#if we can all agree that’s gay we should have no problem accepting a couple THAT HAS EXPLICITLY KISSED IN THEIR STORY

[absentcaryatid]

The Fathers' Day Reveal

An ATEEZ fanfic by AbsentCaryatid

Yunho and San take the opportunity of a commercial to come out in multiple ways during pride month.

1.4K words, Content note: all ages, gender neutral reader, polyamory, coming out, outing is brought up but does not occur, nervousness and anxiety, mention of possible future parenting

~

Mingi had often said he would like to be chosen for commercial work promoting beds since it spoke to his love of resting. When a Swedish furniture company approached KQ Entertainment looking for just such a partnership, Mingi jumped at the chance. Though he could perform in character on stage well enough, unfortunately, his offstage acting skills were still in development. Dressed in cozy pajamas, snuggling into the bed on set came naturally enough. He was even praised for his realism until it was discovered he had actually fallen asleep, but line delivery in the waking up scene left something to be desired.

Having discussed the problem with his best friend Yunho, it was decided to ask the company if they would accept a change in actors and make use of the idol far more at ease with scripted lines. Stepping into the role without delay, the commercial was successfully shot in one day. Yunho also ably modeled for promotional posters and a catalog spread which proved very popular with ATINY. His charming looks also won him fans far beyond K-pop.

After such a well-received ad campaign, the next year brought another request for Yunho's services. With a planned air date for June, a follow-up commercial was in the works, this time continuing the story of Yunho in his flat-pack furniture filled home. His character was to be given a partner to woo over affordable yet attractive tableware in this update. Since the actress had yet to be cast, Yunho was consulted to see if he had any suggestions, perhaps some idol friend he'd like to work with.

After clearing it with both the highest levels of KQ Entertainment and his partner, Yunho came back with an answer. Holding the hand of his lover, he introduced San to the commercial development staff. “I know you picked June for a Father's Day theme, but would you consider making it a Pride commercial as well? With our managers' full approval, we are both ready to come out as bisexual.”

San had seen the furniture company run ads with same-sex couples before so he had figured they would be accepting of that angle. Yet, there was more to open up about. With a squeeze of Yunho's hand, San admitted, “There is something else you should know before choosing us.” When he was finished speaking, San saw grins of approval rather than a less welcoming atmosphere he had known was a very real possibility.

The two cuddled closely in their large bed the night before filming the revised commercial. Yunho traced the line of San's shoulder before frowning and pulling back nervously. Propping himself up on one elbow, he looked at San seriously. “You ready for this? People will talk, and there is no going back. You've seen the lack of support Holland gets in our industry as an out gay man. I don't imagine bisexuals are treated any better, and all the rest of our situation on top of that.”

San's dimpled smile was a reassuring sign. “There will be screenshots on Twitter within minutes, reactions on TikTok, and fanfic on Tumblr and AO3 soon after. KQ and the rest of our team are cautiously excited for the global publicity this will bring. Hongjoong thinks we can help a lot of queer ATINY feel less alone.”

“True,” Yunho agreed, “but for us, are you truly okay going public, and in this way?”

The weary sigh San let out revealed his frustration. “I am tired of hiding. Our families already know and approve of who we love so there is no need to hesitate for their sake. Honestly, with the way amoral reporters compete to unmask celebrities I would much rather this be our decision. Even the anxiety over our reveal and how people will take the news is an improvement over the constant fear of being outed without consent. Besides, we already have interviews with multiple queer websites lined up for the morning the commercial begins to air. That means the media we care about gets the story, in part because we know they will get it right.”

Consoled it was the right decision at the right time, Yunho nestled back into San's warm arms. Sleep came quickly over them both. The pair were so worn out by their emotions that they did not wake when you slipped into the bed of your polyamorous boyfriends.

Filming took far less time than expected, even working with a child actor. The ease with which they could be themselves before the filming crew confirmed their readiness to be public about their loving relationship. Post-production at the hands of a team sworn to absolute secrecy swiftly completed the commercial soon to be aired worldwide.

By the day of the premiere, San and Yunho had shaken off their fears, but you were feeling slight jitters. While your guys were out for interviews, the remaining members of ATEEZ were gathered to watch the commercial first air during the most popular morning show on Korean television. Seated among the boys you had come to see as family since becoming romantically involved with San and Yunho, you watched eagerly for their reactions. Sensing your nerves, Yeosang lightly stroked one of your hands while Wooyoung held the other tightly to his chest making you wonder who was consoling who in the situation.

Jongho grabbed the remote to turn the television louder as the morning show hosts paused for the commercial break at the top of the hour.

“This is it!” Wooyoung shrieked with anticipation only to be confused by a dog food commercial followed by one for laundry detergent. Finally the furniture ad came on and he dropped your lightly crushed hand to immerse himself completely in the scene.

Under the fluffiest white duvet, Yunho slept in a simple but stylish wooden bed in the soft morning light. The sound of small bare feet approached. Clutching a large stuffed shark, a toddler clad in festive character pajamas also conveniently available from the furniture company ran up to Yunho. They squealed, “Papa!” He opened his eyes and ruffled their hair as he gazed lovingly. The covers then peeled back and San was revealed to be in bed with Yunho, arms out, ready to pull their child in for a snuggle.

The cheers that went up from the watch party, including KQ staff filming for a reaction video, were silenced by Hongjoong. “I don't want to miss any of this,” he hissed as attention returned to the screen.

Denying San's offer, the toddler exclaimed, “No, daddy, I want the other one!” Again the covers were pushed down further and now a third partner was visible coming to a sitting position in the comfy bed. You. Clambering over your boyfriends, your television commercial offspring ended in your lap while your arms went out to San and Yunho. There were warm smiles all around. The ad ended with the progress pride flag and the tagline “We sell beds big enough for all families.”

It took far longer for the excited noises to die down this time. Everybody had leapt up to jump around or congratulate you. Mingi was dancing with a staffer and Hongjoong attempted an unsteady handstand which Jongho knowingly sidestepped as the leader came crashing down. It was clear they were very happy for two beloved members to finally be open about their romance, but also as part of a trio who were very smitten with each other.

A commercial wasn't the most conventional way to announce being in a relationship, but then neither was your polyamorous life. Not parents in real life, the child was your young cousin in their first acting role, but you and your partners were still mulling over the possibility of adding children to your family one day.

Seonghwa sought you out and offered a gentle hug. “I am so proud of all three of you, and your little cousin. You will have to bring them over again soon so I can compliment them in person.”

Once things had calmed down somewhat, Yeosang replayed the commercial several times. Everyone had something to say about how positively this representation could impact ATEEZ fans and beyond. While nobody in the room thought there would not be pushback, in this moment they savored the victory of very visible corporate support. It certainly was not the end goal for queer acceptance, but it was a notable step along the way.

~

Masterlist

#kpop fanfic #kpop fluff #ATEEZ fanfic #ATEEZ fluff #gender neutral reader #diverseinsertknet #divnet pride 2023 #Kpop pride #Jeong Yunho #Choi San #ATEEZ ensemble #kpop x gender neutral reader #kpop x gn reader

[peartreetheft]

Catholics and other Christians who want to say that same-sex marriage or even same-sex extra-marital sexual activity may actually be okay never try to use scripture to back up the idea, at least not any of the handful of verses directly referring to same-sex activity, because it's quite clear from those that it's prohibited. Instead, they rely on innuendo, half-truths, and "just asking questions." Fr. James Martin does this all the time. "Why do people have a problem with a gay couple who's been together for 50 years, but not a heterosexual man who's been married and divorced four times?" Sadly, there probably are a lot of Christians who would have a problem with the former but not the latter, but just because people are inconsistent doesn't mean we should actually accept this! Does Martin want us to accept the former, but not the latter? Both? I think he should say, as any priest should, that both are unacceptable. Similarly, Trent Horn recently had Randal Rauser, a "progressive evangelical", on his show, for reasons that are unclear to me. I looked Rauser up and found that he'd posted a response to this tweet by Frank Turek: If somebody asks you: "What do you think of same-sex marriage", you can go: "Well, it doesn't matter what I think about it. Here's what Jesus said about it. He said that marriage is between a man and a woman. So, if you want to argue with that, you can argue with Jesus, not me.

Rauser's reply: If somebody asks: "What do you think of remarried Christians", you can go: "Well, it doesn't matter what I think about it. Jesus said people who divorce for any reason other than porneia and remarry are in adultery. If you want to argue with that, you can argue with Jesus, not me

Rauser followed up on this in a blog post: I am attempting to expose a deep hypocrisy within evangelicalism (as Jesus did at length to religious leaders in Matthew 23 … and with far saltier language, by the way!). And by doing so, I am presenting a dilemma for folk like Turek: either be consistent and conclude that citing Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage constitutes the illegitimacy of all marriages which follow divorces for any reason other than marital unfaithfulness (porneia) as adultery or concede that the issue of gay marriage, like divorce and remarriage, is more complex than prooftexting a single verse.

Just in case it is still not clear, let’s unpack this a bit further. Let’s say you initially opt for the first horn of the dilemma: you conclude that those who remarry after divorcing for reasons other than marital unfaithfulness are in adultery. It then follows that a lot of people in evangelical churches are in adultery. 

I agree that addressing any theological or moral issue is more complex than just prooftexting back and forth, but... uh, yeah! A lot of people in evangelical churches are in adultery. If the options are "either be consistent and conclude that citing Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage constitutes the illegitimacy of all marriages which follow divorces for any reason other than marital unfaithfulness (porneia) as adultery or concede that the issue of gay marriage, like divorce and remarriage, is more complex than prooftexting a single verse" (those aren't actually our only options) I think we should be consistent

[lordystrange]

saw your reblog on that post abt sexuality and stuff. i agree with op and you. i don’t think there’s anything wrong with the show implying sexual attraction, and we can see evidence of that in the show (like the hose scene) but that doesn’t mean everyone has to be comfortable with it. as an ace teenager around the same age as byler the whole idea is confusing to me. when people say stuff like ‘teenagers have sex and are horny’ (which i know is often true) it still makes me feel different in a way. and i know there isn’t anything that wrong with allonormativity in the context of stranger things because i don’t think there are really any ace characters in it, but the idea is just kinda eh. not aphobic necessarily to say allonormative stuff when technically it’s true but you can also see a lot of it with the whole accusing ace headcanons of being homophobic or ableist (when most people that have ace headcanons are ace themselves and just project that onto their favourite characters). another issue personally is that i have this blockage where it feels wrong seeing people i know or characters i know in a sexual light. and it’s not because they’re gay or because they’re young. and i know i’m sort of talking about my own personal issues but it just goes to show that it can be a personal situation and reason for a lot of people being uncomfortable. like how op is uncomfortable because they’re older than them. some people may find that the sexual experiences resonate with them and that’s cool! or they might just want to talk about it. but people that are uncomfortable shouldn’t be ostracised or accused of homophobia. and i don’t think people need to get comfortable with the idea of gay sex because that’s uncomfortable for some people. if i’m asexual and a lesbian why would i be comfortable with the idea? there’s nothing wrong with gay sex and sexuality and i’m not stopping anyone but people act like being uncomfortable with something means that you have this subconscious homophobia that doesn’t let you accept it but idk. i’m uncomfortable, but i think if it works for the show then they should do it, i don’t think there’s anything wrong with gay sex it’s literally just personal preference and i think people should learn to accept that. people shouldn’t have to stop talking about this, and i don’t really have an issue seeing posts about it. my problem is solely with the notion that just because someone is uncomfortable with it means they have this deep internalised homophobia to work through, when really everyone has different perspectives on this.

You made a lot of good points. I would like to reply to some of them 😁

Firstly, I really think that the society should do better job with ace representation. I have to admit that I’ve learned most about asexuality in byler tumblr, from ace bylers. Allosexuals and asexuals are living in the same world and the world should acknowledge that.

You’re saying that people shouldn’t have to get comfortable with the idea of gay sex. I think that if people are comfortable with sex in general, they should also accept gay sex. They don’t have to do that themselves or read/watch of even think about it, but if they have a problem that men have sex without women (or women without men), that is homophobic. However, if the problem is that a person is uncomfortable with the idea of anal sex, that’s not homophobic as long as it applies to straight couples too.

So basically in byler tumblr all people should acknowledge, that if you are uncomfortable with sexual content, that doesn’t make you homophobic. But if you are uncomfortable with sexual content about gay sex specifically, that does make you homophobic.

And let’s face it: most of us, I would even say all of us, have internalized homophobia in us. Sometimes we’re being homophobic without realizing it. And if somebody points it out friendly, it’s only a possibility to learn. 💚

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Travis has had both boyfriends and girlfriends since high school. But when his coworkers discovered his dating history at a board game night, they told him he couldn’t be bisexual. “Bi men don’t exist,” they said. “You’re just a confused gay guy.” Travis, 34, had brought his girlfriend with him that night, but they started calling her his “roommate” after they found out he was bi.

Santiago got an even harsher reaction when he came out to his family. “‘Bisexual’ is just code for insincere gay man” is how he said one of his relatives reacted. “He didn’t use the term ‘gay man,’” 24-year-old Santiago told me, “but I won’t repeat slurs.”

In the past couple of months, I’ve heard dozens of stories like these from bisexual men who have had their sexual orientations invalidated by family members, friends, partners, and even strangers. Thomas was called a “fence-sitter” by a group of gay men at a bar. Shirodj was told that he was “just gay but not ready to come out of the closet.” Alexis had his bisexuality questioned by a lesbian teacher who he thought would be an ally. Many of these same men have been told that women are “all a little bi” or “secretly bi” but that men can only be gay or straight, nothing else.

In other words, bisexual men are like climate change: real but constantly denied.

A full 2% of men identified themselves as bisexual on a 2016 survey from the Centers for Disease Control, which means that there are at least three million bi guys in the United States alone—a number roughly equivalent to the population of Iowa. (On the same survey, 5.5% of women self-identified as bisexual, which comes out to roughly the same number of people as live in New Jersey.) The probability that an entire state’s worth of people would lie about being attracted to more than one gender is about as close to zero as you can get.

But the idea that only women can be bisexual is a persistent myth, one that has been decades in the making. And prejudice with such deep historical roots won’t disappear overnight.

👬👫👬👫

To understand why bisexual men are still being told that their sexual orientation doesn’t exist, we have to go back to the gay liberation movement of the late 1960s. That’s when Dr. H. Sharif “Herukhuti” Williams, a cultural studies scholar and co-editor of the anthology Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men, told me that male sexual fluidity got thrown under the bus in the name of gay rights—specifically white, upper-class gay rights.

“One of the byproducts of the gay liberation movement is this…solidifying of the [sexual] binary,” Herukhuti told me, citing the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s as a pre-Stonewall period of relatively unstigmatized sexual fluidity.

Four decades later, the gay liberation movement created a new type of man—the “modern gay man,” Herukhuti calls him—who was both “different from and similar to” the straight man. As Jillian Weiss, now the executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense Fund, wrote in a 2003 review of this same history, “gays and lesbians campaigned for acceptance by suggesting that they were ‘just like you,’ but with the single (but extremely significant exception) of [having] partners of the same sex.” Under this framework, attraction to a single gender was the unifying glue between gay men, lesbians, and straight people—bisexual people were just “confused.”

Bisexual people realized that they would have to form groups and coalitions of their own if they wanted cultural acceptance. But just as bisexual activism was gaining a foothold in the 1980s, the AIDS crisis hit, and everything changed—especially for bisexual men.

“AIDS forced certain bisexual men out [of the closet], it forced a lot of bisexual men back in, and then it killed off a number of them,” longtime bisexual activist and author Ron Suresha told me.Those deaths hindered the development of male bisexual activism at a particularly critical moment. “A number of men who would have been involved and were involved in the early years of the bi movement died—and they died early and they died quickly,” bisexual writer Mike Syzmanski recalled.

The AIDS crisis also gave rise to one of the most pernicious and persistent stereotypes about bisexual men, namely that they are the “bridge” for HIV transmission between gay men and heterosexual women. As Brian Dodge, a public health researcher at Indiana University, told me, this is a “warped notion” that has “never been substantiated by any real data.” The CDC, too, has debunked the same myth in the specific context of U.S. black communities: No, black men on the “down low” are not primarily responsible for high rates of HIV among black women.

For decades, bisexual men have been portrayed—even within the LGBT community—as secretly gay, sexually confused vectors of disease.

In 2016, bisexual men are still feeling the effects of the virus and the misperceptions around it.

“We’re still underrepresented on the boards of almost all of the national bisexual organizations,” Suresha told me, referring to the fact that women occupy most of the key leadership positions in bisexual activism. And in a new, nationally representative study of attitudes toward bisexual people, Dodge and his research team found that 43% of respondents agreed —at least somewhat—with the statement: “People should be afraid to have sex with bisexual men because of HIV/STD risks.”

For decades, bisexual men have been portrayed—even within the LGBT community—as secretly gay, sexually confused vectors of disease. Is it any wonder that they are still fighting to shed that false image today? It’s hard to convince people that you exist when they barely see you as human.

👬👫👬👫

It’s not that bisexual women have it easy. Both bisexual men and women are much less likely than gay men and lesbians to be out of the closet, with only 28% telling Pew that most of the important people in their life know about their orientation. Collectively, bisexual people also have some of the worst mental health outcomes in the LGBT community and their risk of intimate partner violence is disturbingly high. Bisexual people also face discrimination within the LGBT community while fending off accusations that their orientation excludes non-binary genders. (In response, bisexual educator Robyn Ochs defines “bisexuality” as attraction to “people of more than one sex and/or gender” rather than just to “men and women.”)

