to maintain its identity outside of being a queer story- providing commentary on a wide range of topics relevant to high school, youth, etc. I can't really describe the effect of finally being able to read girls just being fucking stupid- other than saying its like running your brain under cold tap water, if your brain was a lesbian yuri enthusiast with a perpetual craving for full-cream milk. As silly as it may be, I actually genuinely enjoy its approach to w/w and adolescent relationship. 2 out of the 3 arguable 'main' three couples have one partner that is gender nonconforming/visibly queer, a rarity for contemporary yuri as a lot of works- to no fault of their own- fall into pitfalls of exclusively drawing hyper-feminine women to try present itself more believably or because it has no other way of proving to you that the characters are girls. The negative of this being that ostracises an entire group of people within the real-life lesbian community and disregards the instrumental role of butch lesbians in queer history by refusing them representation in a genre for them. Despite how I phrase this, though, I'm not exactly trying to present School Zone as a Magnum Opus or the pinnacle of political-correctness and singlehandedly defeating lesbophobia worldwide (which it did); I just cannot stress how badly we need diverse gender representation in yuri.

The main two girls are both fucking hilarious and strangely adorable in their own way (aside from being every gay couple to ever™). Their dynamic mostly consists of Yokoe being a combination of stupid, evil, and helplessly down bad and Kei being a single thread away from pulling a glock on her. If that can’t convince you to give szg a shot you’re a lost cause + I’m unplugging your life support. Anyways, they’re only one of the 3(ish) main pairings in the manga; but that’s where we get to the difficult part to talk about. Touched on some-what briefly, but too often to be able to ignore (iirc they have a handful of dedicated chapters), is Tsubaki’s incestuous crush on her sister Hiiragi. It’s kind of unfortunate this is in here and it sucks for me to have to mention but In this specific case I do think it’s worth overlooking for *so* many reasons. At its’ core their relationship is mostly focused on teenage adolescence and navigating complex familial relationships whilst still trying to grow up and find yourself. In isolation both Tsubaki and Hiiragi are very well written characters; on par with the rest of the cast and really are both very likeable. It’s when their relationship with eachother gets played up for fanservice is when they start to shit on your salad. Still, though, the author pretty clearly has no intention of actually writing them ending up together/Hiiragi reciprocating. So it’s highly likely Tsubaki’s character arc will lead her to move on, especially considering how she’s developed thus far. Last Couple worth discussing seriously is Fuji and Kishiya-san. While I was reading I was under the impression that Fuji + rest were high-school aged and Kishiya was in her first year at uni, but the only source I can find that lists their age says that Kishiya is a first-year high school student; which must make everybody else be in secondary school. Either way though, the age gap between them remains roughly the same and doesn’t really change my hot take on these two. Out of the entire cast Fuji is definitely the truest depiction of the experience of growing up sapphic, unknowingly. She is also my favourite :-). It was also refreshing to read about a girl who hasn’t figured it all out and is just kind of weird and off putting instead of elegant and tragic like the atmosphere of traditional yuri + made me feel weirdly heard? Call me biased, or a victim of grooming ALL you want but looking up to someone maturer, more in control, someone who feels above it all is someone you tend to gravitate towards when you’ve felt helpless and inept at understanding yourself your entire life. Much like Tsubaki and Hiiragi, Kishiya-san has yet to show any indication of reciprocating or even knowing of Fuji’s feelings and is what I think a genuinely positive influence on her. I can also imagine Kishiya-san fighting on the mental FRONTLINES to stay as patient and kind to Fuji as she is, aswell as taking the time to talk to her and treating her like a friend. Everyone please take a moment to acknowledge her service in the troubled youth industry.

There’s also Yatsude and Kaname but they’re pretty interesting so I’ll let you develop your thoughts independently on those two. They also have ZERO buisness being the most beautiful fucking women alive. The things I’d let Kaname do to me are to be repented for.

#girls love #yuri #yuri manga #gl manga #shoujo ai #百合 #school zone #school zone girls #スクールゾーン

[skinzchoerim]

I keep wanting to rant about give me the lOve bitxx, because I can't be the only one who finds this song inherently contradictory, right? Everything is at odds with itself, including the actions and thoughts of the narrator. I can't put my finger on his motivations, on which lines are sincere and insincere, and it's giving me a headache.

I'm always conflicted whether I should approach their songs about women with a queer lense or not. It makes sense to dig deeper into angel and the instinct part 1 songs where religious guilt ties in nicely with the queer themes, but obviously they have plenty of songs about women that don't require a look into the subtext and can be taken as what they are on the surface, aka bi anthems. In the case of this song, I think it makes the most sense to approach it through the lense of what they can't say, and the amount of internal conflict here feels very queercoded to me. On the one hand, it seems like it's from the perspective of someone who cares about the person he's singing about and is aware he wouldn't be a good partner because of his emotional issues, so he warns her not to get too close. On the other hand, it feels like the narrator isn't sure he's attracted to women and he feels annoyed with this woman who keeps clinging to him, but he admits he doesn't actually want her to leave, likely because he wants to maintain a veneer of "normalcy".

The sound of the song itself is sweet and innocent, but the title is passive aggressive. He demands to be given love even though the majority of the song focuses on pushing her away, and calling her a bitch comes across as resentment. The lyric beginning the song and every chorus is "don't make me pull the trigger", which is a very manipulative threat - he puts the blame for wanting to hurt her on her. As @atozmoongazer kindly pointed out to me, the imagery in the chorus is that of a holdup - freeze, give me your treasure, don't make me pull the trigger. The treasure in this case would likely be the titular love, and taking into account the rest of the song, he's not very keen on reciprocating it or treating it gently.

Her covering his mouth when he's talking could be read in two ways (once again thank you @atozmoongazer for pointing out to me what I missed - it's a reference to Yoojung's mouth being covered in the teaser, therefore a pretty important line). One interpretation is more literal, that she interrupts him, makes him feel like his words don't matter, maybe she prefers to kiss him instead of having a conversation, and all of that on top of the fact that he doesn't like how clingy she is results in him feeling bad and resentful in this relationship. The other interpretation is that he feels silenced whenever he's around her, and he blames her for his own inability to express what's on his mind. She could just be the scapegoat for everything and everyone else that's making him feel this way.

