it is funny seeing ppl be like “what joe said temple isn’t gay?” bc like. like joe is SUCH a straight man and like on some level i do respect him saying that he doesn’t want to write a gay super villain trope like i get that i understand that i respect that but. he did. like he did write that. he made temple a camp overdramatic freak who turned evil over the obsession with the death of another man who’s fighting for people who were marginalized by the system like. like his backstory parallels church and tex’s. come on now joe. this queer got coded.
omfg I am so behind on this (and yes I’ve only become aware of it because Nicholas Galitzine offof rwarb is in it) but they’re making a fucking Duke of Buckingham series!!!
And you’re all sitting there like “who??” well let me tell you about this absolute fuck.
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham was the favourite of King James VI&I and by favourite I do mean it in the gayest of ways. (He started life as Sir George, the shittest of titles, and fucked his way to a Dukedom.)
Long story short, here’s a list of things I need to see in this series or I will SUE:
George slut dropping his way into James’s bed. (I mean, he danced for him, but whatever the 17th century equivalent to slut dropping was you can bet George was doing it.)
The exasperation of James’s advisors when he picks yet another beautiful young man to fuck and give totally unreasonable amounts of money and power to.
Even funnier if they show them actively helping George overthrow James’s old favourite before realising “oh shit this one’s worse.”
George failing consistently at every job he was given. (Yes I know he didn’t actually but where’s the comedy in competency? Give me himbo George or give me death.)
Parliament calling James to task on George being a fucking useless nuisance and James standing up in front of parliament and literally saying, “You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf, and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had his John, and I have my George.” (Huge points for throwing Jesus under the gay bus too.)
James practically arranging George’s marriage for him and then riding his horse around the park crying because George, shock, got married.
What better be the dirtiest sex scenes ever broadcast on British television that lead to the “master and dog” letter.
The consistent drama queenery from James, e.g:
I refuse to tag this as a spoiler because it happened 400 years ago: George smothering James and then playing the heartbroken widow to his son. (Historically debated, if anyone wants details shoot me an ask.)
George getting stabbed to death in what was probably the justified climax of him being the most irritating man alive.
George’s assassin getting the warmest send off ever given by any crowd at a public execution cause the people hated George so fucking much.
[ID: three of the same photo. In them, Harley Quinn is smiling as she's in front of a black background and is holding up a large sign with one hand and gesturing to it with the other. The sign has a gray background and is bordered with orange. In the first photo, the sign is blank but the second and third photo has black text on it that reads ‘trans rights’ and ‘gay rights’ respectively. END ID]
literally nothing will stop me from calling good omens gay "but they're not human!" i do not care "but the lore!" i do not care "but neil gaiman said!" i do not care. those bitches are gay what are you gonna do? call a cop? vague post? cope
"But the reason why we retell the tales over and over is to create hope. We keep these themes and characters alive because we need them, because we need to make sense of what is happening and what needs to happen in our lives, and what better way to do that than with grand, tragic characters who already make sense to us? They explain the world to us and inspire us to keep going even though a happy ending may not be possible (Gilgamesh) and maybe because a happy ending may not be possible yet (Arthur).
“When Albion’s need is greatest,” Kilgharrah says in the last episode of Merlin, “Arthur will rise again.”
And he has risen when we needed him most. Multiple times. We were even the ones doing the resurrecting."
Songmaster is so interesting to me because it’s absolutely DRIPPING with queer desire despite being written by notorious homophobe Orson Scott Card. It was one of those novels I read as a confused tween who was extremely interested in anything queer (but who couldn’t yet understand the source of that fascination), and it truly left twelve-year-old me completely baffled.
I had no idea what to make of it—it was the first novel I read that devoted more than a sentence to the actual act of gay sex, yet at the same time the narrative seemed morally opposed to any kind of sexual desire? Characters who expressed any sexuality at all were often executed, tortured, castrated, and even pushed to suicide. It was violent, it was bleak, and it seemed to revel in exploring the ways that imbalances of power manifest sexually (everything is about sex etc. etc.). At age twelve I kind of just shrugged and moved on with life—some books were just weird—but now I’m really tempted to give it a reread because what the actual fuck was going on in that novel
Idk man call me crazy but headcanoning a canonically queer, non aroace character as aroace is just. Not it
Like everyone’s entitled to their own headcanons but like man. Taking rep away from lesbians and gay men and bisexuals just isn’t it chief. Make your own rep and tell people about saiki k, don’t demand that this canonically non aspec character be aspec just so you can have rep. Other queer people don’t have a lot of rep either, guys. We’re not the only ones who’re starving.
Idk if my previous posts were unclear but I don't remotely hate any Optimus version that isn't IDW or think they suck. Every Optimus is good and there's a fan (or multiple fans!) of every version of OP no matter how obscure or underrated (as well as all the other characters).
