#it has to do with the fact that i was a queer kid or just that the situations the characters were depicted in were outside what society

[datshitrandom]

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

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

#i'm in a fucking rage rn #a transcript of what darren said at the c2e2 #because y’all fucking suck for only reading all those clickbait headlines and words out of context #instead of listening to what he ACTUALLY SAID #stop twisting his words #stop blowing things out of context #all that makes perfect sense #his whole worldview has been shaped by queer culture #so yes he IS culturally queer #and he fucking embraces it #he is grateful for that #and shows himself as an ally #what’s wrong with that?!?!? #he isn't taking advantage of the community #he didnt make claims about his sexuality #he didn't reveal that he identifies as a 'cishet culturally queer man' #so back off #and as a member of the community i'll tell u #that if something as simple as him painting his nails with bright colors #or him being comfortable surrounding himself of queer culture offends you #thats a fucking you problem #⋯⋯⋯⋯ #darren criss #c2e2 #chicago comic & entertainment expo

[d-criss-news]

Glee star Darren Criss says he is 'culturally queer' thanks to San Francisco upbringing

When Darren Criss broke out on Glee, he instantly became a "teenage dream" for viewers — especially for LGBTQ+ audiences, who were able to see themselves represented in a new way in television.

Criss himself identities as a straight, cisgender man, but he says that his upbringing in San Francisco, Calif., helped him understand the importance of his character, Blaine, and his character's relationship with Kurt (Chris Colfer).

When asked at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2), what it was like portraying the groundbreaking relationship on television, Criss replied, "It was f---ing awesome.... Nowadays, we just call it a relationship on TV. But to contextualize it, a gay relationship on mainstream Fox, that's a pretty cool thing to be a part of," he said, adding emphasis when naming the network.

"I have been so culturally queer my whole life," he continued while appearing on a panel over the weekend. "Not because I'm trying — you know, actually, I was gonna say not because I'm trying to be cool but I'm gonna erase that, because I am trying to be cool. The things in my life that I have tried to emulate, learn from and be inspired by are 100 percent queer as f---."

"It was in queer communities that I've found people that I idolize, that I want to learn something from," he said. "And I'd say that's a gross generalization, that's a lot of things and a lot of people. But I grew up in San Francisco in the '90s. I watched men die. There was an awareness of the gay experience that was not a foreign concept to me. So, it was a narrative that I cared deeply about."

Criss also clarified that he didn't feel any ownership or entitlement over the role, but instead, felt a sense of responsibility once he was cast. "[I wasn't] like, 'I'm the man for the job,'" he explained. "They hired me...They said, 'You're the guy,' and I said, 'Okay, I'm the guy, I will do my best. I will do my best to talk about it in the way I believe and a way that I'm passionate about.'"

Criss portrayed Blaine Anderson for five of Glee's six seasons. He was introduced as an openly gay student at Dalton Academy and a member of a cappella group the Warblers in season 2. He recurred throughout the season. In season 3, Criss was upgraded to a series regular and Blaine transferred to William McKinley High School, home of Kurt and the New Directions. When the series ended, Blaine and Kurt were happily married after many ups and downs.

For Criss, Glee's legacy of portraying a relationship on television that so many people hadn't seen before was the most meaningful part of his experience. "In many ways, I'm glad it was me because it was a thing I really liked showing," he reflected. "It meant a great deal to me and it meant a great deal to other people. Because when people say they were affected by that show or that relationship, it's not because of me, it's because of that relationship on TV and the risks that people took to put that on TV."

"It took the people watching it to have the aptitude for seeing beyond what was maybe given to them in other avenues of culture. People of all ages, all spectrums of awareness say, 'I didn't grow up with a show like that and it was a really meaningful thing for me to see,' and I go I didn't grow up with a show like that and that would've been very meaningful for me too. Regardless of the fact that I'm a straight kid. That has value. For anyone who's been an underdog, we all know, in any shape or form — sexual, religious, biological — it has value because there's going to be a lot of people who see that and say, 'Okay, I can now understand this in a context that maybe I wasn't able to before.'

"It was a f-ing privilege," he concluded, "and I love talking about it and I'm so grateful I got to do it."

#darren criss #entertainment weekly #glee #c2e2 #chicago comic & entertainment expo #press #april 2024

[farragoofwires]

don' dweeblog

fuck completely forgot about my erstwhile crush on my best male friend who turned out to be gay. queers really do be into other queers. is the thing.

#the problem is. that i do not believe in the beliefs of the 'bi means you are in love with every woman and 2.3 men' but i am playing it out. #anyway. shoutout to highschool desperately holding onto the belief that she was straight me. babygirl you are into 3 times more girls than #guys and you just have not been able to process this fact; btw everyone else around you definitely has. but you talk to so few people #that you have zero clue that this is the state of gossip in your school. #fun fact: my mom became a sportsmom equivalent in the last year of highschool when i joined colorguard which meant she was instantly more #plugged in vis a vis the gossip and she had to inform ME that apparently the school thought i was a lesbian. #to which i can only say. why were the openly queer emo kids not approaching me then!!!!! yeah i was giving off nerd vibes at lethal levels #but they could've reached out the olive branch and they didn't!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[vinyls-and-valentines]

Honestly, what is it that makes Barbie movies so fruity?

#like. is it something to the eye of the beholder or is it something within the text? #i mean there's definitely movies i've clocked as queer/a metaphor for queerness subconciously as a kid and i'm just really curious whether #it has to do with the fact that i was a queer kid or just that the situations the characters were depicted in were outside what society #deems 'normal' for a young adult #also as a sidenote but what i like about the barbie movies which are adaptations of various tales is that they while they don't strive for #1:1 accuracy they still keep the same story beats as the original unlike say disney movies which much more strive to reinvent popular tales #like. for barbie movies the original tales are a base to paint on whereas for disney they are playdough #idk. i haven't watched a barbie movie in several years. i was actually planning on rewatching one of my faves but then went 'hold up. i #know some of these are gay af but *how* do i know they were gay af?? last time i watched them i was like 9???' #boo rambles

[magentagalaxies]

time for my weekly being emotional about scott thompson while very sleep deprived moment

#hes just done so much for the queer community and deserves so much more recognitionnnn #i cant even like. articulate words rn #but i found a gif set from a video of one of the earliest times he played buddy cole (before kids in the hall) #and im just like. damn he was just a little older than me then like do you think he could even imagine how much hed do in the next 40 years #so inspirational. like ive been having a depression moment today but im like ok if scott can get through literally everything #and still be a living legend gay comedy superhero #i can definitely tell my depression to fuck off and get back to making comedy soon #and tbh the fact that paul bellini believes in me has low key high key been the main thing keeping me going lmao

