#there aren't also really terms for 'gay' or 'straight'

[syekick-powers]

the struggle as a queer+trans fantasy/sci-fi writer is that you want to represent queer and trans people in your stories and also mess with the frameworks of sex and gender and sexuality to call attention to the inherent ridiculosity of how our understanding of sex/gender/sexuality is constructed, but then once you've created this framework you realize that means that none of your characters would describe themselves in ways that are anywhere close to modern terms, which means that some people are going to be INCREDIBLY stupid about how they interpret your characters' queerness and/or transness.

#sye's babbles #like in my newest story idea tsip theres like #four sexes instead of two #and 'traditional family values' dictate four-person groups as the best way to raise a family #so polyamory doesn't even really have a special name and is completely socially accepted #additionally #since polyamory is expected and the gender/sex ratio can be what the hell ever in a relationship #there aren't also really terms for 'gay' or 'straight' #hell since there are four sexes there isn't even really a term for 'bisexual' either #in this world having an exclusively-focused sexuality is like #basically treated as a very exacting and specific bodily preference #more than it's treated as foundational to one's identity #as well.... gender and sex are already believed to be two separate categories that only occasionally overlap #in the society it's treated as the difference between like #your race/subrace and your soul magic #where your sex is your body's physical traits and your gender is your innate identity #and one's gender being different from one's sex is treated as completely normal and mundane #but there isnt so much the terms 'cis' and 'trans' #so much as there are like #'cross-gender' and 'aligned gender' #so someone transitioning from one gender/sex to the other is just. completely mundane #what's considered socially unacceptable is rejecting the gender quaternary entirely and identifying as something else #so with this framework it is Completely Impossible for me to really describe characters with modern queer terminology #this is just the grave ive dug for myself.

[pastelalleycat]

About the Single Pea- after watching the commercial video, I think this section on the cookbook page relates to the video itself, especially the ending:

When Eddie is handed his pea on a plate, he's surrendered his role as mailman to the other neighbors for the day. He's at Wally's homewarming party, but he's the only one without something to do. And when he consequently dissociates and gets a fourth-wall break, he's the only one seeing beyond the curtain of the puppet world. This is a set, with felt and fabric and props. Drawn out with pencils and pens. His world is real, but it's also just a story.

Eddie's being ignored prior to Homewarming was not a freak accident- whoever orchestrated everyone to forget him (Home, possibly?) was trying to make him feel like nobody needed him so they could erase him from the neighborhood and pull him into our reality.

Why would this happen? What could be so egregious with Eddie's character that his existence would be declared unnecessary?

Well, who's always seen alongside Frank, portrayed as his best friend, their shared love for nature playing off each other like a harmony that may be just friendship but may be something even deeper?

How are mailmen and entemologists related, actually? How could they ever be as compatible as flora and fauna? They simply clash too much, it's not natural, it's not right.

(though Julie is often too exuberant for the more mellow Frank, and his seriousness and logic and Eddie's earnestness and love of literature blend together perfectly; also Frank is nonbinary and Julie is genderfluid and they're gay and pan respectfully so no combination of the three is really "straight"; people aren't confined to narrow strands of fate but puppets are subject to their masters)

And yet, someone pulled Eddie back to his side, called him by his first name when they'd only been on last name terms before.

Two peas were placed close together.

(edited to fix a grammatical typo and add extra clarification at the end)

#shoutout to night mind's stream last night #his theories got me thinking myself #welcome home #welcome home theory #welcome home spoilers #eddie dear #frank frankly #julie joyful #tw unreality #mint's posts 💛 #franklydear #platonic franklyjoyful #some sarcasm was mixed into the latter paragraphs if that's not clear #mint's bangers

[genderqueerdykes]

in honor of aromantic spectrum awareness week, i thought i'd take the time to talk about how much my personal life and feelings improved after coming to terms with the fact that i'm aromantic. before i accepted this, i found myself in several romantic relationships where i was deeply unhappy, uncomfortable, and made to feel like i wasn't a good enough partner because i just couldn't do or feel certain things.

i've never enjoyed kissing, and cuddling gets uncomfortable for me within the first few minutes of doing so. even hugs are deeply uncomfortable to me unless i really know and care about someone, and even then, hugs only come when that person asks for them. it never occurs to me to touch people this way, the most you'll get out of me is a pat on the shoulder, back or knee.

i ended up dating several people who were very much romantics, and heavily focused on that aspect of our relationship. it kind of felt like torture to me, i felt like i was being forced to live every day like it was Valentine's Day- every day had to be filled with hours of cuddling, kissing, and telling the other person how much i loved them. while not all romantic partners are like this, it wore on my psyche quickly to be paired with folks like this, because i understood how important it was to them, but i just couldn't keep up the performance.

i thought something was "wrong" with me for years and that i just wasn't in touch with my emotions, or that i was somehow embracing some toxic aspects of my masculinity without realizing. it took me ages to remember that i came out as aromantic when i was much younger, but after criticism from my friends, including a friend who was asexual, i stopped identifying with the label, because i was told that aromanticism wasn't real, and that that just made me an asshole.

