#i guess I'm queer after all!

[mechanicool]

Sometimes I think I'm not really bisexual, but then I find myself daydreaming about Jon the shop technician's forearms, surrounded by a shower of sparks from the angle grinder he's using to remove a stuck pipe fitting for me.

#i guess I'm queer after all! #its a beautiful thing #forearms #bi guy problems

[hillbillyoracle]

I'm so tired of coming across the same bullshit I grew up hearing to justify homophobia, especially in fundamentalist churches -

"I'm just so tired of hearing about it. Like fine they are that but why do they gotta jam it down my throat all the time?"

"I just don't think it's safe to normalize it. They pass around STDs that can kill people. It's innately riskier."

"It's bad for society. It's fucked up they can't just commit like the rest of us. It's anti-family and bad for kids."

-being hurled at polyamorous and nonmonogamous people, often on content that is for polyam/ENM folks and explicitly not for monoam folks.

And then when called on it people will go "It's nothing like that" "but the CDC says!" - like I didn't spend a good portion of my life watching the CDC reverse a lot of it's guidance on queer folks (anyone else get labeled high risk for merely disclosing they're bi? super common in my circle of friends, fucked with medical screenings for a while).

Look, regardless of how you feel, if you're doing the same damn thing as a group of people you really think are wrong - you gotta reflect. "It's different when I say it about this topic" ain't it.

#I see “mono folks are just tired of hearing about it” all the time #if mono folks are tired after a few years #imagine a lifetime of mono only conversations for polyam folks #guess we don't count #hmmm what's that reminiscent of #I've been polyam for the better part of 10 years #pretty quietly #but I'm getting more vocal #because I'm just tired of having to be in the closet about it #EVEN IN QUEER SPACES #who should know what that's like #polyamory #enm

[marypsue]

Ahh also as an addendum to my previous ask about the age swap (which I might’ve accidentally labeled as the body swap fic due to the foibles of being awake unexpectedly early ), I was curious what your criticisms are regarding Robin and Will’s treatments by the Duffers? I know you’ve alluded to being bothered by both but I’d be curious to hear more ( if you have the time/hankering!)

Hooboy. Okay. Buckle in. 

Obviously this is going to be a combination of actual literary analysis and Big Feelings That I Have, so like, please don’t take this as any kind of moral dictum on what to or not to watch, or how to or how not to interpret what you watch. Also, a lot of what makes me uneasy and unhappy about how canon deliberately handles queerness (as opposed to when it does queer things apparently by accident, which as you may have noticed, I have considerable amounts of fun with) has to do with behind-the-scenes context I’ve read about, so there’s a certain degree of Telephone involved. And I’m still only halfway through season four. There’s just so fucking much of it. 

With all that said. 

The behind-the-scenes context I’m most specifically concerned with are the season-one pitch bible(? I think that’s what it’s called) (which, it should be noted, ended up diverging in some quite significant ways from what ended up in the show) where the Duffers first raised the possibility that Will might be gay, and the anecdote that Joe Keery and Maya Hawke were the ones who decided Robin should be queer and had to really push for it and wrote and choreographed that scene in the bathroom. Put the two together, and it tells you that the Duffers planned that there would be One (potentially) Gay Character in their show. 

And that character was the one they spent an entire season directing violent, vicious, eventually outright murderous homophobic hatred at through the mouthpiece of a couple of bullies. You can say what you want about revenge narratives and those characters ultimately getting their comeuppance, but for Me Personally, it sucks all the fun and escapism out of season one to watch it thinking that those bullies only got punished when they aimed that vitriol at someone to whom it didn’t literally apply. Also I still have to sit through however many episodes of that vicious homophobia onscreen regardless, so, like, that’s a walk in the park anyway. /sarcasm 

And then there’s that whole bad business in season three, where it’s never been quite clear to me if we’re supposed to see Mike as having been in any way in the wrong. Kind of scuppers the argument, to me, that we’re supposed to be on Will’s side. And season four, which so far has had Will tagging along after people who are supposed to be his best friends but mostly don’t seem to give a single damn about him, doing absolutely nothing but looking morose and sullen and tragic and *coughcough* Artistic, and causing Problems for the nice straight couple. 