And on top of these general problems, bisexual women are routinely hypersexualized, stereotyped as “sluts,” dismissed as “experimenting,” and harassed on dating apps. Their bisexuality is reduced to a spectacle or waved away as a “phase.”

But it is still bisexual men who seem to have their very existence questioned more often.

Suresha pointed me to a 2005 New York Times article with the headline “Straight, Gay, Or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited,” the fallout of which he saw as “a disaster for bi people.” The article reported on a new study “cast[ing] doubt on whether true bisexuality exists, at least in men.” The study in question measured the genital arousal of a small sample of men and found, as the Times summarized, that “three-quarters of the [bisexual male] group had arousal patterns identical to those of gay men; the rest were indistinguishable from heterosexuals.”

“It got repeated and repeated in all sorts of media,” Suresha recalled. “People reported it in news briefs on the radio, in print, in magazines, all over the place.”

As the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force noted in its response to the article, the original study had some clear methodological limitations—only 33 self-identified bisexual men were included and participants were recruited through “gay-oriented magazines”—but the Times went ahead and reported that the research “lends support to those who have long been skeptical that bisexuality is a distinct and stable sexual orientation.”

“Show me the quest for scientific proof that heterosexuality exists. It begins and ends with even just one person saying, ‘I’m straight.’” — Amy Andre, Huffington Post

The article fueled the devious narrative that male bisexuality was just homosexuality in disguise. The lived experiences of bisexual men don’t support that narrative—and neither does science—but its power comes from prejudice, not from solid evidence.

And unsurprisingly, the 2005 study’s conclusions did not survive the test of time. In fact, one of the co-authors of that study went on to co-author a 2011 study which found that “bisexual patterns of both subjective and genital arousal” did indeed occur among men. The New York Times Magazine later devoted a feature to the push for the 2011 study, briefly acknowledging the paper’s previous poor coverage. But many in the bisexual community were unimpressed that the scientific community was still being positioned as the authority on the existence of bisexual men.

“Show me the quest for scientific proof that heterosexuality exists,” Amy Andre wrote on the Huffington Post in response to the feature. “It begins and ends with even just one person saying, ‘I’m straight.’”

👬👫👬👫

One of the most tragic things about society’s refusal to accept bisexual men is that we don’t even know why it is still so vehement. Dodge believes that his new study offers some hints—the persistent and widespread endorsement of the HIV “bridge” myth is alarming—but he told me that he would need “more qualitative and more focused research” before he could definitively state that HIV stigma is the primary factor driving negative attitudes toward bisexual men. (Research in this area is indeed sorely lacking. The last major study on the subject prior to the survey Dodge’s team conducted was published in 2002.)

In the meantime, bisexual advocates have developed plenty of compelling theories, many of them focused on the dominance of traditional masculinity. For example, Herukhuti explained that “we live in a society in which boundaries between men are policed because of patriarchy and sexism.” Men are expected to be “kings of their kingdom”—not to share their domain.

“For men to bridge those boundaries with each other—the only way that we can conceive of that is in the sense that these are ‘non-men,’” Herukhuti told me, adding that, in a patriarchal society, gay men are indeed seen as “non-men.” The refusal to accept that men can be bisexual, then, is partly a refusal to accept that someone who is bisexual can even be a man.

Many of the bisexual men I interviewed endorsed this same hypothesis. Kevin, 25, told me that “it’s seen as really unmanly to be attracted to men.” Another Kevin, 26, added that “the core concept of masculinity doesn’t leave room for anything besides extremes.” Justin, in his mid 20s, said that “men are one way and gay men are another way [but] bisexual men are this weird middle ground.”

Our society doesn’t seem to do well with more than two—especially when so many still believe that there’s only one right way to be a man.

And Michael, 28, added that bisexual men are “symbolically dangerous”—a “big interior threat to hetero masculinity” because of a shared attraction to women. It’s easy for a straight guy to differentiate himself from the modern gay man, but how can he reassure himself that he is nothing like his bisexual counterpart?

The answer is obvious: He can equate male bisexuality with homosexuality.

The logic needed to balance that equation, Herukhuti explained to me, is disturbingly close to the racist, Jim Crow-era “one-drop rule,” which designated anyone with the slightest bit of African ancestry as black for legal purposes.

“For a male to have had any kind of same-sex sexual experience, they are automatically designated as gay, based on that one-drop rule,” Herukhuti said. “And that taints them.”

To see that logic at work, look no further than the state of HIV research, much of which still groups gay and bisexual men together as MSM, or men who have sex with men. Dodge, who specializes in the area of HIV/AIDS, explained that “when a man reports sexual activity with another man, that becomes the recorded mode of transmission and there’s no data reporting about female or other partners.” Bisexual men have their identities erased—literally—from the resulting data.

“A really easy way to fix this,” Dodge added, “would be to just create a separate surveillance category.”

But when it comes to categories, our society doesn’t seem to do well with more than two—especially when so many still believe that there’s only one right way to be a man.

👬👫👬👫

The situation of bisexual men is not hopeless. Slowly but surely, they are expanding the horizons of masculinity. The silver lining in Dodge’s study, for example, is that there has been a decided “‘shift’ in attitudes toward bisexual men and women from negative to more neutral in the general population” over the last decade or so, although negative attitudes toward bisexual men were still “significantly greater” than the negativity directed at their female peers.

“Put the champagne on the ice,” Dodge joked. “We’re no longer at the very bottom of the barrel but we’ve still got a ways to go.”

That distance will likely be shortened by a rising generation that is far more tolerant of sexual fluidity than their predecessors. Respondents to Dodge’s survey who were under age 25 had more positive attitudes toward bisexuality, perhaps because so many of them openly identify as LGBTQ themselves—some as bisexual, some as pansexual, and some refusing labels altogether.

That growing acceptance is starting to be reflected in movies and on television, once forms of media that were, and still often are, notoriously hostile to bisexual men. A character named Darryl came out as bisexual with a myth-busting song on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and, as GLAAD recently noted, other shows like Shadowhunters and Black Sails are starting to do bi male representation right. The HBO comedy Insecure even made biphobia into a powerful storyline when one straight female character, Molly, shunned her love interest when he told her that he once had oral sex with a guy in a college. But other shows, like House of Cards, are still using a male character’s bisexuality as a way to accentuate his villainy.

Ultimately, bisexual men themselves will continue to be the most powerful force for changing hearts and minds. I asked each bisexual man I interviewed what he would want the world to know about his sexual orientation. Some wanted to clear up specific misconceptions but so many of them simply wanted people to acknowledge that male bisexuality is not fake.

“It’s important that bisexuality be acknowledged as real,” said Martyn, 30, adding that “there’s only so long someone can hold on to a part of themselves that seems invisible before it starts to make them doubt their own sense of self.”

“I am happy being bisexual and I’m not looking for an answer,” said Dan, 19. “I’m not trying things out, I’m not using this as a placeholder to discover my identity. This is who I am. And I love it.”

Samantha Allen is a reporter for Fusion’s Sex+Life vertical. She has a PhD in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University and was the 2013 John Money Fellow at the Kinsey Institute. Before joining Fusion, she was a tech and health reporter for The Daily Beast.

#bisexuality #bi #bi tumblr #support bisexuality #bisexuality is valid #bi pride #lgbtq community #lgbtq #lgbtq pride #pride #bisexual #bisexual community #bisexual men are valid #respect bisexual men #bisexual men #bisexual nation #bisexual education #support bisexual men #bisexual men exist #biphobic gay people #end biphobia #biphopia #biphobic #bisexual pride #bisexual erasure #bisexual men allies

[lady-literature]

I rewrite Sky High

okay so, disclaimer: sky high was actually pretty damn good for it’s time and a lot of the plot twists/tropes used in it were still just starting out and not as commonplace as they are today. so 10/10 really good movie.

Also as i was writing this, it turned into half analysis of what’s already in the movie and half things I would change about the movie so,,, yeah. enjoy!

***

So the point about Sky High is that and the way the school and hero society as a whole works, is that you, as the audience, are supposed to look at it and know that it’s a flawed system. We’re supposed to see it as an injustice that kids are sorted into hero or sidekick- Sorry, I mean ‘Hero Support,’ on your first day of school based on something you can’t even control.

(This movie was my hero academia-ing it up before it was cool.)

Anyway, the movie calls a lot of attention to it in the beginning, but then doesn't actually give it the resolution it deserves in the end. Which, not cool guys.

The Hero/Sidekick debacle is, on the whole, a very thinly veiled metaphor for the problems minorities face. Specifically, those of the alphabet mafia, or LGBTQ, as we’re more commonly known.

There are a lot of examples for this so I’ll speed through the big ones real quick:

Will’s nerves regarding not having attraction to girls superpowers?

The way he tries to fake having an attraction to girls superpowers to get approval from his dad?

Being literally outed in front of his whole class (by someone named Boomer no less) and then immediately trying to hide it from his parents as long as possible?

The constant references to being a ‘late bloomer’. Doesn’t it remind you of the common phrases: ‘it’s just a phase’ or ‘don’t worry. You’ll start liking [opposite gender] eventually.’ ?

The scene in the kitchen, right after Will introduces the Sidekick Squad (and yes, that is what I’ll be referring to them as for the rest of this essay tumblr post). Will is so obviously trying to gauge how his dad is going to take his friends being sidekicks and also him being a sidekick. I just, this is so blatantly a coming out scene? How does anybody not see it as that?

(also the dad talking so offhandedly about bigotry and the hatred his own father had for sidekicks??? Who else has been there?)

Will telling his dad that he doesn’t care, that he’s proud of being gay to be a sidekick is just,,, *chef’s kiss*

With all of this backing behind Will and him growing into not being ashamed of his lack of powers, My first change would be that Will does not, in fact receive his father’s super strength. It’s just such a cop out! The movie had all this amazing build up, and this brilliant metaphor it could have used and, instead, they threw it all away.

The sudden acquisition of powers and immediate acceptance by his peers, feels too close to someone being ‘fixed’. That Will wasn’t good enough the way he was and had to be better, had to be his father in order to be good enough.

So, no. Will remains powerless.

Instead of the revelation of ‘he’s strong’, we get to let the Sidekick Squad shine.

Lash and Speed still cause a fight between Warren and Will, but when Will is under the table, the sidekicks actually do something.

Will knocks the table over (not, like, lifting Warren up but something closer to pushing him off. I mean, even I could push upwards from underneath a table fast enough that if someone is standing on it, they’d lose their balance and fall to the ground) and that starts things.

The Sidekick Squad all grab forgotten lunch trays or cartons of milk or something and throw it at Warren. It isn’t long then that the whole scene devolves into a food fight (Zach, at least, does not have good aim and probably hits a bystander accidentally, drawing more people in, until the whole cafeteria is involved.) The fight turns into something more playful, but still with that bit of an undertone of trying to actually hurt each other.

Ethan melts at one point and (accidentally) causes Warren to slip and land on his back, Magenta probably punches someone (not Warren) and Zach is just mouthing off to anybody who gets close enough. Near the end, right before Principal Powers shows up, Layla finally gets the right idea and just fire extinguishes the shit out of Warren.

(Side note here: I am very much also nixing the Layla crushes on Will plotline. I love best friends to lovers just as much as the next person but… no. Let kids see boy/girl friendships! 

Instead, I will be inserting a Layla/Warren love story and you can consider this the first scene on the road for that.)

Anyway, the whole Sidekick Squad plus Warren ends up in the detention room and all of them are covered in food. Right after Principal Powers leaves, the Sidekick Squad is immediately talking excitedly to each other about how cool they just were and what they did. Basically it’s very wholesome and they’re all hyping each other up and then one of them, Layla or Will, excitedly turns to Warren and goes, ‘and that thing you did with the fireballs? God! I don’t think Lash is going to have any eyebrows for a month’ and the tension between them all but drops.

Warren, of course, tries to push them away and not get involved with their ridiculousness, but the Sidekick Squad is stubborn and by the end of detention, everyone but Warren is in agreement that he’s a part of the Squad now. They will not leave him alone. They also start hanging out at the Paper Lantern all the time just to annoy/make fun of him in that loving way friends do.

(I just want Warren to be a part of the Squad guys. Will calls him his best friend at the end but what did the movie actually do to show they were friends? Nothing, that’s what. I want that fixed.)

So the cafeteria fight boosts the whole Squad’s reputation, right? People think those sidekicks are pretty cool, and they get their fifteen minutes of fame. Only… Will gets a little hooked on the feeling of being popular. He doesn’t want to be a capital-h Hero or anything! But, well… he’d be lying if he didn’t like people thinking he was cool.

The others don’t really care all that much about being cool, but Will does. He hates that he does but what is he supposed to do? He can’t change how he feels. So he starts trying to make himself more popular and sometimes tries dragging his friends into stupid schemes.

And then enter stage right, one Gwen Grayson.

I prefer Gwen being Royal Pain’s daughter, actually. A girl who would’ve had no stock in this fight but her mother, who is sickly and weak and survives mostly because her daughter takes care of her, practically brainwashes Gwen to do her bidding.

Gwen is a minion here, and also, perhaps, a victim.

At first, she follows her mom’s orders and charms Will into dating her. She also feeds into his desire to gain popularity but can’t, in this world, break him from his friends. Actually, Will brings Gwen along to the Sidekick Squad hangouts and, slowly, she becomes a part of the group too.

She starts to doubt her mother. Starts to care for Will and the Squad.

She throws the party, and the Squad is all invited (trying to break them up isn’t conducive to the Plan her mother has anyway and wouldn’t work besides) but she lures Will away to make out and… other things, and he brings her to the Sanctum for privacy just like before. She still steals the pacifier (or whatever death ray equivalent you want idk) but she and Will don’t break up at the end of the night.

It’s not actually until two days later, right before the dance is going to start, does Gwen decide she can’t stand back and let this happen anymore. She spills the whole plot and her betrayal to Will when he comes to pick her up for the dance. She’s crying and apologizing and basically expecting to be hated forever by the only people she thinks ever actually liked her.

And, well. Will is furious at her for lying but there’s more important things to deal with at the moment. They’ll talk more about this and he’ll be angry, but that’s all going to be later. Right now they have a school to save so he grabs her hand and starts running to warn the rest of their friends.

Things happen mostly as canon from that point with minor changes.

It’s Warren who pulls Layla into a kiss before they all split off into groups, telling her to kick ass and stay safe before sprinting off after Speed. There have been scenes throughout the movie where the two are very obviously getting closer and are into each other. And then, before the dance, while Gwen and Will we’re technically going as a couple, the whole Squad was going as a group.

When Warren and Layla saw each other all dolled up, it’s very cliché. Warren says she looks nice and Layla visibly gulps at his outfit of a button down and suit pants, sleeves rolled up to his elbows (because homeboy does not wear a full tux you can fight me on this).

And also, Will doesn’t fight Royal Pain by himself. Instead, Gwen is there with him and they don’t fight with super strength. Gwen’s been helping Will build an arsenal of gadgets a la Batman and the two face off against her mom together, Gwen with her powers, and Will acting as half support and half as a watered-down Batman who still needs some more training before he’s totally polished.

The school falls from the sky, but Gwen buys them time by keeping the anti gravs working through sheer force of will, while Will holds off her mom from attacking her while she’s vulnerable and concentrating. Magenta eventually kills the EMP or whatever it was, and the day is saved.

Gwen passes out, cause ~drama~ but she ends up okay so don’t worry. She’s just exhausted. 

The sidekicks get their recognition and then immediately bounce because dances suck and they all agree that they should go to the Paper Lantern instead to celebrate cause they’re tired, alright? Saving the day is hard.

So it’s all of them, a little battered and bruised and exhausted, crowded into this corner booth and laughing and being kids. The camera does it’s fade to comic book page thing, and the narration is something more along the lines of:

“Royal Pain and her cronies got locked away. Gwen and I talked things out, and she’s getting help for all the stuff her mom did to her. We’re taking things slow in the meantime.

The school is undergoing a lot of changes to the curriculum and getting rid of the whole ‘hero/sidekick’ divisions. (Mostly at the urging of my parents… and Layla). Next year is going to look a lot different, I think.

But it’ll be a good different, just like we are. None of us were what we were expected to be, and, I think, we’re going to keep defying expectations. There’s a whole world out there that needs changing.

And I can’t think of a better group of friends to do it with.”

THE END

(just give me found family saves the day by being themselves rather than somebody else, give me them saving the day because they care about each other, give me them fighting for what’s right and fixing things. please i am b e g g i n g.)

***

Additional nitpicks that are small but Very Important to Me

Coach Boomer is still called coach Boomer because there is no way I am missing out on the ‘okay, boomer’ jokes

Layla stays like Layla, but i’d like for the movie to stop trying to make her seem annoying for her beliefs or like she’s wrong to be so vocal about them. Her caring about things that are wrong ends up as the butt of too many jokes and i… do not like that.

Why so many dad/son scenes? Why this janky imbalance parenting dynamic between the Strongholds. Knock that shit off. I want happy functional family thank you very much

Mr Boy and the mad scientist are very obviously in a relationship

Wait, actually: mr boy, mad scientist and Boomer are al in a poly relationship and are ridiculous about it

I’d like to see more of the sidekick classes going over like, ‘the boring’ parts of the job, and teaching the kids how to deal with the aftermath of the heroes heroics, just to hammer in the fact that the system is fucked up and that it’s messed up that the heroes get all the recognition while the sidekicks are left to clean up the mess

Use actual 14 year old actors? These kids look like seniors.

Or, if you want more ‘mature’ characters make it so sky high is like,,, a finishing school or smth. Something kids 16 and over go to.