nearly a decade and several uncomfortable romantic relationships later, it finally clicked that there wasn't something wrong with me, but there was something wrong with the situations i was getting myself into. sure, i love being partnered- i have a queerplatonic partner that i've known for a decade and have only gotten closer to over time. but we've never been romantic. we don't exchange romantic platitudes, and i realized; i've never been happier with someone else than i am with this person.

why is that?

oh. because they don't expect romance from me. they are also on the aspectrum and don't have a romantic partner, either.

this relationship has brought me more joy than any romantic partnership i've ever attempted to pursue. that doesn't mean there's something wrong with me- i was just looking for happiness in the wrong places. i was miserable not because i'm aromantic, but because i was getting into romantic relationships.

romance can be a source of misery. romance does not inherently make everyone happy. we are not all looking for romance as a species. in fact, chasing it makes many people miserable. too many people spend their lives looking for "the one" that they can kiss, cuddle, hold and say all of those mushy things to when they may not even want that to begin with.

i've never been more at peace with myself since finally, fully accepting that i'm aromantic. i love who i am, and i love how i love. i am not loveless, i experience platonic, queerplatonic and other forms of love. but loveless aromantics aren't miserable, either. we are all embracing ourselves in a way that's true to us. we are refusing to warp ourselves to a society that tells us that we all must have homogeneous feelings.

i am aromantic. i am here. my aromanticism is queer in a society that expects and demands romance of me, and this is true of all aromantics, cis, trans, gay, straight, bisexual, asexual, and otherwise. we are here, we are not going away any time soon, and we will not be silent because our identities make some people uncomfortable. we are happiest being who we are.

happy aro week, this goes out to every last arospectrum person out there, appreciate yourselves this week. you deserve it.

#aromantic #aro #lgbtqia #lgbt #queer #lgbta #aromantic spectrum #arospec #arospectrum #aroace #aromantic asexual #aro awareness week #aspectrum #aspec #our writing #about us

[cairavende]

My wonderful girlfriend got me Gideon the Ninth for Christmas and I realized why should I just give Worm recaps? Let's read some Locked Tomb! (We'll see how this format works, maybe I'll adjust it. Specifically might break stuff down into smaller segments instead of full acts, but I didn't think of doing this until after I had read all of act 1.)

Gideon the Ninth Act 1 (chapter 1 through 8) thoughts:

This book is so gay oh my god

Like, it's gay in ways I can't even explain. I love it.

Harrow beats the shit out of Gideon in chapter 2 and I don't know if I've ever seen someone get beat up in a more gay way.

"Oh Griddle! But I don't even remember about you most of the time." ROLL A FUCKING DECEPTION CHECK HARROW! You are saying this standing in the middle of the field you spent all night burying bones in just to foil her escape in the most dramatic way. You can't stop remembering her.

Gideon is the most herbo of herbos. I fucking love her. I love reading her PoV. She just knows punch and stab with sword and if those don't work than she'll just do them harder.

Also Gideon is SO fucking gay. Dear god. Dulcinea faints and Gideon turns off all though. HELP PRETTY GIRL. Nothing else.

Ok I could just make this whole thing "EVERYTHING IS GAY" but there is technically more than that.

I love how weird everything is and how little explanation is given. I don't want pages of exposition, I want to learn the world as it comes at me! This is perfect.

And just the very nature of things that seem weird not being given more than a passing thought in the book is information. Something may seem wild to the reader but it's so normalized to the characters that they wouldn't even think about the idea of it being different.

Lack of explanation also helps really show how much of a meathead Gideon is. Do the readers get to learn details about this thing? Only if it is a weapon, has tits, or Gideon is forced to listen while Harrow explains it. Otherwise no, why the fuck would Gideon spend her precious few brain cells on thinking?

And even if Gideon is forced to listen as Harrow explains it, the readers might not learn much cause Gideon might stop listening. I love her.

Aiglamene is wonderful. Crux is fine but I like her more.

Poor Gideon just wants a big sword that she can swing hard. It's not like she can't use a rapier. But why when she can go big sword?

SO MUCH CATHOLICISM

As someone who once was Catholic and then realized I was actually not a straight man, but instead a lesbian, I am in deep.

And the fucking slang used! Or whatever would be the right term. The shit they say! I love it. Just the weird sci-fi far future space necromancer universe and then suddenly "Are you asking me to . . . throw her a bone?", "Gideon had always known that this would be how she went: gangbanged to death by skeletons.", "Don’t hypothetically shove stuff up my butt again, it never does any good.", "Lo! A destructed ass.", "Well we were developing common sense, she studied the blade.", "Double Bones with Doctor Skelebone."

House of the First appears to be Earth. I kinda assume the House of the Ninth is Pluto, even though things obviously aren't in order given that the Seventh and Sixth are closer to the sun. Of course, I'm kinda expecting this to not technically be this solar system at all.