[maliceofminds]

went outside today, saw beauty

#no stop because im literally feeling the feeling right now #it was my friends birthday party #and he has a group of queer younger kids hes friends with that he knows from a program he helped build up at our old school #and they are so young!! and so happy!! and so queer #and they just live #it’s not a big deal #it’s just a simple fact the way it was never for me #and im looking at them and some instinct kicks in of wanting something for them that I didn’t have #and you know what #i think they do have that #and that just fills me with so much joy #they are not that much younger (and im really not that old) but there is a difference still in the way they know how they aren’t alone and #how they approach topics and people #i just #hmmm #<3 #so much Love

[devotedlystrangewizard]

i have such strong memories related to black sails like. it was my mom's birthday. during a weekend. think 2018/2019. we went away for the weekend to this. place. idk what its called in english but yk rent a tiny house for like a few days. whatever. i can remember what it looked like. i sat on that couch watching black sails. my sister and i had to share a room and i managed to break the bed (not permanently) i had to sleep on & because even after fixing it i didnt trust it, i slept on the floor. it was on that floor that i watched s2 of black sails. it was on that floor that i saw that fucking scene that fundamentally changed me as a person. because. listen. black sails was one of the first shows id watched with a queer story. with not one but two major plot threads revolving around queer people's relationships. i remember sitting in the car in the dark as the rest of my family was ordering fries for us and i remember my mom going "hey look gay couple!" in a restaurant. it doesnt feel real. that entire weekend is a fever dream. i thought i was just watching a pirate show. the pirates were gay. the pirates were fucking gay bro. i cried over that show. i wept at the end of it. i had to play boardgames for my mom's birthday and pretend like i wasnt going insane because the pirates were gay and i was just. ough. i was 14 or 15 and i was barely out and i was new to being queer in any capacity and it was such an experience.

#i really think my extreme reactions as like. a 14ish year old to stuff like 'is hannibal in love with me' & the wedding crashing #in shadowhunters and the kiss in black sails. #i really think that shouldve clued me in on the fact that i was trans & gay. earlier. #which doesnt make sense since im also aromantic but eh. yk. seeing people like yourself on a screen for the first time #even before you know? wild. insane #current 13 year olds doing discourse on tik tok have never experienced the utter surprise that was black sails. #they have never experienced growing up to 12 unaware lesbians even EXISTED because queer people barely existed in media #i really feel like ive grown up alongside queer media. #just. i remember tlok. & shera. & adventure time. all kids shows! #& then ofmd? last year? i spent the entire time convinced id get queerbaited #i started watching it when episode 4 had just aired and i. i thought it was queerbait. #it wasnt until they actually kissed that i sat there like. huh. spn really did fuck with my head #DO YOU KNOW. HOW FUCKIGN INSANE IT WAS. TO SEE A NONBINARY PERSON #criticize monster/robot nonbinary characters all you like but when i first saw double trouble i was just. #getting to witness o14's development since season of dawn in real time was also amazing #idk. #i think writing valerian has made me really really emotional about gay middleaged men again #also its late. and i miss black sails. i should rewatch black sails

[genderqueerdykes]

people ask why i am adamant about stating that i am a gay man and a lesbian, and why i don't just simply state that i am bisexual. while i do that sometimes, it's very important for me to express that no matter how i present, or what space i occupy, i am queer, read as queer, and will never stop experiencing my own personal queerness.

i am never clocked as a heterosexual anything. even when i was a cis passing trans man, i was viewed as a faggot and a butch dyke dating a woman. no part of me has ever been viewed as straight. from childhood i started presenting masc and growing facial hair and bulking up from my intersex condition.

i was always viewed as a butch dyke by my peers, partially because i was not great at hiding the fact that i was attracted to girls, but also because of how masculine i was, both by nature and choice. i have always been a dyke, to the point of my friends' mothers asking their kids about it. when i was dating my FTM exes, we were just two butch dykes to everyone around us.

once i transitioned into manhood, i was instantly clocked as a faggot, and will always be. this is most people's primary reaction to me. i am the stereotypical fag in real life. i walk the walk, and talk the talk. even if i am dating or having sex with a woman, i will still be viewed as a faggot who loves and fucks women. i will be viewed as a butch dyke even if i am identifying and presenting as a woman dating a man. i will always be viewed as a lesbian or a gay man. i will never be viewed as a straight guy, or a straight woman, or a straight genderqueer person.

i am not and never have been a straight anything, so it's well in my rights to clarify that i am a lesbian and a gay man, not a straight something and a gay something. i have the right to say this, because this is what i am, and i don't have to sell myself short. i am allowed to be honest about how i identify, and how i am viewed. it isn't entirely about how i'm viewed, because this is also how i feel. the feeling is mutual. it's alright to say this, if everyone in the situation agrees that's what's going on.

it's alright for me to say i'm bisexual, gay, and a lesbian at the same time, it's just stating the truth. some bi people are gay and straight, some people are gays and lesbians, the world keeps turning.

#bisexual #lesbian #gay #lgbtqia #queer #lgbtq #bisexual lesbian #bisexual gay #intersex #transgender #trans #transsexual #ftm #transmasculine #trans man #trans men #transmasculinity #genderqueer

[duchessonfire]

I have been reading a bit on the OTW elections and the whole Tiffany G thing, but most of all, I've been reading comments from people supporting Tiffany saying that she just wants to clear AO3 from all the CSAM (child sexual abuse material) content and I don't know who needs to hear this but:

If someone comes to a predominantly QUEER space (like AO3) and tells you that censorship is necessary to eradicate CSAM... it's not actually CSAM they want to eradicate...

I've seen this type of discourse about Pride and about queer literature and queer movies and queer communities. It's a tried and true technique of the right and conservative movements.

First, they say there is a DANGER to the community through CSAM and they conflate the actual threat of CSAM in the community (we all know someone who thinks that writing a love story between two characters who are 16 is CSAM...), and make you believe that censorship is the only way to PROTECT THE CHILDREN. And since most people are (rightly) mind-bogled at having to explain that of course they don't support CSAM content, they bow down and accept the censorship for the greater good, without anyone actually trying to have a conversation about what qualifies as CSAM (which needs to, you know, actually involve real children and not fictional characters who are 17 and losing their virginity with their crush in a Mature-rated story about high school football and first love based on the author's own experience of losing their virginity at 17 to their crush in high school).

Then, they tell you that there are other forms of DISTURBING CONTENT, and what they really mean is porn that THEY find disturbing, for ex, (and I kid you not, I have seen comments like that) porn featuring disabled characters, which they consider to encourage the exploitation of vulnerable individuals, or BDSM porn (which supposedly encourages violence and lack of consent), or rough porn, or any kind of porn that isn't two (preferably white and skinny) able-bodied people doing it missionary style while lovingly gazing in each other's eyes. SO TO PROTECT VIEWERS, that needs to be banned as well.