Even the lyrics that mention constantly thinking about her face and feeling strange could be read in two ways. The obvious one is that you normally think a lot about the person you like, but I know from experience how confusing it can be when you constantly think about a person you know you're supposed to like, but aren't sure you do. I spent a lot of time in the past going back and forth between "If I actually liked this person, I would know it and be certain of it, and since I'm constantly questioning whether my feelings are real or not, that means I clearly don't like them" and "I'm constantly thinking about them and wondering whether I like them or not, therefore I must like them since I've got this weird obsession with them". When he talks about hiding his feelings, playing dumb and feeling numb because of it, on the surface it might refer to making sure his romantic feelings don't show, but to me it feels much more like a continuation of the lines about feeling broken when they're near each other and continuing to put up with it.

Basically, I think this internal conflict and confusion are an intentional feature of the song, similarly to skinz. The narrator wants to hide behind a veneer of a sweet-sounding boy group love song and make sure you don't understand him just as much as he doesn't understand himself, but lying to the listener about everything makes him feel too silenced. Since he can't hold back all the negative feelings he's bottling up, it's easy to look through the cracks and catch a glimpse of everything waiting to pour out of him, and end up feeling just as conflicted and confused as he does.

#i hope this makes sense #it's late and i know I'll probably have another revelation after posting it #but i wanna share this now #onlyoneof #onlyoneof theory #things I can't say lOve

[a-hazbin-reader]

Hi okay here. So this is sort of an au?? Where Mimzy is in love with Alastor like how they were originally written but Alastor doesn't reciprocate. This also may not be entirely historically accurate as this is basically a rough draft and I have yet to do all of the research I think is required.

Tw// Mimzy being homophobic. </3 Ik my girl would never actually but it's for the sake of the story.

So his name is Severin De la Court, he's a French dude who moved to Louisiana to escape some shit in his life that was happening back home. He met Alastor and Mimzy at the club Mimzy worked at and Alastor frequented, and became friends with them pretty quickly. He's demiromantic and asexual like I personally hc Alastor to be, and as time passed they started pining for each other and all that jazz. It's canonical that Alastor speaks some French but isn't fluent, so in this the reason he knows what he does is because he was trying to learn it for Severin to make him feel a little more at home. Eventually Mimzy found out about the little thing they had for each other and, the 1930s being the 1930s, she was like "ew gay people" and leaked the information about Severin being gay to the press so he was imprisoned, where he was killed after a few days for being a homo by the other inmates. </3 Alastor was heartbroken but Mimzy was over the moon. A couple of years later is when Mimzy spilled the beans to Alastor about it being her to rat out Severin after Alastor continuously rejected her advances, "I got rid of that queer and you still won't let me have you" type shit. Alastor, who had already killed several people, had no qualms killing Mimzy after learning this information! And that bit in his lore about him dying because a hunter shot him while he was hiding a body? Was Mimzy's body in this story. Alastor rose to power in hell yadda yadda and in episode three at the beginning of the Overlord meeting Carmilla is like "okay first off we've got a newcomer" and lookie here it's Severin! Alastor is baffled and afterwards they catch up and shit before Alastor goes "wait why are you in hell" and Severin just goes "oh yeah I ran away from France because I killed like a lot of people and they were starting to catch on to me lmao" and then they just went on like normal yk as they would. Queue more pining between the two when Severin decides to help Alastor and Charlie with the hotel.

I'll reveal myself in rbs to answer any questions you have or anything but for now I'm doing this on anon because I'm embarrassed to talk about my ocs publicly lmao. I also have little tidbits about their relationship I'd be more than happy to share if you'd like me to. :3

This one was so intense! I felt so bad for him until he was like "oh I'm a killer lol"

He got us with that plot twist

#ugh not my girl mimzy #🥺 why she do that #you said it was an au? #is there anything else #about it that's different?

[long-suffering-little-spoon]

Mild The Giggle spoilers + big rant about RTD's writing in the Doctor Who specials below!!

Over these few specials I've had mild beef with some of the writing about the "progressive" stuff just feeling a bit condescending?? [DISCLAIMER: THIS ISN'T A COMPLAINT ABOUT "SHOVING INCLUSIVITY DOWN OUR THROATS" OR SMTH, I'M JUST A QUEER DISABLED WHOVIAN WITH A FEW THOUGHTS ON STUFF THAT GAVE ME PAUSE. Also I talk about RTD's weird writing of POC in DW. I am white, don't take this as definitive or coming from a place of expertise on POC perspectives, it's just stuff I've observed as a fan of the show]

The Isaac Newton stuff was all perfectly fine but the trans and disabled stuff could've done with a bit more subtlety e.g. "doctor: wow my tardis is now wheelchair accessible :D shirley: wow it's about time your tardis was wheelchair accessible doctor it's 2023 now" instead "*shows tardis ramp* shirley: finally" Idk. And the scene where the doctor assumed the meeps pronouns and Rose corrects him just felt a bit weird and performative. I get DW airs on the BBC for the whole country but from what I've seen it's got a big queer and disabled fanbase and we don't need to be talked down to about our own experiences like this?? And I'm sure the non-queer non-disabled members of the public can still comprehend a bit of subtlety????

Also! RTD has historically not written his POC and especially black characters very well in Doctor Who and I am hoping and praying that should there be an episode that explores how the Doctor is now perceived differently because of his race it will be written by somebody with more tact and experience on the subject. And Yas as the only POC just being entirely forgotten from the lineup of new who reciprocated love interests mentioned was definitely a bit... weird yeah

I think it's clear that, as someone who has that perspective, RTD is better at writing gay characters/experiences than other minority groups that he isn't a part of (which makes sense) and like he's clearly trying but some of it jut feels a bit off. Like yes!! I am all here for this new era of doctor who that celebrates all different kinds of people but it would be good to hear from writers with those backgrounds going forward to avoid feeling talked down to with clunky lines or worse saying/implying outright problematic narratives

**IMPORTANT EDIT: Someone brought to my attention that the word "woke" is an appropriation of African American Vernacular English and it has been co-opted by conservatives as a negative thing and just by white people more broadly when neither should be the case. Uses of "woke"/"wokeness" in this post have been edited to say something else of the same meaning that isn't from AAVE. Apologies for my error and thank you to the anon who pointed this out. A lot of words that people conflate with being "Internet slang" are actually just appropriated AAVE and on my part at least I will prevent myself from using such appropriations in future on this blog and IRL. Hope that clears things up!!