Undying Emperor, King of Resurrection, I Have Ten-Thousand Titles, Boss First, etc etc hasn't been on "Earth" in over nine thousand years. I wanna know MORE.

And the fucking Ninth House has their own prayer! Everyone else has one that the Ninth didn't know and then the Ninth had one that no one else knows! GIMME MORE!!!!

Also again, so many Catholicism metaphors or comparisons or whatever!

I could go on forever but gonna end this one with OH MY GOD SHE FOUND SUNGLASSES I LOVE HER. Fucking "I came prepared, my sweet." and "But then you couldn't have admired . . . these!" as she whips on the sunglasses. God. I nearly died.

#The Locked Tomb #tlt #Gideon the Ninth #Cairavende reads The Locked Tomb #Gideon Nav #Harrowhark Nonagesimus #Dulcinea Septimus #This might be the most lesbian thing I've ever read and I've read some pretty fucking lesbian things #Dulcinea might be my favorite so far

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Aita for not making any of my characters, that I have to crank out daily, pansexual/polysexual/omnisexual specifically and only making them bi?

🏳️‍🌈👶🏼 so i can recognize this later lmao also I'm not panphobic or anything, this isn't about the validity of the label, pan is fine.

So i (20snb bi) have a project I'm working on where I take all the characters from a specifc media I'm into and pair them up with each other to make every possible ship kid from every possible ship(excluding characters who are kids themselves or are related or something, that shit is gross). Basically taking every character and pairing them up with another and creating a kid I think they'd have. Its a big project with lots of characters and I'm easily over 400 at this point. I really enjoy this, even if I'm not even 25% complete.

However I set a schedule for myself that at least one ship kid needs to come out each day which, considering I draw them, color them and give them some development and some even have siblings, (The refs themselves easily take me an hour to an hour and a half) I have to make lots of them quickly to keep up with my daily grind. I've been doing this project for over a year and although it's stressful, I can get them out quickly with breaks for myself.

Their character sheets all have some pretty basic info like their name, gender, pronouns, personality and more but it also includes their sexuality/orientation. I have a pretty basic list of options for what their sexuality will be: straight, lesbian, gay, Enbian, bi, Aro, ace and aroace with a few random things like polyam, WLW and a good amount of the something-loving-something/juvelic terms. I did this because, well, there's not many entirely unique orientations outside of them and although I love mogai/xenogenders and complex identities, I dont want to potentially drag up discourse or bring problems to my budding art blog over it. Its just not worth it to me to turn something I really care about on its head, even if I like microlabels.

In this case, I'm using bi as an umbrella term as most of the other terms share the same definition with slight variations in wording or action but not much difference in practice. We all like everyone, it's basic stuff. However, apparently this is a problem.

I've gotten one or two anons asking me questions about my guides asking some kind stuff like is this lesbian ship kid a butch or femme or Is this picture of them now or just at the age you put on the ref and other harmless stuff. Then things got rude with some Nbphobia but thrice now I've gotten asks:

1. Asking snarkily if im a panphobe

2. insulting me for not specifically writing pan or Omni and just writing bi.

3. Saying that I "clearly dont care about pansexual representation." Then brought up how my primary oc is native american so i clearly care about representation but that oc used to be a sona and I'm native?? Its confusing. (And Lowkey racist shit to just assume any native character is a "diversity quota" character instead of just a person existing but I digress-)

Im not pan, im bi so ig these people assume I'm not cool with pan people which isnt true? I have nothing aginest them, they are just pretty similar and I dont feel like it matters if they are specfically bi or pan or poly or any other label. I don't go into details like that for any other sub-group, not even pronouns and I included combinations and some common Neopronouns. I understand the importance of representation but my project has less than 50 people looking at it every day, Im not netflix or something. I'm one guy on the most LGBT blogging site with a big project and very little audience, I'm not showing people who wouldn't already know what pan is that pansexuality exists.

This project isn't that deep considering the characters in question aren't human/dont have human characteristics.(no it's not hazbin/helluva) Also ive never spoken about lgbt discourse or stated anything remotely close to it beyond the guides just passively having characters who are an LGBT identity. I've not even mentioned all the potentional orientations they could have so I'm not sure where/why this came up in the first place. The most politcial things ive said are calling out a creator in my fandom who outed themselves as a transphobe and mentioning im pro-palestine. That's it.

I mean this is pretty low stakes, I can just block these people and be done with it and this some seriously online shit but I just wanna check.

Am I being an asshole for just writing bi instead of specifying their mspec label because I have to produce characters quickly and I don't see enough of a difference to warrant a change/specification that would ultimately slow and clog an already stressful and complex project?