(What the fuck kind of parent thinks that their freshman child dating a senior is a good idea?? An almost adult coming onto a fourteen year old??? Are you trying to make Will’s parents (particularly the dad) seem like irresponsible assholes??)

Gwen is, at most, a year above Will in this rewrite, kay?

#my typewriter #sky high #disney #warren peace #superheroes #lgbt

[nerdygaymormon]

What do you think about the possible excommunication of Natasha Helfer?

Before this week, the only thing I knew about Natasha Helfer is I’d read an article she’d written about masturbation being part of normal sexual development, and she doesn’t see it as sinful. I agree with her. 

Because of the publicity surrounding her summons to a membership council, I now know much more about her. 

She made a video about being summoned to a membership council scheduled for April 18th. For starters, a stake where she hasn’t lived since 2019 has decided to do this, which seems strange to me. 

Here’s the things the summons letter cites as “misconduct”:

Support for same-sex marriage

Teaching that masturbation is part of a normative sexual-development journey and should not be seen as “sin” or as a reason to keep our youth from being considered worthy to serve or church activities

Her stances on sexually-explicit materials, aka pornography (she believes this is because she educates about using a values model vs an addiction model in the treatment of such concerns)

She’s been critical of Church leaders

Concerns she has encouraged people to leave the Church 

—————————

I went to section 32.6 of the General Handbook which lists the things someone may face a membership council. Frankly, the things listed in the letter sent to Natasha Helfer are not found in the Handbook. 

I suppose these could fit under the charge of “Apostasy,” because she publicly declares opinions different from the Church. Here’s what the Handbook says constitutes apostasy:

Repeatedly acting in clear and deliberate public opposition to the Church, its doctrine, its policies, or its leaders

Persisting in teaching as Church doctrine what is not Church doctrine after being corrected by the bishop or stake president

Showing a pattern of intentionally working to weaken the faith and activity of Church members

Continuing to follow the teachings of apostate sects after being corrected by the bishop or stake president

Formally joining another church and promoting its teachings (Total inactivity in the Church or attending another church does not by itself constitute apostasy. However, if a member formally joins another church and advocates its teachings, withdrawing his or her membership may be necessary.)

—————————

Natasha Helfer is a well-known LDS marriage counselor and certified sex therapist in Utah. She’s written several articles that have been widely read. She’s been a recurring guest on the Mormon Mental Health podcast, Mormon Matters and appeared on many other podcasts. 

She’s particularly sought out because of her training & expertise and her experiences in helping members of the Church overcome their sense of shame regarding sexuality. 

As a marriage counselor, she helps couples where one or both goes through a faith crisis, she says she doesn’t encourage anyone to leave the Church but honors their choices and helps them work through their thoughts & feelings, and also the effect it has on their marriage.  

Because of the news about her being summoned for a membership council, I’ve learned more about her positions. Here’s a list of some of the things I’ve seen in her writing: 

Sex Ed in Utah public schools should be comprehensive and accurate

Sexual assault is a crime & should be talked about as such

The LDS Church should know how to address sexual misconduct and sexual assault much better than it currently does

We should embrace and minister to our trangender neighbors, not fear them and make church difficult for them

Excommunication is cruel and unusual punishment which often is a traumatic experience used by the Church to silence its critics

Service Missions should be setup to be meaningful and seen as equal to proselyting missions

LGBTQ+ members should be affirmed and included in their faith community

LDS teachings & messages to LGBTQ+ members is akin to bullying and has real-world consequences on their mental health & lives

Fear of the BYU Honor Code actually causes many to not seek repentance for fear of academic punishment

The Church teaching that only certain families that fit the mold will get to enjoy the afterlife together is harmful. Mormon Heaven = Sad Heaven. She lists many groups who are harmed by this teaching, including: mixed-faith families, LGBTQ+ individuals & their families, families where someone struggles with addiction, single-parent families, families trying to deal with abuse & trauma, families dealing with mental health conditions such as bi-polar or impulse-control, family survivors of someone who died by suicide

When the Church rescinded the policy of exclusion against gay couples and their children, it should have been accompanied by an apology, not just a brief statement of the announcement with no explanation for the change

Social media isn’t the problem, how we use it is. If we’re keeping in touch with family & friends with whom we otherwise wouldn’t because of distance, accessing support you wouldn’t find in your area, obtaining ideas & resources, these are good. Comparing ourselves to others’ “best selves”, debating others, writing mean comments and such are not helpful. Too often people behave differently online than they do in person

We should wish people well when they leave our church and faith community and wish them well on their spiritual journey. We do a good job at celebrating newcomers even though many of them had to say goodbye to something in order to say hello to us

We need to speak of abortion more than as if anyone who gets one is evil. Even the Church’s position makes room for abortion in certain circumstances and we should be more nuanced in how we speak of it

Biological sex and gender are not binary. This may be LDS doctrine but the sciences of Biology and Psychology say otherwise

She supported the law ending conversion therapy in Utah of LGBTQ+ people

Racism is a public health emergency in the USA, racism is more than hate, it’s in our systems. It’s in our scriptures, our folklore, our culture, our history

Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. It’s acceptance and moving forward

She also has many articles & podcasts about improving marriage relationships, how to talk with your child about sex, tips for a mixed-faith marriage and similar topics directly related to her job as a marriage counselor and sex therapist.

I’m very impressed, from what I see. She is a tremendous force for good in our LDS community. We need people willing to speak the truth. 

—————————

Here’s two articles that especially impressed me. 

First is one is about masturbation, how it’s a legitimate way to meet one’s needs and some of the many benefits associated with sexual release. 

Second is one about pornography, the LDS culture gives pornography more power than it deserves with our blanket bans, secrecy & shaming, and calling virtually all porn viewing an addiction.

—————————

Frankly, based on what I post on my blog, I could be charged with all the same things that Natasha Helfer is being charged with.

Do I support same-sex marriage? Yes. Absolutely.

Do I think masturbation is a sin? No, and I think many Church websites, publications, and the General Handbook back up this view. 

Is masturbation a normal part of sexual development? Yes. And it has many benefits for individuals, especially singles like me, and even within a marriage

Is porn always wrong? I definitely can think of ways porn can be included inside a healthy marriage, perhaps as a way to help a partner get “in the mood,” or for someone with a higher libido to use along with masturbation, as part of foreplay, or even getting some ideas to spice up their love life. 

Have I been critical of Church leaders? You betcha. I think they’re wrong on LGBTQ+ topics and I say so. 

Do I encourage people to leave the Church? I don’t view myself this way, although I wouldn’t say that I try to get them to stay, either. It’s their path to walk. I know most LGBTQ+ people leave the Church, it’s the way our journeys normally go. I feel God has told me it’s fine for me to leave this church, so in no way do I think poorly of people who leave. This church isn’t ready for queer people and I don’t think God requires us to remain some place that harms us.

My understanding is we’re allowed to have beliefs that differ from the Church, as long as we’re not recruiting people to our side. Simply sharing your opinion or some differences in how you view things shouldn’t be something we can be punished for.

I suppose the difference between her and me is she’s seen as a high-profile individual and she’s using her credentials to give weight to her opinions, and I’m just some rando gay guy who has a blog.

#natasha helfer #long post

[likearecordbb]

about your post on the recent discourse...

it's honestly so confusing to me because like,, you say that ppl pointing out how members of this fandom will make neil very stereotypically 'feminine' is reinforcing the idea of 'masculinity' as one thing and 'femininity' as another.... and i get that we should get rid of these labels. but at the same time... the content itself that ppl are criticising (the ones that 'feminize' neil) are already doing just that. that's why they're criticising it.

i can't point out how ppl are reinforcing the idea that a relationship should have a 'man' and a 'woman', without... saying that that's what they're doing. the writer themselves already sees relationships this way and 'masculinity' and 'femininity' as two different distinct things. that's exactly *why* they're writing neil this way while keeping andrew close to canon.

there's nothing wrong with neil being stereotypically 'feminine' of course. but to act like it's somehow misogynistic for me to go to these ppl and be like 'hey, u shouldn't view mlm relationships through the lens of a hetero one! it can be very harmful' is weird to me... *especially* considering these stereotypes that ppl are pushing onto neil come from misogyny themselves. (ppl making neil much much more emotional than he is in canon while keeping andrew very stoic)

idk, like... ur simultaneously saying that we shouldn't view relationships as needing a 'man' and a 'woman'... while defending people who are doing just that and creating content which reinforces just that.

it's one thing to say 'we shouldn't view masculinity and femininity as two distinct and different things!'/'we should get rid of these labels all together cause they're meaningless'... but if i look at the content that u make/consume and it's practically, if not entirely, all andreil conforming to heternormative stereotypes... then i can't help but feel like ur not as detached from the idea of 'masculinity' and 'femininity' as u would like to believe... i trust the ppl who say these ideas are meaningless while not changing the canon characters because they seem to be sticking to their words.

people will just say that they prefer writing andreil is this heternormative way... they'll just say it what they like or what they're most comfortable writing without ever questioning *why* they prefer it this way.

and if they're projecting.. well then, *why* this couple? why pick an mlm couple to project what is often the experience of a cis woman in a relationship? why pick this mlm couple when there are others that do fit the stereotypical heternormative dynamic? idk. like,, u can do this ofc, but ppl can also call u out on ur shit.

there's an undeniable reason that neil is exclusively the one that ppl pick to make more stereotypically 'feminine'. and there's a reason this type of content is also so popular. and it's certainly not wrong to point this out.

You know, I can see all of these points that you're making. For me, the overall issue of this is very complicated. I am also super uncomfortable with the imposition of heteronormative roles onto...well, onto any relationship, regardless of the identities of the people who constitute it. I was raised smack dab in the middle of the gay community by lesbian moms (together 38 years now, jfc, can you imagine??), so that "man/woman" thing was never something that I grew up internalizing or normalizing. I can recognize that this may give me a bit too much of a sense of objectivity.

However, I'm also like...I've been ruined by grad school. The "feminizing" word makes me really uncomfortable because it starts to stray for me into gender essentialism territory. It also seems to foundationally differentiate between "masculine" behaviors and "feminine" behaviors and I just really hate that? Lesbian moms, trans daughter, bi (and late-in-life trying to see where on the ace spectrum I might fall) self, I've just met so many people with so many expressions of gender and sexuality and I just... Idk, I automatically resist anything that feels like it's upholding "masculinity" and "femininity" as real (as in, not constructed) things. And then I also am like, well, I've known SO MANY gay men who behaved in the ways that the discourse constructs as "feminized" and then I start to feel like, what about these men? Are they less 'men' because of it? How would it feel for that man to read these things saying his identity expression was a problem or a bad stereotype? Do I read *Neil Josten* within that context... no, not really. I think Neil has a 'not enough emotional expression' problem way before he has a 'too much emotional expression' problem.

I'll say here what I often say to my students in complex discussions: I don't have answers. I don't think I'm right and anyone else is wrong. I just have complicated thoughts and feelings and concerns about some of the things that sometimes seem to be left uninterrogated.

So, I do 100% get the need to be vigilant about the imposition of a "man" (dominant, emotionally constipated, sexually driven, stoic) role and "woman" (emotional, needy, teary, dependent) role onto relationships with two (or more!) men or women. I would also argue that we need to get rid of that idea in hetero relationships, too, because it's super damaging. I just wish we could find a way to talk about that that didn't feel like it was accepting this idea of femininity as a given? And I definitely agree that it's problematic when the 'bottom' in a relationship is depicted as the one who's soft and silly and weepy. (Have you read TJ Klune's Tales from Verania series? A VERY fun world that does that not at all and it's great). I'm not saying these things are not worth confronting--I'm just really uncomfortable with the way the conversations are often framed around a concept of femininity/feminizing. It feels like shrapnel, I guess? Like, 'ugh stop feminizing Neil he's not weepy and uwu he's a badass' feels inherently to me like it's making femininity and badassery mutually exclusive? Maybe I'm just looking for a caveat or footnote in the argument that acknowledges that that is constructed *for women too*? And is a part of, like, a larger heteronormative patriarchal structure? And not something that we can just all obviously agree is the way the ladies (should?) behave?

One other question I've been dying to ask, though, is: where are these fics? I don't think I've ever read something where Neil is crying over Jack being mean to him or anything. Maybe if I start to see hints of that characterization, I just close the tab and never end up getting to the 'worst' of it?

Although, if what you said earlier about the "content that u make/consume and it's practically, if not entirely, all andreil conforming to heternormative stereotypes..." was referring to me, then... idk what to say to that. I don't think that's what I do. The heteronormative relationship that you're describing isn't one that I enjoy, desire for myself (or anyone else), or have any interest in reproducing.

Does this clarify what I'm trying to say? I guess it's a really long way of saying, in the old insufferable grad school tradition: well, first we have to define our terms. Because I'm not sure we're all coming up with the same thing when we use the word "feminizing" and that probably has a lot to do with why we keep having this exact same conversation over and over and over again.

If I missed any specific point you'd like to pick at in more detail, please let me know--my very sad platonic life partner (who had to put her beloved 15-year-old poodle to sleep yesterday) and her mom are waiting for me to drive them to the stores for a distraction, so I'm feeling a little time pressure.

[craziestfangirl98]

My thoughts on Love, Victor season 2 cause I have too many feelings and I need to talk about it.

Disclaimer No. 1. This has massive Love, Victor season 2 spoilers so pleaseeeee leave if you have not watched it. Also if you do not want to engage with it.

Disclaimer No. 2: This is my opinion on the season so if you don't agree please leave. Don't come for me. I don't mind having proper discussions but I don't want unnecessary arguments so thanks.

There are a lot of unpopular opinions so as I said earlier if you don't want to be respectful, please leave.

I absolutely adoooooooored this season. I think it met its potential quite well and I liked how it panned out. I felt it was brilliantly done. I know a lot of people don't agree with me but I actually saw that it was gonna be an acquired liking but yeah.

THIS POST WILL BE GETTING TO THE MORE MAJOR PARTS OF THE SEASON. MEANING VICTOR, RAHIM, BENJI AND VENJI.

Let's start with individual breakdowns.

Right of the bat we see that this season is gonna deal with Victor with the rest of the world. The first season was very internal and dealt with his own stuff in his own head. We very minutely see his interaction with different people and how that internally affects him. This season was more of how the outward world dealt with him. His intersectionality of being a Queer POC that plays sport really adds to the discussions within the queer community and the sense of being outcasted within the community. I liked how he was able to talk to Andrew about the whole being 'the most non gay gay' and also not being 'gay enough'. It was really nice and I loved that interaction. I also liked the fact that they discussed the whole aspect of being stressed about the first time and such.

I liked the full cabin sequence in terms of his anxiety about having sex for the first time. That too with an experienced gay. It all just makes sense and makes me glad that it was addressed.

I loved him as the 'mentor' for Rahim and the fact that they could relate to each other about being POC with religious parents I think was the exact push needed for the discussions to move forward.

I think his conversation about his queer experience as a POC with Rahim was something I have been waiting for since the first season. He definitely should not have revealed Benji's secrets without talking to him and that was a mistake on his part and something that will affect Venji in a long while. But the fact that Rahim and Victor relied on each other was not surprising.

I am going to address the rest of the aspects of Victor with regards to his relationships with each of them after their individual breakdown.

Now moving forward to Benji.

I know its gonna be a hard truth but I think his character was the one that I liked the least. And this is specific to the fact that his motivations are hidden from us. He is not really open to talk to us (through victor). I had the same problem with him in the first season and was hoping he would be fleshed out more. We only see him as an extension to Victor and just his boyfriend. Even then, we barely see him communicating with Victor or anybody else all through the time. Also, that being said, I have seen a lot of people say he was OOC but I think he was actually not really OOC. The way he reacts to Victor's mom's reactions although they come from a place of wanting better for Victor, he doesn't really think twice about why Victor must not be reacting or doing so subtly. He feels very unsympathetic on many occasions and that is a pattern we see from season 1.

I'm not saying he didn't have any troubles of his. Cause he definitely did. We know that with the drunken driving episode and the AA meetings and the strip club story. They were all awful, but that doesn't excuse him from trying to understand where Victor is coming from. Maybe having a little more context and communication about him would make us understand him and his motivations better.

This season specifically, I actually found him to be very token-ish of a gay guy which is weird because it has two other gay characters (or 5 based on the multiple cameos).

Now getting to Rahim.

I LOVED HIM. He is, I think right behind Victor in my heart. I fell in love with him barely minutes into the episode. His coming out retelling was the most wholesome of all things. I loved the friendship Pilar and him shared. I'm surprised we didn't get a scene with Pilar teasing him about his crush on Victor but I think that was because the writers didn't want to make it obvious. I felt he had a character of his own that was explored more than just coming in between the main couple. The one episode where they skip school we found out more about him and it was intriguing to say the least.

He is a Muslim gay boy who likes to put nail polish and fashion and believes that his parents will not accept him. It is soo refreshing to see this theory get denied and the parents being completely okay with it. Next, Victor and him have an interesting relationship between the two. When victor needs his mind to be taken off of things or talk to, Rahim does just that and when Rahim needs some advice or just some support Victor does that.

NOW VENJI.....

