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pippin-katz · 9 months

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Alex & Being Bisexual 🩷💜💙

I've seen a lot of people complaining about Alex not having as big of a crisis over being bisexual as he did in the books, but I feel like a lot of people are overlooking the development he does go through.

Henry is the first guy he has felt attracted to that he actually knew prior to getting physically involved.

Alex & Miguel

Nora's asks specifically about men Alex has "been with", not men he's liked or interested him. She means physically, and he knows that too. Alex doesn't even bother with giving any context or details for his high school hook up. His description of his hook up with Miguel is straightforward, direct, and factual, because he doesn't have an emotional attachment to that moment or Miguel.

This, and his interactions with Miguel, gives the impression that they don't really know each other that well. It seems like they met during the campaign, made out in a hot tub, and now occasionally they talk at school.

They don't seem like friends, rather acquaintances after a one night stand, which is pretty much what they did. Their first conversation is mostly Miguel trying to get quotes for his journal and flirting with him rather than any kind of real discussion.

Gifs courtesy of @phakphumm from this post

Alex isn't stupid; he knows Miguel is flirting with him, however he chooses not to acknowledge it. He doesn't discourage him, but he does not encourage him either.

He avoids saying anything about it at all. His expressions after the eyelashes comment show him at a bit of a loss for how to respond. Alex seems flattered by the compliment, but doesn't seem to have any real desire to hook up again.

Everything Miguel says, he says in an attempt to get something out of him, whether it be flirting to hook up and/or get quotes for his journal.

Same thing at the state dinner; Alex isn't fully paying attention cause he's busy staring at Henry, but Miguel opens with compliments, specifically about his memo, which is definitely an attempt to flatter him. Then he starts asking direct questions about the campaign, Alex doesn't answer, and he walks away. They're not really friends.

New Territory

It's one thing to admit being somewhat attracted to the same sex, under limited, physical circumstances. Lots of people often joke about "being straight/gay but I would sleep with this person".

It's another thing to develop an attraction to a person you know of the same sex when you've never had those feelings before. It's not just physical anymore, because you know and like this person outside of that context, and the physical intimacy gains a new meaning.

Alex VS Feelings

This is a new feeling for Alex. This man practically makes out with two women he barely knows without any qualms, but when he's waiting to see Henry? His close friend who he knows and plans to kiss?

He is nervous; not just a little nervous either:

Alex is a pretty confident guy, able to host massive parties and dance without any reservations about it, unlike Henry who awkwardly bounces. He's a fantastic public speaker. Excluding the wedding, which were extreme circumstances, he's able to navigate a room comfortably. We know from the closet conversation that he used to get scared, but it's clear based on his campaign efforts, the DNC speech, and so on that he's grown into his role and can play it well.

Here, Alex can't sit still. He doesn't know how to stand. He's shifting around, almost pacing. He visibly tries to muster up the confidence we know he has, but can't. He's trying to pose, or look confident, and almost gets there, but the second the door opens, he panics and just stands there.

"But that's just cause he really likes Henry!"

Yes, exactly; Henry is his first step towards fully realizing his identity.

Once the tension is broken, Alex is confident again and doesn't hesitate anymore. He may not be completely sure of his identity, but he is completely sure that he wants Henry. Those thoughts take priority when he kisses him. He knows physical intimacy. He knows how to kiss with someone regardless of who they are. He has been with a couple men, and is a man himself, so he knows what feels good. His confidence stays intact during their exchange when they get to his bedroom.

There are very small moments where you can see his nerves poke through.

When Henry pushes Alex over the couch, not only is it surprising to him, it also disconnects them for a few seconds. He has a chance to look at Henry while they're not touching or kissing, no direct distraction.

When Henry starts undoing his pants, he looks up, inhales quickly, blinks a couple times, and swallows; it's almost like he's thinking "okay this is actually happening now". Again, no direct distraction, as Henry isn't doing anything yet, and Alex isn't touching or kissing him.

Both moments go by fast though because he's focused on what he knows, the physical part. He knows he wants Henry physically, so he can focus on that, and deal with the other feelings later.

Alex is aware that he has feelings toward Henry that are new to him. He doesn't know what they mean, and it's nothing even close to what he feels later in Paris and at the lake house, but they're starting to form. He's the one who suggests that he and Henry see each other again, and you would have to be blind not to see the brief disappointment on his face when Henry says it has to be very casual. It's also important to note that this is right after Alex comes out.

The Bisexual Label

While his feelings make Alex nervous, Henry is still his friend and he feels comfortable around him. He's the first person he comes out to; he was unable to say anything definitive about his identity during his conversation with Nora, despite her best efforts to help him.

Henry is the first person he tells and he distinctly shows uncertainty when he first uses the bisexual label:

He's serious about it; not overly serious, but he's coming out very formally. He's nervous, even though he's telling Henry, who he literally hooked up with five minutes ago. Henry already knows he's attracted to men. Alex is not nervous about that; it is clearly the label that he's uncertain about.

Confidence

A lot of people get taken by surprise when they start questioning their identity because they had simply never thought about it before.

The uncertainty Alex has about his identity was initiated by his feelings for Henry. Alex clearly never considered the idea of being in an actual relationship with a man. Without Henry, he may have never figured out that he was fully bisexual. He may have continued fooling around occasionally with guys, never giving serious thought to the other possibilities, unless/until he met someone like Henry who basically smacks him in the face with a mirror.

Being with Henry makes him truly think about himself, and come to the conclusion that he's bisexual. Seeing/dating Henry also makes him more comfortable and confident in his identity over time.

While Alex hadn't acknowledged Miguel's advances before, after he sleeps with Henry, he actively calls him out on it and refuses without hesitation as soon as Miguel puts the suggestion out there. Miguel even says "Well, I don't anymore", confirming that had been his intention in earlier scenes.

He had been trying to hook up with him again, and because Alex never addressed it, Miguel thought that it was possible. Alex may not have addressed his comments, but Miguel could see for himself that they had a positive reaction; he felt flattered and bashful. That response coupled with the fact that Alex did not outright tell him to stop was enough reason for Miguel to think it could happen again.