I dont think I am but idk lol

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

[pseudophan]

on of those twitter phannies yesterday was like “soviet of you haven’t watch BIG in a while maybe you should” in regards to people talking about the hand holding in spooky week and i badly wanted to respond being like ?? basically i’m gay… the video where dan calls phil his soulmate and literally confirms everything 😭 maybe they should watch BIG again actually

there is this weird thing where some people heard dan say that the speculation about his sexuality and invasion of privacy that he endured was traumatic and somehow from that got that he hates so-called "Phan Shippers" and is against anyone talking about him and phil potentially being a couple and it's so bizarre because it's just literally not what he said at all ? and if he did say that it would be highly hypocritical because, and i cannot stress this enough, dan and phil have always leaned into the shipping thing. always. they know it gets them views and they also clearly find it funny. that was never the issue.

the actual issue has always been people demanding answers and straight up harassing them about it, accessing their families' social media looking for clues, showing up at their literal home being weird, and, while closeted, constantly asking them if they're gay. THAT was the issue, that's what dan is talking about in his video.

i'm not even saying the general shipping didn't also get on their nerves sometimes, i'm sure it absolutely did, but that's not at all what dan said really affected him mentally.

the amount of times dan and phil have joked about it, actively encouraged fanfic (both by tongue-in-cheek writing it themselves and many times saying they consider fanfic to be a good creative outlet), referred to themselves as "phan" (a term they coined themselves, lest we forget), gone along with phannie jokes about them being together, and most of all emphasised that they generally try to stay out of fan spaces (i.e. anything they aren't tagged in) because they want us to feel free to be weird and post whatever without being afraid they'll see it... i'm sorry but to then vehemently insist dan and phil hate it when people ship them and are gonna ?? stop uploading again ?? if we do it ?? fucking stupid. and unbelievably annoying. if you don't like rpf that's fine, but there are so many more important issues you could dedicate your time to than policing people going 'aww' over two lameass grown men touching hands.

#sorry anon this got long #i saw the tweet you're talking about yesterday and this rant has been building in my head since then lmao #i DESPISEEEE it when people twist dan's words in big i hate hate hate hate it #answered

[thearchercore]

lestappen is not real as a romantic relationship, we know it, there's no need for speculation here. but would you want to see it be real? of course we dont know how they act in their general romantic relationships or their private life, if they are straight/bi/gay etc, but the way they act so soft and domestic around each other, max being a literal fan of charles, defending him (the example is just two days ago on the cooldown room and theres a lot lot more lol) charles having things that he only does for max, and adding all the rivalry, im curious about your opinion

i mean, let's be real first. even if one (or more) drivers were anything other than straight, f1 is a business that thrives in countries where it's illegal so for a driver to come out publicly under the current conditions? yeah.. that's not really a great option. the most they can do is when lewis had his rainbow helmet in qatar or when charles said he's not against same sex relationships because "he has gay friends". it's not exactly a sport where it would be encouraged to be diverse in that sense, or even an acitivist. drivers also have clauses that prevent them for speaking out about political issues in their contracts so there's not a lot that can be done there without risking a person's career.

other than that, it's a very masculine sport and a lot of men project their idea of masculinity onto other drivers (as @tsarinablogs once said, a lot of men who disliked the lewis dominance found themselves in max and became a fan of his, but max does not really present their idea of masculinity in real life. he's just a high profile athlete that other men create sort of a parasocial relationship with -- trust me, when men attack girls for liking f1 and calling them parasocial, it sure goes both ways.)

people like charles (or even lewis) who express interest in not typically masculine things like music or fashion also tend to struggle in the public eye whenever male fans need to find a reason to dislike them.

so all in all, we have to understand two things -- do i think any drivers have a secret relationship? no. if yes, i'm gonna be genuinely surprised more than when lewis moved to ferrari lol. and i definitely don't think the current state of the sport allows a driver to come out on their own terms without destroying their reputation. sure, some drivers have more influence on the sport than others but as of now, it does not seem realistic.

what i think most people find "odd" in terms of whatever friendship max and charles have going on is that they aren't the type of "rivals" that men would expect - they respect each other and actually think very highly of one another so you won't find them beefing it out behind the track like the nascar drivers do (by the way, yes, nascar drivers get into physical fights after races lol) they don't hate one another, they admire each other's skills and talent and it's not really the "drama" you see in other sports where the rivarly can get to toxic extremes (let's say, mma) and that's what makes them stand out.

#lestappen

[gay-otlc]

Yeah people can be weird about people who have fluid or multitudinous genders but static sexualities. Like I am multigender and attracted to men pretty much exclusively and sometimes (largely masc) nonbinary people and it feels like there's this expectation to also find women attractive because I don't fit the idea of static gender/static gender sexuality. I'm not suddenly bisexual because I have multiple genders; they don't just come as a package deal

Yep! People really have no idea what to do with multigender monosexual folks. I think it's largely because non-monosexual attraction labels (bi, pan, aroace, etc) aren't gendered, while (common) monosexual attraction labels are generally defined and understood using gendered terms. By itself, labels like bisexuality don't communicate anything about the gender of said bisexual person, but that's not the case with labels like gay, straight, lesbian. (Of course, these labels don't necessarily communicate gender either- for instance, not everyone who is a lesbian is a woman or a "non man"- but they carry strong gendered connotations.) Which is why multigender monosexual people constantly get hit by the "but you can't be lesbian if you're a man!" or "how can you be a straight woman if you're a man?" or "it doesn't make any sense to call yourself a straight lesbian" or "don't use [microlabel], no one knows what that means." Multigenderness and monosexuality is a hell of a combination.