(Tangential to the point I’m coming to, but also, my son deserves better than to be reduced to a soggy cardboard standee with ‘GAY’ scrawled across it in magic marker the way season four seems to be angling toward. All the Byers, but especially the Byers boys, deserve better than season four seems interested in giving them. But I digress.) 

Also. I love Robin. If you follow me, you probably know that. I’m a hardcore, ride-or-die Robin girl. But. With Robin, from what I’ve heard of the context, the Duffers never intended for her to be queer. They wrote a girl who was smart and funny and sharp and talented and a little bit mean and a little bit insecure and a little bit weird but in an interesting, endearing way - as a love interest for Steve. 

And then, as soon as season four rolled around, once they’d been pushed into making her canonically, on-screen queer (in a beautiful, tender, heartfelt, true-feeling scene that they didn’t fucking write), suddenly she’s had a complete personality transplant. Suddenly, she’s an awkward, bumbling, annoying loser who’s only funny when she’s the butt of the joke, who’s no good at anything and who nobody really likes except maybe for Steve, an outcast even amongst the freaks. When she does do something smart or competent, everyone around her reacts with shock, like it’s wildly out of character instead of how her character was originally written. One of these versions of Robin was written with ‘gay person’ in mind, and it unfortunately wasn’t the one we were obviously supposed to like. 

In both cases, I get the feeling that the storytelling issues stem from this like...assumption that queerness equals isolation and misery and tragedy, and that there’s nothing to queerness outside of that. That there’s something inherent to queerness, something pitiable but repulsive, that causes the isolation and misery and tragedy (not that those things are imposed from outside, by, say, violent homophobia). That it would be absurd to imagine that queerness could ever be joyful, or playful, or that someone might ever, given the chance to choose, not choose to be straight instead. Or that there could be enormous friendship and community and heart and pride in queerness, or even that queer people might find friendship and community and strength in each other. Or even fucking talk to each other, ever. 

Which is especially infuriating, because the whole central theme of season one (besides surface appearances being deceiving) is that community and care between people who are very different but discover they have more in common than there is that separates them is what saves the day! That love comes in all kinds of forms, and they’re all important, and that love can be stronger than fear! 

But apparently, according to the Duffers, queer love doesn’t count and queer community doesn’t exist. It’s just isolation, misery, and tragedy, and I guess we the watchers are supposed to sit outside of it and pity Them for it (and be quietly, sneakily, a little bit nastily grateful that it’s not happening to Us). Because of course nobody watching the show is queer. Of course. This show is made for normal people. 

It’s part of the same attitude I’ve also seen play out with the Duffers’ inability to just let a white dude be bad. Oh, they want to talk a big game about how they’re on the side of the freaks, and bullies are bad, and everybody should be respected and appreciated for who they are. But when it cuts down to the bone, when applying that precept to a girl or a person of colour or a queer person makes a straight white guy come off as a monster, they keep trying to dodge it. 

The more antagonists they try desperately to rehab without ever acknowledging why they were antagonists in the first place, the more it starts to look like they simply don’t really believe that the people those antagonists hurt really matter. That, somewhere deep down where the assumptions that are so baked in you don’t even realise they’re assumptions live, they don’t really believe that girls, or Black kids, or queer people are as fundamentally human and deserving of respect and compassion as their beloved awful straight white men are. That what they really think about bullies is that bullies are bad because the bullies picked on them, instead of the kinds of people who deserved it.

(See also: that time a twelve- or thirteen-year-old Sadie Sink didn’t want to have to do a kiss in the Snow Ball scene, so the Duffers, who had just been joking about having her do it, actually made her do it. For multiple takes. Specifically because she didn’t want to. And then later related that anecdote to the press. Because they thought it was funny.)

Anyway. Personally, I’d prefer canon just never say anything definitive on the matter of Will’s sexuality and stop trying to push the narrative in that direction, so I don’t have to watch the Duffers spectacularly fumble yet another attempt at Writing About Marginalised Groups. 