#don't get me wrong i still liked the specials these are just a few of my qualms #praying that this is coherent in any way #it's 11:30pm rn i'll proof read it in the morning #doctor who #dr who #doctor who spoilers #doctor who 60th anniversary #the giggle #mild criticism?? but not really idk

[triflesandparsnips]

2. Stede will avoid touch to protect himself.

And we're back! in Part 2 of the "stede is weird about touch" pirate data science smorgasbord.

Figure 1. Two people very comfortable with physical interaction.

This one's hard to pin down, but: Stede is simultaneously afraid of people touching him, and he doesn't trust that people actually want him to touch them. This ends up showing up in Really Weird Ways (several of which can be attributed to trauma, fear of retribution regarding his queerness, or hooray, both.)

Stede will frequently pull himself away from potential touch (leaning away when Buttons gets close during the mutiny talk; clasping his hands away from Jim and Olu on the couch; pulling away and closing himself off from Mary; leaning back from Ed when Ed declines a nature walk; staying in his room and reading while Jack is on board).

Stede engages in a lot of plausibly deniable touch. These include things that could be seen as accidental, such that no one can think he's "asking" for the touch, and therefore he can't have that request rejected (letting his arms or legs brush against Ed's, letting his lace sleeve drape on Ed), as well as openings Stede will leave for other people to touch him (putting his elbow on the table beside Mary when giving her his gift, leaning on the newel post directly in front of Ed when talking to Calico Jack, shifting out of a closed position into an open one when Ed sits next to him on the beach).

A related kind of plausibly deniable touch? The use of objects instead of his own body. He'll touch things rather than people -- he'll use things to touch people rather than touch them himself.

Even when people do choose to touch him, he rarely reciprocates (Ed's lighthouse hug, Ed's post-kiss handhold, Mary's hug).

Figure 2. Local hot pirate holds weirdo gentleman and then hugs closer to gets his hands on some of that bare rich-person bicep; weirdo gentleman happy but deeply uncertain how to respond to positive touch, wonders if raising bottle and holding onto rail appropriate, if better to spit or swallow (the booze)

The number of people Stede actually touches skin-to-skin (or hair-to-skin, whichever), deliberately, is shockingly few.

The first time he chooses to touch someone's skin/hair, outside of the elderly tribe member in episode 2, is episode 7 -- he lightly whacks at Lucius's arm, cleans Ed's beard, and then when kneeling next to Ed at the end he settles his bare arm against Ed's once and then a second time.

Why the sudden change in behavior? Possibly because he believes they actually might be okay with him touching them, thanks to the events of episode 6: Lucius both taps Stede's arm and pats his chest following the duel, and Ed chooses to lean his forehead against Stede's bare hand.

The tribal member in episode 2 could, admittedly, be considered an enormous outlier: we see Stede's head on the elderly man's bare thigh, he touches the man's hand twice (though once is a social handshake), and claps him on the back once. He's also very much in the tribal member's personal space as part of these interactions. It's significantly more direct, intentional physical interaction than Stede shows with anyone else, including Ed.

Figure 3. White guy uses man of color for emotional support and to make personal breakthroughs with the help of "native wisdom" or some shit, wtf.

I think a key thing here (and which I hope to get more evidence of in season 2) is that, presumably, Stede was invited to enter into the tribal member's space. As in, deliberately asked and perhaps even drawn down into it. With this active invitation, Stede can trust that his touch was allowed, and so he went with it, demonstrating that, frankly, Stede isn't really touch-averse -- he's touch-starved, but afraid to rectify that due to his traumatic history with touch.

(Could Stede be okay with touching the tribe member for a different reason? Yes, absolutely... and we'll get to it.)

All that being said, though, be wary of any kind of touch -- or lack thereof -- that appears in Stede's memories, flashbacks, or dreams as proof that he doesn't touch people or that people don't want to touch him. He is an unreliable narrator. He may be imagining a withdrawal of touch (or the opposite!) in order to justify his own feelings.

When Stede remembers his relationship with his family in episode 1, the first memory the audience sees is him physically separated from them at a dinner and excluded from their general conversation. Later, we see the same dinner, but he's seated beside his daughter and everyone's laughing together.

Even more fascinatingly, though: In episode 4, when he fever-dreams the memory of marrying Mary (as part of his "how did I get here, why did I run" montage), she goes to take his hand and he keeps it limp in her grasp. Later, in episode 9, when Stede is actively remembering the same moment from his wedding (and his guilt about hurting the family he cared for), his hand is actually holding Mary's -- his thumb is up and over the back of her hand, and his fingers are tight around hers.

Figure 4: Dead-fish hand as part of totally normal wedding interaction.

Figure 5: Active hand-holding that seems to contradict previous dead-fish memory, what is real, who knoooows.

What does this mean? Why does he do this? Does he have a "real" memory that he tends to interpret differently depending on what he's feeling, or does he genuinely have broken memories (similar to how he genuinely hallucinated the dead Nigel Badminton)?

The fact that this memory-shenanigan happens at all is, I think, a key part of Stede's entire Thing with Touch.

-----

ONWARDS:

-> Review the raw data and notes

-> Go to part 1: Stede wants to be touched, but is afraid of it.

-> Go to part 3: Stede has found/developed "safe" ways to physically interact with people.

-> Go to part 4: The top three people who touch Stede, or who Stede touches, are Ed, Mary, and Izzy.

#our flag means death #stede bonnet #meta #touch #multipart essay #pirate data science #omfdedits #had to make my own dang gifs for some of this

[todayisafridaynight]

A Little Late and the way you already picked up on it despite not really hardcore seeking out ninkyo (yakuza-genre) media says enough, but I wanted to second that it is absolutely true queer appeal is inextricable from ninkyo as a whole. That's why RGG is the way it is!