What's more questionable (or at least annoying) is when fandom ignores canon character personalities in favor of writing specific archetypes that are either out of character or repetitive/stereotyped to the point of annoyance. As an example of this, it would be a female character being called the Team Mom just because she's a woman existing in a group of (primarily male) characters even if she's not remotely motherly or nurturing. Or, as a more topical example, how often I've seen Transformers ships where even though both characters are canonically masculine (or gender neutral), fanartists love to turn one of the characters small and weak (or even outright feminine) to turn the ship into Strong Dominant Seme and Sweet Cute Uke to fit a specific kink or romantic fantasy, even if it's a disservice/OOC to portray those characters like that.
In other words, a fandom's popularity of certain characters, ships, headcanons, etc is often more informed by tropes and forcing canon to adhere to one's personal tastes, as opposed to approaching canon and trying to understand it on its own terms. I'm not talking about the quality of the source material, but rather the way that the fandom interprets the source materials in ways that don't make any sense, approach it in bad faith, or just generally don't care about canon at all. So I'm not saying one OP is better than another, my problem is when fandom consistently focuses on certain stereotypes or flanderizations of a character, and then any character that doesn't fit the popular (often stereotyped) mold is ignored or virulently rejected. In other words, I think popular fandom often does a DISSERVICE to characters whether they love them or hate them, it just takes different forms.
So, just as an example, I think one fandom caricature of Optimus that I see a lot (and heavily dislike) is making Optimus some sort of shrinking wallflower type who's innocent, sweet, and virginal, in contrast to an opposite caricature of Megatron that's big, strong, dominant, and rugged, and making ship art that forces the characters into some kind of seme/uke or borderline heteronormative romance. Despite the fact that canon Optimus (in, say, TFP for example) is tall, broadly built, deep voiced, dignified, assertive, and strong (physically and morally), completely incorrect interpretations of him as a shy feminized uke type are still pretty common to find. And it makes you ask yourself why it is so many people make MOP ship art of them of The Small One and The Large One or The Small, Cute One and The Big, Violent One when it's completely different from canon. It feels as if such fanart is made by people who just want to see seme/uke style slash ships, and if canon doesn't give them what they want, they'll simply trash it and replace it with their own version, even if it's completely OOC.
So when I said in my other post that people don't like IDW Optimus because he can't be fit into caricatures like happy dad or shy twink, I'm not saying it to say "other OPs who resemble that suck," I'm saying it to express "Fandom tends to simplify characters into easily palatable and comfortable tropes, and when they encounter a character they can't do that with, they respond by ignoring or even hating on that character."
Other versions of Optimus have the problem where fandom turns them into a stereotype instead of the actual character they are, e.g. portraying TFA OP as some poor abused damsel with no self confidence and crippling anxiety being abused by his superiors, and then they talk more about this fake uwu smoll bean cinnamon roll version of TFA OP than they do about actual canon TFA OP. And honestly I can't think of any prominent content/meta about G1 OP that isn't just "he plays basketball and does funny one liners and is Team Dad/Grandpa." (Hell, you even get that with non-Optimus characters that get simplified to just sexy twink, old grandpa, comedy relief, evil ex, Diversity Win-- She's A Lesbian, third wheel to the favored ship, etc even though there's way more depth to them than just their surface level stereotype.)
IDW OP's problem is that he can't be stereotyped like that so instead the fandom ignores him. He's not small, so they can't stereotype him as a skinny twink getting topped by a burly uke. He's not jovial or happy go lucky or extroverted, so they can't stereotype him as Team Dad or Comedy Relief. He's assertive, blunt, and has a temper, so they can't stereotype him as a shy wallflower in need of protecting. He makes catastrophic mistakes and is responsible for bad things happening, so they can't stereotype him into a sweet cinnamon roll who has never done anything wrong in his whole life or The Infinitely Wise and Kind Paragon. There's no Big Bad Authority Figure who was mean to IDW OP and traumatized him, so they can't excuse the bad things he did as "he's traumatized so he couldn't help it" and wave away his flaws as "it's his abuser's fault, they made him this way." IDW OP has the kind of depression where he's grumpy, shut off, and angry-- as opposed to the shy, sad kind of depression that just stares forlornly out of the window in a beautifully tragic way-- so they can't make him into a sad woobie kicked around unfairly by life.
Or I guess they just stereotype IDW OP as "evil bastard with no redeeming qualities that's mean to everyone for no reason, plus the writers forced everyone to like him just because he's Optimus Prime" even though that isn't accurate either.