(Also, this is absolutely not me saying Watch A Different Show - I’m here writing fanfic for this stupid show, it’d be pretty fucking rich of me to try to tell people to stop watching it. But I’d really love for many of its fans to get some more exposure to less-mainstream, more deliberately queer literature and film, so y’all can see what it really feels like to be seen and acknowledged and loved by a story, on purpose. I get it! I do! I too have wanted very badly to feel like something I loved, loved me back. 

But you don’t have to content yourselves with scraps. And you definitely don’t have to be so concerned with those scraps that you blame your friends, cousins, siblings, brothers in arms for ‘stealing’ some kind of ‘representation’ from you by asking to be seen and acknowledged and loved as well. The bastards who’ve been withholding that recognition from all of us would love nothing more than to watch with amusement, gorging themselves on a banquet, while we tear each other apart over a couple of discarded bones. Don’t give them the satisfaction. We don’t have to be isolated, pitiable, pathetic, miserable tragedies. Put the hollow promises of exclusionism and respectability down. There is queer art and literature and film and community and joy and love in abundance that you don’t have to beg anyone for, and you are invited to participate. This is me inviting you to participate. 

And cordially inviting the Duffers to meet me in the woods behind the 7-Eleven.)

...

tl;dr the way the Duffers treat queerness when they do it on purpose feels like a combination of othering, contempt, and misery porn, and I hate it. And that, in a nutshell, is the rant I’ve been sitting on for the last two-and-a-bit years. I’m getting down off the cafeteria table now. 

#chatter #stranger things #i have been first uneasy and then very fucking angry about all of this for Quite A While Now #but robin's personality transplant broke open the fucking dam #it's worse because they did such! a good job! with seasons one and two! #obviously Not Perfect but also painfully obviously Better Than This #and then I guess they'd made enough money for netflix that they stopped having creative reins and restrictions placed on them #and it all went to shit #just total anne rice/stephen king editor syndrome #anyway I won't be following anything they do after this bc i'm pretty sure I like the show in spite of its creators instead of because of th #*them #they also aren't applying season one's theme of appearances being deceiving when it comes to queer people! #they keep saying every shitty shallow queer stereotype is true! #(the tragic gay martyr #slash the obsessive possessive friend-borderline-stalker) #(the unfuckable lesbian) #(the predatory gay villain - I didn't talk about closeting and s2 Billy Hargrove bc hoo boy that's a can of worms #but I do think they took that angle with him on purpose #especially since his 'redemption arc' goes hand in hand with suddenly switching his focus from steve to karen #and he stands to gain nothing by manipulating karen in s3 so it's pretty obviously a cheap dodge #so the duffers can go 'what? no he wasn't sneeringly derogatory toward teenage girls bc he was so deep in the closet he could see narnia' #'nooooooooo he just...only likes ~mature women~' #which. yes boys jennifer coolidge was hot in american pie but please grow up.) #anyway yes that loss of sight of that central theme is exactly how we got the russians in season three #and we all know how much that fucking sucked #i do hope having the word 'fuck' in the tags still hides a post from search

[shirogane-oushirou]

thank you, tv room, for giving me a brain blast and helping me FINALLY decide between some different ren origin options after mulling over them for months :) he may have come fully formed in my brain personality-wise, but i'm still working on details.

still waiting on that voice claim brain blast tho KJANSFKJN

#literally been listening to two tv room tracks for MONTHS... and when i finally looked up the full albums last night #it was like a neon sign pointing me to something obvious that i hadn't thought to look up ;; #currently: mom's french canadian > immigrates to maine after meeting his dad there > ren's born > he moves south for college / to escape #and i'm gonna hide this in the tags bc despite it all i'm still nervous KJANSDFKJN but #after all this time i'm wondering if i'm building up the voice thing when it isn't like... i'm-gonna-be-crucified bad? #he is absolutely peak white liberal + everything but his most recent stuff is Genuinely Bad... maybe this will give it away #but i only knew about him from vine and from other white liberals talking up his most recent n/etflix special when it released... #so seeing the other stuff while looking for ren-isms Took Me Out. but he's clearly... grown? i guess?? still irony poisoned #and cynical and annoying as shit but... yknow... more harmful comedians are given bigger platforms etc etc. #if that's enough to give shit away and you know anyone who has a similar voice and isn't. yknow. him? i'm Begging and Pleading. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 #evil brain blast cursed me and i've been working to break the curse ever since... so any and all recs are VERY much appreciated ;;; #currently searching through queer comedians to see if i can find anyone w the same tone but not having as much luck as i thought i would. #SEND TWEET KJSANDFKJn been sitting on this for a couple of hours. Debating. it's gonna happen eventually tho so it might as well be now. #📌 [ my posts. ] #🍄 [ lying on the blade of an emotion. ] #🦦 [ can't escape it. ] #✨ [ oc lore. ] #✏️ [ my scenarios. ] #🐸 [ look ahead. ] #🧃 [ who is in control. ]