#multigender

[notashadowbutawave]

i almost posted this on the true detective subreddit episode thread but thought better of it:

I've gotta say… I feel like a lot of complaints people are having about this season of the show don't pass muster objectively when held up against Season 1. Melodrama, "unrealistic" dialogue, complaining about being shown too much about people's personal lives and not caring about the characters…

There is so much unrealistic dialogue in season 1. The way Marty and Rust during their video interviews just come in talking about some big philosophical idea or "life wisdom" nugget in the middle of the episode (nobody talks like that IRL). The scene with Marty's daughter and the princess crown, for example. Marty cheating on his wife multiple times isn't like, objectively "more interesting" than Evangeline's sister having mental health issues or Liz being sexually promiscuous and a mess.

I've seen season 1 probably 10 times and I adore it but a lot of the angry comparisons people are making to S1 kind of just come off as straight up misogyny at a certain point. Like it rubs people the wrong way because it's women. Complaining about Liz and Evangeline going to the dredge without backup but when Rust and Captain America Marty Hart do something like that it's believable?

I don't think anyone's obligated to like the season by any means but you can just say you aren't feeling it as opposed to trying to make these apples-to-apples comparisons to season 1 that really don't hold water; I think people are just a lot more willing to accept this type of storytelling when it's about men and kind of has a fetishization/shame angle with masculinity in general. Like S1 is very masculine but it's also a love story. idk. I'm gay so I should probably stick to Tumblr for talking about this show, ya'll are wild.

----

idk watching people who are probably white dudes complain on Reddit that we are seeing too much "native culture" on the show strikes me as really icky.

i recognize that these are reddit comments and not like, actual media criticism but i think it says a lot about how people are conditioned to understand storytelling in general. like there's still so much fucking misogyny and white supremacy in our mainstream media and i realize a lot of people wouldn't say it out loud but i think they genuinely just find it exhausting that they're being asked to contemplate the interior lives of native alaskans and women by watching this show lmao

(that's not a value judgment about how well it is doing at depicting  Iñupiat culture because i'm not the person who gets to make that judgment but it REALLY rubs me the wrong way that people can't STAND even seeing it depicted)

(i think the fetishization of the American south also has a lot to do with it, like people are very willing to accept the aesthetic style of the American south as a vehicle for crime/mystery/possibly supernatural storytelling because it really doesn't challenge any conceptions they might have about the genre) (it helps that Woody Harrelson and Matthew McCounaughey are native southerners with great acting talent and natural screen chemistry who really took Season 1 to a higher level, in no small part thanks to their uncredited script doctoring. with lesser actors I think the story falls flat as hell because you need them to sell a rich relationship and complex inner lives with their performances because SO MUCH of their relationship is subtextual) (so when people see these great acting performances in the context of a police procedural set in Louisiana i think they're very pre-conditioned to elevate it to an almost mythical status in the genre because it doesn't present TOO many challenges to a conventional worldview about who has power and agency in stories)

like I said i've watched season 1 probably 10 times. it's very good. but it does MANY of the same things that people are complaining about regarding season 4/night country in terms of showing a lot of relationship/sexual drama for the leads and their Tragic Pasts. they just don't like it. which is fine. i just think it's a disingenuous angle to approach criticism of the show.

like if any actor other than McConaughey were doing Rust's monlogues in S1 it would not have been very good because it would have come off like self-serious edgelord shit, which is what it actually was (pizzolatto sucks) before it ended up in the hands of competent producers and performers. instead it really comes off like a man who has suffered and developed this worldview genuinely, within himself, not as a way to wield power over others but to protect himself from harm.

anyway....

for my part, i wanna know what the fuck is up with the spirals and the bad CGI polar bear visions and i'm going to be disappointed if it's not just some massive red herring designed to freak people out a little because that's what we deserve.

but in terms of like, the characters' lives, i generally find them very interesting. the opening scene of episode 3 with annie genuinely moved me to tears. annie seems like a fucking cool person and i would love another flashback about her.

i love that liz is a fucking asshole who is constantly being forced to confront her own behavior as racist, self-centered, impulsive, etc.

i love that evangeline is a very lonely person just barely keeping it together. kali reis is putting on an amazing performance. also, for the record, i'm VERY gay.

i wanna know more and there are only 2 episodes left and i hope it sticks the landing so i can write a big actual essay about what it did well from a storytelling perspective!

gosh i just love serialized fiction on the television

#true detective season 4 #true detective night country #night country #true detective spoilers

[dictee]