Also, Alex told Nora that he got the feeling Miguel wanted to hook up again, but that he was a journalist, which does not say he wouldn't be down. He never says he wouldn't want to; instead he expresses his apprehension to the idea due to his job. So for all intents and purposes, before Henry came along, Miguel was correct to think it was a possibility.

This seems to be the first time Alex has ever actually addressed their tension, and it occurs after he starts seeing Henry and using the bisexual label.

Owning The Bi Label

Then Zahra finds him and Henry the next morning. She is kind enough not to tell Ellen immediately, because even if she won't admit it, she does care about Alex a lot and recognizes the importance of something like this. However, she makes it very clear that he needs to tell her ASAP or she will.

When he comes out to his mom, he is significantly more sure of himself when he uses the bisexual label. He laughs and uses the shorten term "bi" which is a small detail but indicates his confidence, compared to how he cautiously said "bisexual" when coming out to Henry. He's not at all nervous to use the term, and says it grinning.

This is also indicative of his confidence in his label because Alex doesn't lead with his sexuality. He leads with meeting someone, and clarifying that it's a man, and that it's Henry. So once they're on the couch talking, Ellen is also already aware that he is attracted to men, but this time, he's prompted about his label and he shows zero nerves about using the term "bi".

Queer Identity

By the end of the movie, Alex is able to publicly refer to himself as having a queer identity. Obviously, he was outed against his will, but he is still able to stand up and acknowledge who he is without nerves about it. He has been with Henry for a year, and he knows who he is, and he’s not ashamed of it. As he says, the leaks were an issue of privacy, not shame. Alex is not afraid to say who he is, and he is queer, he is bisexual. He’s a different person than he was before Henry. He’s learned about himself because of him.

Does he have a complete, computer-error-noise breakdown over it? No, he doesn’t, but he does not immediately start waving a bi flag around either.

Okay, that’s all! This took so freaking long to put together, but I hope it helps people understand how his bisexuality is addressed in the movie. Just because he has a different journey than he did in the book does not mean he did not have a journey at all, and I hope this allows people to see it more clearly! Thank you for reading!

#red white and royal blue #rwrb #rwrb movie #rwrb thoughts #bisexuality #alex claremont diaz #taylor zakhar perez #miguel ramos #henry hanover stuart fox #ellen claremont #firstprince

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flashbastardsramblings · 8 months

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I've realised that the thing I love most about the new popular queer media (and for this I'll use as an example wwdits, good omens and ofmd), is the fact that the difficulties these characters are dealing with aren't connected to their sexuality. The problems don't stem from their queer sexuality. They are not being punished for being queer.

Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship isn't forbidden because they aren't a cishet couple. It's forbidden because they are both victims of an opressive and unjust system (heaven) who's afraid of their combined power which is a direct result of their love for one another.

Guillermo and Nandor's relationship is so nuanced and complicated. There's lots of things to unpack that have been piled up for more than a decade, but again their queer sexualities aren't the problem. Same goes for the rest of the vampires, who are also queer.

Sure, in Stede's case he has to deal with queer trauma, toxic masculinity and the realisation that he's gay, and therefore doesn't conform to the ideal archetype of the straight, masculine man with the heterosexual family. But after realising that and coming out to Mary, the show isn't really about ‘oh, look how difficult it is to be queer, poor guys'. Like Con O'Neil said in a panel, the obstacle here isn't that we have two men who are in love. The difficult thing is to let yourself be in love and become vulnerable.

Both Stede and Ed are dealing with their own trauma, which has affected how they see themselves and by extension their relationships with other people. They are dealing with self doubt, even self loathing, and the belief that they aren't good enough or that they don't deserve love. However, none of that is because they are queer. Being queer sure isn't easy (especially then) but it's not the source of their pain and I fucking love that.

I'm all about the exploration of sexuality, dealing with internalised homophobia and transphobia, coming out etc, and that's why we have series like Heartstopper. But it's still so fucking refreshing to see queerness not being depicted as a ‘big deal’, but rather one of the many aspects of one's self.

That being said, I love being queer and fucking love my insane little queer characters.

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ms-demeanor · 7 months

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i really liked OJST in the mid-2010s but i didn’t stop reading cause of the cuck comic - wasn’t there also a comic erika moen wrote about (functionally) harassing lesbians with her now-husband?

In the mid 2010s closet-keys criticized one of Erika Moen's early diary comics and described Erika Moen as "Reassuring a cishet partner that it’s totally okay to use hate speech towards wlw at Pride" and condoning the harassment and fetishization of lesbians because of a 2007 comic that she had made as part of a webcomic she had written about gender and her interactions with her queerness.

The hate speech in question is the partner asking "are you sure you want to hold my hand with all these dykes around?" while they are pretty clearly at a Dyke Day event during pride, and the reassurance that 'it's totally okay to use hate speech toward wlw' is Erika responding "sweetie, I'm proud to be with you."

The comic is still up with a disclaimer that it was written at a different time, and I know that's probably not going to fly with a lot of people but if you were a bi woman in the early to mid 2000s it was pretty common to use statements like "lol yeah i'm into women my boyfriend is fine with it as long as I take pictures" to diffuse the biphobia from straight people AND to say shit like "I'm not a party bi, I actually love pussy, thanks" to diffuse the biphobia from queer people. (if you were a bi guy in the early to mid 2000s i'm sorry and I'm sorry now because we got LUG but that mostly went away and you *still* have to deal with the "gay in waiting" bullshit).

That comic ends with Erika and her partner looking at a woman and saying "I'd totally do her" while the woman thinks "pigs" and if you think that means that they literally sat on the street and vocally commented about lesbians passing by them or that they condone harassing lesbians (in, I cannot stress this enough, a diary comic written by someone in their early twenties who is realizing they are occasionally interested in some men some of the time after identifying as a lesbian their whole life), then I'm gonna go ahead and recommend signing up for some variety or other of literary analysis class. Do we think that Erika is seriously implying that she is going to make her boyfriend gay if she fucks him in this comic from a year later?