I think this is again... a little unpopular right now, but... their relationship was not that great this season. And I.... kinda expected that to happen. That is for multiple reasons. They spent 50% of their time making out, 40% of it fighting and 10% communicating. Were they flawed? Absolutely and I get that. They had massive miscommunication problems. Trust issues and everything under the moon. It is to be expected especially cause they are teenagers and they are not mature enough. That being said, flaws are not when you are dismissive of your boyfriend's issues because he doesn't fit your ideal gay stereotype. Flaws are not when you say your boyfriend is too much for you to handle and say something like you are the only one taking care of them. That's manipulation. Flaws are not when you don't realise that the context your boyfriend comes from is very specific to himself and if you want to do better you need to be open to listen to where he is coming from instead of getting offended by him saying you are white when you don't get the specifics. You need to understand that by saying you are white, he is not dismissing your experience with alcohol addiction and with your father taking you to strip clubs and shit. He is just saying you don't get where I am coming from. The reason I say I saw it coming is because even in season 1 we see Benji go ahead with what he wants to do instead of thinking about the consequences. Case in point the kiss on Victor's birthday. Victor told Benji that his grandparents are homophobic and still he kisses Derek. Because it is fiction and a teen drama the consequences weren't dire and it came to be a growth point for Victor but just imagine if the consequences were different. If it ended up being something worse, what then. I feel this season we are especially able to see Benji out of the rose tinted glasses that Victor had last season.

That being said I admit that Victor was also not entirely good. He did breach Benji's trust. I don't see how they can go back from there. He didn't communicate from his side as well, but just think of it like this if someone says you are too much to handle would their partner actually be willing to communicate what's bothering them?

The things about Isabelle walking on sex. If it was my house anything remotely sexual, irrespective of the gender would have been met with shame and anger just as Isabelle did. They are 16. The little brother was right next door. In any way whether it is straight sex or gay sex it would still have been met this way I feel.

So yeah as much as they are supposed to be the main star couple of the show they lack in almost every aspect. So yeah...

Now coming to VICTOR X RAHIM

Straight off the bat, I don't know if I watched the same season that others did because I actually felt the chemistry between them was actually more than Venji had in scenes other than the make out ones.

Also, they come from similar backgrounds. They understand each other much better than any white dude could ever understand them. They actually talk and communicate.

Rahim and Victor on the other hand are both new to this whole being gay, out and proud thing and I feel they would understand each other better. I think a big problem people have with them is that the writers fall back on the love triangle trope and stuff but I like it in this instance. It made sense to me.

Why? Because they are teenagers. Also, the gay pool in schools are so small and people are bound to explore. Like Victor said, what are the odds that you end up with the first person you start dating?

Also, regarding the wedding. Benji said he would not come, so I don't think he has the right to question who he came with. It was completely innocent on Victor's part because he did invite Pilar first. I guess it is the whole first slow dance that was the betrayal and as much as their chemistry was palpable I feel Benji should have allowed to here him out. I don't know maybe you all feel different about it but I feel that is not a betrayal on Victor's part. What could have been a betrayal was the kiss. I know it is once again a repeat of the cheating stereotype and I had hoped that the showrunner's did it a bit differently but well it has happened. (But again the chemistry in that kiss!!!)

What do I want to happen next. I definitely ship Victor x Rahim more than Victor x Benji. I would love for it to be Rahim behind the door but it feels unlikely that the showrunners will actually do that so my hope is even if they get together, Benji and Victor realise just how much they don't fit with each other and break up amicably and then Victor x Rahim gets explored and slow burn happens.

I don't want Victor to be the only one apologising if Venji do get together again. For whatever small amount of time. I need them to communicate better.

So yeah..... this was long and what I thought of the main portions of Love, Victor. It's really ironic how people love everyone other than Victor in a story about him and care for all the stories other than him.

#love victor #love victor season 2 #rahim love victor #victor salazar #not gonna tag Benji cause I am not too forgiving on him #can you tell author loves rahim? #and victor #and especially loves them together? #Victor x Rahim #we need to come up with an appropriate ship name for them #Vichim? Rator? I don't know just something! #Anywho... Another one coming up sometime about the friends and family #kayblyeeee #first post in ages

[jamiiviper]

The Jamil Essay

this is a reupload of a post i made a couple of weeks ago - previously it was an external link to a google doc, so it never showed up in any of the twst tags, but i worked so hard on this and i would really love it if more people read it, so i’m reuploading directly to tumblr.

to put it simply, this is a 3.7k word character analysis purely about jamil. and even with a word count like that i wasn’t quite able to cover everything i wanted to say, so who knows, maybe there’ll be a part 2 one day. i’ve also decided i do want to write a kalim version, so i’ll probably start working on that sometime soon! stay tuned!

trigger warnings: mentions of child abuse

jamil is the vice dorm leader of scarabia, who’s been kalim’s caretaker practically since birth. he puts on a facade of not standing out, preferring to remain completely average, and plans his life around kalim’s antics. as we learned in chapter 4, however, his true feelings are that he bears a lot of resentment towards kalim, and that he wants to stand out - he just wasn’t allowed to, as he can never surpass kalim.

in this essay i want to cover not just my personal interpretation of jamil, but also some common misconceptions that people tend to have about him. twitter doesn’t have this problem as much, but with tumblr i’ve found that there are very few jamil stans, especially in the theory and writing communities - meaning it’s quite common for people to misunderstand his character. in the fandom as a whole, it’s common for people to only acknowledge him insofar as “gay for kalim”. 

firstly, jamil’s character development in the main story - i would say he’s arguably the best-developed character in twst, since yana now has enough chapters available to flesh out characters after their main story arc ended. jamil holds very deep-seated resentment against kalim, to the point that he plotted to betray him for probably several years. he plotted to have kalim not just thrown out of nrc, but thoroughly ruin his reputation in the process. after his overblot, those feelings did not magically vanish - far from it. i think earlier twst chapters suffered from arcs being wrapped up a little too neatly post-overblot, but pomefiore’s arc has already proved itself to be the exception and thoroughly covers not just jamil’s continued dislike for kalim, but also the wider consequences for what he did.

since the twst school year begins in september, we know jamil is about 9 months older than kalim. from literally the day kalim was born, jamil’s life has been dedicated to kalim. possibly since the day jamil was born, and he was always fated to be kalim’s caretaker. it may even have been the reason he was born at all. either way, it’s not like he remembers those 9 months. all jamil has ever known is that his sole purpose must be to serve kalim. he must not have desires of his own, he must not do anything for himself - from childhood he was expected to be ready to give up his life for kalim at a moment’s notice. he can’t be good at anything - kalim must always be better (i’ll cover this in more depth in a later paragraph, this philosophy is key to his character). his own parents drilled this into him, even going to the extent of hitting him if he didn’t comply. it seems he has a normal relationship with his family despite this - he bickers with his sister like regular siblings, and pre-overblot he indicated that his desire to be free from servitude wasn’t just about him, he wanted to free his family. nonetheless, the psychological damage his childhood caused him is severe. is it any wonder his unique magic is mind control, when he’s never had an ounce of control over his own life?

moving onto his early teen years, we know both jamil and kalim were severely poisoned at one point, both falling into comas for around two weeks. although we don’t have a timeframe for jamil’s coma, we know kalim’s was when they were around 13 years old. if jamil’s was around this age too - probably a short while afterwards - i think it’s plain to see why jamil’s resentment began to build. he’d have been around the age where he first started to question why his life has to revolve around kalim. why should he be expected to die for someone he doesn’t even like, who’s spoiled and doesn’t realise how much jamil does for him? kalim takes everything for granted: status, friendships, freedom, and jamil is meanwhile left in the shadows with nothing. then one day kalim gets poisoned so badly he falls into a coma - how much do you want to bet jamil was blamed for that, at the age of 13? after that he’s expected to taste-test anything kalim eats beforehand, and eventually starts making all his meals for him because the risk of poison is so high otherwise. then one day he slips up, or it’s an undetectable poison, and jamil is the one to fall into a coma. is anyone blamed for that? does anyone pity jamil outside of his immediate family + kalim? no, probably not. after all, he’s just doing his duty, right? it’s truly… no wonder jamil’s resentment became so intense. he finally has proof that his life truly does not matter. although kalim certainly cares about him, he doesn’t understand jamil’s position. he sees jamil as a friend, an equal; jamil knows this can never be the case, and he also knows kalim is too privileged to ever hope to understand. 

fast forward on a couple of years to jamil receiving his nrc acceptance letter. he thinks that finally, finally he’s going to be free. four years of freedom - and who knows, maybe after that he can be free forever! he can finally excel at his classes and be his true self, without fear of upstaging kalim! 

and then kalim gets accepted a month late. for no reason other than his surname. 

and then kalim gets sorted into his dorm.

it’s a miracle he didn’t just overblot on the spot - but that’s his nature as a scarabia student. careful foresight and planning. this moment was, undoubtedly, the moment he started planning his betrayal. he had his one month of freedom ripped away, just like that. 

oh, don’t forget the fact that not long after, kalim was made dorm leader not because he notably embodies scarabia values at all, but because of nepotism. (side note: most scarabia stans agree kalim does actually reflect scarabia values, just not as obviously as jamil does, but either way jamil himself wouldn’t see it this way. this is a jamil essay so i won’t go in depth about this unless asked to!)

under kalim’s watch, scarabia - known for its intelligence and cunning - is turned into “the party dorm”. this seems to be the fandom’s perception of them too - i mean, just ask any non-scarabia stan what goes on in scarabia, that’s probably the answer they’ll give you. jamil would have probably loved the original scarabia; although we don’t know much about it, we know scarabia students are on a par with octavinelle when it comes to intelligence (paralleling azul’s constant interest in jamil). yet by winter break, scarabia is doing so badly in those same exams that they didn’t even place in the rankings…? without meaning to, kalim clearly harmed scarabia. instead of getting chance to study magic and show off, jamil is now essentially an unpaid, full-time party planner by the time his second year starts.

a few months later, winter break finally arrives, and jamil executes his plan to dethrone kalim. i may have just spent the last two pages defending jamil’s grudge, but his actions themselves are still indefensible. there’s evidence to suggest kalim knew what was occurring on some level - refusing to answer jade’s question about who was hypnotising him proved that 1) he probably had some idea deep down that jamil was betraying him 2) he doesn’t want jamil to get in trouble for it. nonetheless, this does not make what jamil did okay in the slightest, even if kalim allowed it to happen. jamil is, undoubtedly, the bad guy in this situation, no matter how sympathetic his childhood makes you feel. i could go into detail about why kalim acted the way he did, but again, this is jamil-focused.

i’ll skip talking about his overblot, because i covered his hatred for kalim in a lot of depth already and i want to talk about the general aspects of his personality like his desire for praise later on. so moving onto the end of chapter 4, we see jamil’s true self: a snarky, heavily opinionated boy who honestly just wants to be free to be himself.

but just like his freedom, that side of jamil once again only lasts for a brief moment. jamil almost loses everything after his overblot. practically every scarabia student hates him and wants him thrown out of the dorm - even kalim, his sole defender, can’t call him a good person. he’s a traitor. he says he trusts the scarabia students to work out that it’s better for them if he stays, but that day won’t come any time soon, and until then he’s keeping his distance from them all, because their hatred is that strong. if azul truly had been streaming to more people than just jade, his life would have been ruined beyond repair. so what does jamil do? he goes back to serving kalim. as a scarabia student, his foresight is good enough that he knows the option he hates the most is the only one that’ll be good for him in the end. for jamil, being himself is nothing short of a death sentence.

now i’ve talked for far too long about the timeline of his character arc, i can finally get to the good stuff: jamil’s personality, and how it’s changed throughout the stories we’ve seen so far.

the first thing that springs to mind when you think of jamil, other than “snake”, is probably “tired”. or “he’s going to snap”. something along those lines. which... yes, we know he is. he did snap. after chapter 4, this doesn’t seem to have changed too much, but i do get the impression that he’s somewhat less stressed out by kalim. his resentment has dissipated, for the most part (he does still openly insult him, though), so while he does grumble at kalim there’s no suppressed fury behind it. what replaced that fury?

guilt.

in 5-10, jamil tells azul that he intends to continue to obediently follow kalim around in order to restore his reputation, both inside and outside of scarabia. this does of course make him sound pretty selfish (as per usual), and in classic jamil fashion he doesn’t let his true emotions show, so it’s easy to take this at face value and assume he just doesn’t really care. i think in this case, we need to look more at his actions that we see throughout chapter 5. namely, the way it’s being emphasised how he’s silently watching kalim from afar - something he’s always done, yes, but yana seems to be really making a point of it in chapter 5. it’s not just kalim he’s distancing himself from, either. he’s staying away from the rest of the scarabia students too, as mentioned earlier. he never had any friends at all to rely on, even before his overblot. so by doing this, he’s effectively completely isolating himself. he clearly has a lot of thoughts about everything that he’s not sharing with anyone - just listen to the way he sighs at the end of the flashback in 5-10, how annoyed and frustrated he seems. if jamil was telling the truth about just wanting to restore his reputation, he’d probably appreciate kalim’s efforts, even if he dislikes kalim himself. he shouldn’t be upset by kalim persuading the scarabia students to give him another chance. not if he truly just wants to get back to normal. i think on some level, jamil feels incredibly guilty over his actions. he might not have even admitted to himself yet that he feels this way, and by saying things like “i just want to restore my reputation” he’s just trying to convince himself. after all, that’s something he has a history of doing.

ever since jamil’s first introduction, we’ve known jamil lives his life by the philosophy of “not standing out is the best way to succeed”. he hates standing out or receiving any kind of positive attention at all, because he thinks that it’ll only attract trouble. or so we thought, because as we learned from his overblot, jamil desperately wants to stand out. he’s powerful and intelligent, and he wants people to acknowledge that. he wants the praise and recognition he knows he deserves. this means that whenever he said he didn’t want to stand out, he was lying through his teeth - he probably constantly tried and failed to convince himself of this throughout his childhood. during his lab SR story, he even repeats it to himself in his thoughts, like a mantra - “I want to avoid standing out. I can’t be satisfied with this. I cannot be too good, nor fall behind, and neither should I get satisfactory grades or fail. This is the best shortcut to success.”. much like his feelings of guilt, jamil refused to acknowledge how much he truly wanted to show off, even in his own thoughts. he is awful at being honest to himself.

post-ch5, we find out that despite everything, jamil does still hold this philosophy, to some extent. he of course shows off his singing and dancing skills enough to be chosen as a main vocalist, and he says he wants to make a name for himself and show various people just how talented he truly is: kalim, his family, the asims and MC, to name a few. yet in the chapter before that, when kalim compliments his singing and dancing, he’s like “i don’t really want to stand out, but…”. which is honestly a little confusing at first because he does want to. i’d probably interpret it as something along the lines of he wants to show off to the people he cares about, but he still wants to keep his head down in general. so i think that to some extent, maybe he actually has internalised that philosophy now. the one time he truly expressed his desire to stand out, it ended in catastrophe for him. he has this tiny seed of doubt within him now, telling him his parents were right all along. but... he’s working past it, and applying himself as and when he’s comfortable doing so.

going back to him being bad at being honest, jamil’s a pretty big tsundere. there’s one person he does regularly receive praise from: kalim. yet despite desperately wanting to be praised, he often gets annoyed at kalim and tells him something like “this isn’t about me right now” or “what does that have to do with anything?”. plus when the praise is coming from kalim, it’s often in the context of kalim praising him to other people - as a servant, he can’t be seen accepting all these compliments, right? he can never be better than kalim. so he has to reject kalim’s praise. when it’s just the two of them alone, though, is when jamil gets embarrassed to the point he has to hide his blush under his hood. given his childhood, chances are that he doesn’t really know how to process being praised. he knows he wants people’s approval, but when he actually gets it, he just short-circuits. it was the same at his birthday celebration; although he wants to be the centre of attention, when it actually happens, he gets all embarrassed and tsun. i was trying not to let my own personal feelings spill in this but oh my god he’s so cute i can’t

next... this isn’t really linked to any previous topic, but i want to talk about jamil’s cooking! jamil cooks all of kalim’s meals, and regularly cooks entire feasts for kalim’s parties, too (as well as being in charge of getting any animals kalim wants to show off, decorating the dorm, making sure everything runs smoothly… you get the idea). his cooking is very good, and he has a lot of technical knowledge about cooking too - azul, whose parents run a restaurant, didn’t know about emulsification, but jamil was able to explain it to him. despite being so good, though, according to his dorm SSR homescreen lines he doesn’t actually like cooking very much. he says the fact that he cooks so much is “just how things turned out”. of course, he could just be being a tsun, but i do feel like he’s being honest with this - what reason does he have to seriously enjoy something he was forced into doing his entire life? However there is evidence that he might enjoy it after all; he’s particularly good at alchemy because of his cooking knowledge, and according to magical archives he’s completely neutral in motivation for both flying and history lessons, but has slightly higher motivation levels for alchemy, indicating that he can’t stop himself from putting a little bit extra effort into that class. i think it can be interpreted either way with the canon info we have currently, but regardless i would not say he’s the cooking fanatic people often depict him as. 

also, when jamil cooks, although his cooking is good, visually it’s usually very boring, to the point he and his sister would bicker over it. he has the technical skills to cook good food, but no idea how to present it. similarly, in his fairy gala SR he was told that although he perfectly memorised the dance, it was boring to watch - it looked like he was just executing the routine without any passion behind it. jamil is so emotionally repressed that he has no idea how to express his individuality. even in his bedroom, the only truly personal items he owns are a first aid kit (related to his servant position, not him as a human being) and a stereo + headphones set for dancing. he doesn’t have any other hobbies or interests - he doesn’t even know what people his age do for fun, because he’s never been allowed to think about such things. 