I don’t get why people argue it’s problematic to assign gender roles to a same sex couple like isn’t the show engaging with loads of problematic issues?? For better or worse it’s what the show is about. Marrying a powerful wealthy man who promises you everything your hearts desires in order to escape your dissatisfaction only to find he’s a controlling monster. I mean how else are we meant to watch this show without the gender lens! It’s impossible to engage with this show w/o it.

yes! well i understand the idea in principle which is like. generally the attempt to assign gender roles to a same sex couple comes from straight people trying to comprehend a break in the myth of universal heterosexuality in which they are invested. So in that sense yes that's a reductive and inaccurate framework to coerce people into. But that's not what's going on here! the depiction of something and the discussion of it is not the endorsement of it and to treat it as such--to write a world where race class and gender have no bearings on people's existence or behavior--is actively harmful. Like this anon that got sent to a different blog

first of all i dont think either of them are gender nonconforming in terms of presentation LOL (Edit: except for louis in dubai) second of all i don't think anyone talking about for example louis reading edward carpenter in the wake of severe domestic assault is being like i love gender roles and domestic assault lmfao. and thirdly it's not "swapping out" it's what's depicted in the show. but to explain myself in depth anyways 💀:

i think this is emblematic of how totally the project of "representation" has neutralized queer politics. & this is why i think movies that came out under the hays code often have more interesting and nuanced gay characters than movies that came out for decades after. because after it was legal to depict gay people on screen well there's still the amount of homophobic jokes but like putting that aside. "positive" representation is about marketing. it is a reactionary politics that centers on reifying social categories as intrinsic to people's selves and making us think that celebrating those categories is liberation when really it's about creating another market. the rare "respectable" depictions of gay people emphasized assimilation into society ("we're just like you!") and demanded morally upstanding, universalized characters which are fundamentally uninteresting. the earlier hays code depictions (like the children's hour or rope) aren't about representation because they legally couldn't be. instead if they include queer material it is because there is a genuine thematic interest. so often this is very homophobic but also often it involves a real criticism of normative structures.

what i really appreciate about iwtv is that the writers are obviously not interested in presenting a generalized "correct" (and marketable) representation of what gay people are like. because that doesn't exist--the idea that it exists is a trap. and because they have moved beyond what would have been a concern ten years ago, which is the relationship genuinely being interpreted as a message about the evils of homosexuality, and towards an actual thematic engagement. they're interested in telling a complex and engaging story! in the same way, Louis isn't Black so they can say oh we have a Black character who behaves Correctly and proves the racists wrong. the humanity--not the moral perfection--of the characters is already assumed, and therefore not the point. instead we have a story that is concerned with grappling with immortality, trauma, forgiveness--with the core "lie" of vampirism being that it means freedom from the past and the society that made and hurt you. we can understand Louis's deep rooted desire for assimilation and we can see as it plays out how the very premise of the bourgeois nuclear family both conceals and relies on a problematic configuration of power.

there is a real wave of (mostly white) bioessentialist "to be a woman is to be oppressed therefore women are good and men are bad" type rhetoric which serves no one's liberation. and thats emphatically not what i'm trying to get at. i'm not defining womanhood by suffering and i'm not saying louis Is a woman. but i also think it's equally reductive to say the characters are Essentially Gay Men and establish "gay man" as a category somehow discrete and uninfluenced by the heteropatriarchal world. it is reductive to say that gender is absolutely discrete and uninfluenced by social context and the roles we are forced to play. like that too ends up with an essentializing understanding of gender. it's not that abuse in general is feminizing, it's that the abuse in the show is explicitly gendered even as it's in a family with a same sex couple. because the nuclear family is fundamentally a mechanism for the perpetuation of patriarchal abuse. and the show, at least in this season, is explicitly concerned with domesticity and with the inescapability of social roles. And it's criticizing those things. To be clear.

#Long post / #and to say that acknowledging the existence of patriarchy or gendered abuse is bioessentialism is just. unserious #iwtv

[spacelazarwolf]

So do you like think there's a line between lgb (cis homos) and "queer" people? Because I hate the term queer (for myself), but I have always and will always be for trans rights. L with the T. The argument you make (aro manifesto) makes it seem like the same idea of "well bi people and pan people are different bc pan people are the real 'queer movement' and trans inclusive"...as if cis lgb people don't consider themselves queer or trans inclusive. Just seems like a separation of us and queers, which only divides us more. Like I get people think we are only ever for marriage equality/rights (due to the aids crisis) and also current organizations highlighting only that need, but like stop separating "us" (cis lgb) from you/queers as if we don't have the same goals in mind. I too think we should focus more on other goals as marriage is not the only important thing. We are of the same community, not different.

i'm gonna break this down/define the way i use things so you can understand what i'm talking about, because you have made a lot of assumptions. these aren't like official definitions, because strict definitions just never really quite work in these kinds of conversations, but this is what i generally mean when i use these terms. any identities listed aren't an exhaustive list, they're just what i thought of in the moment.

lgbt+ community: anyone who is lesbian, gay, bi, trans, ace, aro, pan, nonbinary, etc. this is not an established group with a mission, it's just a category of people who identify as not cishetallo.