If this comic bothers you and you see it as a straight-passing couple giving the go-ahead to harass lesbians, you do you, I'm not saying you have to read the comic or enjoy Erika Moen.

I am saying it's a bit of a stretch, though, and certainly the least charitable explanation possible, and that we should probably give people some space to say awkward things about their sexuality and to make missteps when discussing it in their early twenties and not call them lesbophobic fifteen years after the fact for a college comic.

Moen also gets called transphobic because she has described trans men as adorable/cute in a way that could be read as patronizing in one comic and because she made a comic about wearing a packer for fun and for sexual gratification with her cis male partner as a cis woman.

Appropriately, all of these things feel very "late twenty teens tumblr callout post."

If it bugs you, you don't have to read the comics but I've talked about Moen before and I've gotten the anons in my inbox calling me lesbophobic for recommending her comic when in 2007 she made a comic about catcalling lesbians and condoning street harassment.

Which is frustrating because Erika Moen writes a comic about sex toys that has incredible body and gender diversity and is interested in making sure that people of all sexualities are having safe, enjoyable sex and talking openly about it. This is Rebecca Sugar condones war crimes level discourse over a creator who makes a genuinely good comic and gets dismissed as cringe by people who hate open discussions of sex and gets dismissed as a bigot (in ways that I think are incredibly unfair given the vast majority of her work) among people who *claim* to love open discussions of sex but who *actually* love witch hunts.

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relaxxattack · 7 months

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Piggybacking off the last anon, what is it you like about Jane so much? I find my feelings on her kind of mixed but I lean towards positive.

okay i haven’t read act six in probably like 5 years so bear with me here. *cracks knuckles*

jane is sooo so interesting and it’s really a shame people miss like everything fun about her.

pre-scratch she used her detective work to literally succeed at tearing down the crocker cooperation, to the point that HIC has to fucking abandon ship and head into another universe to have another shot at her evil empire. pre-scratch jane is also fucking hilarious! if you didnt enjoy her antics with john as nannasprite you must just have no heart

meanwhile HIC breaches a new universe, and her FIRST fucking order of business is to NEUTRALIZE JANE CROCKER because of how goddamn detrimental she was to HIC’s plans the first time around.

not ONLY does HIC pump subliminal messaging and brainwashing into nearly every aspect of jane’s life, she also tries to straight up mind control her basically whenever possible! she ALSO sends assassination attempts after jane 24/7! (people will seriously try to say that jane lived a safe normal life… as if she wasn’t almost killed by walking into her backyard.) this is because HIC is fucking scared of jane, as she very well should be!

jane is also NOT a boring weepy annoying crybaby like everyone and their mother complains about. jane is literally the most fucking supportive friend and emotion-repressing dumbass you could ever hope to meet. jane combines john’s emotional repression and jade’s intentional cheerfulness together into one of the most fucked up cases of emotional repression in the whole comic

act 6 suffers from a LOT of shitty writing choices, but it’s not jane’s fault the whole act turns into a soap opera— and she’s ALSO not the only one who acts all soap-opera-y either! literally all of the alpha kids suffer from this, people just like jane the least so they project it all onto her. despite the fact that she did her very fucking best to NEVER talk about her feelings, to the point where she ONLY started telling people about shit when she was mind-controlled or took mind altering substances to make her do so! and you can say “ohhh that’s stupid she shouldn’t repress things in the first place how dumb” but, one she’s sixteen, and two, everyone eats that shit up when it comes from like. literally any other character.

people (cough hs2 writers) act like she would actually be “pushy” with a relationship on jake— as if she wasn’t literally the one who helped him make the decision to explore dating dirk?? because she thought it was the right thing to do???

jane is incredibly thoughtful and mature and people really throw all of those traits out of the window with preference for a version of the story where she Comes Inbetween Their Fave Gay Pairing as if she wasn’t, again, the one who got them together. jane is also extremely interesting in terms of queerness; she’s got the makings of a really interesting arc, not to mention she’s the only human girl that dresses mainly masc! there’s a lot there that people just don’t care to explore.

people just have less patience for the prospit kids in general. not to mention homestuck fans love to be misogynistic and berate jane for stuff they love the men doing, or claim she’s coming between them when she’s not, etc etc. and then because no one was writing fun meta posts about her, nobody ever rereads the comic to grab little scenes or lines to expand the online discussion about her! and then because there’s no discussion about her, people assume she’s boring and don’t go looking for bits to start discussing, which cycles on and on forever until we have the ripple effects we see of that misogyny today. which mostly consists of, “oh i hate jane because she was a villain is hs2”, or, “i know hs2 isn’t canon but i still don’t care for jane because she doesn’t do anything that interests me.” (and she’s only not interesting because of the cycle i mentioned before causing NO ONE to have meta discussion about her).

idk, it’s been a while since ive read so i could be talking out my ass but that’s what i’ve got.

TL;DR: jane is fucking COOL, she just suffers from intentional fandom ignorance. and she’s also a canonically hot, fat, masc woman, so i don’t know what else you could possibly want.

#oh god i didn’t mean for this to get so long #lol i hope this helped????#jane crocker #homestuck #op #hsmeta #long post

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sh00kspeared · 2 months

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Can we talk about Johnny's bi erasure in-game? Because really, it makes me kinda mad.

Now, I'm not the kind of person who shouts 'homophobia' at everything because it's just not my way of things... but the amount that Johnny's attraction to men has been completely shafted throughout the game is really a disservice to him and to all the people who ship their male characters with him. A few examples:

Cutting or making really hard to trigger the line where Johnny says he got a lap dance from a man at a gay strip club (I've seen some people claim they experienced it, which is why I think it may still be in the game)

Johnny saying he didn't sleep with Kerry because he had a dick despite the official, director-sanctioned game guide saying that he did.

Johnny telling female V that the two are arguing "like an old married couple", yet telling male V that they're arguing "like two geezers on a park bench." (Johnny's definitely not the kind of guy to change his language depending on the gender of person he's with).