[woodlandthorns]

.

#need to get my thoughts on the ofmd finale out bc i've been lying depressed about it in bed all day #the start of the season was fantastic #the last 2 episodes felt super rushed #i feel kind of betrayed #this isn't the rom-com where no one important dies and everything turns out okay in the end anymore #i guess i shoudn't have gotten attached to izzy at all #they really gave him all that character development and found family and #he was starting to open up to them and he protected them from bb and the crew cared about him and #i'm full on sobbing now again #all that for him to just get randomly shot and die?????? #and the crew just stood there and looked at him ??? and they had a wedding right after like nothing happened?????? #this was my comfort show and i guess i'm just struggling to process the loss of that #if there's a season 3 buttons better fucking resurrect him cause magic is real apparently #i can't imagine ofmd without con #he's so loved by the fandom and he loves the fandom back #but at this point i'm terrified of there even being a s3 bc i can't trust them with the lives of ed and stede anymore either #i want my silly little queer pirate show back #tldr. ep 6 is where the season ended the last 2 episodes didn't happen

[shadowdianne]

Its all about adulting. I mutter while I send emails and applications and I need to feign I answer to she/her pronouns BC, yknow, things.

#dont mind me #its pride day or whatever and its a funny thing to be sent messages by coworkers that whilst not having a “problem” with you being queer #or rather not have a problem with understanding you as a woman and having a woman partner #would def have a problem if i came with the “use they/then for me” full cards #and i guess ive been feeling morose about it bc reality and disphoria after a mastectomy is..a thing and one that i thought i was prepared #for but hahaha #and today IS a happy day #i did an amazing thing that IS about my future and the future of the person i love #and yet there's always the little nagging voice at the end there #meh #don't mind me #complicated feelings have complicated answers and I'm not in the mood to look too deep into them right now #suffice is to say that at least we finally got all documents soooo maybe we will be able to sign as legally married soon-ish

[arsonist-chicken]

Off to bed I go at 07:47 am, expecting a friend over at 11 for the whole day, but goddamn I FINISHED THE STUPID PAPER that I still don't know what it's about. If I don't get a passing grade, I'm starting a riot

#well and the other paper i need to do today i guess while my friend's here and into the night so it can go to the post office tomorrow #morning but well #next summer after i graduate i'm gonna look for a job that only starts in autumn and i'm gonna take as much as i can of july and all of #august off and just do nothing for a week and then lose it in my childhood bedroom and travel around to visit friends #and go somewhere just on my own to do nothing and whatever i want. read by the sea. go to a queer café somewhere. idk. sightseeing. kiss a #stranger. idk what i'm saying but my point #is i'm gonna do whatever i want on vacation alone and put my phone into flight mode #i cannot WAIT for that time #also i have like 4 days this summer to visit a friend and i'm not taking any uni stuff with me except my phone to organise erasmus stuff #and if uni wants something in that time i'll just cry by the berlin zoo raccoons or the red pandas i was promised #ooh next summer i should go somewhere and pet a raccoon where no one can stop me. i have a tetanus shot it's fine #okay bye good night #mine

[queeriboh]

also I'm gonna be real and honest here. I used discord for about 3 years before I was able to give my username out to friends without having to stop and go open the app, remember where the account button was, and check to make sure I really remembered my randomly assigned number correctly so