And then, they tell you that even that sanitized version of porn is still porn and that people under 18 or under 21 or under whatever age they consider too young to view anything sexual regardless of the fact that not all countries have the same law about the age of maturity, should be free to surf the site without having to *gasp* filter out properly tagged works. So TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN, every explicit content is censored.

And then finally, when all that is left is a sanitized, white-washed, ableist, puritan type of content featuring General-Audience approved gay works of two nice men or two nice women holding hands and chastely kissing each other on the lips... Well guess what? :) CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE EXPOSED TO QUEER CONTENT SO WE NEED TO BAN THAT AS WELL, and since we've basically done purge after purge before and there are still a handful of people on the website, well surely they won't mind/care anymore, will they?

It's not just a slippery slope, it's something that has been done time and again, and that is why censorship on AO3 will never, never have a positive outcome.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

#otw elections #ao3 #sorry for the rant #but i'm tired of seeing the same BS again and again #tw cp mention #censorship

[nope-body]

.

#I think part of the reason why I really liked my one trans coworker (other than the fact that we got along really well and she was so kind) #is because she 5 or 6 years older than me and while im starting my freshman year in college she’s starting her senior year #and that’s not the biggest age gap but she’s still a trans person who’s older than I am and who has gone through what im going to go through #and she’s happy! and her brother supports her and loves her! #there was a reason why I wanted GSA to have a queer sponsor- because I knew how important it was to see a queer adult who’s successful #and happy and living their life how they want to #it’s giving people the chance to see not only that there is a future but also what their future can look like #like something to look forward to #and for trans kids it’s the same thing. except because being trans is a bit different than just not being het #it can be harder to find someone older than you who essentially has done/is doing all that and is happy and doing well #it can be harder to identify with cis queer people just because what our futures look like can be different #and I think it’s the same reason why it’s so important to have a queer GSA sponsor #that knowing a trans person just a bit older than me was so wonderful #she was my friend and she also let me see what my future could look like- happy #so yeah I appreciated that. and I know that she probably also liked me because I was trans a bit before we got to know each other #because it’s community. and it’s nice to have community wherever you are #because that’s one less person you have to explain things to and it’s one less person who’s going to ask you weird questions #and it’s one more person who you can laugh about those weird questions with

[forpiratereasons]

all right. i'm ready to talk about izzy.

izzy is a great character. in s1 he sits in this great position as an antagonist that's close to the main characters, and in s2 he sits in this great position as an antagonist who's gotten everything he wanted, and found that actually - fuck! - that's not it at all. the world changes enough in s1 that there's no satisfaction in izzy getting what he wants out of blackbeard. and it's not just ed that's changed, it's not just the crew, izzy himself is fundamentally changed too. even before s2, and that change continues to grow and flourish through the series.

in reality, death is cruel. and death is senseless. and death is unfair, and shitty, and it happens to the wrong people at the wrong time, too early, with too much to live for, who mean too much to too many. it happens.

maybe izzy's death is all of those things, but i don't think that's the point. it's not meant as a lesson in mortality; it's not meant as retribution for past crimes; it's not meant as a commentary on who deserves to live and who deserves to die. it's not about deserving. if anything, it's about the fact that deserving doesn't come into it at all.

the point is that izzy healed.

a lot has been made of the fact that izzy is the only character who bears visible scars from the kraken era - the scar on his head, as well as the leg. but i don't think they're meant as a reminder of the injury, or as a sign that izzy is "damaged" post-kraken era. they're representative of the fact that izzy healed. the scar is there to remind you that izzy survived. you see it heal over multiple episodes because that's the work izzy is doing - he's healing from blackbeard's actions, from his own actions, from his history, from his constraints.

it's not too late to heal. it's not too late to find your place. it's not too late to come out. it's not too late to let people in. it's not too late.

and all those things are worth doing despite the fact that our time here is limited. we are all going to die. but we are here right now, which means it's not too late, and it is worth it to free ourselves to be who we need to be regardless of who we have been and who we are now and what time we might have left.

izzy isn't suicidal in ep 8. he's healed from that. izzy isn't abused or depressed or alone in ep 8. izzy is strong, and competent, and respected, and loved.

and some folks have been disappointed it's not romantic love. i get that. but i think it's super important too that izzy's healing is worth it without romantic love. familial, platonic love is so fundamentally important to the queer community. found family. friends. solidarity. the look when some stranger sees you and you see them and you both know the other is family, that they're safe. the way we fight for each other - for our rights to love who we want, fuck who we want, to marry, to adopt kids, and also for housing, for jobs, for healthcare. for our rights to use the bathroom, for our rights to choose our own names and our own bodies and our own families. we're fighting for our right to exist and that, guys, it's not romantic. the foundations of our community is about - well, i'll let izzy say it:

it's not about glory, it's not about getting what you want. it's about belonging to something when the world has told you you're nothing. it's about finding the family to kill for when yours are long dead. it's about letting go of ego for something larger. the crew.

ed and izzy, following s2e3, interact and communicate on izzy's terms, and that's made clear. that's the last relationship for izzy to heal. when izzy finally approaches ed in ep 6, it's - not great. it's a start. you gotta start somewhere. he lets ed apologize, in their very closed, guilty way of speaking to each other, but then goes back to the crew, back to his safety.

he finally finishes his healing arc with the drag performance and la vie en rose, and then he and ed DO have good moments. he teases ed about stede. he directly reverses his previous actions in s1 and tells ed to listen to his good feelings. that's where djenks is getting this (imo, still a bit weird) father-figure business. the scene in the republic where ed's watching fishermen and izzy comes to say hey, it's all right, hey, listen to your gut. they don't need to directly come out and have some deep serious conversation about their relationship because that's just not like them, man. they're doing their healing their way. i think it would be nonsensical to expect these two to be open and honest with each other regardless of how they are with everyone else because their relationship is not like their relationships with anyone else.

until they run out of time.

and this, i think, is important. izzy controls this last conversation because it's what ed needs to hear, because izzy no longer needs to hear it. izzy doesn't need to hear that ed's sorry, izzy knows ed's fucking sorry. ed's whole arc this season is about the guilt he's carrying. izzy says what he says because he knows ed needs to hear it. ed, you weren't a monster all on your own. ed, i saw you. i saw you outgrowing him, and i didn't want that to happen because i was worried about what it meant for me, but i see now that it could have meant this all along - family. balance. something to die for, sure, but something to live for.

you could argue that ed and the crew don't think of each other as family. i think it's a bit more complicated than a yes or no on that one, but when izzy says, ed, you're surrounded by family, maybe it doesn't matter whether that's fact. maybe it's a statement of possibility. look at this family who can love you if you let them. look at this family who will forgive you even when you don't deserve it. look at all the ways you can still heal. look at how worth it it all is.

just be ed, izzy says, there he is.