Never, ever alluding to any of his flings with male characters outside of the strip club line despite him saying that he did swing both ways now and then.

Now, why do I care so much about this? Because it's really sparked more debate than necessary. This post got hate for making him "gay" Cyberpunk 2077 on X: "Johnny Silverhand 🎤 Art by: @painperdues https://t.co/ABiBzSCZvm" / X (twitter.com) and so did this one Cyberpunk 2077 on X: "V and Johnny, Johnny and V… By: @hanbyeo0526 https://t.co/JlGNBmRYJH" / X (twitter.com) (I believe some of the comments have been deleted since because I don't see a lot of the meanest ones there anymore). Mind you, after the latter was posted, a fem V x Johnny post was made not too long afterward and it got markedly fewer hate comments. Also, funny story, my old male V x Johnny post is the third most controversial post of all time on r/lowsodiumcyberpunk at the moment (please go downvote it if possible; I wanna be first again lmao /hj).

But, all this to say, much of the playerbase sees Johnny as an alpha straight manly man when he's... well... not. While many people including me assume that the choice to keep his bisexuality under wraps is due to his addled memory in Mikoshi misremembering the fact that he canonically slept with Kerry, I just think this is a really odd thing to use to demonstrate that. Of all the things the devs could've chosen to display this, they chose one of the things that is most likely to get male V x Johnny shippers belittled and seen as the 'lesser' version of the ship for just existing.

They chose to erase a massive part of Johnny's identity, either to prove the point of his memories being addled or because they were scared of backlash. I just don't see how it would've been so hard for him to allude to some of his male flings more often, make the dicky twister line easier to trigger, and just not have him say that he didn't sleep with kerry because he had a dick. Ffs CDPR, stop being so dodgy your bi characters' identities.

#tw vent #tw rant #cyberpunk 2077 #johnny silverhand #silverv

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datshitrandom · 10 days

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How was to be in a gay relationship (klaine) on screen?

“It was fucking awesome man. I mean the main thing here, like not because I’m trying to be blasé about the obvious thing in this question because we are saying that this is a gay relationship, nowadays, we just call it a relationship on tv, but to contextualize it, a gay relationship on mainstream Fox Network, that’s a pretty cool thing to be a part of. I often equate my relationship to that whole experience to Slumdog Millionaire which is, if you are familiar with Slumdog Millionaire is a kid that gets ask a bunch of questions and he just so happens to have the experience to answer this very specific things, now being cisgender straight kid you go 'oh oh what? are you going to allow this guy to talk gay shit?', I’ve been so culturally queer my whole life, not because I’m trying you know, actually, I was gonna say not because I’m trying to be cool but I’m gonna erase that, is because I am trying to be cool. All the sh— in my life that I have tried to emulate, learn from and be inspired by are one hundred percent queer as f—. It was in queer communities that I’ve found people that I idolize, that I want to be, to learn something from. And I’d say that’s a gross generalization, that’s a lot of things and a lot of people. But I grew up in San Francisco in the ’90s. I watched men die. There was an awareness of the gay experience that was not a foreign concept to me. So, it was a narrative that I cared deeply about. I wasn’t like a f— saint or like 'I’m the man for the job', they hired me and they said, 'You’re the guy,' and I said, 'Okay, I’m the guy I will do my best, I will do my best to talk about it in the way I believe and a way that I’m passionate about'. So in many ways I’m glad that it was me because it was a thing that I really like showing up for and it meant a great deal to me that it meant a great deal to other people. Because when people say they were affected by that show or that relationship, it’s not because of me, it’s because of that relationship on a TV and the risks that people took to put that on TV and most important of all it took the people watching it to have the "aptitude" for seeing beyond what was maybe given to them in other avenues of culture. People of all ages, all spectrums of awareness say, 'I didn’t grow up with a show like that and it was a really meaningful thing for me to see,’ and I go ‘I didn’t grow up with a show like that’ and that would’ve been very meaningful for me too, you know?, regardless of the fact that I’m a straight kid. That has value. For anyone who’s been an underdog, we all know, in any shape or form — sexual, religious, biological, whatever — it has value because there’s going to be a lot of people who see that and go, 'Okay, I can now understand this in a context that maybe I wasn’t able to before'. So short story long, what was it like? It was a fucking privilege and I love talking about it and I’m so grateful I got to do it." - Darren Criss at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo Q&A | April 27th, 2024

#i'm in a fucking rage rn #a transcript of what darren said at the c2e2 #because y’all fucking suck for being stupid and only reading all those clickbait headlines with words out of context #and jumping to conclusions #instead of listening to what he ACTUALLY SAID #stop twisting his words #stop blowing things out of context #all that makes perfect sense #his whole worldview has been shaped by queer culture #so yes he IS culturally queer #and he fucking embraces it #he is grateful for that #and shows himself as an ally #what’s wrong with that?!?!?#he isn't taking advantage of the community #and he didn't make claims about his sexuality #so back off #and as a member of the community i'll tell u #that if something as simple as him painting his nails with bright colors #or him being comfortable surrounding himself of queer culture offends you #thats a fucking you problem #hope that one day we will stop going after the only few cis straight guys that are actually really trying to be good allies #and embrace our community and culture like this man does #⋯⋯⋯⋯#chicago comic & entertainment expo #c2e2 #darren criss

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mage-propaganda · 1 year

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So many people miss the point of my original post and I’m tired of it so come clarification:

Yes, some guys suck. Some guys are really horrible people, who do horrible things. This isn’t news to anyone! Though it might be surprising for some to learn that there are women out there who suck, are terrible people, and do terrible things too. Neither of these things are the point!

If you’re dating a man, maybe don’t constantly shit on him for a funny little thing like ~gender~ which he can’t really control. A lot of people will make fun of and hate the old boomer mindset of “I hate my wife” jokes and then will turn around and do the exact same fucking thing to their boyfriends. It’s stupid! It’s annoying! And it’s extremely prevalent in the queer, more specifically bisexual, community (aimed at both bi men and women) to the point it can just be straight up Homophobic at times (why tf you shaming a bi man for having boyfriend instead of a wife??).