dancing is all jamil has that’s not directly related to serving kalim, really - but even that ties into his servant status. although he genuinely enjoys it nowadays and dances by himself for fun, he only picked it up as a hobby because kalim wanted to go to dance practice, and of course jamil had to accompany him. when his flashback after his overblot talks about him deliberately losing to kalim, the story focuses specifically on a dancing competition. which is why it’s honestly so important to jamil’s character that chapter 5 focuses on a singing and dancing competition. jamil finally has the chance not just to show off his skills in general, but his skills at the one thing he’s been allowed to love throughout his life. the one thing where losing to kalim at it hurt so much that it was such a prominent memory for him. when jamil was chosen as a main vocalist, he instinctively tries to say kalim would be better suited for the position, but stops himself and accepts it. it clearly means so much to him that he was chosen for this.

okay i started to scare people with how long this was getting when it was only 50% finished, i think if i write anymore people will actually be concerned for my health so i’ll leave it here. if you read all of this, thank you so much for putting up with my anime boy brainrot for over six full pages! i really.. really like jamil. again, i most certainly do not think his actions should be defended, but god if they’re not fascinating to read about. and i hope i covered the other sides to him well enough, the things that you’d never ordinarily pick up on because so few people talk about him outside of him and kalim as a pair (both platonic scarabia + romantic jamikali, i mean). he has so much depth to him that people don’t see and god i could easily have gone on for another few pages if i wasn’t forcing myself to stop. but please please talk to me if you want to hear more...

yana has treated him so well, jamil stans get too much food if anything but i’m absolutely thriving off it as you can see! thank you for allowing him to exist, yana-sensei!

having said that, i couldn’t stop myself from adding some extra facts about him below. please enjoy.

some fun jamil facts for your soul:

his sister used to bake him cookies on his birthday - specifically, these!

when jamil and kalim went to eat at the cafeteria with ruggie and leona, leona took one look at jamil and went “you look like you’d kill kalim in his sleep”

sebek and jamil find each other’s positions enviable. sebek wishes he could have been by malleus’ side from birth as jamil was with kalim, and jamil just… wishes he served someone he respected as deeply as sebek respects malleus (but he does think sebek is too enthusiastic)

jamil hates surprises with a burning passion, and despite being with kalim for 17 years is still not used to them. for his previous birthday, kalim held a huge surprise party, and i think he still hasn’t recovered from the shock

i think a lot of people already know that in his birthday SSR story he said he wanted a parrot after graduation so he could teach it to call him master, but it goes a bit further than that? it was actually first mentioned during his lesson chats, when kalim gets a parrot. jamil has to research how to care for it, and ended up wanting one of his own afterwards (but got too tsundere to admit it at the time).

also, he heard that the sorcerer of the sands’ parrot (iago) could speak as fluently as a human, and he got excited and watched a bunch of parrot videos on magicam, but was of course disappointed to find out that this was not the case.

he frequently uses flattery to try and get his way, like when he attempts to flatter vil during his SSR story - unfortunately he misjudged vil, as vil’s actually the type of person who hates meaningless flattery. because he does this so frequently, when he genuinely does give compliments people don’t always believe him.

according to the halloween event, jamil is surprisingly environmentally conscious, and insists on holding a sustainable halloween theme. after organising so many parties and seeing the waste they probably produce, i think there’s no wonder he’s so concerned about it.

#twisted wonderland #jamil viper #twst jamil #scarabia #twst #kalim al-asim #twst kalim #i'm a busy uni student so don't expect the kalim essay to be finished anytime soon #i procrastinated way too much writing the jamil one #and i would not do the same for kalim ajdfjshsjhs #also i know people have said they'd like to see my take on other charas but please consider: #the only reason i have this deep an insight into jamil's character is bc i never think about the others #there's only jamil in my head #so i don't think i'm the best person to go to for interesting analysis about anyone else #but again who knows #tw: abuse

[dreamingsnowflake2013]

The Marriage Argument: Tharn’s Perspective

Both Tharn and Type have valid arguments about the marriage so they have inevitably been bound to clash. The reason for the clash is that they’re two people who have been formed by very different experiences, including their individual past traumas, making them into the men they are now: an idealist with a streak for eternal optimism and a realist with a tendecy for negativity; an all-out gay and a former homophobe; a hopeless romantic and a cynical pragmatic, someone who’s loved before and was broken by it and a man who is in love for the first time in his life.

Season 1 focused on Type’s problems, flaws and character developemnt as he had come a very long way. And although Tharn’s issues were addressed, they have never been completely resolved, therefore the focus in Season 2 shifts towards him and delves deeper into his character: his insecurities, hopes and personality traits.  

It’s not only their differences which divide them, but also what they have in common because like repels like, so while Tharn and Type differ in many ways, they are viscerally and uncannily similar in others, which is something many people don’t realise. THEY ARE BOTH FIGHTERS - strong, stubborn as mules and immensely brave - who have overcome huge obstacles, not only in their relationship, but also as individuals. For instance, everyone talks about how stubborn Type is, but it gets rarely mentioned that Tharn is as stubborn, if not even more. He merely isn’t so loud about it.

The most important and inherent aspect of Tharn’s personality is that he is an idealist who has always wished for the impossible and fought losing battles, ultimately having his wishes granted and winning those battles most of the times due to his dogged stubborness and refusal to budge and give up on what he believes in. He’s been like this for most of his life, even before we met him in S01E01, so when some people claim that the Tharn in Season 2 is not the same Tharn, they never really known him or understood him. Therefore, it there is one quote that perfectly describes Tharn in both seasons, it is this one:

Tharn’s always dreamed the impossible dream: to study music, for Type to love him and only him one day. 

Furthermore, he’s fought against the odds and opposition: the prejudice against his sexuality, his parents’ initial refusal to allow him study music, Type’s bullying, Type wanting to keep their relationship a secret from everyone else,... and he has overcome and defeated all of them with his unrelenting optimism and relentless refusal to give up. He still believed in love despite all his terrible breakups and didn’t give up on Type no matter how badly Type treated him, believing Type is a good person.

The very qualities that stopped Than from moving out of the dorm when Type harassed him 7 years ago, leading to them being together, and enabled him to live his life the way he wanted and to win Type’s love, despite the fact he was fighting a losing battle each time - tenacity and pride and insane stubbornness - are both his greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses. So once again Tharn hopes for the impossible: this time, it’s marriage.

Tharn accepted himself a long time ago, coming out to his parents when he was in 12th grade, openly admitting that he was gay in school and later, in work, as well. Unlike Type, he is an all-out gay, therefore he is in a very different place than his lover. However, he, too, had struggled with it. It took him 4 years before he dared to come out to his parents and publicly reveal he’s gay. So ever since, he’s been dealing with everything that comes with it, both the positive and negative. There must have been times when Tharn was marginalized, discriminated against and felt inferior due to his sexual orientation, most noticebly while being bullied by a certain homophobic roommate. 

On the other hand, while Type told his family and friends about his relationship, he’s never come out publicly, so he still lacks the final step and the experience that comes with it.

Performing at his own brother's engagement party the love song he wrote for Type and seeing him propose to the woman he loves, still hurting because Type has refused his own proposal many times and doesn’t want to get married to him, break something inside Tharn. 

He wants the same thing, but he can’t have it and that makes him hurt, desolate, bitter and envious. He’s been with Type much longer than Thorn with Aom and they’ve been through so much, earning their right to be together, yet marriage seems like an impossible dream, the only thing that Type has refused to give him. Not only does he feel cheated of something that should be his, but it makes him feel inferior, marginalized and not good enough. 

Because if he were a woman, Type wouldn’t refuse to talk about him with his co-workers and would have agreed to marry him a long time ago. Instead,Tharn has to come up with excuse why he won't introduce his boyfriend to his collegues. This has been an ongoing issue since season 1. 

 And this is where those who argue that if Type doesn't want to get married Tharn shouldn't make him completely misunderstand the problem - the marriage is only a symbol, representing equality and Tharn's desire to be like any other couple in all the things that matter.

While Tharn can compromise a lot, he is no doormat and has a certain set of morals and beliefs he will never break. He has enough self-worth to know that he deserves better. Once again, it’s the same quality which didn’t allow him to move out of the dorm when Type bullied him. So it says a lot that the only time Tharn seriously contemplated breaking up with Type was when he thought Type slept with Puifai. He couldn’t bear to be treated as second rate, a spare tire, a mistress and a dirty secret and share Type with someone else. It’s a line he will never be able to cross, his pride and heart won’t allow it. Tharn wants equality, thus he wants it all, wants what everyone else has. And being denied marriage to the love of his life makes him feel incomplete, deficient, depraved, as if he were somehow undeserving of it.

Speaking of inferiority, Tharn has never gotten over his abandonment issues: being dumped by all his past lovers, including Tar, his first love,... In fact, it has actually become worse when Type broke up with him 7 years ago. It might have been fake, but Tharn didn’t know that back then, so the heartbreak he felt was real - his body, his heart and his mind went through a real breakup and they remember it all. 

The thing with traumas is that while you might heal and overcome them, you will never forget about them because they leave behind traces, scars that will hurt from time to time and never let you forget about them. During his formative years, Tharn got used to being thrown away and Type’s abandoment was the one that cut him the deepest. Because of all this, Tharn  developed a deeply-rooted and hidden inferiority complex together with his fear of being left behind. Deep down, he always worries that he isn’t good enough and that no matter how hard he tries, he will be abandoned in the end. 

The scar caused by Type’s breakup has never healed and was left to fester, staying latent over the years, and it’s always been only a matter of time before it reared its ugly head. There is always a price to pay eventually and the consequences of that breakup have been merely postponed. 

The mere mention of breakup is enough to trigger Tharn, but hearing Type explaining to Thorn that marriage would make things more messy and difficult when they broke up shatters him, it’s basically the ultimate trigger.

Tharn knows what it feels like to lose Type, he lived through it and it almost destroyed him, so he doesn’t want to experience it ever again because he wouldn’t survive it. Therefore he has been doing everything in his powers to prevent it and bind Type to him in every way possible, desperately trying to stop him from leaving and himself from being abandoned once again. 

And marriage is one of those bonds, actually, it’s a real palpable bond that binds a person’s life to another. It involves people making a sacred and legally binding promise, proclaiming their love publicly, in front of eveyone, and they exchange rings, the symbol of the bond and eternity, as well. In some cultures, the couple’s ahnds get literally binded together. So it’s no wonder that Tharn desires to get married to Type so much. 

Moreover, a proposal, an engagement party and a wedding ceremony are incredibly romantic moments and Tharn is the ultimate romantic with a penchant for grand romantic gestures and declarations, organizing glamping dates on rooftops, giving his boyfriend red roses,... therefore he does want to do it all.

Finally, the primary reason for the inferiority complex and fear of abandonment comes from the fact that THARN IS A MIDDLE CHILD. His family is very loving and he’s never been neglected, but being a middle child means he is neither fish nor fowl, neither the oldest or the youngest. He’s grown used to taking himself out of the equation, to compromise and to share the love of his parents with his siblings. So he desperately wants someone to be only his, someone who he doesn’t have to share with anyone; HE WANTS TYPE AND HIS LOVE TO BELONG ONLY TO HIM, COMPLETELY AND UNCONDITIONALLY. It’s a visceral need on his part and the reason behind his strong jealous streak.

#tharntype #mewgulf #mew suppasit #tharntype 2: 7 years of love #gulf kanawut #analysis

[simply-not-an-egg]

Cobra Kai, Future Season/s Dump Because I Have Many Thoughts

I’m gonna split this up into sections because oh boy are there a lot of things I’d like to see in the future of this series from these characters. DISCLAIMER; THIS ISN’T COMPLETE YET, SO KEEP CHECKING BACK TO SEE WHEN THIS DISCLAIMER DISSAPEARS BECAUSE AT THAT POINT IT SHOULD BE COMPLETE. I COULDN’T BE BOTHERED KEEPING IT IN MY DRAFTS.

Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso

So where we left off in Season 3 is Daniel and Johnny joining their dojos to become one to defeat the big enemy, Cobra Kai. But what does that also mean for them? They’re pretty much friends now, as much as either would them would probably hate to admit it. Anyway, these dynamics now presented, it opens up a lot of potential plots for them, the biggest of which being Lawrusso becoming canon at some point in the future, which I’d say is HIGHLY likely considering, as we all know, Ralph Macchio is the captain of said ship, and William Zabka, as far as I’m aware, is fairly supportive of this ship (FYI, Macchio has also said in an interview before that Johnny and Daniel have a very will they, won’t they? Ross and Rachel relationship, and imo, that’s not something you’d say about platonic friends). Anyhoo, below is pretty much what I’d love to see of them, and how it all happens, because trust me, there’s a long road to get to the point where we all want Lawrusso to be.

Personally, I would think neither Johnny or Daniel bat an eye about this whole potential relationship between the two of them until certain kids in their dojo start pairing up, and by certain kids I mean Eli/Hawk and Demetri, which would likely happen at some point during Season 4 after they’ve talked through their trauma and, for the most part, forgiven each other (mainly Demetri forgiving Eli/Hawk). 

The reason I say this is because I don’t think either Johnny or Daniel would have ever expected such a relationship to be considered normal, or for one just have it be accepted, because the two of them grew up in the 80s, where it was still shamed upon to be anything other that cis and het.

Such a thing leads me to the next point of internalised homophobia and repression, and the absolute confusion and probably shame that would come with realising that they aren’t straight, more or less on Daniel’s end. I feel as though Johnny wouldn’t have as much of a problem with it though because a) he’s a free agent, and yes I know he’s had an almost on/off thing with Carmen, but they’ve never actually, you know, laid the cards on the table and said, ‘yeah we’re a couple’, and b) I, like many others, are inclined to believe Johnny may be bisexual, which therefore gives him the crutch of ‘well I also like girls so I must be normal to a degree’. I also think Johnny would be in some way learning through the kids that all is well, and that’s it’s alright to feel the way he feels about people, because, I mean, let’s face it, literally no one in that dojo is straight. The show’s not Cobra Kai, it’s Cobra Queer. Now, Daniel, on the other hand, would have so much more trouble coming to, and accepting the conclusion that he may have a thing for dudes.

The biggest reason for that being, of course, his marriage to Amanda. I think that would definitely be the thing that messes with him the most, and I feel as though he’d be doing a lot of self-questioning, you know, such as things like ‘did i ever love her?’ or ‘have i been faking it all these years?’, which to both, we know, the answer is no, because, even if he was a straight A gay, it is possible to love someone without being attracted to them as per say. But anyway, I digress.

Daniel would probably end up questioning Amanda a lot too, whether she feels he’s good enough for her, or if he’s done right by her, et cetera, et cetera. This would likely make her question him, obviously, because her husband’s acting stranger than normal, and I feel like all that questioning on her part would likely lead to a breakdown on Daniel’s end in which case he would spill out all these emotions and feelings and realisations about him liking dudes. And obviously, all of this would absolutely crush Amanda’s heart, and he knows it, but she takes it in her stride, and does what she can to help him.

With this though would obviously come the divorce, something which is mutually agreed on, but they remain good friends. Course, they also have to tell the kids then why this is happening, and Sam is terribly accepting, of course. Anthony I’m not so sure about, but I think at the end of the day he loves his dad, nonetheless. I also think that Anthony would be inclined to live with his mother post-divorce, although he’d still come round on weekends to see his dad, meanwhile Sam lives with her father. 

Following their sexual awakenings then, along with personal acceptance, comes the realisations of the crushing. The way Johnny cares so much about the kids and how Daniel smiles at that, the way Daniel is always so calm and collected and how comforting of a feeling that is for Johnny. And I think, as an added bonus, the kids realise their senseis have a thing for one another before they even do themselves.

Their friendship grows though, one step at a time, and I think at some point there’s a night where Johnny and Daniel are sitting out on the deck at the dojo, drinking and reminiscing and laughing all the while. And it is that exact night that changes everything. Because at some point, when they’ve become substantially intoxicated, they let both their walls down completely, and in Johnny asking a question about Daniel’s divorce, the latter opens up as to why it happened. Because he’s gay. And I swear to god Johnny almost chokes hearing that, because, deep down in his subconscious, he’s been waiting to hear something like that from Daniel since they were in high school.

Suddenly, after that, the metaphorical blindfolds come off, and Johnny and Daniel actually, properly, begin to realise now that they are crushing on one another and hard. They’ve fallen head over heels and there’s nothing they can do about it. But they are both timid, and I feel Johnny more than Daniel in this case. 

Eventually Daniel gets the guts to ask Johnny out, on a date, to which the latter agrees, and they likely just spend their night eating gas station food (to Daniel’s begrudgement), and driving around various spots in town, including the sports hall where the All Valley Tournament of ‘84 was held. There I think they also really talk, for the first time, about everything that went down that night. Daniel thanks Johnny for giving him the trophy again, and Johnny ends up in tears when he talks about Kreese and what he did to him. And all the while Daniel comforts him, and probably gets a bit cheesy in saying they’ve got each other now, and they’ll take him down together, at which Johnny makes a snide comment about the cheesiness, but they laugh together nonetheless. They end the night with a very tentative first kiss outside Johnny’s apartment before Daniel drives home, smiling all the while. 

Of course, as fate has it, and schedules, the next day there is a karate session, and it’s likely a bit awkward between the two then because their stuck in that position of ‘we’re not friends but we’re also not in a proper romantic relationship yet and we’re also basically gay so like what do we do’. To fix said awkward tension, Johnny ends up asking Daniel out on a second date on the weekend, and Daniel agrees, granted he chooses what to do and where to go (because Johnny did that last time).