If Nakano and Motomiya--both incredibly prolific ninkyo actors, with Motomiya producing+writing for+leading the biggest series out there right now, Nihon Touitsu/Unification of Japan--can sit down to talk, describe ninkyo as a genre about men falling in love with men, the "ultimate BL," and carry on without missing a beat, I think that speaks for itself. And like, they're not wrong at all--even if it was a little tongue-in-cheek and even if the subtext is rarely intentional, many if not most ninkyo stories are fundamentally about love.

Why that matters is because ninkyo specifically portrays the idealized version of the yakuza--"ninkyo" translates to "chivalry." There's very little that could be considered ideal about being a yakuza nowadays; that much is explored in non-ninkyo yakuza media. Of course there are the universal ninkyo themes of being able to make something of yourself from nothing, of defending the defenseless, of fighting back against injustice from the wrong side of the law when the "right side" isn't serving you, but at the core of many of these stories, there's one thing in particular that makes it worth it to be a yakuza.

Ninkyo depicts a world of extremes--often unthinkable to an ordinary person--which the characters are willing to bear so long as they can keep the only people who truly recognize them in their lives, and so long as they can have it reciprocated. To trust others and to be trusted in return, as Mine says. For them to go to those lengths for a fundamental human desire resonates with queer people in a world that asks for so much resilience from them just for existing. I think this is also why the stated reason Mine fell in love with Daigo was simply because he saw him as a man.

It's not always as clear-cut what kind of love it is as with Mine, but I don't think it's done cynically like you see in actual queerbait. I'd say it comes from an earnest place, raw and without self-consciousness. I think the blurred lines and openness to interpretation are also a big part of the appeal. Not just in the obvious sense of being presented with these intense bonds that are open to interpretation, but I can imagine there's also comfort to be found in the depiction of love that's hard to define in exact terms and in recognizing it doesn't always need to be defined in and of itself.

To some degree, within the history of ninkyo, I think RGG and Nihon Touitsu genuinely revolutionized how openly these topics are discussed. Ninkyo has always primarily been a genre of film, and even with Nihon Touitsu being a direct-to-video series, if you're queer or a woman or both, it's common to feel like you don't belong in the ninkyo space. Going to theaters or renting tapes or DVDs without feeling judged--or apprehensive about the content's depiction of queerness and/or women--has often been trickier than it had to be.

It's specifically the accessibility and culture around video games and online streaming, as well as the relative privacy and ability to curate your circles, that has allowed for these series to reach fans like that--so much so there's even a term for women who got into ninkyo via interpreting it through a queer lens, ninkyo joshi. Nihon Touitsu is actually what popularized that phenomenon in recent years.

There's also something to be said about RGG and Nihon Touitsu as media and the people behind them being more welcoming towards queer and/or female fans than a lot of ninkyo is in general. You won't ever catch me saying RGG doesn't have a history of queerphobia and misogyny, but at the same time, I think demonstrating they could handle characters like that respectfully went a long way, in addition to RGGS having a pretty good track record as a workplace. Similar deal with Nihon Touitsu and Motomiya doing his best to gear the series more towards a general audience and his commentary on multiple occasions agreeing his and Yamaguchi's characters' relationship reads as a BL. Even if that's as far as it goes, it does mean something to be acknowledged.

Anyways uhhh do you think Mine was an OG ninkyo danshi... like A Ninkyo Joshi But A Guy... I feel like if you're living in Japan, especially in an area with a lot of actual yakuza activity like Minato as Mine does, you'd only really come away with the romanticized ideals about the bonds between men Mine has from ninkyo... personally I just think it'd be super funny if he was an OG ninkyo joshi who transitioned into a ninkyo danshi, like when gay trans guys have a "fujoshi phase"... the call was coming from inside the house etc etc...

thank you for the history lesson on the yakuza genre, its relationship with queerness and people being able to acknowledge those undertones, and jp society's relationship with the genre. its great that big names in the genre are making it more socially accessible to everyone and not making it feel limited to a certain group of people :)

bout mine being a fan of the genre before. Being A Part Of The Genre so to speak tho, i think its a fair assumption to say he was a fan. if he wasn't beforehand, then seein them blokes sacrifice themselves for daigo def made him one lmao

#snap chats #kinda hard to make stuff for a genre where a dude is Extremely Dutiful to another dude without it dipping into 🏳️‍🌈 territory lol #so yeah.. always great to see people Not be in denial bout it #anyway mine goin to blockbuster and rentin every yakuza film they got on deck BYE #japanese blockbuster...bitch thats. BEAM !!!!!!

[ask-spider-punk-13666]

Identity

Word Count: ~900 [CW: internalized homophobia, homophobic slurs (self identified)]

Summary: Tommy has something to tell Gwyn, but things don't always go to plan.

January, 1984 - Tommy's Bedroom

Tommy wipes his palms on his pant legs for the fourth time in as many minutes, gritting his teeth in frustration. Why is this so hard? Either she'll take it well, or she won't, but not knowing is worse, and he's never going to know anything if he just keeps sitting here without saying it.

"Gwyn, there's something I need to tell you," he says. He can't look at her, though, so he stares at his shoes instead. The sole is starting to come loose, but he can't afford a new pair.

"Of course, babe. You can tell me anything."

Tommy doesn't wince at the endearment, too used to Gwyn's casual affection, but it chafes at him, somewhere deep below the surface.

"I'm not who you think I am. I've been lying to you, to my Uncle, to everyone, and I'm tired. I can't keep hiding from you, Gwyn. You're my best friend," he says, hating how his voice is getting tight, or how he keeps babbling instead of getting to the fucking point.

"Tommy..." she says gently, mattress sinking when she sits down next to him. "It's okay. I already know."

...what?

Tommy’s blood runs cold. Had he been so obvious, even before he figured it out for himself? His thoughts are racing, wondering if she’d noticed how focused he’d been when they watched John Travota prance around a Ford De Luxe on movie night, or maybe she’d seen how his eyes had lingered a little too long when Harry Osborn climbed the rope in gym class. Have other people noticed? How long until he stopped knowing even a minute of peace? Until even the adults who tolerated him left him for the wolves? What about his uncle?

"What? What do you mean, 'you know?'"

"The lying, the missed practices, the bruises. You're Spider-Punk. I've known for a while."

Yeah, Tommy definitely missed something.

He gapes, for a moment, mouth opening and closing a few times without a sound before he manages to find his words—

"What? No."