“Oh but Bees, I have trauma! I can’t help hating men and looking at the person I want as my boyfriend in utter disgust” then don’t date! Go to therapy, work on yourself! Don’t subject some poor dude to constant vitriol because you refuse to work yourself! I swear to everything good people on this app, and others, will shit on disabled people, and neurodivergent people, for being disabled and needing some extra assistance from their partners sometimes (something they often CANT help)… and then turn around and be like “but actually…my trauma means I can verbally abuse my boyfriend for being a man :/// thanks :///“.

There, now all the sorry-ass-joy-sucking motherfuckers can shut the fuck up!! Here’s clarification!! If you see happy gay couples, or a confident trans man in a healthy relationship, or something and feel the need to add a rant about your failed relationship with a dude (so they can’t be happy either) maybe pick up journaling or something! Get hobbies! Enjoy life! And maybe stop with all your bad takes!!

#I’ll fuck your dad!!#shut up!!#OP is a trans man #I am OP #OP uses He/They pronouns #OP is Bi #So y’all can shut the fuck up about that too #mlm #nblm #gay #bisexual #queer discourse #loving men is cool actually #men are amazing actually #men can be pretty actually #hey if you’ve read this far you’re stunning actually #if you are a man ily #also OP is disabled so shut up about that too #just preemptively

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bettyshoweduptotheparty · 4 days

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The Albatross decoded

(as requested by @asteracaea's anon, just wanted this for my records too. I hope you see it)

It starts with 'Wise men once said' so immediately we know it's some old white men wisdom, so probably some BS... "Wild winds are death to the candle" isn't a saying I've heard before but English is also not my first language. I'd take it to mean a wild unruly person will destroy something delicate and fragile, just like a strong wind will blow out a candle. As warnings are being issued here, I assume that they are warning the person about this woman because she's known for being a 'wild wind'. The warning then continues into the 'Rose by any other name...' line. Just to make it perfectly clear that it's the MEN who are saying it's a scandal, not Taylor. Taylor knows it's a rose. At least twice on this album does she refer to kissgate as a scandal and with such venom that I'm very sure that that's what the old white men at her label told her it was at the time. And she's still angry about it (as she should!).

In the chorus we have "Cross your thoughtless heart/ Only liquor anoints you" Crossing your heart means you're making a promise to tell the truth, similar to a pledge or a pinky promise. And adding 'thoughtless' would imply she wants the other person to make this promise without any fear or consideration of the possible consequences. So, basically, "promise me something sincerely without thinking too much about it". Only liquor anoints you - Anointment is part of religious ceremonies and is usually done with holy oil to either improve someone's health or make them a saint. It's also done when kings and queens are crowned and I think that's the meaning here. The other person is being raised up to be a monarch or a saint, but with alcohol instead of holy oil. Personally, these two lines convinced me that Taylor is talking to her lover here, because asking for a sincerely promise, almost like a vow, and in return making the other person your king/queen is all very soft and romantic. Very 'King of my heart'. 😉 (and note that she's not saying I'M here to destroy you, she saying OTHER people will tell you that I'm going to destroy you)

In the second verse we're back to what the 'wise men' are saying and this time it's the bad seed that kills the garden (kinda self-explanatory) and then "One less temptress, one less dagger to sharpen". First they were warning the lover and now they're clearly trying to keep them apart by saying that this woman (Taylor) is a bad influence or a temptation. Not sure if I would call this a literary reference, but it's noteworthy that lesbians in early media portrayals (the days of the Hays Code) were often shown as predatory or evil women who would seduce the good straight girls and turn them gay... bad seed/temptress indeed.

Then we have an add on chorus with "Devils that you know raise worse hell than a stranger". This is in fact a saying "Better the devil you know" which means it's better to choose the bad thing you already know over a new one, because you're already used to this one. But again, in this context it's flipped (she does this a lot). In this case, the devil you know is in fact WORSE than a stranger. So they're saying to her lover 'this devil of yours is worse hell and you'd be better off with a stranger' adding to the above warnings, and then they're also adding the warning "You're in terrible danger/She's the death you chose". Boy oh boy, they really didn't want them to be together, very Romeo and Juliet indeed...

Ok, the bridge: "And when that sky rains fire on you/ And you're persona non grata/ I'll tell you how I've been there too And that none of it matters". -> All these warnings are coming to fruition and the sky is now 'raining fire' on her lover. Something bad has happened and they are persona non grata, which is Latin for an unwelcome person, but more commonly used to say the worst person you can think of. So, her lover is in the eye of the storm and is seen as the guilty person, but Taylor tells her that she's been through the same before and it doesn't matter. Like she said in her Lavender Haze video, "We just ignore it and protect the real stuff."

The third verse gives details about what the fire storm mentioned above actually was (just for context, I know you didn't ask about that): some people read some fake news about her lover and came after her because they believed it. The "Jackles raised their hackles" and being dragged from your bed at night very much gives witch hunt imagery, which is a cool choice for two reasons: 1) like the 'witches' her lover is innocent and wrongly convicted of a crime, and 2) all 'witches' were women. 😉

In the last chorus, of course, Taylor's albatross becomes the rescuing angel that swoops in to save her lover from being burned at the stakes. The devil becomes the angel and the anti hero becomes the hero. She says "I'm the life you chose and all this terrible danger". This reminds me of peace: Yes, the life you chose with me comes with shit storms sometimes ('would it be enough if I can never give you peace?') but I will always rescue you if I have to.

(And this part hasn't happened yet, one reason why I love this song so much, it feels like such a sneaky insight into things yet to come, same as FOTS and the Alchemy 😊)

So, there you go, hope this helped, never ask long questions if you don't want long answers ;)

#the albatross #ttpd #tortured poets

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fandomsandfeminism · 2 years

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So, this is going to be a little meandering and all over the place. But I'm trying to express this...web of thoughts I've been having lately around this issue of queer, and labels, and the way we talk about our history and the way the community conceptualized itself in this very digital age. And it's still kind of half formed, so...let's see.