he says it to ed because izzy already knows he can be just izzy. izzy already knows he's dying surrounded by family. izzy already knows that love and belonging and family are worth it, and he uses his dying moments to make sure ed knows it too because despite everything, despite everything he did and despite everything ed did and despite not being ed's romantic choice, he loves ed. it's worth it to use his dying moment to make sure ed knows this because izzy loves him.

it's worth it.

izzy is the stand-in for the stereotypical pirate, the villain - the representative of how repression and oppression work together, of how race and class and colonization interact with each other, of the lines between love and obsession and power and rage and fear blurring beyond recognition - and he heals. guys, the point of his story is not that he was all those things and paid that price. the point of his story is that he could grow beyond all those things and that growth and healing was all worth it despite the fact that yeah. our lives will inevitably end.

historically, israel hands is said to be one of the only major pirates who survives the golden age of piracy, and he doesn't survive it well - according to the contemporary account of "captain charles johnson" (almost certainly a pseudonym) in A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, published 1724, hands dies a beggar in london sometime between 1719 and 1724. it has been suggested by some pirate scholars that hands may have actually been the source for much of the information johnson is able to relay regarding blackbeard - and that johnson's apparent wealth of information contributed significantly to the legacy blackbeard left behind and his lasting fame. i had actually really hoped to see this play out in ofmd - izzy protecting ed and stede through perpetuating stories about blackbeard's 'death' (fake, i'd hoped) and legacy.

but i think - he is. in his way. he's there on the hillside, keeping watch. he's there to hold all the stories and all the memories of pirates and what it meant to belong to something, even as the golden age of piracy sets. he's there to show what it is to love and to be loved in return: eternal.

i don't like that izzy died. i think he's a great character, i think he's great fun to have in the ensemble, i think his dynamics with ed and stede are so fucking chewy and delicious. i think con o'neill has done the work of a lifetime on this character and, i hope, had and continue to has the experience of a lifetime with this fandom. my heart goes out to those of you who are devastated; i've been there in past fandoms, i know how achingly difficult that is. i'm so sorry.

but izzy's story is worth telling. izzy's story is worth celebrating. izzy is about making mistakes - bad mistakes! - and finding your way back to something better. izzy is about healing, and about community, and about hope that even when things are shit and people are shit - they can change. things can change.

and maybe - yeah. it's about the role stories play in our lives. about using fictional little scenarios to deal with our traumas. we're here. we're alive. we're coping. we will heal.

not moving on is worse.

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #izzy hands

[love-takes-work]

I've seen a fair number of people interpret Rebecca Sugar's (and the Crew's) decision to put Ruby in a dress as subversive, and I want to discuss why that feels like a clear miss to me.

Every time--every single time--I've heard Rebecca Sugar talk about the queer relationships on this show, it comes with this expression of wholesomeness, and often glazed with a sheen of wistfulness, flavored something like "I needed this as a child and young person, and I didn't have it." Much of Rebecca Sugar's work to bring this wedding (and other unapologetic queer relationships) to the screen was framed as an emergency--as in, we HAVE to get this out there for those kids we used to be, because we know they're drowning.

Yes, it's funny sometimes when people make jokes about Sugar deliberately "adding more gay" or "making it gayer" as a big eff-you to the people who spoke against it, but that doesn't sit right from where I'm standing. It took so much strength (and resulted in so much battle damage) to fight that fight, yes. But from everything I can see from the interviews and conversations I've seen and read, this wasn't served up in a "ha-HA, take THAT!" kind of way. These characters having these kinds of relationships should have been a non-issue, and the fact that their very wholesome kids'-show wedding and very sweet kiss and very adorable love for each other was seen as Political when it should have been just two characters in love is so sad to me.

I've seen dozens of people suggest that Ruby is in a dress and Sapphire is in a suit "to fuck with the bigoted censors in other countries" or "to give the finger to gender roles," but again, I think it is simpler and sweeter than that. Rebecca's said that Ruby in a dress is how she feels in a dress. Celebration and exploration of feminine-coded stuff felt wrong to Rebecca for a long time, like it wasn't hers, because she wasn't really a woman and didn't want it forced on her. As a result she was robbed of all the beauty that should have been a non-issue, from what TV shows and toys she was supposed to enjoy as a kid to what kind of person she was supposed to marry and what she should wear as an adult.

Ruby never got a choice about how she looked really. Once she got to choose her presentation for a significant event, this is what she chose. It means so much more to see that than to construct it primarily as a reactionary measure, as if it would somehow foil the sinister censors in more homophobic countries (who, incidentally, are not therefore forced to show Ruby in a dress even though they tried to hide that Ruby was a "she" or that she was in a romantic relationship with another "she"; y'all, they just don't show the episode).

We see plenty of other examples of gender-role-related expectations being casually stepped on and squashed, like when they took the trouble to give traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine "clothes" to some watermelons to make the audience think there was a husband and wife watermelon only to have the wife be the warrior and the husband stay home with the child. With stuff like that, yeah, sure, maybe it's designed to make you think "oh isn't that very feminist of them!" Or maybe it's more "well why do I see this as a 'reversal' when it's just a thing that happened?" This show is full of ladyish beings who fight and have power. And as for Steven. . . .

Nobody has negative reactions onscreen (or even particularly confused reactions) when Steven wears traditionally feminine clothes, and it is (of course) also not presented as a "boy in a dress gag"--it's not supposed to be funny. When they go all in slathering Steven in literal princess tropes throughout the final act of Season 5, we understand that it's because the powerful Diamonds expect him to be Pink Diamond, not because the show is trying to girlify him or embarrass him or even make the audience think positive thoughts about boys in girls' clothes. It's more neutral than that in my interpretation: "these are literally just pieces of cloth, and while some of them have meaning, they don't inherently have a gender." I don't see this as transgressive. It's just in a world where putting on what you want to wear doesn't HAVE to be a political statement. (Though obviously it CAN be, and plenty of people wear a variety of clothes as a fuck-you to whoever they want to give the finger to. I just don't see that as happening here.)

Don't get me wrong; Rebecca Sugar certainly knew about the politics (intimately) and has lived at many of their intersections. She was not ignorant of how queer people are seen in this world. She was silenced as a bisexual person because her identity supposedly didn't matter if she was with a man and planned to be with that same man forever. She was shunted into "omg a woman did this!" categories over and over again, which she wore uneasily as a nonbinary person while accepting that part of who we are is how the world sees us. But what is it like if everything someone like her embraces is seen as a statement synonymous with "fuck you" to someone else?