—and then they just don't stop.

"I mean, yeah. We can do that too, while we're at it, but that's not— that's not what I meant. Well, I would have told you, right after this, even, but that isn’t what I was trying to say. I am Spider-Punk, but that's— it's not—"

Apparently, his confusion is letting him skip right over the panic of Gwyn somehow knowing his secret identity, but not letting him find the right words to say what he actually wants to. He just keeps babbling.

"Tommy, honey, take a breath. What's this about?"

Fuck it. Who cares whether they're the "right" words?

"I'm gay, Gwyn," he blurts, and everything goes silent, like even the shitty pipes are too scared to break the tension with their usual clanging.

"What?"

"I'm gay," he says again, and it comes out easier, even if it hurts more. "I'm queer. A fairy. A fucking faggot, if you prefer." He spits the words like a curse. It definitely feels like one.

Why me? Isn't my life hard enough!?

His eyes are burning and Gwyn is still just staring at him. She doesn't look disgusted, but maybe she’s just in shock, processing this huge bombshell.

"Say something," he rasps, "please?"

She doesn't respond, not with words, anyway. Instead, she surges forward, wrapping her arms around him and tucking her face into the crook of his neck. It takes him painfully long to reciprocate, movements halting and awkward with surprise. This has to be a good sign. Right?

They stay like that for a long moment, with only the sound of shaky breathing and the background hum of the heater to fill the silence. Eventually, though, Gwyn is the first to pull away. She doesn’t go far, just enough so they're face to face. Her eyes are just as damp as his own.

"Me too," she confesses.

"What?"

"I'm gay. More of a dyke than a fairy, actually. Men? Not really my thing."

Oh.

Tommy doesn't know how to respond to that, other than to pull her back into a hug, burying his own face in her shoulder. It's probably for the best, because he starts to bawl like a baby, choking on the overwhelming mix of emotions that crashes over him. It's almost too much to parse and he feels like he's drowning, pulled under a riptide of relief-joy-trust. 

He's mourning a bit, too. Grieving for the normal life he could have had— that they could have had. It’s one thing to admit such things to himself, but admitting it to another person— to Gwyn— makes it all the more real. 

And it hurts. Each strangled sob is soothing agony— like the gangrenous decay of fear-shame-isolation being cut from healthy flesh.  He hadn’t realized he was suffocating until he could finally breathe again.

He can’t stop crying and Gwyn's not doing much better, if the wetness of Tommy's collar or her shaking shoulders are anything to go by. She’s clutching onto him like a lifeline and Tommy? Tommy is independent. He stands on his own because he’s never had a choice, so it’s… terrifying to rely on others for support, but he’s holding onto her just as fiercely. Sharing the burden instead of stumbling under the weight of everything. It’s indescribable.

Tommy doesn't think he's ever connected with anyone the way he does with Gwyn.

#story post #gwyn stacy #coming out #f slur #d slur #internalized homophobia

[sailorsally]

Funny how a professional author and screenwriter summarised the plot of a TV show, in which one being stood infront of another and admitted his feelings, and one of the beings could not reciprocate at that time, and one of them also got blasted to another plane of existence leaving the other depressed and alone, as romantic.

Funny, you mean to tell me that's not platonic dude-bro behaviour? Who'd have ever guessed that was romantic, eh SPN.

Honestly I am gonna say something: as someone who has come into the SPN fandom following 15x18 craze I too was very vocal about "them" being homophobic and calling the fans "delusional" without actually ever asking who those "they" were in the first place? Maybe I don't know fandom history well enough or don't think there is much point in it after the confession but I get the impression that people will often be angry with the writers for "queerbaiting". That was also something I was aware of for years before I started watching spn at all.

I think everyone who blames writers for queerbaiting in spn is wrong. SPN is queer not because a bunch of fans decided they were gonna have a very queer field day with this seemingly "macho" show. It is queer because for years writers neatly put one subtly queer block on another to build a queer narrative. Sadly they couldn't be as vocal about it as Neil Gaiman is because a)homophobia was more rampant back then b) the network had done market research and the results said that destiel wasn't something people wanted. Yes, throughout the years there have been some writers in the mix and some actors (jared for example is still very anti destiel. Jensen for me is on probation rn lmao) who were against destiel but I would say that most people in the winters room were very much on the board and made very specific choices to prove this. Remember when Misha said , even years before the confession how they were all aware of Destiel and had had talks about it? How Mark Sheppard said they all knew Cas was in love with Dean? I feel like Destiel was an established idea amongst the creatives working in the show it's just that they couldn't be vocal about it because well, if anyone is going to be blamed for any homophobic crimes it's the C*W network isn't it? And after the whole Misha biasco and how the network was urging him to stay out as bi because that would be more profitable, I didn't even think the anti destiel stance was really fueled by homophobia but more likely by their conviction that most of their viewers would absolutely flip shit if Dean Winchester was anything other than straight. And yes, you will ask WHO wouldn't want Destiel to be canon?? And I'll tell you that I know it feels hard to believe that people would watch SPN for anything besides Destiel or the queer themes so intricately woven into it but having been to a SPN convention now I can say that these people very much exist and most likely were the group they used for market research back in the day.

Sorry this got a lot longer than anticipated but all in all, I think (most) writers very much always saw dean & cas as romantic because they write them as romantic and tbh at this point I'm under the impression that nobody is trying to nohomo Dean & Cas. Except wincesties, that Adam Williams dude and Clif & other few 'Dean can only be straight because he is part of my straight fantasy' girlies. And some con organizers. Which is an entire new topic tbh and, again, I do not know a lot about fandom history, but I think most transgression against fans was always comitted at cons and cons are the 'sales' side not the 'creative' side of things so they would have to follow the networks guidelines. Or sometimes make their own stupid choices I guess (sincerely, fuck you Daniela).

#god this got out of hand im sorry anon #spn #spn wank #ask sally

[inventedfangirling]

Thai QL Favorites Tag Game

Tagged by @telomeke ! I was surprised when i saw the notification pop up but yaay I loved reading your answers and I'm very excited to try this out too. Thanks for tagging me🤗

Credit to the creator of this game @thatgirl4815 of the Thai BL Favorites Tag Game.