So. OK.

One thing I see a lot online, especially with people who are just now coming out, is a sort of...overfixation on increasingly niche labels. Im not saying that having a very specific or newer label is bad, to be clear. Labels are rhetorical tools, use what is useful. They help with visibility and discussing specific issues. No issues there.

But watching people quibble over bi vs pan vs omni vs abro or non-binary vs genderqueer vs demigender vs genderfluid vs agender vs xenogender vs bigender vs gnc. Asexual or gray ace or demisexual or queerplatonic. And whether they are a biromantic lesbian demigirl or bisexual greyaromantic genderuid. And it's always just a little exhausting, ya know? Again, if those labels are meaningful and useful, that's great, but I see people *agonizing* over which they "really" are. Like if they pick the wrong word to describe themselves, they are coming out the wrong way, like they are wrong about themselves if they can't find the exact correct word on an FAQ list of lgbt vocabulary.

And how I think that relates to the way people talk about our CURRENT labels as though these labels have always been there and like the people described by these labels now have no common experiences with other labels. Like lesbians and bisexual women have absolutely nothing in common. Like butches and trans men have no shared history. As though trans women and drag queens have always been completely separate and unconnected groups. As though ace folks and nonbinary folks are somehow new to the scene, and not community members who were always here and just didn't have a separate label until more recently.

I *remember* watching the community make the switch from transvestite and transsexual, to differentiating between transsexuals and transgender, to basically just using transgender/trans. Those labels are not stagnant. None of our labels are some ingrained biological unchanging objective truth. Labels are rhetorical shortcuts to summarize this facet of our identity and lives and experiences- but they are just words.

And maybe this connects to the way people get really...weird about historical figures too. Like whether Sappho was a lesbian or bisexual, as though either of those words would have had any meaning to her. About whether Shakespeare was gay or bi, like he would have conceptualized his own identity that way. About what modern label Dr. James Barry would have used for himself if anyone could travel back in time and ask him.

And then I think about why queer feels so much more affirming, so much more a place of strength, than LGBT+. Not that LGBT as a label is bad, and I honestly probably prefer it for allies and outsiders to use. But as a community label- Queer, to me, says that all our experiences are queer experiences. Queer can be many things, but they are all queer. Regardless of how many genders or which specific genders you like, whether you have a romantic and or sexual attraction to whatever collection of genders, whatever thing your gender is doing today- all of it, ALL of it, once you step outside that cis, straight mainstream sexuality and gender norm- is queer. Equally queer.

Lgbt+ feels like we are still keeping all those labels separate, little boxes all lined up next to each other- different but a coalition. And while that isn't bad, I also think it isn't totally true.

[A caveat here, that there are times when more specific labels are very helpful. We don't want any specific kind of queer experience to be overshadowed or erased, and having more specific labels facilitates those discussions. Again, I'm not saying that we should eliminate or erase our more specific labels.]

But I think imagining our community as a collection of wholly separate groups that are just allied together, instead of one group that we are all equally in, can make it far too easy for exclusionists to sneak up and say "well ___ isn't REALLY lgbt. THEY aren't REALLY one of us. ___ dont belong."

If we take all the labels off all the crayons- red and pink and purple and blue and teal and green are not hard and fast divisions. They are artificial distinctions we have made- all of them are light, all of them the rainbow.

Anyway. I just think that, while everyone should use whatever labels bring them joy and are useful for them, we might be better off if more folks were ok with ALSO accepting the vast ambiguity of being queer.

#queer thoughts #queer rambling #maybe Im off here or missing some nuance #but Im bi AND queer #Im bi and genderqueer AND queer #and I think theres strength and beauty in seeing our diverse experience and saying YEAH all of us are in this together

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red-might-be-dead · 1 month

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hello hi here to force strange thoughts into your brain once again, this time about jrwi (wow who could’ve guessed)

been thinking about this for a little but it’s basically what i think some campaigns would be if not podcasts, i haven’t listened to some of the older ones so i’m sorry they’re not on here :(( if you have any ideas feel free to add them btw :DD

RIPTIDE!!!!! - really long animated series

not an anime though, no matter how much grizzly wants it, it would be an animation style where the characters could have very clearly different nose, face and body shapes, really pushing my riptide nose agenda here sorry, each episode would be like 20-40 minutes long and instead of coming out in seasons there would be massive gaps in between episodes, from 2-6 months long, to leave time for writers and animators to get stuff done (massive team of animators btw, i feel like it would be pretty successful)

PRIME DEFENDERS!! - comics

literally nothing else they could be, just really well made, well performing comics (i’ve already talked about this before you can stalk my talk tag if you really want to find it lmao), the comic company making them would be keeping well away from movies n shit btw

APOTHEOSIS!!! - i wasn’t really sure about this one to be honest

i had to ask my friend and she said anime which i don’t agree with but i can see it, i think maybe a short book series where each book is 150 - 300 pages and is about a different god they have to kill/a different episode, i think that works but if anyone has any better ideas please tell me :D!!

BLOOD IN THE BAYOU!!! - i hate to say it, i really do…

bitb would be a really long really good 80s horror book with strong homoerotic undertones, a satisfied fanbase and lots of active members in the community making fan comics, films, writing, theories and art ect… until well after the book came out……….. and then it would be made into the most egregious and awful live action movie you have ever seen, the most awful casting (like chris pratt as officer dudes….. throws up) and even worse sfx, oh yeah and the characters would be ruined and the story would become so butchered it wouldn’t make sense, they would do some shit like cut out becky so kian just kisses some random lady (removing both a really good and well written character and a layer of kian’s character that i think is super important) and make rolan really be an evil bug spy the whole time so rand has to kill him to save the town also add in a whole new sub plot that never existed like the rand family is secretly a long line of bug alien hunters or something fucking stupid like that and the entire fanbase would murder whoever thought re-writing the story was a good idea (ahaha can you tell ive been through something like this before ahahaha, character morals and motives being removed and whatnot ahahahhahahaha.)

anyways………

THE SUCKENING!!! - live action series

it would be well made though, unlike the bitb movie it would be its own original thing, have great makeup and effects also be well casted and well shot, well written, ect ect, it would bloody and gory and not suitable for people who can’t handle showing bones and organs all over everywhere, lots of shitty rip off merch would be made though and the fandom would be 99% gay little freaks (normal suckening enjoyers) and 1% homophobic straight white men who get mad whenever they see soda and emizel having gay sex on screen or whatever fag shit that biting thing was

again feel free to add your thoughts and ideas and shit in the reblogs it would be nice to read them :DD!!