queer community: a group united by a mission you can read more about the original queer manifesto from 1990 here. queer people are cis, trans, intersex, genderqueer, nonbinary, gnc, straight, gay, lesbian, bi, pan, ace, aro, etc. but that's not what makes them queer, what makes them queer is the goal of collective queer liberation. (some people use queer as an individual identity and want to separate themselves from queer as a political identity and like, i can't stop them, but the fact of the matter is that since the word queer was reclaimed in the 80's it has been inextricably linked to the queer liberation movement, which is inherently political.)

the difference between these two is that lgbt+ is an individual identity whereas queer is a political identity.

there's a lot of ways lgbt+ people might form community that don't include being part of the queer community, and there are many queer people who take the political stance of not identifying as lgbt+ because they consider their queerness to be more than just an individual identity and feel that being categorized under lgbt+ removes the political aspects of their identity. the venn diagram of these two communities is not a circle, but it's also not two completely disconnected circles either. there is overlap, and that includes cis queer lesbians and gays.

lgbt+ advocacy: this is advocacy that is based within the current system. fighting for marriage equality, right to start a family by adopting within the system or using ivf, fighting discrimination in the workplace, etc. all great things to fight for.

queer liberation movement: this movement seeks to dismantle the cisheteropatriarchy entirely. for example, some folks believe that we should be fighting to dismantle the concept of marriage rather than just fight for lgbt+ people to be able to get married under the current system.

neither of these approaches is Objectively Correct, though everyone is going to have their own opinions on what they think the right course of action is. you can think of these two categories as reform vs. abolition. sometimes they overlap, sometimes their ideologies are incompatible.

so when i say that the aromantic manifesto had a fundamental understanding of what the queer community is and what the queer rights movement is, this is what i mean: the manifesto presented the "queer community" and "queer rights" as what i would define as the lgbt+ community and lgbt+ advocacy. based in identity, and prioritizing reform over abolition. so their critiques that the "queer community" and "queer rights movement" only fights for marriage equality seemed bizarre to me, because queer liberation is more likely to fight for the dissolution of the concept of marriage. it's more likely to tackle the concepts of societal norms and what a "normal" relationship looks like and how it functions.

and the thing is, i get a lot of people who get angry at me for "separating" queer people from the rest of the community, but the fact of the matter is that the rest of the community separated itself from us. when i talk about cis lgb people who prioritize assimilation, i'm not talking about Anyone Who Is Cis And LGB, i'm talking about cis people who are lgb who will throw trans women under the bus to maintain a cisnormative view of what a woman is. i'm talking about cis lgb people who think that kink is disgusting and wrong and blame queer kinksters for "making the lgbt community look bad." i'm not talking about identities, i'm talking about actions.

i'm not saying i think any one identity is "more queer" than others, i'm saying that i do not definitionally consider the lgbt+ community and queer community to be the same thing. and tbh, i do get really tired of people who don't identify with the queer community getting pissed off that i don't set my queerness aside to align myself with them if they wouldn't set aside their discomfort with queerness to align with me. if you don't want to align yourself with the queer community, that is entirely your prerogative. but it seems like you think that queer people are the ones creating the separation simply by identifying as queer while you don't, when the problem is that people who don't want to identify with queerness still want access to the same level of community with queer people as if they were in the community, and i'm very sorry but that's just not feasible. we can still fight side by side for our rights, but no, we are not the same community.

#ask avishai #gender studies

[stormblessed95]

I have a question

Like Crazy is probably the most queercoded in Jimins songs, right after Filter.

But the song also begins with the pronoun "She's saying Baby come and follow me"

Some fans on Twitter are saying this is a reference to a gf or something.

Whats your take on this?

Hi! Thanks for your ask. Sorry for the delay in replying! And to start, I think it's fairly clear that I don't think Jimin is straight, in my opinion, based off my views. But in that same vein, I think he also likes women. I mean, he has shared previous school crushes on a girl with us. So a "she" in the lyrics of a love song, wouldn't ever really throw me off personally. But that's just me. On top of that, Jimin did share his notes of his lyric writing process for his songs on FACE. And we can see for Like Crazy, his original planned lyrics said "baby" in place of "she." So that probably got changed for a better flow, either he did that himself, or it was suggested to him by RM, Pdogg or one of the other people who helped and gave input to the song. Either way, I don't think it's indicative of a girlfriend or an ex girlfriend in anything factual. But everyone can think what they will and have their own opinions of it for sure.

Now, for me, honestly there is a lot of queer coding through this whole MV and through subsequent performances/choreo/promotions for this song as well. Lyric breakdown can be found here before we go further:

Music Video:

And my first post about Like Crazy, where I talk about the song as a whole, what I think it's about AND touch on the queerness of Jimins gender expression throughout the MV:

To expand upon that, the choreo is a huge part of that and this person did a pretty good job breaking that down and sharing their theory over the dance too.