She is married to a person who happens to be a man and happens to be Black. Her relationship isn't a "statement" about either of those aspects of his existence; her love is simply something that is. She is Jewish working in a society that's largely Christian. Her cultural perspective to NOT center her cartoon around Christian holidays and Christian morals; her choices to make an alternate world in this specific way is simply something that is. Her queer perspective as a nonbinary bisexual person has helped inform the Gems' radical philosophy of "what if we learned to explore and define ourselves instead of doing the 'jobs' we're assigned and being told it's our nature?" Her decision to include queer people in a broadly queer cartoon isn't designed PRIMARILY as a battle against baddies, or to drown out all the relentless straightness, or to deliciously get our queer little paws all over their kids' TV. It's an act of love.

So this is just to say that though I DO understand that sometimes subversion and intentional transgression are very necessary, I do not think that's the HEART of what's going on at this Gem wedding. We got a wholesome marriage scene between two of the most lovely little flawed-but-still-somehow-perfect characters, and I very much want to see their choices as being about them. About how Ruby feels in a dress. About how Sapphire feels about not having to always wear a dress. About them incorporating a symbol of their union into their separate lives so they can have some independence in their togetherness. About them celebrating their love by letting Steven wipe his schmaltz all over them.

There are many choices in the show that ARE carefully constructed to counter existing narratives, you know, giving the Crystal Gems' only boy all the healing, pink, flower imagery; having a single-sex species that's ladyish with all the members going by "she"; featuring many nurturing male characters who cry and cook and raise kids without mothers; pairing multiple fighty ladies with gentler guys; and importantly, intentionally loading up the show with stories, characters, and imagery any gender will find appealing despite being tasked with expectations to pander to the preteen boy demographic.

But it's very important to me that the inclusion of queer characters and the featuring of their choices be seen primarily as a loving act, and way way less of a "lol screw the bigots." I want our stories to be about us. Yes, I know it's a necessary evil that sometimes our stories are also about fighting Them. But every time I see someone say they put Ruby in the dress to "piss off the homophobes" or "stump the censors" I feel a little gross. Like the time I picked out an outfit I loved and my mom said I only dressed in such an obnoxious way to upset her, and I was baffled because my aesthetic choices, my opinions, my choices had nothing to do with her. Yet they were framed like I chose these clothes primarily to cause some kind of petty harm to her, when not only was it not true but I was not even that kind of person who would gloat over intentionally irritating someone.

The queerness of this show isn't a sneaky, underhanded act trying above all to upset a bigot or celebrate someone's homophobic fury. It lives for itself. Its existence is about itself. It's so we can see ourselves in a show, and it's so people who aren't queer or don't have those experiences can see that we exist, we participate, we want very similar things, and definitely are focusing way more about celebrating our love at our own weddings rather than relishing the thought of bigots tearing their hair out and hating us.

It's dangerous to turn every act of our love into a deliberate movement in a battle strategy when their weddings just get to be weddings.

I think there’s this idea that that [queer characters] is something that applies or should be only discussed with adults that is completely wrong. And I think when you realize that talking to kids about heteronormativity is just like air that you breathe all the time, it’s kind of amazing that that is not true in any other capacity. I think if you wait to tell kids, to tell queer youth that it matters how they feel or that they are even a person, then it’s going to be too late! You have to talk about it—you have to let it be what it gets to be for everyone. I mean, like, I think about, a lot of times I think about sort of fairy tales and Disney movies and the way that love is something that is ALWAYS discussed with children. And I think also there’s this idea that’s like, oh, we should represent, you know, queer characters that are adults, because there are adults that are queer, and you should know that’s something that is happening in the adult world, but that’s not how those films or those stories are told to children. You’re told that YOU should dream about love, about this fulfilling love that YOU’RE going to have. […] The Prince and Snow White are not like someone’s PARENTS. They’re something you want to be, that you are sort of dreaming of a future where you will find happiness. Why shouldn’t everyone have that? It’s really absurd to think that everyone shouldn’t get to have that! --Rebecca Sugar

#steven universe #ruby and sapphire #rebecca sugar #queer relationships #long post #myblog

[xiaq]

Part 1 Here

Prompts combined for Pt. 2 are : Outsider POV, Steve Harrington is an idiot (affectionate), Wayne Finds Out, and Everyone is Queer Because I Said So.

Wayne Munson knows he’s not the best parental figure. He never liked kids. Never wanted kids. And he nearly said no when the social worker called asking if he wanted to take guardianship of his thirteen-year-old nephew. Because surely there was someone better suited. Except then the social worker told him why Eddie had been removed from his father’s care. About the magazines Eddie’s father had found in Eddie’s backpack that preceded him kicking Eddie out. About the fights Eddie had been getting into at school. About the song lyrics his temporary foster had found in his journal. And suddenly Wayne wasn’t so sure there was a better option. He knew there had to be people more equipped to raise a traumatized queer teenager, but there was no guarantee Eddie would end up with one of them. The opposite was far more likely. Wayne knew firsthand that much of the world was unkind to people like them.

In the years that follow, they don’t talk about it. He figured once he’d won the kid’s trust, Eddie would bring it up in his own time. Or maybe Eddie would ask why Wayne spends a weekend in Indy once a month or maybe ask who he’s spending the weekends with. But somehow those conversations never happen and Wayne doesn’t force them. 

It’s not until he finds Steve Fucking Harrington keeping vigil at Eddie’s hospital bedside that he thinks maybe he should have pushed the issue sooner. 

Because Harrington looks like he’s been through a war. He’s covered in blood and grime; only his arms, washed to his elbows where he’s holding Eddie’s hand, are clean. He’s looking at Eddie with naked emotion. And, perhaps most damning, he’s wearing Eddie’s battle jacket.

When Wayne enters the room, Harrington startles and says, “Hi. I’m Steve Harrington,” like Wayne and everyone else in Hawkins weren’t already aware of that.

“I know who you are. I know who your father is, too.”

“I’d uh, prefer you didn’t hold that against me.”

Wayne makes no promises. “How do you know Eddie?”

“We’re…friends,” Steve says. There’s a continent of things unsaid behind the word.

“And how are you in his room past visiting hours?”

“I bribed the nurse," he admits. “I didn’t want him to be alone.”

“Well. On that, we’re agreed. But I’m here now. And no offense, kid, but you look like you should be in one of these beds yourself.”

“Yeah. I told them once you got here I’d let them stitch me up. It’s not anything life-threatening.” He says this with the resigned intonation of someone who is familiar with the difference.

What the fuck has Eddie gotten himself involved in?

Harrington stands. It’s a slow, painful, movement, and he only lets go of Eddie’s hand at the last possible second. “Can I—I’d like to come back. After. If you don’t mind.”

Wayne considers him. He considers Eddie’s blood-smeared vest on the kid’s shoulders. He realizes, belatedly, that Eddie’s guitar pick necklace is hanging around Harrington’s bruised throat, the rings usually crammed onto Eddie’s fingers lined up on either side of the pick.

“Sure,” he says. “Be nice to have some company. And you can tell me what the hell happened.”