Fair warning, almost the entirety of this is going to be filled with Bad Buddy related responses and it's gonne be the opposite of concise *SURPRISE* so yes lezgo...

Favorite Thai QL: Bad Buddy. It was the second thai QL i have ever watched and THE ONLY reason i decided to actually consume more of thai QL content cos this show moved me in a way nothing i had ever seen until then had. It was queer, it was asian, it intentionally subverted so many tropes i hated, gave us inkpa AND patpran-one of the most beautiful and respectful love stories ive ever seen that culminated in an ending that is as happy as it is realistic and i am still in awe of p'aof and ohmnanon and the gem they made. But also. Just for episode 5. Perfection. Also, Episode 7 my beloved. And Episode 11 the love of my life. Bad Buddy you will always be my favourite <3

Favorite Pairing: OhmNanon -> PatPran ofc! I've never seen the appeal of childhood friends to lovers until i saw Patpran's childhood frenemies to adult frenemies to friends to lovers. Just the most organic growth of a bond whose seeds were sown even before they were born. But most importantly once they grew up and were confronted with obstacles and realities, they chose to love eo and kept on choosing eo. Their love, their regard for eo, the way they cared for eo, it's all so very precious and i just won't ever love a romantic pairing the way i do patpran, and it's half because of just how brilliant ohmnanon's chemistry worked, they are EVERYTHING to me.

I also LOVE First & Khaotung's chemistry. Great Stuff. Also Net & James.

Most underrated actor: I don't know if i have watched enough shows to comment on this since the actors i mention might actually be well appreciated and not strictly underrated but yes Fluke Gawin Caskey is on my list too. I feel that his drop dead gorgeous looks have somehow made his real acting chops appear like an afterthought when in reality it so isn't. Kinda have similar feelings about Net from Bed Friend as well.

I loved LOVE from bad buddy, and i can't wait to see her in 23.5 with Milk. Suar from You're My Sky & La Pluie, and Title also from La Pluie, War from Love Mechanics, First & Khaotung from Eclipse (i know they are well loved but still!) i REALLY enjoyed their performances.

Favorite Character: Pran Parakul my beloved. Pran is in so many ways so similar to me i immediately took a liking to him. I don't know how much my love for Pran is inextricably tied to how Nanon played the part but the pining and the love that was just on display but hidden oh so beautifully, my heart hadnt ached for a character in a romance story in so long. And then the love is reciprocated and then instead of the character doing a full 180 and being unrealistically happy we see him struggle to adjust, we see him learn and grow and finally accept the love he had been wanting all along, and along the way learning to be a better partner too, more gushing on pran here, cos i'm incorrigible.

Favorite Side Character: Pa from Bad Buddy. I love love love Pa and Pat's bond. I love how Pa is like Pat's compass pointing him in the right direction (more often than not) and Pat listens and actually follows up on what she says. And also "men are so boring, and are all men delusional like you" NO ONE DOES IT LIKE PA I SAY. Special mention to Ink & her "It's so gainful".

Also Tee from Gap The Series, Palm's mom from Never Let Me Go, the uncles from My Ride (they remind me of Patpran with all their bickering ahhh), Tien & Bow from La Pluie, Pharm & Manow from Between Us, Pear from Be My Favorite. Oh also everybody in Cher's friendgroup from A Boss and a Babe.

Favorite scene in a QL: I'm gonna cheat cos there is no way i can pick one, so here's 5, all from Bad Buddy: ep 5 rooftop Kiss, that whole scene in ep 7 where pat shows up as Riam and saves the play, the balcony phone call scene ep 8, ep 11 the scene that starts with Pat thanking Pran for "trying to make a silly guy like me happy" and also the scene where Pran follows "i wrote this song for him" up with singing the beautiful song that was "our song" SOBBBS.

But also Thun's coming out scene in He's Coming to Me is so so very special to me.

Okay maybe that's more than 5, but i already said i'd cheat so :333

Favorite line in a QL: So many lines from Bad Buddy I could just go on and on under this prompt BUT okay i'll be good this time if i had to pick one just rn then - "Together, we’ve been through a lot. We’ve experienced wonderful times a lot. We’ve had awful times a lot. We’ve looked out for each other a lot. We’ve been concerned about each other a lot. We’ve been thinking about each other a lot and we’ve been happier, a lot." will just have to be the winner. What a crown worthy answer, my baby Pran is right as usual.

Most Anticipated QL (& why): 23.5 degrees. GMMTV finally releasing a GL show after years and years of BL content. And also MilkLove together after Bad Buddy & INKPA NEED I SAY MORE!?!?

But also "Last Twilight" cos i cant wait to see what P'aof's been cooking.

Healthiest relationship in a QL: Patpran, again xD. This is extra special because they had all the obstacles that could have made this such a toxic relationship and yet they focused on respect and consent and healthy communication and caring for each other and understanding each other and becoming better versions of themselves because of and with each other and the prominent way consent is emphasized in all their intimate moments, it's just EVERYTHING to me.

Also Mork & Tawan from My Ride. Rarely do we get to see such an equally contributive and reciprocal and healthy relationship. It was a pleasure to watch.

Most toxic relationship in a QL: Maybe VeeMark from Love Mechanics. They were cute and shiz but just way too much back and forth and miscommunication just NO.

Guilty pleasure series: Bed Friend

Most underrated series: My Ride, He's Coming to Me, You're My Sky

Tagging @sharingfandoms, @aroceu, @thecriers, @midnightfreeway, @lovelyghostv, @fiercynn, @thegayneurodivergentagenda and whoever else who wants to try this, no compulsion &lt;3

#thai ql tag game #bad buddy #patpran #my ride #la pluie #be my favorite #23.5 degrees #bed friend #he's coming to me #you're my sky #if you read till here???? #thats so sweet of you???? #i would've dropped mine personally #i cheated so many times #anyways thanks for reading #ily <3

[biblioflyer]

Being a red shirt on the info literacy and empathy front lines.

This is a bit of a meta post and by "going there" I'm really just trying to generate more of the sort of "you are seen" genre for whomever it has meaning. If it has a whiff of "look at me, I'm an ally, I'm helping by yelling into the void" then I don't know really know what to tell you, maybe it is and if it is, feel free to keep on scrolling, I am not consciously demanding your affirmation, just rambling about the role of sci-fi in my life in getting me to this point ethically and professionally.