Put bluntly, IDW OP forces fandom to contend with the idea that someone can be a good person with good intentions but still fuck up on a massive scale and maybe end up hurting more than they helped. IDW OP is messy, ugly, flawed, mean, stoic, closed off. When IDW OP has mental breakdowns or has his feelings hurt, he's loud and angry and harsh, and the consequences of what he did while he was unwell continue to haunt him long after. In other words, he actually experiences negative emotions the way a real person would, and sometimes when he's under the influence of negative emotions, he lashes out or does stupid things (like a real person might) instead of inoffensively crying in a corner somewhere. He isn't sanitized enough for a fandom that only wants Perfect Pure Good Optimus Who Never Hurts Anyone Even By Accident, so instead of IDW OP's mistakes and dark moments being treated as the logical end point of a person put in constant no-win situations until he breaks, he gets treated as if his mistakes and flaws make him an irredeemable bastard with no good qualities who should've fucked up less often to make fans actually like him.
And this is all in a fandom where 90% of the characters are war criminals and a good half of them have massacred organic planets. But god forbid IDW Optimus ever make a bad decision in a stressful situation. Or be mean to someone. Or have a character arc about how blindly idolizing people as paragons ends badly for everyone involved because no one can be that perfect. He is simply The Worst Optimus Ever and there's absolutely nothing about him worth discussing.
And just to be clear, the problem isn't the fact that some people don't like IDW OP, or he's just not their thing and they don't care.
The problem is the fact that he's consistently and actively hated by the fanbase who makes a concentrated effort to say he sucks and make sure none of their fan works ever include him. It's literally at a level where I stopped looking in the Optimus tag on this website because I was tired of people randomly going "and btw IDW OP sucks and I want to drown him in a ditch" in posts that weren't even about IDW, and I stopped looking for MegOP fic on AO3 because most of it is IDW Megatron/clearly TFP or G1 inspired continuity soup Optimus. Places that are Optimus friendly for Optimus fans, where I could reasonably expect to find positive conversations, but instead get sucker punched by hate about the character The Space Is About. And I can't even have conversations asking about why they do, bc the way 90% of them talk, I can tell they literally just didn't read the comics or deliberately misinterpreted the story.
I find it bizarre and frankly, tragic, that the hate train for IDW OP is so pervasive that people actively erase and replace him from fan works IN THE IDW UNIVERSE in a way that no other character is targeted in. I have tried so hard to understand why IDW OP gets this sort of hate and erasure when other characters who were as bad or worse than him have perfectly normal takes about them that go "yeah he kinda sucks but he's cool and I like him" or "who cares if he's problematic IRL, it's a story." The only conclusion I can come to is that because Optimus Prime (TM) has a specific brand image and is locked into being a cultural icon, he's held to a standard of The Ideal Perfect Hero instead of the way better standard of "Is he an interesting, well written character?"
Basically this is a one-shot to that one idea I posted
Description; Steve’s and Nancy’s relationship ends with the word bullshit, while Eddie and Steve’s blooms from said word.
The word bullshit still made Steve skittish. It was stupid and he felt stupid for being so afraid of one word but it was the same thing Nancy called him drunk in a bathroom. Every morning when he woke up he felt like bullshit. He wasn’t some nice dude, he was idiot jock that would much rather be a asshole to everyone else all because his parents didn’t love him enough. Though the persona is easy to be put up, it just clicks into place when he’s with Robin and he’s convinced Robin is the reason why he’s a better person. Though he didn’t love her in a romantic way he loved her dearly. She had been the first person to catch on to his hatred for the word bullshit. Flinching back when ever she used it in a sentence or when Dustin gets loud and irritated hissing out, “this is such bullshit” Steve still doesn’t fully understand how one night, one person could ruin just one word. He used to use it at least once a day, now his brain refuses to even think about it without cringing a little.
The word doesn’t come up often these days, once in a while one of the kids will spit it out without thinking. Which was fine, Steve wasn’t going to force them to censor themselves around him. They were growing teenagers that went through so much to be standing where they are right in front of him. Robin on the other hand, understood him and made a swear jar at Family Video. When ever one of the kids cursed there was a quarter in the jar. Soon enough the quarters were piling up and the word Bullshit was barely heard. The only person to not get the memo about not cursing in the store was Eddie. Who had a pass for a lot of things when coming in. Late rental? Cleared. Owed money? Cleared. So when he comes in he does curse on occasion. But one day it comes out of nowhere.
“This is such bullshit!”
Steve is already flinching back and curling in himself as Robin goes trying to see what the problem was. He stays frozen on the counter as his thoughts wander back to the party with Nancy. Though he quickly snaps out of them as he moves to try and see what the issue is. Eddies hands are flying in the air and Steve’s so confused.
“What do you mean the rocky horror picture show was Recalled?” The boy is pretty much hissing the last word out. Robin is trying to relax the situation as much as she can. Steve on the other hand knew that he hid most of the copy’s in the back room in a box. Never wanting to throw a good movie away just because some asshole didn’t like it. Eddies about to go on a rant but Steve’s quick to interrupt him. Getting a soft glare sent his way.