Harington sighs. “Not sure how much I’m allowed to tell. Or how much you’ll believe. But I can try.”

Wayne takes his place holding Eddie’s hand.

He tries to ignore the fact that Harrington stands in the doorway for more than a minute, just looking, before finally slipping into the hall.

He’s back a few hours later, clearly showered, wrapped in gauze, and wearing the preppiest goddamn outfit. Honestly, Wayne can’t fathom how Eddie and Harrington have anything in common. He’s also still wearing the necklace, though. And when he pulls up a chair to sit on the opposite side of Eddie’s bed, he removes the necklace and carefully, downright tenderly, returns the rings to Eddie’s fingers. Wayne notices, almost despite himself, that Harrington isn’t just guessing at the placement, either. He knows. So either he’s intimately familiar with Eddie’s fingers––something that, as impossible as it sounds, is starting to seem more and more likely––or he’s particularly observant. And that kind of observance speaks to its own sort of devotion. 

Wayne isn’t excited about either of these options.

He’s trying to figure out how to ask if Steve Fucking Harrington is Eddie’s boyfriend without scaring him away when Eddie shifts, which has Wayne and Steve both jumping to their feet.

“Wayne?” he murmurs. And Wayne isn’t one for emotional displays but he finds himself participating in one for the next few minutes nonetheless.

Once he gets ahold of himself, Eddie’s head turns, slow with painkillers, to see Harrington.

“Stevie,” he says, grinning. “Hey. I’m not dead.”

“Despite your best efforts,” Steve chokes out. His hands are fisted under his armpits and he looks about five seconds away from crying. Not that Wayne can judge since he’s more than five seconds into crying.

“What did I tell you, what did you promise?” Harrington snarls.

Eddie’s grin dims. “Not to be a hero. But Dustin––shit. Dustin. Is he...”

“Fine. Sprained ankle. Pissed as hell at you. Everyone else is fine too. Max is down the hall. She has some broken bones but she’ll be alright.”

“Sorry,” Eddie murmurs. “How did I—“

“We went back for you.”

“We?”

“I,” Harrington grits out. “I went back for you. Thought you were dead. Carried you back anyway. Didn’t realize you were still breathing until we got you in the car. Drove like hell to the hospital.”

And that’s. Well, shit. Apparently, Wayne is going to need to temper his distrust of this particular Harrington. Because it sounds like he saved Eddie’s goddamn life.

“He also refused treatment and waited with you until I got here,” Wayne feels he has to add. “Despite the fact he was bleeding everywhere.”

Eddie glances between them, eyes huge. “Shit. I’m sorry. Hey, no, don’t––”

Steve is crying now, not even trying to hide it, and Eddie holds out a hand, wincing. “Come here, man, I’m fine. Or I’ll probably be fine, right?”

“So says the doctor,” Wayne agrees. 

Steve doesn’t need a second invitation.

He all but collapses, carefully, into Eddie’s outstretched arms, and Eddie’s hands bunch into the fabric of Steve’s sweatshirt and he crams his face into Steve’s neck and they’re so––their obvious, desperate, affection for each other is so unapologetic that Wayne has to look away.

 It’s not until later, when they’ve hashed out the basics of the insane upside-down phenomenon, that they finally convince Steve to go home and sleep.

He waits ten seconds after the door has closed to exhale, pressing his palms into his eyes.

“Jesus, kid. I knew you had expensive taste with cigarettes and guitars but this? He’s the closest thing to royalty this town has.”

Eddie lets out a hysterical little warble of a laugh. “No. No, no. That’s not—we’re not.”

“What the hell are you then?”

“Friends. Bonded through extreme trauma.”

“But you’d like to be more than friends.”

Eddie looks at him askance “I’ll take what I can get and I won’t ask for more,” he says quietly.

Unfortunately, Wayne is well familiar with that kind of love. He just can’t get Steve’s expression out of his head. The gentle way he’d replaced Eddie’s rings. He doesn’t think Eddie’s interest is as one-sided as Eddie does. But he doesn’t want to meddle. He’s certain they’ll figure themselves out.

Two months later, Wayne is starting to think they’re both idiots. Because half the time when he gets home from his evening bar shift––a new job after the plant disappeared into the fiery abyss––Steve’s BMW is parked down the street and when he cracks Eddie’s bedroom door he finds them cuddled up, asleep. Sometimes he’ll go to rent a movie and Steve will be wearing a shirt that Wayne knows is Eddie’s and half the time when he wakes Eddie up in the mornings he’s wearing a pastel sweater monogrammed with initials that don’t belong to Eddie. He’d think they’re together and keeping it quiet if not for the fact that Eddie is driving him absolutely insane with pining. He’s written three songs about longing and heartbreak in the last two weeks and if Wayne has to listen to one more wailing ballad he’s going to lose his goddamn mind.

He’s walking back from the bar after closing, only a mile from the new fancy trailer the government had installed for them when he passes Harrington’s conspicuous vehicle a few houses down. He sighs. The boy really has no sense of subtly. 

He’s expecting to find them, as usual, asleep in a tangle of limbs, except when he reaches the porch stairs, he can hear the boys talking.

He pauses with his hand on the railing.

“What are you doing,” Eddie murmurs, voice just carrying from the open living room window.

“Well. I’d like to kiss you, if you’d let me.”

About damn time, Wayne thinks.

“Steve, wait,” Eddie says. And it’s so quiet, so uncertain, that Wayne is tempted to open the door right then if only to prevent Ed from sounding so broken.

“I can’t be a practice run for you,” Eddie says, “Please. I can’t. I wouldn’t survive that.”

“A––what the fuck, Eddie.”

“It’s just, I know this is new to you and I’m, obviously, all about exploration and, um, finding yourself. Congratulations. Yay. But I can’t be an experiment. Not with you. I can’t.”

“You’re not an experiment,” Harrington says, voice a little louder than Wayne would prefer, given the circumstances. The trailer park isn’t exactly spacious. “I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you. I want to kiss you because I’m in love with you, how could you think—besides. This isn’t that new. I’ve kissed other guys.”

“You’ve what? Who? When?”

“Just. You know. Friends messing around. I didn’t know that made me bisexual until I talked about it with Robin but apparently, I’ve been kinda gay this whole time.”

“I’m sorry. You thought making out with your basketball buddies was…a standard heterosexual pastime?”

“Well, when you say it like that.”

“What other way is there to say it?”

“Okay,” Steve says, “I already had this conversation with Robin this morning. I don’t need to rehash it again. So I’m a little bit of an idiot. Memo received.”

“Jesus, Harrington. You just found out bisexuality was a thing this morning and now you’re here, what, asking me to be your boyfriend?”

“I mean, yeah. Ideally.”

“You don’t do anything by halves, do you.” Eddie sounds disgustingly fond.

“Eddie. I just said I love you.”