I feel like Daniel takes Johnny to the forest he took Robby to for that karate training session, because it means a lot to Daniel, that spot. And much like the last time, they find themselves talking more and more about whatever deep, unresolved trauma the two have, whether that be because of each other or because of external factors (family, friends, shared enemies, et cetera). I think this date also has them gaining a tad more confidence with each other when it comes to physical things, like kissing and holding hands and just all that relationship stuff (because they enjoy it a lot, they’re both just still afraid to do these things, because, again, this stuff was taboo when they were growing up).

They end up going on a third and fourth date, the latter of which they discuss their respective families (aka the children), and what and how they’re going to tell them, along with Johnny’s own fears about Robby and, if and when he comes back, how he’s going to feel about this. 

Following the fourth date they decide to make things official between them, and once again, there is a bit of tentativity when it comes to calling one another ‘boyfriend’ but they get over it soon enough, and in time the two are happily commiting to soft PDA whenever they see each other. All the karate kids(TM) are of course happy and accepting of their senseis. 

And I’m just gonna say, the moment their relationship becomes truly public is at the All Valley Tournament. They’re holding hands, their giving comforting hugs, and when their kids kick Cobra Kai’s asses, you bet they give each other the biggest, most public kiss ever. 

And following all of that, I just wanna see the domestic karate dads just being happy??

Oh and Robby has a great reaction to this relationship, because, you know, Daniel was like a father figure, so him just being with his dad is great (not to mention, it probably makes him more open about discussing his feelings to them about Miguel)

Demetri and Hawk

Miguel, Robby, and Sam

Robby getting chokeheld by Kreese after losing the All Valley. That’s it. I want that parallel between Robby and Johnny. Adding to that, Johnny then beats the sh*t out of Kreese, and as Kreese has made the mistake of trying to choke a minor in front of a crowd, this gets him arrested

Tory

Ali, Carmen, and Amanda

Kreese and Silver

As much as I hate it, I would like to see this Daniel’s trauma pop up in season 4, better yet if it affects Daniel to a point where it worries Johnny, because then perhaps there’ll be a good understanding between the two that they’ve BOTH had traumatic senseis in the past

What I’d also like to see is for Silver to continue Cobra Kai, if Kreese gets arrested for whatever public displays of violence, because that would create quite a large fear plot for Daniel’s part, and it would be really cool to then explore all his trauma

I’d love to see more of Kreese and his Sugar Daddy in general. Like I never thought I’d say it but I do ship them. Do I like them? F*ck no. But they are husbands imo, and I need to see more of those type of scenes in S4

Something I thought of was Silver showing up at Daniel (and Johnny’s) dojo while they’re doing a class, and I want that to be the first time Daniel sees him. It will make him freeze, I know it, and as much as I hate watching Daniel suffer, I also love it

The Lawrusso Dojo

Cobra Kai

The All Valley Tournament

LaRusso Auto Group

Other

#karate kid #cobra kai #daniel larusso #johnny lawrence #lawrusso #demetri deservesalastname #demetri cobra kai #eli moskowitz #miguel diaz #robby keene #samantha larusso #tory nichols #ali mills #carmen diaz #amanda larusso #john kreese #terry silver #miyagi-do #eagle fang

[quillsandtypos]

Smiling in the Background

Summary: Reggie discusses his parents divorce with sunset curve for the first time. The reader opens up to Reggie about their own experience.

Warnings: comfort angst and talk about divorce

Words: 2.4k

Pairings: none but could be interpreted as reggie x reader

...........................................

Reggie knew his place in the group. He was the funny but lovable dumbass. If you needed a laugh you came to him. He was used to being overlooked and underappreciated. But he knew that his friends didn’t feel that way about him, they were always there for him when he needed it, not that he did; but it was still nice to know that they had his back.

But as the boys, and Reggie, grew older things shifted out of place. At their core they still had similar morals and principles to their personalities, but the trauma that they had developed would become a part of them as well.

Alex was first to endure that kind of trauma; when his parents didn’t react well to him coming out, he was devastated. The guys of course had already known about him being gay for years. They comforted him when he came to band practice the next day crying because of his parents' words. The boys promised him that he always had a family with them, a family that accepted him.

Luke was the second. At first the band didn’t know exactly what happened. Luke wasn’t very good at hiding his emotions, and they knew his relationship with his parents wasn’t the greatest at the time, but they didn’t know exactly what happened until they accidentally walked in on him playing one day, completely in tears. Luke told them what had happened and the song that he was writing to cope. By the next week the three had gotten together to write the instrumental to the song. They surprised Luke with it, and it was enough to make him smile, even if it was only for a second.

It took Reggie a long while to even admit to himself what was happening in his world. Something like this couldn’t be happening to him. He was supposed to be the funny guy of the group. How could he be the safe and comforting grounds for everyone else to walk upon when he couldn’t walk upon the grounds himself? He didn’t tell the group for quite awhile, he didn’t want to bother them with his own problems; he knew Luke and Alex were dealing with their own shit.

But he didn’t need to tell him, they knew something was up, long before he did. Words were only spoken about it once. It was a beautiful summer day and they were practicing in the studio. The group was cracking jokes and smiling. Reggie was smiling too, but it was obvious to those that knew him well that it was fake.

“Reg?” spoke Alex.

He forced a smile, “Yeah?”

Alex looked worried, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, totally!” Reggie lied.

Alex gave him a knowing look and Reggie knew he couldn’t lie to one of his best friends.

He glanced down to avoid eye contact. “It’s kinda a long story,” he murmured.

Alex took a spot next to him on the couch. “I’ve got time, if you want to tell it,” he assured him.

By that point the other two had caught on to the more serious atmosphere, and had turned around to watch.

“Reg you know we’re here for you man, right?” Luke asked, as he gripped Reggie’s shoulder rather tightly.

“Yeah, yeah I know. I just don’t wanna bother you guys, you’re dealing with your own stuff anyways, you probably don’t need my stuff anyways right?” Reggie joked. He forced himself to laugh and smile but no one in the room bought it for a second. They all had somber faces and looked at him through worried eyes.

“Reggie, you are never a bother to us,” Alex reassured him.

Luke nodded.

“Yeah what he said,” Bobby agreed.

Reggie took a look at all of his friends' faces and decided that he would tell them. He told them about how it started off with arguing at night, but it was quiet enough that he could ignore it. Then it turned to comments during the day that they thought he wouldn’t notice, which he did. Then it was screaming so loud in the middle of the night that he could hear it upstairs even with a pillow over his head. He told them everything, and they listened to all of it. Occasionally nodding to let him know that they were still listening. When he was done talking his breath was shaky and there were still tears rolling down his cheeks.

Bobby offered him a tissue box that he gladly took.

After a few moments of silence and them watching him, he felt the need to break it.

“I’m still the funny guy though, so don’t any of you think you can take my place,” he playfully threatened. The group broke into small grins but they quickly faded.

“The funny guy can still be sad. Being funny doesn’t mean the absence of being human,” Alex consoled him.

“Besides, you’re so much more than the funny guy. You’re an amazing friend, a great bassist, and you’re one of the nicest people I know,” Luke continued. Other than when he was talking about his parents, Reggie didn’t think he had ever seen Luke look so serious.

“And you make a mean sandwich,” Bobby added. Alex lightly smacked his leg.

“Ow! I was just trying to make him smile,” Bobby defended himself.

Reggie genuinely laughed at that.

“Thanks guys,” Reggie said, as he looked at all of them.

From that point on it was a said but unsaid thing. Reggie never really talked about it, but the guys knew when the fighting had gotten especially bad that night. They always offered a listening ear but never pushed him. But when Reggie died, he didn’t know what would happen to his parents. He never brought it up, with Caleb and everything it seemed like an unimportant matter.

But when Julie introduced you to the band, that seemed like an important matter to him. Another alive human being could see them, even if they weren’t playing. You came to know all of them fairly well, but you clicked the most with Reggie. He’d sometimes come visit you at school, just to say hello only to poof back out a couple moments later. He’d just sit in your room as you did homework, occasionally interrupting your homework to ask you a question or two about the world nowadays; not that you minded, you enjoyed talking to him.

Today was one of those days, it had been a week or so since Caleb’s stamps had been removed, and you were grateful to even be having a conversation with him.

Reggie already knew you had divorced parents, you had mentioned it off handedly the second week he knew you. Everyone else seemed to brush passed it, but he continued to watch you for a moment, noticing the way you couldn’t make eye contact with him; the same thing he had done, all those years ago.

But it wasn’t until this moment that it was brought up again. You had said something about needing to pack to go to your mom’s house when he remembered.

“Oh right, you have divorced parents too,” he reminded himself.

You realized what he just said. “Wait, you’re parents are divorced?”

Then you realized what you had just said. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that,” you apologized.

“No it’s okay, truthfully I don’t really know,” he admitted.

You had a curious look on your face, but you said nothing, since it wasn’t any of your business.

He paused for a minute before continuing. “My parents always fought and they seemed to be having a lot of issues right before I died, but when we went to where my house used to be, my house wasn’t there anymore. I don’t know if they ever ended up getting a divorce or not, I just kinda assumed they had,” he explained.

You thought of something but hesitated slightly.

“What?” he asked.

You bit your lip. “Well do you want to know?”

You definitely had peaked his interest. “How could we know?”

“Well I mean it’s 2021, I’m sure we could find them on the internet or in a phone book somehow,” you nervously suggested.

“Sure, but can you do me a favor?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course,” you responded softly.

“Can you find it and just tell me? I don’t think I can take the searching around,” he admitted. He looked so fragile in that moment, like at any second he could break. You immediately agreed. You looked through google using his last name, sifting through anything you could find.

After about ten minutes of searching you managed to find some court proceedings with his last name on it.

“Was this their names?” you questioned as you showed him the names on the paper.

“Yeah,” Reggie responded.

You scrolled through the rest of the papers. You anxiously looked up at his depressed face. “Your parents got the divorce finalized five months after your death,” you concluded.

Reggie sighed, “I guess I was the thing keeping together.” He emphasized the was in his sentence.

You looked him in the eye with a sort of passion that could only be recreated by someone who had gone through similar pain. “Reggie, you can’t blame yourself like that. Divorces are between the parents, it has nothing to do with you.”

“And yet somehow it feels like we're the ones who get hurt the most doesn’t it?” he asked, as he turned to you.

You felt your eyes start to water, “Yeah, something like that,” you agreed.

“Why is it that way?” you wondered aloud.

He turned his body to face you.

“I just mean, why do parents act like we’re unaffected by it and that we don’t get any decisions on what happens to us in the matter, but we’re the ones who have to deal with choices they made,” you ranted.

“You wanna talk about what happened to you?” Reggie offered.

You took one look into his eyes, and you knew you couldn’t stop the flood gates from opening.

A few tears leaked out of your eyes. “It was several years ago, I should just be used to it,” you complained.

“Just because it happened in the past doesn’t mean the pain is in the past.” He looked a little impressed with himself with what he just said.

You smiled slightly at his face. “Yeah, I suppose your right.” You wiped off the tear running down your cheek.

He looked at you to continue.

“But there isn’t much to explain, I have one parent who is a bitch and the other isn’t bad,” you explained. You shakily laughed.

“You don’t have to tell me anything, but I doubt that’s all of it,” Reggie spoke softly. You were vulnerable, and you hated vulnerability. But you knew that Reggie would keep this side of you a secret for as long as you needed him to, that’s what friends are for. And you also knew that he understood your situation better than anyone, he was in the same boat himself.

So you decided to tell him the whole story.

“When I was around thirteen I started noticing things were off, I wasn’t sure of what yet, but there were these little moments where I knew that the fight was getting worse,” you started.

“There were some moments where the events didn’t make sense. I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening. There was a barrier coming into play and I didn’t know where it was, but I knew it was there,” you explained.

“I was young, but I knew that my childhood was coming to an end. As a kid you put your parents up on these pedestals, and then divorce hits, and things get uncovered and you realize no one is as high up as you believe them to be. Not that their marriage was ever completely stable anyways, but somethings become natural, no matter how bad they are for you.” Reggie looked at you with watery eyes, he really did get exactly what you went through.

“But as I got older they got worse, but when they told me they were getting a divorce it didn’t really surprise me. I knew they had been fighting for years, and it didn’t come as a shock to most people in my family, so I guess I wasn’t the only one who noticed.”

Reggie held a sad smile on his face for an instant, “They usually tend to know before the parents do.”

“Well they definitely did in my case, and to make matters worse they battled it out in court. Which meant that I had to battle it out in court,” you paused to collect your thoughts and wipe your nose.

“Well I didn’t actually go to the court but I had to fight my own parents to get equal time with the both of them,” you admitted.

“Y/n I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” Reggie consoled you.

You squeezed your eyes shut to get the final tears to come out.

“It’s okay, it was a long time ago, and I probably didn’t have it as bad as some people,” you reasoned.

He placed his hand on your knee. “A wise person once told me that even though someone’s suffering is worse, it doesn’t erase your own,” Reggie offered.

“That’s really smart, who said that?” you asked.

Reggie thought for a moment before breaking into a large grin. “No idea, but I think they had the right idea though.”

You laughed at that, though he wasn’t wrong, it was a good idea.

You placed your hand on his knee. “Thank you Reggie.”

He patted your leg, “Anytime y/n, anytime.”

“And you know I’m always here for you right?” you promised.

He looked like you had said the most obvious thing of all time. “Yeah, I can poof to you at any time.”

You rolled your eyes. “I’m serious, Reg.”

His face grew serious again in acknowledgement. “Yes, I know.”

“So if you ever wanna go find your parents house, you know where to find me,” you offered.

“I will make sure to remember that.”

“Good, then I will see you tomorrow,” you told him, as you got up.

“Not if I see you first!” he yelled out at you.

“You’re a dork!” you yelled back, though you couldn’t deny the smile on your face that replaced the sad one from earlier.

#quillsandtyposwrites #q&t- jatp #q&t- x reader #reggie imagine #reggie x reader #bi reggie #reggie peters #reggie phantom #reggie jatp #julie and the phantoms #jatp #julie and the himbos #reggie peters x reader #jeremy shada #owen patrick joyner #madison reyes #charlie gillespie #julie molina #luke patterson #alex mercer #jatp x reader #juke #willex #julie jatp #alex jatp #luke jatp #bobby jatp #trevor jatp #netflix #jatp netflix

[lesbian-vmin]

Ask Roundup #1 - Vmin

Hey, guys! I promised to be here at least once this weekend and answer some asks. As I’ve been terribly busy with work, a lot has built up in the in box. With over 200 asks to get to, I decided it would be better to take an idea from romanticdrift and do an ask roundup and sort of answer what I have so far. No, I won’t answer all 200 in this post because a lot are very similar. But I’ll be summarizing asks and clearing out my inbox. Many of these are paraphrased, but keeping the original context. (vmin focus only)

Discussed in here

The importance of vmin friendship

4 o’clock

Chim’s reaction to Tae calling during kimbap live

No vmin live

Sad Tae / Vmin tension

Vmin friendzoning

I was going to add more asks to the mix, but this got really long with just the few that I answered. I also tried to do a mix of soft vmin and people wanting me to expand on some idea of vmin not being close or the “friendzone” thing.

(BELOW THE CUT)

anonymous asked:

Part of me wishes that vmin was real. Another part of me doesn’t want them to be. Don’t get me wrong, I ship them and don’t have a problem with the idea of them being gay and in love. But somehow I really like the idea of them being best friends who just really care deeply about each other. Does that make sense?

That makes perfect sense to me, honestly. I often talk about the value of friendship on this blog and how friendships are just as important as romantic relationships. If vmin have the close bond they do with each other, and it’s totally platonic, it sort of proves that there are friendships out there that have connections just as deep as romantic love.

This is one of the reasons I don’t push the “romantic vmin” agenda too hard. Because their friendship is perfect and ideal if that’s all it is. It really puts the statement “something deeper than friendship” to shame. Because what’s deeper than friendship? In fact, a romance with someone you can’t also consider your best friend doesn’t seem deep at all. It’s almost like “friendship” is what make romantic relationships deep. You know what I mean? You just won’t have the same connection with a romantic partner if you’re not also friends with them. So it’s silly to me how friendships are often devalued.

Regardless of what type of relationship vmin have, I think it’s okay for them to be the model of the type of relationship someone else would want to have. Whether it be with a friend or an s/o. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have a romantic relationship that matches someone else’s friendship. And, if you don’t think vmin is real but still relate to them as “couple goals” because that’s the kind of relationship you want, then that’s fine. That’s actually sort of the kind of shipper that I am.

someone asked:

Tae started crying at the end of 4 o’clock during their performance. But if it’s just about the dumpling fight, why would he cry? Am I delulu? Was the fight really that intense?

someone else said:

Chim was smiling and stuff during the practice of 4 o’clock. So I think he had to have known that the song was about him?

These asks were from an anonymous person, but they were two separate asks. So I wanted to specify them as two separate asks in this post, but answer them together.

First things first. Let’s get a few links in here that you can reference to understand my answer a little better if you don’t know the whole story.

Four O’Clock | RM & V perform 4 o’clock live | The practice for the performance | The Friends Unit Interview | My (Old) Analysis of the Interview | Vlive in Which Chim Talks about The Incident | Vlive in Which Tae talks about the Incident

Okay. Let’s talk about Tae crying during the performance. I can’t actually say that he really cried, but he did seem to get emotional at the end. It’s a song that’s about a fight that is a big staple in their friendship. I think it’s pretty obvious that there’s more to the dumpling incident that they’re not telling us. I don’t think that’s the first time they would have had such an argument. They probably argue about whether to eat pizza or burgers all the time, and whether they should have dinner first and then watch a movie or watch a movie and then eat dinner.