#red rambles relentlessly #jrwi show #jrwi pd #the suckening #jrwi riptide #jrwi apotheosis #jrwi bitb #jrwi spoilers #jrwi the suckening #jrwi prime defenders #bitb spoilers #suckening spoilers #i think i wrote some shit that could be considered spoilers in those two sections #definitely the bitb one #which i definitely didn’t base around a certain netflix adaptation of one of my old favourite books cough cough #I HATE THAT FILM SO MUCH WHY DID YOU DO THAT TO SOPHIES CHARACTER SHE IS SUPPOSED TO BE A BITCH STOP TRYING TO MAKE HER NICE #anyways like maybe one person who sees this post will know what that’s referencing #and i will admit the books weren’t perfect but at least the characterisation made sense

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a-faggot-with-opinions · 9 months

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Responding To The "Aromantic Manifesto"

So I found this aromantic manifesto earlier today and I have many thoughts and opinions about it. Mainly that it's really bad, and it is homophobic. It uses a lot of big words and complicated language to sound smart, but it's not actually conveying good ideas. I'm going to respond to it piece by piece. By the way, I am aromantic, but I am also gay, so that's the perspective I'm looking at this through.

The main points of this manifesto, as outlined in the beginning, are:

"Romance is inherently queerphobic."

"The organisation of queerness around the celebration and pursuit of romantic desires and pleasures reinforces queer oppression."

"Queer liberation must abolish romance as its long-term goal."

Point 1 is bad because the activism for lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights has LITERALLY been all about being able to love whoever we want to. We didn't fight for centuries to legalize gay marriage to have someone say that us loving someone else is inherently queerphobic. Implying that gay love is somehow oppressing someone else makes you the queerphobic one.

Point 2 is wrong because we've been fighting for our rights for literal centuries, and we've already decided that trying to repress our sexualities for any reason, is actually bad and contributing to our own oppression. The only way to make real progress in solving queer oppression is by expressing ourselves loudly. It's okay to dislike amatonormativity. I dislike amatonormativity. But that doesn't give you an excuse to be homophobic.

Point 3 is even more incorrect. That's because a movement that is fighting for people historically marginalized based on who we love isn't going to have abolishing romantic love as a goal. It's okay to be aromantic and not want romance. The problem comes in when you try to force everyone else to repress their romantic desires because you simply don't like it. That's bad.

The next part is extremely insulting to me as a trans person. They compare gay men wanting to date other men and not wanting to date women to gay men wanting to date trans men. Newsflash, assholes: trans men are men!

If straight people can’t help who they love, then neither can gay people. Nor, one might suppose, racists and transphobes, and people who find disability and fatness unattractive.

This is an obvious homophobic argument. They're implying by this that gay men not wanting to date women is the same as gay men not wanting to date trans men, implying that men who don't love women are misogynistic. It's transphobic to compare the experience of being gay to transphobia. Tell me you've never spoken to a trans person in your life without telling me.

Queer oppression is not just the experience of prohibited desire. It is also the experience of hierarchical and violent desire. It is also the experience of undesirability.

What the fuck are they even saying right here? Queer oppression is literally about the experience of prohibited desire and the lack of experience of expected desire. I can maybe understand where undesirability comes into play, since especially as a trans person I get cis people trying to equate my sexual attractiveness with my worth as a human being, but experiencing hierarchical and violent desire?

This reads as someone saying that queer romance is inherently evil and we're oppressing ourselves and we're totally at fault for our own oppression. QUEER ROMANCE AND SEXUALITY ARE NOT INHERENTLY EVIL AND SAYING THAT THEY ARE IS HOMOPHOBIC, IT'S 2023. Why is this even a hot take?

The next section talks about the "privatisation of love," which is a model for why they think that queer activism has been missing the entire point. Let's see what this author has to say about that.

While the domestic sphere fashioned by heterosexual kinship relations has been historically designated as private life, queer intimacies have instead been regarded as a matter of public concern due to moral panics associating them with predation and perversion throughout history.

This is a very sloppy, incomplete reading of the way that homophobia works. I'm not going to get into my theory of how homophobia works in this post, but anyone who's actually experienced homophobia in their lives will tell you that this ain't it. For one example of how that's incomplete, in recent years queer people have been encouraged by society and especially the right to hide our queerness and abandon our culture in favor of mainstream society. This isn't trying to make us a matter of public concern, it's trying to make us disappear. This isn't how oppression works.

This next section focuses on how romantic love is allegedly used as a hierarchy.

People who regarded as romantically attractive are invariably upward-mobile, white-proximate, gender-appropriate, able-bodied, slender/muscular etc.

Maybe. Just maybe. That is just a reflection of how society views people who aren't white, aren't gender conforming, are disabled, and are fat. Racism, transphobia, ableism, and fatphobia weren't invented by romance. The way that romance in our society works simply reflects those things that already existed. "I just find them unattractive" has been an excuse to discriminate against people for ages. That isn't because romance is inherently THE hierarchy, but instead it's because it's used as an excuse.

Often, calling romantic partners “compatible” just means their placements on the romantic hierarchy are relatively equal in privilege. Calling romantically unattractive people “compatible” with each other, on the other hand, easily sounds condescending.

I don't have much to say about this. This is simply not how romance works. While compatibility is not a great concept and I have critiqued it before, this ain't it.

Queer romantic ideals remain incredibly heteronormative, only celebrating the most privileged and “compatible” of queers and condemning more marginalized queer people all the same.