I am a red state millennial librarian. Don't feel as sorry for me as you might reflexively think I want you to. I'm not a public librarian or a public school librarian, I'm an academic librarian. Moms for Liberty hasn't directed its Eye of Sauron at us (yet.) Thus we're able to keep stocking LGBTQ literature without too much worry of people screaming at us. For now at least.

Why does this matter?

Well through a little loophole we are officially an academic library that provides services to young adults and the public in addition to formal college students without being a public or school library. I'm reluctant to share too many biographical details, but suffice to say you might be surprised at what is part of your nearest academic library collection and it may be easier than you think to access that collection.

Individual institutions are going to have their own policies, however because we are part of a broader consortium that all shares resources, we offer reciprocal services to every member of that consortium and their patrons if those patrons come to us with a valid library card from one of the member counties or a peer institution.

So if your public library has been gutted, take a peak at local colleges. They are more likely than you think to have queer literature, including queer and diverse literature in the YA genre, as well as inclusive children's books even picture books. College libraries know many of their students are either parents or are intending to go into public education (god help them) and thus have some very infrequently utilized special collections that they would love to see circulate so they can justify buying more.

This being a nerd blog, let me just speak briefly of the role of sci-fi and fantasy allegories in my development. I could very easily have been one of the people that I fear may come for my job. The people we have done workshops rehearsing how to respond professionally, empathetically, but also forcefully to formal challenges to what's on our shelves and informal challenges - i.e. people intent on making spectacles.

I don't say that I "fear" these people lightly, our head of DEI initiatives was sacked after the program was expected (and ultimately) was defunded. This person was not offered a job in a different department. I'm not super in touch with what goes on outside my department but I'm told that this person was broadly respected and other than their job title, was never involved in anything controversial or had any interpersonal disputes.

So we who are heteronormative don't get the luxury of putting our heads down and assuming this will blow over. We can't actually know with any certainty how many degrees of separation are between us and the ire of the Christian Nationalist fever that has swept the nation.

Anywho, Handmaid's Tale isn't exactly the sci-fi I meant to talk about (although boy howdy did it scare the bejeezus out of me the first time I listened to it and that was - I think - pre-2016.)

I grew up in a very rural area with minimal diversity. My exposure to diversity and later queer representation was almost entirely through media. Star Trek was a big one, but also Roseanne which ironically makes the comedian's red pilling more heart breaking than JK Rowling - its a xenniel thing, I was in my edgy ironic full of myself no time for childish things teenage years when Harry Potter came out.

I'm sitting here in 2023, and I can see the absurd falseness of the rhetoric of grooming discourse. Riker's fling with an androgynous alien or Jadzia Dax's open pansexuality didn't make me queer. It de-stigmatized being queer and left me open to taking seriously the self expressed experiences of people who I was open to befriending. As an adult, while I've found Discovery to be frustrating in many ways, one of the things that keeps me coming back is Culber and Stamets. Their performances and arcs have been a consistently solid part of an otherwise very messy production.

Much as Culber and Stamets are simply decent human beings just trying to get by and overcome crisis after crisis, so too are the queer people I've befriend. Their sinister agenda is to walk in public with their partner without people walking between them not thinking they're actually together or being harassed. Some of them are parents of developmentally well adjusted children.

I'm not looking for ally virtue signal points by praising these storylines, I'm just recognizing them for what they are: pieces of my development as a person. Which makes me happy to be in a place in my life where if nothing else, for now I get to make available a wide variety of experiences and perspectives for people to be exposed to. Its not my job to force anything on anyone and I order plenty of straight forward murder mysteries, romances, and swashbuckling epics that don't require a lot of critical thinking, but I like knowing that something I placed on the shelf might make someone accept themselves or accept someone else.

#red state library #books unite us #pride month #we need diverse books #star trek #academic libraries #intellectual freedom

[berrylover0571]

I was talking to somebody tonight and something came up that bothered me that I didn't realize had bothered me and I needed to vent about it.

Online, identity is fluid and very easy to sort of come to understand. After a certain point there is a sort of inflexibility to identity, expectations placed on You by other people, but overall your identity is very fluid and people can see a new you almost everywhere you go. Online you get the benefit of people not knowing you, who are then able to sort of come to understand who you are.

Offline this is not the case. offline, peoples expectations of you are a lot more rigid, and a lot less fluid, and a lot more likely to be inflexible and annoying and hard to deal with. I have become intimately familiar with this fact in the most recent couple days. If you don't like being specific, fit every bill, and Jive most smoothly with the way Society is, this isn't a problem. However when you're trans like me, and you're going through a period of transition, and you need a lot of things validation-wise, that validation doesn't come from the sources it should. It just, it just doesn't.

That brings me to my point:

I have never been called cute by a person in my real life proximity.

Online I've had the wonderful Fortune of quite a number of people I know finding out and knowing the real much more intimate and personal me. They know the person that I want to be, the cute, strange woman that I am. Offline I have not been so fortunate, despite being fortunately blessed with a lot of other things. I don't have a lot of typical queer traumas because a lot of the queer traumas that exist are due to an unaccepting environment and shitty relationship with religion imposed by shitty people reinforced by shitty history. I will never otherwise or trivialize those things, at least not intentionally, because doing so would be shitty on my part and Trauma should be healed not disregarded. However, the traumas I do have are very specific and very small but they have cascading effects on my person that have made navigating and existing in the world a painful experience in a different way. To sort of convey where my trauma comes from, and the ways in which I am deeply affected by certain things, I will tell you how I used to self harm, because I did something that is probably far worse than anything I could have done physically.

I could not bring myself to break skin, so I instead psychologically scarred myself through a myriad of different behaviors that were not healthy. From staying up late at night and scrolling through stuff I shouldn't have such as gore videos or deeply frightening horror videos and stories, to making myself worry about how I came off and ultimately self-sabotaging the way I interact with everyone, to long time spans of isolation from people, oftentimes self-imposed or imposed by the fact that I lived a half an hour out of town in another city all together. And what friendships I did have were intense friendships or unhealthy and toxic friendships, due partially to my selection in class, but also due to the fact that I did not value myself and let people walk all over me. This basically normalized me to the presence of unsupportive friendships and the absence of any sort of compliment reciprocation, and so for almost a decade to my entire life I have never known people who compliment me, and I have felt and found a deep anxiety in how I maintain relationships. I reinforce my worth with how much someone needs of me and not how much somebody appreciates me, and I don't like having that appreciation shown, and I've come to the conclusion that I actually should in fact like being appreciated.