Just the fact that Chim stated that he had to go and have a drink with Syub after the fight tells us that there was more to the incident than they are telling us. You don’t go and drink yourself drunk because you and your best friend can’t agree on whether to eat dumplings before or after practice.

I think that incident is one of the building blocks of their friendship. I think that it happened at a time they were going through a lot of changes. We know that Chim tends to be pretty possessive, and this was at a time that Tae started having his own schedule because of Hwarang. I think there were a lot of sudden changes to things, and that stressed them out and put some strain on their friendship. And it’s possible that’s entirely wrong.

Either way. It’s pretty clear there’s more to it than dumplings. But we can’t begin to analyze and figure out what it is and expect to be remotely accurate. And quite frankly, no matter how curious any of us may be, it’s none of our business. If they wanted us to know the “obviously more to the story” part of the story, they’d tell us.

And now. I guess I could have handles the two asks separately. But anyway. I’ve already talked about how I think Chim did already know that 4 o’clock was about that incident. So check the interview analysis I linked above for my discussion on that topic. I’m going to be going through my analyses soon and updating them, but that answer will do for now.

anonymous asked

You talked about Tae calling Chim on his live but what your thoughts about Tae caling during Ji / kook live. Chim was so unprepared and Kook was laughing about Tae calling and I guess Chim’s reaction to it. Chim didn’t seem to be in the flirting mood. I just wanted to know your thoughts on it.

I believe I have talked about this before somewhere, but I’m not entirely sure. So the live you are referring to is the kimbap making one (x). So, I’m going to reference the Mandago Incident in this answer, and I did an analysis on this live before. I’m going to link to the analysis I made. A link to the last mandago live can be found in that analysis. (x)

During the last mandago that we got, I really got the feeling that Chim wanted to do a live with Tae, but Tae didn’t want to join him. We have Chim being all sour and pouty and even down right petty in that last live, and I sort of got the same vibes from his behavior when Tae called during the kimbap live.

We know that Chim keeps saying he want to do a vlive with Tae, but it never happens. What the real story behind their lack of a live together is, we may never know.

I have a theory about this one, but it is just a theory. It’s probably not even remotely true, and there are thousands of other possibilities than what I’m about to say in regards to this live.

I think that it’s possible that the Ji / kook kimbap making live was supposed to be a vmin kimbap making live. Or vmin / kook, but I’m leaning further away from that option for this analysis to make a little more sense in relation to the mandago one (which I compare it to).

This analysis is assuming (1) that the kimbap making was supposed to be Chim’s live originally (2) he originally invited Tae to do the live with him (3) Tae refused (4) Chim wanted to do the live, but not alone (5) He asked Kook (6) Kook accepted, and they did the live together.

That’s a lot of assumptions to make for a logical analysis, but it’s seriously the vibe I got from Tae’s phone call.

Let’s look at the key points from the mandago live:

(1) Chim wanted to do Mandago (2) He wanted to do with Tae because it’s their thing (3) Tae didn’t want to come (4) Chim invited Kook instead (5) Kook came

After Kook joined the Mandago live, it didn’t take long before Tae joined as well. As stated in my analysis, you could make the argument that he wanted to eat as well (because they had food), but he ended up bringing his own food. He didn’t have to join the live to eat if he already had food on his own. I think he was upset because Chim was doing “mandago” without him. Even thought it ended up not really being a mandago live and more of Eat Jin.

Chim’s behavior in both lives really seems similar to me. So I sort of got the feeling that Tae was originally supposed to be part of the live but refused. Then when he saw that Chim was with Kook instead, he got upset. He called Chim, and Chim got upset. A “if you wanted to be in the live, why didn’t you just do it” sort of upset. Like, if Tae didn’t want to do the live with him, why is he calling during the live? Knowing they’re live? You get what I’m saying.

And, no. I’m not saying this is a Ji / kook vs vmin thing. And I’m not even trying to imply any sort of unhealthy level of jealousy here. I just think (if this theory is remotely correct) it shows how Chim is being real with us. He’s not just pulling our leg and saying that he wants to do a live with Tae but he really doesn’t and it’ll never happen. I think, again - if my theory is remotely correct, this shows how Tae doesn’t want to do a solo vmin live with Chim. Even if this theory is correct, it’s possible that Tae would have called regardless if Kook was there or not. Because, based on the theory, he was initially invited, but he didn’t want to be there in person. Alone. With Chim. For whatever reason.

Again, relating it to my theory, I think Tae either called because (1) If Kook was going to be there, he would have joined. Because that would have been a third person, keeping it from being him and Chim alone. So when he saw Kook there, he wanted to make himself part of it somehow. Or (2) He would have called even if it was just Chim because he’s more okay with talking on the phone than being there in person. 

I might do an actual analysis of the kimbap live, but we’ll see. It’s easier to talk about a theory here than to actually analyze because there’s not a lot to go off of without making assumptions.

related to this, anonymous asked:

Why do you think vmin won’t do a vlive together?

With some other saying that them not doing so makes it hard for us to see that they are really friends.

So, my idea on why they won’t do a vlive together is a little different than what I’ve read around. I think the reason it doesn’t happen is simply because they don’t want to, but not for any particular reason other than taking the time to do it. I’m going to explain.

We can make the argument that they are comfortable with each other and don’t want to have to be too careful. But I think that’s a copout for thinking a little deeper about it and making it more realistic. Yeah, it’s possible that they’ll have to watch themselves while they’re live, but what makes that different than any of the other members?

Ji / kook can have a live together, look into each other’s eyes, tease each other, and all kinds of things during vlive, so...why is the case different for them than with vmin? I don’t really think that them having to “watch it” has anything to do with them not doing a live together. It’s not like they’re really going to “forget about the camera” and accidentally make out or something. Even if they are in a relationship. They wouldn’t do that.

My honest belief, until I’m given reason to believe otherwise, is because they simply don’t want to. Vlives are often done from the studio or some other place where they work (if not hotel rooms). We don’t get random vlives of them living day-to-day life or going to Lotte World. So this means that most vlives we get are planned for work, or done during down time from work. But it’s always related to work somehow.

I really think that Tae and Chim are best friends and enjoy spending time with each other the same way any other friends do. When they are together, that’s their time, and they probably don’t want to share it with us. Because they share a lot of things with us, and I’m sure they have things (like their friendship or time together) that they want to keep for themselves. Despite Chim acting like the more private one, yet wanting to do a vlive with Tae, I think this is why Tae refuses. Because, although he doesn’t seem to be shy about expressing his love for Chim, he wants to keep their private time private as well. 

And that’s all I think it is. And, honestly, if that’s the case, we can relish in the fact that we don’t get vmin lives. Even if getting one would be nice. It’s nicer to know that they want to keep their private time private because their friendship is important to them and they don’t want to make it about us. And. Who knows? Maybe the mandago thing and the dumpling incident all have a part to play in this. Because maybe the publicity put on their friendship at the time is what caused those kinds of strains to happen. And to avoid something like that again, maybe that’s why they won’t go live.

But. I think it’s possible we’ll get one eventually. I haven’t given up yet.

anonymous said:

HI. I would just like to remind your readers about 2020 Festa: Unit Interview @12:31 VMIN was asked: What do you want to say to each other? Tae somehow refused to answer and just said: "WE ALWAYS SAY IT TO EACH OTHER." There's NO NEED to say what they feel for each other openly. No explanations whatsoever. As Chim said in Bon Voyage 2, not us, not even the members can fully understand what they feel about each other.

Remember what I said about no theory being good enough to be truth behind vmin? This anon gets it.

a mix of asks relates to

I don’t know why people keep saying Tae is sad or that vmin are fighting. They are fine. Nothing’s wrong.

I don’t know what’s more harmful. Assuming someone is sad all the time. Or assuming they’re fine all the time.

There are times when Tae is obviously down, and he shows it. I think he doesn’t try so hard to put on a fake happy face for us, and I think that’s wonderful. It’s okay not to be okay, and we really don’t have a lot of icons out there that let us know that. They may tweet and talk about mental health and the importance of it. But celebrities that actually show their mental status or even talk about their own level of happiness is far and few between. People think they’re happy all the time, and those that do say they’re not often get attacked because “why wouldn’t they be happy? They have fame, money, and everything?”

If you don’t see that Tae might be sad at a particular moment, or don’t think that vmin has a moment of tension, I guess that’s fine. But to say that it never happens is obviously false. Everyone gets sad sometimes, and everyone has tension with their closest friends.

That being said, those who go overboard and act like Tae is never happy or that vmin hate each other...yeah. That’s a bit much and needs to stop. Tae’s emotions are dynamic, and vmin love each other.

another mix of asks relates to

Do you think vmin are intentionally trying to friendzone themselves because they don’t want us to get suspicious? Or do you think they want us to know that they are only friends and shipping makes them uncomfortable?

Friendzone what? Like. What?

Regardless of what Tae and Chim are together, they are still best friends. The one thing that we confirm about their relationship is indeed that.

I really don’t think they ever say “he’s my best friend” in a “no-homo” kind of way, and that’s sort of what both scenarios presume. Two men can call each other “best friends” without having an implied “no-homo” label onto it.

And let me talk about this “no-homo” thing, okay? I’m not sure how many lgbt people are asking this question, but from my own lgbt perspective “no-homo” was always a little offensive to me. Like, why can’t you just give your bro a hug? Or why can’t you just say “I love you” to a friend? Are we really to the point where people have to say “no-homo” because they don’t want to give someone the wrong idea?

Honestly, my best straight male friend hugs me and tells me he loves me all the time, and he sometimes says “no-hetero” when he does it. And I love him to bits and pieces in a completely no-hetero kind of way because he started the joke because he realized how offensive the other statement was. At least, how much it bothered me regardless of how any other lgbt people felt about it.

Anyway. My point is, regardless of what kind of relationship vmin have together, I’m sure they say “he’s my best friend” because they are best friends. Regardless of any other labels they could have, they are best friends, and that’s what they want to let us know. I don’t think it has anything to do with dumbass “friendzoning” or “no-homo” shit. I don’t think they have some ulterior motive by simply stating that they are best friends.

And. Honestly. I if I asked my sister who her best friend is? She’d say her husband (or me lmao). If I asked my best friend who her best friend is? She’d say her husband (or me lmao). If I asked my straight male best friend? He’d say his wife (or me lmao). So. Again. My point is. Your significant other can be your best friend, and referring to them as such doesn’t mean you are friendzoning them.

It doesn’t mean that vmin is a real couple. It doesn’t mean that they’re not a real couple. It just means that, if they are, they’re obviously not going around introducing each other or talking about each other as boyfriends.

#vmin analysis #ask roundup #theory

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Travis has had both boyfriends and girlfriends since high school. But when his coworkers discovered his dating history at a board game night, they told him he couldn’t be bisexual. “Bi men don’t exist,” they said. “You’re just a confused gay guy.” Travis, 34, had brought his girlfriend with him that night, but they started calling her his “roommate” after they found out he was bi.

Santiago got an even harsher reaction when he came out to his family. “‘Bisexual’ is just code for insincere gay man” is how he said one of his relatives reacted. “He didn’t use the term ‘gay man,’” 24-year-old Santiago told me, “but I won’t repeat slurs.”

In the past couple of months, I’ve heard dozens of stories like these from bisexual men who have had their sexual orientations invalidated by family members, friends, partners, and even strangers. Thomas was called a “fence-sitter” by a group of gay men at a bar. Shirodj was told that he was “just gay but not ready to come out of the closet.” Alexis had his bisexuality questioned by a lesbian teacher who he thought would be an ally. Many of these same men have been told that women are “all a little bi” or “secretly bi” but that men can only be gay or straight, nothing else.

In other words, bisexual men are like climate change: real but constantly denied.

A full 2% of men identified themselves as bisexual on a 2016 survey from the Centers for Disease Control, which means that there are at least three million bi guys in the United States alone—a number roughly equivalent to the population of Iowa. (On the same survey, 5.5% of women self-identified as bisexual, which comes out to roughly the same number of people as live in New Jersey.) The probability that an entire state’s worth of people would lie about being attracted to more than one gender is about as close to zero as you can get.

But the idea that only women can be bisexual is a persistent myth, one that has been decades in the making. And prejudice with such deep historical roots won’t disappear overnight.

👬👫👬👫

To understand why bisexual men are still being told that their sexual orientation doesn’t exist, we have to go back to the gay liberation movement of the late 1960s. That’s when Dr. H. Sharif “Herukhuti” Williams, a cultural studies scholar and co-editor of the anthology Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men, told me that male sexual fluidity got thrown under the bus in the name of gay rights—specifically white, upper-class gay rights.

“One of the byproducts of the gay liberation movement is this…solidifying of the [sexual] binary,” Herukhuti told me, citing the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s as a pre-Stonewall period of relatively unstigmatized sexual fluidity.

Four decades later, the gay liberation movement created a new type of man—the “modern gay man,” Herukhuti calls him—who was both “different from and similar to” the straight man. As Jillian Weiss, now the executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense Fund, wrote in a 2003 review of this same history, “gays and lesbians campaigned for acceptance by suggesting that they were ‘just like you,’ but with the single (but extremely significant exception) of [having] partners of the same sex.” Under this framework, attraction to a single gender was the unifying glue between gay men, lesbians, and straight people—bisexual people were just “confused.”

Bisexual people realized that they would have to form groups and coalitions of their own if they wanted cultural acceptance. But just as bisexual activism was gaining a foothold in the 1980s, the AIDS crisis hit, and everything changed—especially for bisexual men.

“AIDS forced certain bisexual men out [of the closet], it forced a lot of bisexual men back in, and then it killed off a number of them,” longtime bisexual activist and author Ron Suresha told me.Those deaths hindered the development of male bisexual activism at a particularly critical moment. “A number of men who would have been involved and were involved in the early years of the bi movement died—and they died early and they died quickly,” bisexual writer Mike Syzmanski recalled.

The AIDS crisis also gave rise to one of the most pernicious and persistent stereotypes about bisexual men, namely that they are the “bridge” for HIV transmission between gay men and heterosexual women. As Brian Dodge, a public health researcher at Indiana University, told me, this is a “warped notion” that has “never been substantiated by any real data.” The CDC, too, has debunked the same myth in the specific context of U.S. black communities: No, black men on the “down low” are not primarily responsible for high rates of HIV among black women.

For decades, bisexual men have been portrayed—even within the LGBT community—as secretly gay, sexually confused vectors of disease.

In 2016, bisexual men are still feeling the effects of the virus and the misperceptions around it.

“We’re still underrepresented on the boards of almost all of the national bisexual organizations,” Suresha told me, referring to the fact that women occupy most of the key leadership positions in bisexual activism. And in a new, nationally representative study of attitudes toward bisexual people, Dodge and his research team found that 43% of respondents agreed —at least somewhat—with the statement: “People should be afraid to have sex with bisexual men because of HIV/STD risks.”

For decades, bisexual men have been portrayed—even within the LGBT community—as secretly gay, sexually confused vectors of disease. Is it any wonder that they are still fighting to shed that false image today? It’s hard to convince people that you exist when they barely see you as human.

👬👫👬👫

It’s not that bisexual women have it easy. Both bisexual men and women are much less likely than gay men and lesbians to be out of the closet, with only 28% telling Pew that most of the important people in their life know about their orientation. Collectively, bisexual people also have some of the worst mental health outcomes in the LGBT community and their risk of intimate partner violence is disturbingly high. Bisexual people also face discrimination within the LGBT community while fending off accusations that their orientation excludes non-binary genders. (In response, bisexual educator Robyn Ochs defines “bisexuality” as attraction to “people of more than one sex and/or gender” rather than just to “men and women.”)

And on top of these general problems, bisexual women are routinely hypersexualized, stereotyped as “sluts,” dismissed as “experimenting,” and harassed on dating apps. Their bisexuality is reduced to a spectacle or waved away as a “phase.”

But it is still bisexual men who seem to have their very existence questioned more often.

Suresha pointed me to a 2005 New York Times article with the headline “Straight, Gay, Or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited,” the fallout of which he saw as “a disaster for bi people.” The article reported on a new study “cast[ing] doubt on whether true bisexuality exists, at least in men.” The study in question measured the genital arousal of a small sample of men and found, as the Times summarized, that “three-quarters of the [bisexual male] group had arousal patterns identical to those of gay men; the rest were indistinguishable from heterosexuals.”

“It got repeated and repeated in all sorts of media,” Suresha recalled. “People reported it in news briefs on the radio, in print, in magazines, all over the place.”

As the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force noted in its response to the article, the original study had some clear methodological limitations—only 33 self-identified bisexual men were included and participants were recruited through “gay-oriented magazines”—but the Times went ahead and reported that the research “lends support to those who have long been skeptical that bisexuality is a distinct and stable sexual orientation.”

“Show me the quest for scientific proof that heterosexuality exists. It begins and ends with even just one person saying, ‘I’m straight.’” — Amy Andre, Huffington Post

The article fueled the devious narrative that male bisexuality was just homosexuality in disguise. The lived experiences of bisexual men don’t support that narrative—and neither does science—but its power comes from prejudice, not from solid evidence.

And unsurprisingly, the 2005 study’s conclusions did not survive the test of time. In fact, one of the co-authors of that study went on to co-author a 2011 study which found that “bisexual patterns of both subjective and genital arousal” did indeed occur among men. The New York Times Magazine later devoted a feature to the push for the 2011 study, briefly acknowledging the paper’s previous poor coverage. But many in the bisexual community were unimpressed that the scientific community was still being positioned as the authority on the existence of bisexual men.

“Show me the quest for scientific proof that heterosexuality exists,” Amy Andre wrote on the Huffington Post in response to the feature. “It begins and ends with even just one person saying, ‘I’m straight.’”