“You did,” Eddie says, high and cracked. “You did say that.”

“So if we could refocus.”

“Right.”

“I don’t expect you to say it back, but––”

“God, you really are an idiot. Of course I fucking love you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

And then that’s––well, that’s probably his nephew getting his first kiss from Steve Fucking Harrington.

Wayne decides to give them to a count of thirty before interrupting, but just as he’s about to stomp his way up the stairs, Eddie says, “Sorry, sorry, I’ve never done this before.”

“Hey, no. It’s ok. Neither have I, really. But you’re crazy if you think I’m going to fuck you right now,” Steve says.

“I meant kissing. Hold on, does that mean you would be willing to fuck me later?”

Wayne winces. There are things he does not need to hear come out of his nephew’s mouth.

“Wait,” Steve interrupts, “You’ve never been kissed before? How is that possible?”

“Who would have kissed me?” Eddie hisses, “ I’m the town pariah. And until I met Robin I didn’t know any other queer people existed in Hawkins. Though apparently, I should have just joined the basketball team since you’re having orgies or whatever.”

“The first two were on the swim team,” Steve says. 

“First two. How many were there?”

Steve ignores him. “And that wasn’t––you’re so hot, though. And your band has played in bigger cities. Haven’t you ever gone up to Indy to any of the bars there?”

“I need you to understand,” Eddie says, “that I am 90% bravado and 100% anxiety.”

“That’s not how percentages work.”

“Steve.”

“Sorry. Okay. Well, if this is your first kiss then I better make it good, huh?”

“Yes. That is absolutely the burden placed upon your capable shoulders should you choose to––oh.”

Eddie stops talking and doesn’t start again, though he does make a breathy little noise that Wayne takes as his cue.

He stomps up the stairs as loudly as possible, fumbling longer than necessary with the door handle, and pushes his way inside.

The boys are both shirtless, clearly in the process of shoving themselves away from each other. Eddie’s face is pink and his lips are kiss-swollen and Harrington’s back has a set of welted scratches on it that Wayne imagines are a perfect match for Eddie’s fingers.

“Well, shit,” Wayne says. He definitely should have opened the door sooner.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Eddie says.

“What the fuck else what it be?” Steve says, only sounding a little hysterical.

Except then the kid is pushing Eddie behind him and squaring up to Wayne with his jaw clenched and his head high, the discolored ring around his neck, still not yet healed, the scars down his belly, on display. Wayne is well-acquainted with the nuance of a man posturing versus a man who would gladly throw himself into a fight, even one he’s not certain he’d win. Steve Harrington is indisputably the latter.

Wayne can’t decide if he’s offended or endeared.

“Stand down, kid, I’m not going to hurt him.”

“I wouldn’t let you.” 

“That is…extremely apparent.”

“Steve,” Eddie says. “It’s ok. He knows. Or. We’ve never really talked about it but.” He meets Wayne’s eyes. “He knows. It’s ok.”

Eddie pushes around him, stepping into Wayne’s open arms.

Steve watches distrustfully as Wayne wraps Eddie in a hug.

“You’re both safe here,” he says. Mostly to Steve, since he’s the one who needs to hear it. “And I’ll call up my boyfriend in Indy and have him vouch for me if you don’t believe me.”

Harrington’s expression is just as magnificent as Wayne hoped it would be.

“Your what?” Eddie shrieks.

Part 3 Here.

On AO3 Here.

Tempted to do one more from one of the kid's POVs when the kids find out. Thoughts?

#steddie #steddie fic #steve harrington/eddie munson #myfic #mywriting #stranger things

[novelconcepts]

There’s a line from American Gods I keep coming back to in relation to Yellowjackets, an observation made early on by Shadow in prison: “The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment.” I keep rotating it in my head in thinking about the six survivors, the roles they occupy in the wilderness, and the way the show depicts them as adults in society.

Because in the wilderness, as in prison, they’re trapped—they’re suffering, they’re traumatized, they’re terrified—but they’re also able to construct very specific boxes to live in. And, in a way, that might make it easier. Cut away the fat, narrow the story down to its base arc. You are no longer the complex young woman who weighs a moral compass before acting. You no longer have the luxury of asking questions. You are a survivor. You have only to get to the next day.

Shauna: the scribe. Lottie: the prophet. Van: the acolyte. Taissa: the skeptic. Misty: the knight. Natalie: the queen. Neat, orderly, the bricks of a new kind of society. And it works in the woods; we know this because these six survive. (Add Travis: the hunter, while you’re at it, because he does make it to adulthood).

But then they’re rescued. And it’s not just lost purpose and PTSD they’re dealing with now, but a loss of that intrinsic identity each built in the woods. How do you go home again? How do you rejoin a so-called civilized world, where all the violence is restricted to a soccer field, to an argument, to your own nightmares?

How does the scribe, the one who wrote it all out in black and white to make sense of the horrors, cope with a world that would actively reject her story? She locks that story away. But she can’t stop turning it over in her head. She can’t forget the details. They’re waiting around every corner. In the husband beside her in bed. In the child she can’t connect with across the table. In the best friend whose parents draw her in, make her the object of their grief, the friend who lives on in every corner of their hometown. She can’t forget, so she tries so hard to write a different kind of story instead, to fool everyone into seeing the soft maternal mask and not the butcher beneath, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the prophet come back from the religion a desperate group made of her, a group that took her tortured visions, her slipping mental health, and built a hungry need around the very things whittling her down? She builds over the bones. She creates a place out of all that well-intended damage, and she tells herself she’s helping, she’s saving them, she has to save them, because the world is greedy and needs a leader, needs a martyr, needs someone to stand up tall and reassure everyone at the end of the day that they know what’s best. The world, any world, needs someone who will take those blows so the innocent don’t have to. She’s haunted by everyone she didn’t save, by the godhood assigned to her out of misplaced damage, and when the darkness comes knocking again, there is nothing else to do but repeat old rhymes until there is blood on her hands just the same.

How does the acolyte return to a world that cares nothing for the faith of the desperate, the faith that did nothing to save most of her friends, that indeed pushed her to destroy? She runs from it. She dives into things that are safe to believe in, things that rescue lonely girls from rough home lives, things that show a young queer kid there’s still sunshine out there somewhere. She delves into fiction, makes a home inside old stories to which she already knows the endings, coaxes herself away from the belief that damned her and into a cinemascope safety net where the real stuff never has to get in. She teaches herself surface-level interests, she avoids anything she might believe in too deeply, and still she’s dragged back to the place where blood winds up on her hands just the same.