This quote is really interesting because it's pointing out a very real issue with society (the fact that society encourages assimilated queers) and tries to blame queer activists for it. No, we do not want to assimilate. Society wants us to assimilate, and some of us try to do so. However talking to most queer activists will reveal that we don't want to assimilate. We want to be treated with basic respect.

Queer romance does not resist heteronormativity as much as it assimilates queer desire, making us hold on tightly to whichever relative privileges we have and hate ourselves for whichever we don’t.

Hello? This is projection. This is exactly what the person writing this manifesto has been doing the whole fucking time.

By peddling the illusion that romance can be made queer, heteronormative capitalism forces queer people to try solve their problems of undesirability and unhappiness privately by finding the “right” partner, rather than directing their anger towards public action.

Gay people in the past got into romantic relationships that often got us killed. Did we do that because of heteronormative capitalism trying to force us to find someone? No. What the actual fuck are these people even talking about.

We propose aromanticism as a counterpublic that responds to queerphobic violence by mobilising public resistance instead of escaping inwards. Aromanticism is a principled commitment to finding radically nonviolent ways of relating to others.

There's so much to unpack in this quote. Firstly, the author believes that aromanticism is a choice. It is not. I was born aromantic and even if I choose to get into a relationship that does not make me any less aro. This is also implying that (gay) romance is inherently violent, which is Homophobia 101.

If you already have a romantic partner, we are not asking you to “leave” them, but to aspire to love them in a different, queerer way.

There's no such thing as more or less queer. If you're queer, and you love someone, congratulations, that's queer love. It doesn't become more queer if you call it something other than romance.

I'm not going to go over the last part, but this last quote is some icing on the cake of homophobia we've just eaten.

Just be aware that similar hierarchies of desirability exist in sex as in romance.

It shouldn't be a hot take in the year 2023 that claiming that all sex is bad is a very culturally Christian thing to do, as well as being very traditionally homophobic. Sex negativity is weaponized against queer people far more often that it is against cishets.

To conclude, I'm just going to say that this manifesto takes real frustrations that even I have with amatonormativity, and turns them into denial that romance exists, and blatant homophobia. It's also very hard to understand, so if I misinterpreted something, please do let me know. While I do think that aphobia is bad, being homophobic isn't a solution and is just going to cause us to be hated even more, as well as alienating gay aros.

#star speaks #aromantic #aromantic manifesto #long post

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angelthemanspanker · 2 months

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my most tinfoil hat AtS opinion is that legit straight up canon spangel was like RIGHT beneath the surface of season 5, like the show was ready to pivot in the direction of them being at least friends with benefits at a moment's notice despite fate and the censors' best efforts

Season 1 had shit like Angel's first power walk shot set against a pride flag and him awkwardly telling guys he wasn't hitting on them, going for a kinda Adam West Batman kinda gay thing where people assume that about him bc it's the early 2000s and his clothes fit VS Season 5 in the premiere alone giving us Angel correcting a guy who calls him a "little fairy" with "I'm not little" and the legendary, blog-inspiring "I have no problem spanking men" (one of which he says to a guy he's about to kill and one to a guy he knocked out, almost like Angel lets gayer behaviour slip if he's around people who can't bring it up later hm) followed by the only man we KNOW Angel has fucked literally appearing from thin air in his office

then you get Life of the Party where Angel's Whacky Magic Antics are set off by Lorne telling Angel and the person he's having sexually tense arguments with to get a room, causing him to have ill-advised hate sex he ordinarily would not have with someone he is reluctantly attracted to. and I believe in my BONES that at SOME POINT in the scripting process that that person was gonna be Spike. Even setting aside my admittedly subjective opinion that Angel and Eve had even less sexual chemistry than Xander and Willow, it just... scans. Angel and Spike have their "I need to get our faces within an inch of each other or I'll die" arguments in front of EVERYBODY in literally every episode of the season, so I feel like if Lorne was gonna say it about ANYONE it'd be about them. I will never budge from my belief that Spike still being a ghost at this point and early 2000s tv politics caused them to abandon the Angel And Spike Magically Fuck At The Party plot early in the writing process for the episode and slot Eve in there instead while Spike gets the easy-to-write-into-existing-scenes positivity thing.

and THEN. AND THEN. it becomes a plot point that the show Angel's friends are suddenly really on board with him getting back out there dating-wise (the unperson-ing of Cordelia helps here. whee.), with us all suddenly being in agreement that there is little to no danger of his curse being triggered by sex (even though both times he's lost the soul since his curse, real or imagined sex played a significant role in the moment of happiness). Like, Nina is one of the more one-dimensional characters in the Buffyverse and her midness seems to be for the purpose of setting the audience at ease that Angel's soul ain't going anywhere from hooking up with her.

WESLEY is all for it! Wesley "Most Paranoid and Prepared For The Return of Angelus" Wyndam-Pryce is saying look man we're all rooting for you go have a relationship with a girl whose only flaw that I can come up with is that she's a werewolf. Like sir??? How can you be sure the Beautiful Engaging Young Woman Who Actually Wants You won't accidentally make Angel happy with her extremely inoffensive flavour of Nice?

Whereas if, say, there was a beautiful, engaging blonde who actually wants Angel and Angel wants but comes with the caveat that THIS beautiful blonde not only drives Angel up the fucking wall but recently had magical sex with Angel at the office party in front of the whole main cast, proving that as much as Angel gets off on screwing Spike that he is Not happy about it? I can see Wes giving the all clear on that one ngl

bonus points that Angel and Nina got the Official Couple upgrade in Smile Time which comes right before the Illyria tragedy forces Angel and Spike into the... maybe not friendly but LESS hostile dynamic they keep for the rest of the show, so the season structure of their relationship still follows a lot of the same beats. honestly besides getting a lot more moments of David Boreanaz and James Marsters trying to out-six-pack each other in their post-coital shirtless scenes the only thing you'd need to do is change the world-shattering "Me and Angel have never been intimate. Well except that one..." to something along the lines of "Me and Angel have never been intimate, I just shag the bastard"

#benny russell voice its REAL.#angel #spike #angel the series #spangel

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