👬👫👬👫

One of the most tragic things about society’s refusal to accept bisexual men is that we don’t even know why it is still so vehement. Dodge believes that his new study offers some hints—the persistent and widespread endorsement of the HIV “bridge” myth is alarming—but he told me that he would need “more qualitative and more focused research” before he could definitively state that HIV stigma is the primary factor driving negative attitudes toward bisexual men. (Research in this area is indeed sorely lacking. The last major study on the subject prior to the survey Dodge’s team conducted was published in 2002.)

In the meantime, bisexual advocates have developed plenty of compelling theories, many of them focused on the dominance of traditional masculinity. For example, Herukhuti explained that “we live in a society in which boundaries between men are policed because of patriarchy and sexism.” Men are expected to be “kings of their kingdom”—not to share their domain.

“For men to bridge those boundaries with each other—the only way that we can conceive of that is in the sense that these are ‘non-men,’” Herukhuti told me, adding that, in a patriarchal society, gay men are indeed seen as “non-men.” The refusal to accept that men can be bisexual, then, is partly a refusal to accept that someone who is bisexual can even be a man.

Many of the bisexual men I interviewed endorsed this same hypothesis. Kevin, 25, told me that “it’s seen as really unmanly to be attracted to men.” Another Kevin, 26, added that “the core concept of masculinity doesn’t leave room for anything besides extremes.” Justin, in his mid 20s, said that “men are one way and gay men are another way [but] bisexual men are this weird middle ground.”

Our society doesn’t seem to do well with more than two—especially when so many still believe that there’s only one right way to be a man.

And Michael, 28, added that bisexual men are “symbolically dangerous”—a “big interior threat to hetero masculinity” because of a shared attraction to women. It’s easy for a straight guy to differentiate himself from the modern gay man, but how can he reassure himself that he is nothing like his bisexual counterpart?

The answer is obvious: He can equate male bisexuality with homosexuality.

The logic needed to balance that equation, Herukhuti explained to me, is disturbingly close to the racist, Jim Crow-era “one-drop rule,” which designated anyone with the slightest bit of African ancestry as black for legal purposes.

“For a male to have had any kind of same-sex sexual experience, they are automatically designated as gay, based on that one-drop rule,” Herukhuti said. “And that taints them.”

To see that logic at work, look no further than the state of HIV research, much of which still groups gay and bisexual men together as MSM, or men who have sex with men. Dodge, who specializes in the area of HIV/AIDS, explained that “when a man reports sexual activity with another man, that becomes the recorded mode of transmission and there’s no data reporting about female or other partners.” Bisexual men have their identities erased—literally—from the resulting data.

“A really easy way to fix this,” Dodge added, “would be to just create a separate surveillance category.”

But when it comes to categories, our society doesn’t seem to do well with more than two—especially when so many still believe that there’s only one right way to be a man.

👬👫👬👫

The situation of bisexual men is not hopeless. Slowly but surely, they are expanding the horizons of masculinity. The silver lining in Dodge’s study, for example, is that there has been a decided “‘shift’ in attitudes toward bisexual men and women from negative to more neutral in the general population” over the last decade or so, although negative attitudes toward bisexual men were still “significantly greater” than the negativity directed at their female peers.

“Put the champagne on the ice,” Dodge joked. “We’re no longer at the very bottom of the barrel but we’ve still got a ways to go.”

That distance will likely be shortened by a rising generation that is far more tolerant of sexual fluidity than their predecessors. Respondents to Dodge’s survey who were under age 25 had more positive attitudes toward bisexuality, perhaps because so many of them openly identify as LGBTQ themselves—some as bisexual, some as pansexual, and some refusing labels altogether.

That growing acceptance is starting to be reflected in movies and on television, once forms of media that were, and still often are, notoriously hostile to bisexual men. A character named Darryl came out as bisexual with a myth-busting song on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and, as GLAAD recently noted, other shows like Shadowhunters and Black Sails are starting to do bi male representation right. The HBO comedy Insecure even made biphobia into a powerful storyline when one straight female character, Molly, shunned her love interest when he told her that he once had oral sex with a guy in a college. But other shows, like House of Cards, are still using a male character’s bisexuality as a way to accentuate his villainy.

Ultimately, bisexual men themselves will continue to be the most powerful force for changing hearts and minds. I asked each bisexual man I interviewed what he would want the world to know about his sexual orientation. Some wanted to clear up specific misconceptions but so many of them simply wanted people to acknowledge that male bisexuality is not fake.

“It’s important that bisexuality be acknowledged as real,” said Martyn, 30, adding that “there’s only so long someone can hold on to a part of themselves that seems invisible before it starts to make them doubt their own sense of self.”

“I am happy being bisexual and I’m not looking for an answer,” said Dan, 19. “I’m not trying things out, I’m not using this as a placeholder to discover my identity. This is who I am. And I love it.”

Samantha Allen is a reporter for Fusion’s Sex+Life vertical. She has a PhD in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University and was the 2013 John Money Fellow at the Kinsey Institute. Before joining Fusion, she was a tech and health reporter for The Daily Beast.

#bisexual men are valid #bisexual mental health #respect bisexual men #bisexual men exist #bisexual men #bisexuality #bi tumblr #bi #support bisexuality #bisexuality is valid #lgbtq community #lgbtq #lgbtq pride #pride #bi pride #bisexual education #bisexual nation #bisexual rights #bi+ #bi positivity #biphobic gay people #biphobic #biphobia #end biphobia #bisexual injustice #bisexual justice #bisexual info #bisexual facts #bisexual #bisexual community

[just-another-ficwriter]

Holidate - Part Two

Pairing: Sweet Pea x Reader

Words: 1600ish

Warning: Mentions of sex, alcohol, overbearing parents

Summary: Tired of being alone on holidays, Sweet Pea and Y/N decide to be each other’s plationic plus-ones all year round. What could go wrong?

Notes: Next update will be Valentine’s Day!

New Years Eve 2021

Sweet Pea’s still a little confused by it all when he finds himself waiting for her outside Thistle House five days later.

He’d laughed for a solid five minutes while she’d explained the whole thing, picked at little flaws in her otherwise perfect plan, would anyone really believe they were together just like that, and then found him self instantly saying yes when she asks again despite it all.

Maybe it was the hopeful look in her eyes. Maybe it’s because he knew deep down anything is better than spending New Years Eve alone.

Or maybe it was simply the attractive woman asking him on a fake date with no strings attached, an easy solution to both their problems that might actually work.

He’d nodded in agreement when she’d suggested they put some rules in place, invisible barriers to help this run as smoothly as possible.

“No sex.”

“Not a problem.” He leans over the table, shoving a fistful of fries into his mouth to stifle a groan. It hadn’t meant to come out like that. Y/N huffs, only mildly offended that he’d so easily accepted. She flicks him off in response, a roll of her eyes. “Okay rule number two, this isn’t some New Years romance, no falling in love with me at midnight.”

She snorts, directs the curly fry away from her mouth and at his head instead. “I’ll try my best.”

“Speaking of midnight.” He raises an eyebrow as a flicker of curiosity erupts in his mind while he tries to guess where this is going. “I’m not kissing you, fake date or not.”

He laughs, a wicked grin pulling at his lips, a quick wink that’s almost missed as he reaches for the fry basket once again. “We’ll see.”

“Sorry I’m late.” He turns to see her rushing up behind, hand pulling down at the hem of her dress, not that it was doing much. “My Mom became insufferable when I said I had a date.”

He opens his mouth to say something, but can’t quite pick the right words. Y/N’s fast to notice the way his eyes widen, watches them slowly travel from her face down to her legs and back up again.

She’ll give him this much, she thinks, she is his date after all, and she’ll be the first to admit the dress is out of the ordinary for her - a pale pink glittery number that stops short on her thighs and shows a little more cleavage than she’s used to.

“Anyone told you it’s rude to stare?” She hides the warmth darkening her cheeks with a smirk, laughs when his eyes snap back to hers a little embarrassed and doesn’t let herself think too much about the shadow of a smile on his lips.

“You look hot.” So maybe he’d had a few beers before hand, and maybe he’s a little buzzed, but Y/N looks gorgeous and he didn’t have a problem telling her that. There wasn’t a need for a filter tonight, he didn’t need to impress her like this thing between them was real. She just scoffs, shoves playfully at his shoulders. “What? I can say that because you’re my date.”

An eye roll on her behalf, an arm looping through his, a grin forming on both their faces as they move forward. “I suppose you don’t look too bad yourself.”

They barely make it a few steps insides before Toni spots them, waving with her free hand while a cocktail occupies her other. “Y/N!”

“I’m so glad you made it.” The two jump into a hug, squeezing at each other shoulders while Sweet Pea distracts himself with the giant Christmas tree that stands tall in the centre of the room. He’s pretty sure he’s never seen anything like it.

Toni almost does a double take when she sees him, pulling back from Y/N so she can look between them both. “Wait a second- did you two come together?”

“Kind of.” Sweet Pea shrugs like it’s not important, exchanges a worried glance down at Y/N. If anyone’s going to see through this whole farcade it’s Toni.

“Huh.” He watches her whole face light up at the idea, her arm now wrapped lazily around Y/N’s waist, it’s easy to see how close they are. “I never saw that coming, I should have introduced you sooner.”

-

“Okay look at those pair.” Sweet Pea tilts his beer bottle, gesturing towards the edge of the makeshift dance floor where a couple moved wildly together, bodies grinding in a way that was almost too inappropriate for public.

She feels like she’s intruding just by looking in their direction. “A little raunchy for a public event don’t you think?”

“Definitely a new couple starting out, all that passion-“ She shuddered while he smirks, knocks back what’s left in her wine glass before tapping at his shoulder and nodded in the opposite direction, continuing their game of people watching. It had been a fun way to pass the time; he’d made her laugh, and it was much better than following her sisters or Toni around, miserably surrounded by other couples.

“What about him?” Sweet Pea follows her gaze, eyes landing on a man that keeps wringing his hands nervously, a shine of sweat on his forehead as he anxiously speaks to the girl next to him.

“Easy.” He raises the beer to his lips, takes a quick sip while she waits for him to elaborate. “He’s proposing at midnight.”

“You think?”

“Look at him, he’s a wreck.” She laughs, about to add that maybe he just doesn’t like to dance when something else catches his eye and he’s pointing off to the side. “Now, how about those two?”

Y/N cranes her neck, tries to find the couple he’s talking about and almost falls off her chair in disbelief. Stood at the back of the room, almost concealed by darkness, making out like two teenagers- “Oh my god that’s my Mom!”

Sweet Pea chokes in shock, narrowing his eyes, straining to get a better look. “Is that FP?”

Y/N groans beside him, the sound audible over the heavy bass of the music pulsing around the room. “I need another drink.”

-

“She just doesn’t get it.” A few hours in and Y/N starts to slur slightly, red wine nearly spilling from its glass as she waves it around frantically, trying to get her point across. “Maybe I don’t want to settle down.”

“You don’t?” He eyes her from behind his glass of whiskey. An uneasy feeling settles over his chest, one that shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t care if she wants to settle down or not.

“I mean not right now.” She shrugs, and her whole body slumps. There’s more to the story there, something she isn’t sharing but Sweet Pea decides not pry. Not that she gives him a chance to anyway. “I know it’s only because she cares, but sometimes I just wish she wouldn’t. You know?”

He nods, and for the first time that night a silence falls between them and Sweet Pea finds his heart sinking at the look at her face. So he leans over, plucks the glass from hand, and replaces it with his own. “Dance with me?”

“Lead the way.” She laughs, letting him yank her towards the dance floor. Normally she wouldn’t bother, she wasn’t exactly know for dancing at these things, but all the alcohol definitely helped. And as they both giggle, getting used to spinning each other in circles and jumping around, they music starts to slow.

Sweet Pea doesn’t hesitate, wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her towards his chest. She doesn’t register the countdown sounding around them, content with swaying back and fore, her head on his shoulder. But then he spins her out in front, pulls her back into him with a gentle tug just as the crowd yells ‘one’ and kisses her without thinking.

Her lips still tingle with the rule break when they pull away. “What was that?”

He nods subtly over her shoulder, asks her not to turn around to suddenly before explaining. “You’re Mom’s watching, gotta make it believable right?”

She feels a little queasy.

-

The Uber ride back to her apartment is filled with an unbearable silence. The kiss had thrown things off balance between them, and when she’d awkwardly offered to find her own way home he’d refused, insisted on making sure she got home safe.

“So tonight wasn’t awful.” He states, teasing her. If the car wasn’t so dark, he’d have seen the way she blushed.

“Yeah it was fun.” She agrees, and then they’re quiet again, a tension growing thick between them.

It isn’t until the car stops outside her home that he speaks up once more. “So uh- do you think you’d need Holidate for Valentine’s Day?”

“That’s in February.” She gasps, shaking her head at the idea. “Who says we won’t have found someone real by then.”

Her words make his throat burn. “Doesn’t hurt to be prepared. Plus FP throws this whole family day thing for the workers at the garage, would be nice to show up with someone that isn’t my best friend and his boyfriend...”

“Well then, I have your number-“ She reaches for the door handle, pushes it open and steps into the cold night air. “I’ll text you if I’m free.”

And then she’s gone, a door slamming shut in her wake and Sweet Pea’s left wondering if he’ll ever see her again.

Sweet Pea Masterlist

Forever Taglist: @p-marie-sp

Sweet Pea Taglist: @80sand90simagine @wildberryyyy @hopelesslylosttheway @be-gay-do-crime-cutie

Holidate Taglist: @popcrone818 @dcnerd98

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[demetriandelibinaryboyfriends]

Do you think Eli and Demetri were ever romantically involved prior to the show? I don’t think they were ever boyfriends or anything, I actually think they were just best friends but... maybe a little too close for just friends? Like maybe that had done something silly like practice kissing or something? If that was the case Eli would be terrified of it getting out after the sleep enuresis drama...

I do, yes!!! I agree with you, though, I don’t think it was really anything “official” or readily apparent, or even something either of them were even really aware of. They certainly weren’t dating, per se, but they both defs had crushes on each other that manifested to various degrees. Sometimes they’d sit just a little too close to each other during movie night, or Eli would sometimes just kinda subconsciously rest his head on Demetri’s shoulder while they were watching stuff together, and Demetri just...didn’t have any problem with it. I imagine there were a lot of stolen touches as well--resting their hands on one another’s legs and knees when they were watching movies together, playfully poking and shoving each other when they’re teasing one another, Eli clinging to Demetri’s arm during the scary parts of movies and shows, Demetri sometimes slinging an arm around Eli’s shoulder as kind of a “casual bro” thing (like he does so easily in early Season 3 when he’s “faking” being friends with Eli in front of the counselor), but then his hand lingers for a liiiiittle too long. Hugs that were a little tighter, a little closer, and a little longer than they really needed to be. And, of course, there’s always that precious little shoulder touch they do to comfort/reassure one another, although that’s not NECESSARILY romantic by nature. But it sure does have a degree of intimacy that sometimes even close friendships don’t have. A lot of the time these two just...like to find excuses to touch each other, and the other finds they absolutely do not mind being touched, but they just...can’t totally articulate why. It’s not as if Demetri and Eli really have any other friendships to compare their relationship to, so they figure all the touchy-feely moments are just normal “best friend” stuff and don’t really register that there’s an underlying attraction there.

I also have a headcanon that sometimes, when they would be having a sleepover after an especially rough day of school, Demetri lets Eli sleep in his bed with him instead of on the air mattress, even at the risk of being pissed all over. On really bad nights Eli would sometimes get pretty intense nightmares and would wake up crying and shaking. This tended to wake Demetri up too, and he took to just holding Eli and whispering to him until he calmed down--which, more than a few times, led to them falling asleep like this and kinda accidentally sleep-cuddling XD They’d always be a bit embarrassed about it in the morning and would kinda both just pretend it didn’t happen.

I can totally see them practicing kissing with each other!!! Like maybe late middle school or their freshman year of high school, when they’re 13 or 14 or so--before they’ve wholeheartedly accepted their status as losers who won’t lose their virginity before college, and still have hope that they’ll be making out with all kinds of hot girls in a couple years XD So they’re like “well, shit...when we kiss hot girls, we’d better know what we’re actually doing so they don’t think we’re total losers, so...we should practice on each other!!! You know!!! For getting the experience for when it ACTUALLY matters!!! Not because I think you’re cute or anything!!!” And of course, the irony is that these two eventually realize they liked kissing each other MUCH better than they liked kissing ANY of the hot girls they used to fantasize about! But they were each other’s first kiss for sure, and probably “practiced” more than a few times on each other, always under the guise of “getting experience” for all the girls who will surely be lining up to date them eventually XD

Of course, I’m sure prior to Cobra Kai, these two were either blissfully unaware of their feelings for each other, or in deep, deep denial--I wouldn’t be surprised at all if these boys had some good old internalized homophobia drilled into them at some point, considering how their school’s student body seems willing to deride and mock people over literally ANYTHING. Being gay would honestly only add more fuel to the bullying fire, so it’s no wonder Demetri and Eli most likely had a lot of difficulty accepting that part of themselves. Here’s to hoping in Season 4 they’ve learned to be confident enough to accept and take pride in being deeply in love with each other in a very homosexual way!!!

#hawk x demetri #demetri x eli #binary boyfriends #hawkmeat #eli x demetri #demetri x hawk #elimetri #demetri cobra kai #eli moskowitz #cobra kai #cobra kai season 1 #cobra kai season 4 #hawk #demetri #eli #my askbox