#I'm probably going to try and get my username by itaelf w/o number first #and then default to username(number I'm used to) if not #but like #my babk account routing number has been the same since I opened it 10 years ago #and I still google to makensure its right EVERY SINGLE TIME #so #I guess I don't mind being able to take a step off my usual OCD #and like #if youre going to have a 4 digit number after your name now #you can choose those 4 numbers ?? #even if you use the ones you had before or randomly generate new ones #just like #it sucks a little but meanwhile some states are literally restricting our rights to exist as queer humans #and I am very tired #and already so angry all the time #i cannot spare Outrage for something like that rn

[posthumus]

ok wait nvm i've reflected (stalked my mutuals' tags) and yeah i do think it's dumb that laenor has a whole "im not the step dad, im the dad who stepped up" speech 0.2 seconds before getting launched into character purgatory

#i've been hesitant to talk about laenor much because i worry i'm missing the forest (interesting subtextual queerness) for a tree #(the only 'canonical' queer character) #but i have a lot of thoughts about how he was handled—suffice to say not well #he seemed so interesting in the first couple of episodes! #but then after the time jump they really stopped taking him seriously it was so bizarre: just total unwillingness to see things from his pov #that's not even really it though; they rendered him ridiculous #so i guess as an immediate twist (because i read it as laenor and qarl being in on it together) i liked that claiming of agency #but it kinda brings up that question of what even is fictional death. #laenor had to be dealt death blows #if we were going to do bury your gays discourse around this show #(let's not and say we did) #i dont think the difference between being killed and being written off the show is all that significant #idk whatever! i do wish the show went in a little more on fleshing out the non-central players #but what they've done with viserys and criston cole and larys and ESPECIALLY alicent is so good im inclined to be generous #hotd #hotd spoilers #my posts

[canwriteitbetterthanueverfeltit]

i was really, really pushing for breaking 50k in the next 2 days and I CAN do it, hypothetically, if I just write the same amount of words I've been writing, but I am having such a bad mental health moment for whatever reason I really don't think I can push myself that far tonight

#i guess like 2.5k is my goal? #i'm at just under 500 right now #and it's.... a struggle #but also i do know that after i get past this awful scene i'll be into banter which #if my head is working at all #should be sort of fun and easy to chip away at my word count with #but i just also feel really like??? lonely?????? this nano? #neither of my best friends have asked me anything which like theyre never super involved but never THIS uninterested #and i dont have my writing group #including the ONE person i still know irl who does nano who ALSO writes queer stories btw #and is usually great about sharing and hyping me up and letting me hype them up #and they've gone mia??? like i tried to text them in the beginning of the month and never heard back #idk nano is always a one on one but usually it's like a nice isolation with your characters thing #and this is AWFUL #i dont even know why unless it's just part of this horrible horrible year #personal #nano22

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

Pt III good omens but i STILL SOMEHOW haven't watched it (and i'm increasingly passive aggressive)

i'm now basically held hostage adopted as mascot by this fandom. it's fine i'm fine *SIGNALS FOR HELP DESPERATELY*

Alright fuckers I swear this time I'm going to get some shit right. Without further ado, here's my third attempt at a good omens summary:

Everything everywhere is queer all at once

Angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley on earth likey each other

The car is a bentley and it is BLACK not silver and everyone is very upset about this. my bad yall it was reflecting light therefore i guessed more silver than black but I'm not Anish Kapoor take your black.

Then it is yellow, and aziraphale likes it. crowley preferred the black because he's a flamboyant emo.

God is a deadbeat absentee parent and you are all children of divorce.

There's a naked archangel and they cause problems for the husbands somehow. By being naked? By being an archangel? By being at their doorstep? Who knows not me

They were actually married for 6000 years, they just are the last to know about it.

Crowley is on fire. Like, he's slaying for sure, but also he is literally on fire, like Aziraphale's bookstore.

The actors like I said before are Michael Sheen and David Tennant but this is the place where I finally admit that I don't actually know who is whom. I'm going to assume Michael is Aziraphale because Michael sounds angel-y and David is Crowley because uh Michaelangelo made David and was gay for him.

Terry Pratchett is not fictional.

He co-wrote the book with @neil-gaiman, who IS fictional, because he does not have social media. Several of you have assured me that he is in fact a fandom inside joke. I like to think he would be proud of me.

They adopt a preteen and Crowley gives him bad advice.