Because the reason why I had an aversion was because I never knew what it was like to have a supportive group of people around me.

I've never been called cute. Not cute, not attractive, outside of maybe nice kind or creative, I am not described as really anything by people. And that carries over into my transition, which deeply bothers me. It deeply bothers me.

I have a friend group that's really supportive, and really nice and really easy to talk to and do things with and who care about me, who are complimentary and they want to do nice things constantly and it really feels good, but I've never known what I've wanted, I've never known what I've wanted to be, who I wanted to be seen as, how I've wanted to be seen, and I've been trying on things, and so by now they've kind of got a set in stone understanding of who I am and what I want to be, and I've only just realized that the person they've constructed me to be is not the person I want to be.

I don't hate the person I am to them, it's nice to feel like I'm a fierce person and to be recognized for it, I like having power for once and control and the ability to assert myself in a healthy manner, but I don't just want that. I don't just want to be assertive. I don't just want to be strong. Because I have been strong all my fucking life, I have been people's walls and I have been there ramparts and I have been their parapets, I've been every single part of a person except vulnerable, and I love being able to be relied upon, I love being able to be there for people, but I don't want that to be the only thing I have. Because it is utterly fucking exhausting.

I want to be seen as cute. And pretty and beautiful and lovely. Don't get me wrong, I love wearing black and torn jeans and fishnets and all these different things, I love that ferocity, but I still want to be all of those things and wear that kind of stuff. And I know that's possible because hundreds of other people do it and they get it.

So why can't i?

Why is it that when I relate to things, why is it that when I want to feel like I'm cute and sweet and delicate like a dried black rose, people feel the need to invalidate that? To not just let me be and just let me enjoy myself?

A friend posted something in a group chat, and I related to it, and I felt like saying I related to it, it said something cute, and for some reason the person who sent it felt the need to tell me that it was okay I related to it, but they always conceived of me as powerful. And that hurt for some reason. Like that hurt a lot.

It's so exhausting trying desperately to be the kind of person you want to be, and knowing that no matter what, no matter how much you fucking heal and rectify in yourself, it will never be enough to change how somebody sees you. It will never be enough to truly and meaningfully convey who you want to be. Because they see you and they see this one specific person, and they don't even have to be the person you were before, especially in the case of trans people, just the person they met you as, and that's the person you are to them forever for some reason.

I'm so tired of being someone I don't want to be.

I so desperately want to feel like I'm a cute person. I dress cute, I do cute things in my eyes, I try and do somewhat cute makeup, but it's not enough. It's never fucking enough. I'm so fucking tired of not being enough. I'm tired of being a second choice, I'm tired of feeling like I only attract people in my real life who want me to be crazy all the time, I'm tired of feeling like I don't exist unless I am this loud and abrasive person.

I don't know how some girls do it. I don't know how they've managed to make this fucking leap. I don't know how some of my bestest friends did it. Because God knows they're adorable and they're awesome and they're wonderful, and it's honestly killing me. It kills me every goddamn day. Every goddamn day to think I've done it, to think I've reached that threshold, done that thing, and only people who've never met me, who don't know my person and don't know who I am and only know this part of me call me cute. Because I fit their bill, thousands of miles away, through a computer screen I fit their bill.

Words on a screen A Thousand Miles away, hell 30 Mi away, aren't enough. They just aren't. It doesn't feel like I exist. Like I have substance or that I matter or that I'm interesting, it feels like I'm just an object on a screen that people can sort of look at and enjoy aesthetically.

I can appreciate the value in that, I can appreciate that when I feel like it's enough. But when I try desperately, and I mean when I try desperately, it never feels like enough and that just exhausts me. It just fucking exhausts me.

Everyone else gets what they want, but I don't.

I don't get a relationship that I can feel and exist in and be happy with, I get a relationship I feel distant from and a person who tries their best but is overextended and they most likely know it. I don't get compliments that make me feel good, I get compliments that feel like they're just telling me what they think I want to hear.

Estrogen gave me an ass and a clear head, and honestly sometimes I wish my head was fucked again because at least then I felt like I was adequate. At least then I would feel like I deserved that mess instead of realizing that I didn't.

Everyone preaches constantly about being considerate and kind and talking to people on their own terms and giving them things that make them happy in their own specific way, and yet? Everyone else gets it.

Everyone else gets to be pretty, and cute, and adorable, they get to be fawned over and loved and adored and aspired to be and I get reassurance. I get once out of a thousand times. And it kills me.

I've lived with good enough, just enough, all of my life. Been 6 months I'll be 25, a quarter of my lifespan, and I know now that it's not enough. It's never been enough. I have just been accepting things at their face value and not being the person I want to be and now that I want to be that person? It's harder than ever just to get what everyone else gets. Because I don't want to be just good enough, I don't want to be fucking exceptional, I just want once. I don't want it to be forced or out of pity I just want it naturally once!

I went in Cosplay to an anime convention as a character that's not from an anime. It was just somebody I wanted to cosplay, somebody that gave me gender euphoria, and somebody that I felt comfortable enough to be able to do. And still feel comfortable enough to be able to do.

I didn't expect to be recognized, I didn't expect to have anyone make the connection, but one person, one very kind person did. And it made my day. It wasn't forced, they didn't ask who I was, they just knew. They didn't even know their name they just knew what the character was, they knew the proper reference points and they knew what exactly to say and it made my fucking day.

Because it had worked! It had fucking worked!

That's what it would feel like but like a thousand times better.

I don't want to be pretty to an onlooker on a screen who's so distant from me and so detached from who I am, I want someone to see me in my state, trying my hardest to be the person I want to be, and I want them to say it without fucking feeling forced.

I want to feel pretty and cute and sweet, like some weird goth little Pokemon.

Why can't i?

#personal vent #vent