How does the skeptic make peace with the things she knows happened, the things that she did even without meaning to, without realizing? She buries them. She leans hard into a refusal to believe those skeletons could ever crawl back out of the graves she stuffed them into, because belief is in some ways the opposite of control. She doesn’t talk to her wife. She doesn’t talk to anyone. It’s not about what’s underneath the surface, because that’s just a mess, so instead she actively discounts the girl she became in the woods. She makes something new, something rational and orderly, someone who can’t fail. She polishes the picture to a shine, and she stands up straight, the model achievement. She goes about her original plan like it was always going to be that way, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the knight exist in a world with no one to serve, no one to protect, no reason propelling the devastating choices she had grown comfortable making? She rechannels it. She convinces herself she’s the smartest person in the room, the most capable, the most observant. She convinces herself other people’s mysteries are hers to solve, that she is helping in every single action she takes. She makes a career out of assisting the most fragile, the most helpless souls she can find, and she makes a hobby out of patrolling for crimes to solve, and when a chance comes to strap her armor back on and ride into battle, she rejoices in the return to normalcy. She craves that station as someone needed, someone to rely upon in the darkest of hours, and she winds up with blood on her hands because, in a way, she never left the wilderness at all.

How does the queen keep going without a queendom, without a pack, without people to lead past the horrors of tomorrow? She doesn’t. She simply does not know how. She scrounges for something, anything, that will make her feel connected to the world the way that team did. She moves in and out of a world that rejects trauma, punishes the traumatized, heckles the grieving as a spectacle. She finds comfort in the cohesive ritual of rehabilitation, this place where she gets so close to finding herself again, only to stumble when she opens her eyes and sees she’s alone. All those months feeding and guiding and gripping fast to the fight of making it to another day, and she no longer knows how to rest. How to let go without falling. She no longer wears a crown, and she never wanted it in the first place, so how on earth does she survive a world that doesn’t understand the guilt and shame of being made the centerpiece of a specialized environment you can never explain to anyone else? How, how, how do you survive without winding up with blood on your hands just the same?

All six of these girls found, for better or worse, a place in the woods. All six of them found, for better or worse, a reason to get up the next day. For each other. And then they go home, and even if they all stayed close, stayed friends, it’d still be like stepping out of chains for the first time in years. Where do you go? How do you make small choices when every decision for months was life or death? How do you keep the part of yourself stitched so innately into your survival in a world that would scream to see it? How do you do away with the survivor and still keep going?

They brought it back with them. Of course they did. It was the only way.

#yellowjackets #yellowjackets spoilers #yj meta #long post #shauna shipman #lottie matthews #taissa turner #van palmer #misty quigley #natalie scatorccio #the question not being how do you survive the wilderness. the question being how do you come BACK. #the way each of them tries so hard to keep moving forward #unable to untangle the girl in the woods from the adult suffering in polite society #how the world doesn’t want to hear about the pain or the night terrors or the sleepwalking or the addiction #the world wants the bright colors and the flash-bang headlines #the world doesn’t want who they are. who they had to be. it wants pretty perfect tragedy #that specialized environment lives on in each one of them every day #but it’s not a place anyone else can ever go #how do you feed that for so long and then just…stop? #constantly thinking about nat saying we didn’t make it out. none of us. #because no. no they didn’t. the girls died the minute that rescue chance did. what came back was risen from those ashes

[mimymomo]

In ‘Lucas on the Line,’ Lucas Sinclair experienced countless bouts of racism and micro aggressions including but not limited to:

Had children run away from him and refuse to touch him because they thought his Black skin color would rub off on them. This happened IN THE THIRD GRADE! And he never told his parents about it!

Calmed his anxiety about being the only Black kid in his homeroom class by coming to the realization that since there was no other Black kids that meant he most likely wouldn’t be bombed

Had to install a camera in his locker because his property got defaced by a glitter bomb

Lost his first and only black friend/mentor who supported him thanks to an ACTUAL MAKESHIFT BOMB being installed in his locker that caused a janitor to go to the hospital for 1st/2nd degree burns (and the white boy who did it barely got punished)

Got teased that the only reason he got on the basketball team was because he was Black

Comes to the realization that he might’ve actually only gotten in the team because the coach has a history of recruiting Black boys for the team regardless of their skill level

Gets called an Oreo (for uneducated: white on the inside, black on the outside) by racist bullies. Erica (who apparently has also been called this) sticks up for him and is the only one who understands what the insult means which means Mike and Dustin don’t know/understand the lengths of how deep the racism Lucas experiences in Hawkins on a daily bases

And these aren’t even all of them! These are just examples I had from the top of my head!

And despite all this happening in the book, “fans” have STILL FOUND A WAY to turn this book about Lucas and his struggles as a Black boy in a mostly white suburban town and his deteriorating relationship with Max and make it about Byler!

The fact that Lucas, one of the only characters of color on this show, can’t have ANYTHING to himself without people using him to push their ships is so aggravating!

He and Erica constantly get shit talked and miss characterized by fans, get excluded/cut out of group shots, and barely get any fanart/fics about them and their struggles compared to the white characters (I could make a whole new post about the terrible way this fandom treats Erica but I won’t do that here). Hell don’t forget that the fandom constantly tries to dispute the racism Lucas received in S2 from Billy was either not really racism, just a moment that Duffer Bros. put in to “ruin” Billy’s character and ultimately can be tossed out and ignored.

The only time I ever see Lucas get any large amount of attention is either due to 1) Lumax (but let’s be honest: 90% of the lumax tag on here isn’t even about them and has now become Elumax 2.0 and most post are people praising ElMax and then being like “oh Lucas/lumax is cute too” in the tags and that’s it). 2) people creating “parallels” of Lumax to their ship of choice (mostly Byler and Mileven) as a way to say that their ship is gonna be canon or 3) to say that he’s bisexual.

And all that is fine and whatever, ship and headcanon things to your hearts content, but if you only care about Lucas if he’s helping push you ship narrative or because you think he’s gay (to the point where some people actually read snippets of the book that talked about Lucas coming to the realization that Black boys like him can be considered attractive and only acknowledge the “queer” reading of the text and completely ignored the big race element that was the main focus), I’m sorry but, that’s not cool. The fact that 95% of the Lucas Sinclair tag isn’t about Lucas himself but white characters like Steve, Eddie, Byler says everything about how the fandom treats him.

I’m just so tired.

Lucas Sinclair deserves the same respect that the white characters get!

I leave you one of my favorite sections of the entire book: Lucas learning to become unabashedly himself:

Rant over.

Edit: in my blind rage I realized I forgot to edit out the Twitter handle. That’s completely my fault. Please don’t hate that Twitter user. I’m just coming back to fix that.

#stranger things #stranger things spoilers #lucas sinclair #lucas on the line #st season 4 #you know what? I AM gonna tag all the popular ships #if you clog the Lucas/lumax tags I’m gonna clog yours #Byler #steddie #mileven #steve harrington #eddie munson #will byers #mike wheeler #Lucas Sinclair deserves better #also stan lumax for clear skin

[relaxxattack]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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