At some point a baby was delivered to someone and was exchanged for the son of Satan. Idk if the baby is the preteen, or the son of satan is the preteen, or neither. This could be a fanfic, I have no way of differentiating the fanfic from canon on tumblr, except that the canon is weirder.

Crowley does not go down a chute. He goes down a telephone cord after making himself microscopic to pole dance on a pin with shroom-induced backgrounds.

During this his stage name is Disco Tony. Get it king go slay you're making better life choices than I am tbh.

Aziraphale is a biblically accurate angel, and you have all gone to extensive lengths to prove this to me. I understood nothing, but there you go.

It's all very queer, just like the fandom.

Crowley is a retired demon but he still sins by breaking the speed limit.

They eat at fancy restaurants and bicker but like in a sexual undercurrent way.

Crowley gives Aziraphale a private dance that is not a lap dance, it is an apology dance, but not in a kinky way, until it is.

Their haircuts keep changing and range from 'this is acceptable and gay' to 'i let a drunk chimpanzee take gardening shears and a blowtorch to my hair'

It's all ineffably queer my good fellows

Everyone keeps trying to convince me Neil Gaiman is the villain yeah no guys I know it's really you. Y'all be like 'SEASON TWO BROKE ME' and then you're making headcanons to make it sadder yeah I see you mmhm.

There is a final fifteen. It is sad. What is it? No one told me.

The demon turns goats into crows and the angel turns them back and then children are turned into newts (does the angel turn them back? who cares not yall) and the demon was the snake in the Eden garden and everyone's furry game seems to be on point.

There are a rather lot of children. I have not seen them. But I am assured they are there. They are, guys. I assume they were turned into the alcohol Aziraphale and Crowley drink or something.

There was an apocalypse plotline. It was averted. It is not important. You don't talk about plotlines in this fandom, no sir.

Crowley doesn't want to go to heaven. Aziraphale is sad.

The kiss is not nice, just like this fandom. It is queer, just like this fandom. It is sad and desperate and masochistic, just like this fandom.

Aziraphale doesn't want to stay back with Crowley. Crowley is sad.

Season 2 ends. Fandom is sad.

Everyone's sanity is hinging on the promise of a happy ending in season 3. Good luck guys.

Y'all better appreciate this. I can't even boast to my mother about this legacy of mine, hey mum your son has been held hostage kidnapped inducted into a cult adopted by a fandom he's not part of look he's winning at life.

#good omens #good omens fandom #ineffably queer #good omens summary #good ineffable omens #aziraphale #crowley #azirafell #aziracrow #azirowley #aziraphel #just tumblr things #masochistic fandom #we could have been us #tell me you said no #angel #demon #unforgivable #wall slam #6000 years of pining #queer #lgbtqia #accurately summarised good omens #reblog at your peril to ruin someone else's life #deadbeat parent #absentee parent #aka god #lot of gay eye contact #ineffable husbands #god's plan doesnt exist??

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

It's me. I'm the cis, heterosexual, aromantic man. I will never marry, I will never be married, I will grow into middle age and elder age and I will die unmarried. I will be forced to support a household of myself on only my wages alone for the rest of my life. I will be asked about women and marriage and children by my family for the rest of my life (or men, the progressive ones might say). I may not ever come out to them. I feel like I burned my coming out on something stupid. I don't want to explain it. I don't want to run them through the definitions and intricacies. I don't want the acceptance without understanding, placating me with ceased questions and poor explanations to other, drunk adults.

I like my hair to be long, I spent a year with it dyed a golden blonde with dark roots because I like the trashy party girl aesthetic. I want to dye it again with pink tips. I like painting my nails, black and blue are my favorite colors. I like wearing chokers. I also like wearing baggy jeans and ratty hoodies. I like having stubble. I like having chest hair. I like having a square jaw and broad shoulders. I wish I had a flatter stomach and a thinner profile frame. I don't know what this makes me, perhaps this is something no more GNC than Machine Gun Kelly. I think about this a lot, how queer my appearance truly is. I should think about it less. I have thought long and hard about if I could be trans or if I could be non-binary or if I could be genderqueer and the conclusion I ultimately came to is that I most enjoy being a man open to whatever self-expression I want.