“That’s the one with Tim Curry right? Where he gets all dressed up in make up and shit?” He asks furrowing his eyebrows hands on his hip. Looking at Robin for confirmation as she nods her head. On a rare occasion something with LGBTQ+ themes came in and Steve felt like shit for just throwing it out. Which was the reason for the hidden box. Steve snorts and gets dirty looks from both teens. Waving his hand he gestures for the two to follow him. He could hear Eddie’s chains clinking behind him and Robins braincells firing up trying to think about what he could have possibly hidden from her. Huffing a little bit he moves and he waits for them to take a step back as he lifts a pretty heavy box up on one arm and picks the second box up with his right. For once his strength as come to good use. He moves and plots both on the counter as he moves searching for said movie. Grinning as he pulls out four copies.
“Well Munson, I have The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Rocky horror Picture Show, The Rocky horror Picture Show again, and oh my! You’ll never guess what I just found! The Rocky -” before he can finish the man in front of him is snatching a copy from his wide eyed. Robin is doing the same as she looks at him like he has three heads. “What? I also have Al Pacino in drag if that peaks your interest?” He says in a teasing tone. Picking up Cruising.
“Oh my god, Steve Harrington you are my god. Let me get on my knees and worship you!” Eddie jokes but he’s already dropping to his knees to start bowing.
“Oh shut up, and keep the movie. Go through the box if you want there might be a couple of other movies in there.” He hums as he moves to go start his lunch break.
The second time Steve hears Eddie use the word Bullshit it hits a little closer to home. Eddies currently wasted off his ass in Steve’s living room. Nancy and Jonathan were in the guest room and poor Robin was knocked out on the couch. The metal head keeps stumbling around that Steve was getting nervous he was going to crack his head open. He doesn’t think and his arms moving wrapping around the others waist pulling him closer. His breath nearly being knocked out of him when the other does that thing he likes to do. Lean his head back and smile like he was in on some hidden joke Steve didn’t know about. Steve can smell the smoke and alcohol from the others breathe and his nose scrunches up a bit but he doesn’t mind. Eddies rambling about something DnD related. Tossing his hands around as he excitedly explains the campaign to Steve, who is happily listening. The guy doesn’t even realize he’s walking or pretty much being led to Steve’s room. When he does he stops mid sentence seeing the ugly wallpaper. He bites his lip as Steve feels awkward.
“I’ll be sleeping on the floor just in case you need anything.” Steve says with a soft smile forcing him into his bed. There’s hidden jokes there and he expects Eddie to say one. But he doesn’t instead Eddie’s eyes land back on Steve’s face.
“This is such Bullshit.” He slurs and Steve’s freezing tensing up. Eddie doesn’t notice as he slurs a little more trying to gather words but none of them are coming out right. Almost as if he’s overwhelmed. Steve’s hands start to shake and he moves pulling the blanket over the struggling boy. Not saying a word as he fights to get the other situated.
“Stevie, this is bullshit, you shouldn’t be this cool and nice. You’re making me feel stupid for thinking you were a asshole.” Eddies whining a bit as a hand moves to the others face cupping it gently. “I can’t believe I’m currently in Steve Harrington’s bed in his house and not being hate crimed.” Eddie rambles out as his eyes are glossy and he’s trying to find the right words. He pauses for a second. “Stevie you aren’t bullshit, I’m bullshit for believing that every preppy jock was some asshole who didn’t have any feelings. You’re my favorite jock baby, and I would gladly take a basketball in the face if it means I can be near you.” He’s slurring out. Steve’s face goes pink for a different reason and his hands stop shaking. Relaxing under the others hand as he watches the other carefully.
For once the word Bullshit doesn’t chip at him. He bites his lip as he relaxes a bit feeling tears in his eyes. Eddie doesn’t let him stay standing up for long as he pulls him into the bed. Wrapping his limbs around the other as he giggles. The serious moment gone as he hums. “And I think it’s bullshit that you think I’m letting you sleep on the floor. I’m sorry king steve but you must share your bed with little old me.” He slurs out as he buries his face in the others shoulder.
Steve snorts but he lets the other use him as a pillow. And yeah, maybe Eddie is right. He’s not bullshit, Nancy was.
@heartofstanding tagged me in this meme months ago and unfortunately it took me this long to get to it because I had a mild crisis over how long it's been since I've read a novel, let alone one that I loved 😅 so this is nine of my favourite novels (not books, because if I included manga/short stories/comics/etc this would be giant)
0The Picture of Dorian Gray -- Oscar Wilde// Pyrrhus-- Mark Merlis//The Scarecrow--Ronald Hugh Morrieson//Unnatural History--Kate Osman//Tunnels of Blood--Darren Shan//The Coffin Dancer--Jeffery Deaver//Hero--Perry Moore//Frankenstein--Mary Shelley//One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest-- Ken Kasey