I don't date, but I've thought about it. I would like to meet people, and I would like to have sex with them. But I don't want to hurt them. I fear if I explain what I am beforehand it'll scare them away. I fear if I explain after they'll feel manipulated or abused. I don't know how many people in the dating scene want what I want. I fear my own lack of experience will make me a bad lay, an embarrassing story to tell to confidants in hindsight. I fear my own virginity, a boundary to those I wish to be like. All of these fears are baseless, as I've not been able to even begin a single relationship in my life. Despite this I still heavily identify with terms like "slut" and "manwhore" and "thot" because my interests lay so deeply within casual sex, sex without great intimacy or emotion. This may be some form of stolen valor. I hope the true sluts are not too mad at me.

I made this blog several years ago because a mutual of mine reblogged memes making fun of aro and ace people, making fun of the concept of aphobia, and in addition well known aphobes. I didn't feel comfortable talking about aro stuff on my main blog, for as little as I talk about it. Living through the ace discourse of the 2016 era has largely caused me to cringe in embarrassment any time I am forced to discuss my orientation with people who aren't aro or ace themselves. I no longer follow this person. I unfollowed many people I was mutuals with from that time, most of them because they posted too often about how much they hated men and I didn't want to see that, some because our interests simply drifted too far apart, only one for explicit aphobia reasons. (Also one because they became a "both sides are bad, any vote is wasted" libertarian, but that's unrelated.)

I guess at this point I don't care deeply about what strangers on the internet think of me. If a trusted friend told me that they don't think I'm truly queer that may hurt. But I am going to continue to use the word for myself. I take up no resources. I go to events that are open to me. If an event was not open to me, I think I'd not want to go anyways. I am not a hypothetical, I am not a strawman, I am a person with lived experiences both within and exterior to the queer community. If you hate me, I will permit you to continue to do so. But ultimately, I am who I am, I cannot change these facts, and I would not choose to do so even if I could.

#aromantic #aro #aro positivity #reference to aphobia

[thepussyprophet]

Him: A fit-ish Bear, Tshirt and cargo shorts, leg sleeve and various ink across his arms, high and tight with a fade and a full, beautifully trimmed beard.

Me: Hey, Sexuality, could you SIT TF DOWN PLS?!

#gay #gaaaaaaaaaaaay #i guess I'm still down for the cis-gays after all? #queer #nonbinary #trans masc

[bodhrancomedy]

Guess who's on TV!

(Well, iPlayer until the 15th, that's when it airs on BBC One)

Hope Street episode 3.11, let's go!

First of all, I'd say they did me dirty with this picture, but my university ID was exponentially worse.

Onto the spoilers!

Our boy Matthew has arrived in Port Devine, looking a little concerned.

For good reason when he's suddenly confronted by this lad, Dara.

Ah, a fight which Matthew escapes by slipping out of his coat. (Pretty sure this is the take where we ripped it practically in two...)

Dara's questioned, he claims he's never met Matthew in his life. Hmm.

Police do some investigating (and some character stuff) before Dara makes his way to Matthew's mother (Louise)'s house to have a wee showdown.

They both in a gang and Matthew's stolen a gun. Dara needs to get it back...

Matthew's nay having it. "This is my way out. If they want the gun back, they have to let me go."

Another fight. The gun goes off! (Poor Pete and I were convinced after take one to put some padding on. My arm looks bulky because I'm strapped up with squishy stuff and allergic to plasters so it has to be in a sock)

Thank fuck no one was hurt. Dara gets the hell out of dodge -

Leaving Matthew to contemplate his mortality. And other people's, but mostly his own.

"Oh fuck, my bosses are gonna find me and murder me, oh shit. I'm far too young and pretty to die!"

Time for Matthew and Louise to follow Dara's example and get the fuck out of here.

The police are now on the Halbridges' trail, but they discover the phone tracking them and leave it in a field.

Meanwhile, Dara's been arrested for drug dealing. He refuses to talk, clearly nervous.

Ah, what's this on Dara's phone? So Matthew and Dara have been in a relationship for over a year now.

(The poor intimacy coordinator having to walk me through my just about second kiss in my entire life. And the third. And the fourth. And the fifth... Pete is a very sweet person. Made it all funny.) ("Relax your hand, Bodh. Just relax it. Open - open your fingers, just let me position your hand.")

They're both working for the same gang. Matthew was given the gun to hold onto by their bosses' and freaked out, running away with the weapon. His plan was to trade his freedom for the gun, but Dara was sent to get it back for the Brazier Brothers, notorious drug runners and gang leaders.

These guys.

Unfortunately, now Dara's had to tell the Brazier Brothers that Matthew is refusing. They're going to kill Matthew and then Dara. Oh no.

But Dara has an idea where they might be hiding.

At the caravan there's a standoff between the police and Halbridges. But when the Braizer Brothers are arrested, they're convinced to come out.

(Side note, my favourite picture of me, ever.)

Oh no, the Halbridges are going to jail and Matthew's regretting his life choices.

Matthew walked off to his new life inside a jail cell.

The end.

(This is where Niall Wright accidently sublexed my shoulder. To be fair to the man, I'd never mentioned it and he took his finger sliding in-between bone like a champ)

Look, it's me!! I was on TV! Bit sad they cut pretty much all the uses of SSE (weren't allowed BSL because we still had to speak the lines), but I got to be queer and Deaf so that's pretty nice.

#deaf #queer #funny #actor #hope street #hope street bbc #long post #spoilers

[crazy-pages]

I'm going to throw my two cents in to the conversation about why James Somerton didn't get caught earlier. Part of the answer is of course that he did get caught, he just bullied and lied to get away with it for a while, but I know a lot of people still express confusion. And of course he went out of his way to make sure his audience didn't know about other queer history sources other than himself. But still. How could he have so many viewers of his videos and none of them had seen X source material?

Well. To be blunt, most of his videos were pretty basic. He tended to copy the highlights of what he was plagiarizing, not the really advanced stuff. And insofar as he copied the advanced stuff, he had a tendency to chop it up and serve it out of context alongside other plagiarized work. The material he was presenting was revolutionary to an audience unfamiliar with queer history, but like. I'm guessing 'Disney villains are queer coded' is not exactly a new concept to the kind of people who read multiple books about queer coding in film.

Now I'm not a film studies person, I'm a physicist. But you know what I do when I get a video in my YouTube recommendations about some fairly basic physics concept?

I skip it. No shade to the creator, but like. I hit that topic a decade ago and I've added literally thousands of hours of studying and research to my brain since. I'm just going to give it a pass, all right?

These kinds of videos self-select for an audience which isn't going to be familiar with the source material. The people who know it are unlikely to keep listening after the first minute or so.

And you've got to remember how much of this content the experts have consumed! With very few exceptions for weird little things that stuck in my head after all these years, I would probably not notice a physics explanation plagiarized from one of my textbooks! Not because I wasn't intimately acquainted with the textbook, but because I was intimately acquainted with many such textbooks. Spend enough time learning this stuff and it all blurs together a little bit. Does this explanation sound familiar because you've heard it before, or because you've just read books which cover this specific topic seven different times? And does that wording or that example ring a bell because it's plagiarized, or because it's common to the field?

Catching this kind of plagiarism requires having the kind of people who are already familiar with these sources, and therefore uninterested in video summaries on the topic, to watch the video. And among those people who do, it requires them to match Somerton's words to one specific source on the topic out of many, that they probably read quite some time ago. And then you have the filter of how many of those subject matter experts have the source on hand to check, to turn a vague "...hmm" into something solid.

If you know enough about queer history to say that some of his plagiarism was obvious, now that you've watched the video, then you should remember that there is a reason you probably weren't one of the people watching his videos! And because YouTube promotes videos through algorithmic engagement, none of this stuff has to pass the sniff test for any other expert in the field before it gets released. No experts have to like it for it to get published or for it to get good reviews or for it to get a recommendation in, I don't know, the New York Times.

The only people who have to like the videos for them to get traction are people who are just trying to learn introductory queer history and film theory. The exact people who aren't going to notice this. And for those of you who to whom it is obvious, ask yourself. When was the last time you watched a basic level queer history introduction on YouTube?

#hbomberguy #james somerton