On top of in the extra content for FACE, similar references get lowkey pointed out in the FACE Playlist video, both in the LC MV and the Playlist video. Which you can watch here

During the Set Me Free portion, things line up very similarly to Freddie's "I want to break free" video, where he cross dresses. And for those who don't know, he fairly openly queer as an artist. He was involved with both men and women regardless of never openly stating or confirming his sexuality (that I know of). In the video, we also see Jimin looking through vinyls, including Queen and Nirvana. AND in the LC MV set, we see on the wall writing that says "Set Me Free" "Moon" "Wake" among others AND a Queen sticker too.

I want to break free video:

He talks and makes references to accepting both sides of himself a lot. It's in his stylistic choices, his art, how he expresses himself. And it's been a repeated theme for AWHILE now and if you aren't seeing it... it's because you don't want to

To get deeper into it, some of the historic queer imagery and iconography Jimin used in this MV specifically and just in FACE promotions in general... would include Philip Johnson, the architect of the Glass House, openly gay and where the term "the glass closet" was coined from. A photo of his is once again in the FACE Playlist video.

Robert Mapplethorpe, his portrait on the jeans Jimin wore through the MV and several images in his photobook I believe too. A photographer specializing in male and female nude works, among other things. Including his most controversial work being his documentation of the gay male BDSM subculture scene.

In the photobook, he is pictured several times in an outfit where he is wearing Jean Paul Gaultier y/series Bodymorph jeans. Specifically he is wearing the "woman" set. The designer Specifically described this series as exploring and playing with the concepts of gender, he liked the idea of there being a mens set, and a womens set and them being able to overlap each other. The bodymorph clothing sets have naked human body prints on them. So!Yoon who recently worked with and is friends with RM (if not friendly with the other members too) also recently wore these in her album release as well. You can interpret him wearing these as you choose of course. I personally think it's speaks fairly clearly to the same things I was talking about above, with him referencing all things gender and how he is leaning into the more typical feminine iconography here with these pants for his softer side of the photoshoot for his album.

I think looking at the designs for both sets also makes it more clear which ahem, set, Jimin is wearing too. Lol and how some of the models are mixing the sets (including So!Yoon wearing the women's set as well in a diff color)

And lastly, while it might not have to do with the album directly, it does involve Jimin and is worth mentioning here as it was lowkey part of album promotions. During the first ever performance aired of Like Crazy on the Jimin Fallon show, Jimin worked with 8 backup dancers and one of them was nonbinary and shared their experience and how comfortable, welcoming, non judged and appreciated Jimin and staff made them feel the whole time. How they got to just be who they were the whole time. It speaks the type of environment Jimin cultivates around himself all the time.

Performance video:

And during the teaser that was shared of Jimin working on his album with Pdogg and others. They talked about how for 10 months, Jimin basically lived in Pdoggs house. They all just lived together and ate, slept, breathed this album. Lol and in the hallway of Pdogg's house, we see that he has a Stonewall rainbow art piece. Which if that is what that is, is very special to have the education over Stonewall and the support of for that in your home in Korea. I won't speak to it either way, if that is what it is, great. If it's not. I'm just going to enjoy a rainbow in the same shot as Jimin regardless. Lol

Teaser video:

At this point, there is deep references to historic queer iconography in so much of Jimins art, it's fair to say we aren't guessing anymore. He is as out as he can be without explicitly saying anything. For me personally at least. And no one is owed an explicit coming out from anyone for any reason. If you listen to what he says, what he sings about, what he photographs, what he dances, what he shares with us? It's all right there too see. So plainly. Queer people have always had to talk and listen between the lines. It's there if you want to see it. And it's fair for queer armys and queer people to react and talk about the continuous use of queer icons and imagery Jimin has used over the years. It's not assuming anything. It's just listening to what he is telling us and sharing.

Thank you for the ask. And thanks to anyone who read the whole thing. 💜

#Jimin FACE #JM Like Crazy #JM rainbow moments

[astraltrickster]

All the people calling the analysis of the queer undertones in Goncharov "reaching" and "tumblr fangirlism" need to sit down and do some damned research because listen, I'm one of the first people to be skeptical of intent in things like this, I lived through TJLC, but this is, decidedly...not that. Matteo JWHJ 0715 addressed it in this 1975 interview, one of the few he's ever done! He makes it clear, in no uncertain terms, he is a queer person, he uses his pseudonym for his and his family's safety, and his work cannot be fully understood without understanding his struggle with being unable to fulfill a role prescribed to him.

(Hell, the comment about him sometimes wishing he was a woman so that he might be loved the way a man is supposed to love a woman makes me wonder if he ended up being on the mlm-transfem cusp, but that's as far as I'm willing to speculate, especially because odds are decent he's still alive so that would be not just historically unstable but also just plain rude.)

And I mean, okay, it's an obscure interview, I don't blame some of you if you hadn't seen it until now, and I know that filmbros can look at a guy saying "yeah this movie is partially about my queer experience" and still be like "oh but it's just METAPHORS there aren't REALLY gay people on screen and besides he was probably joking anyway", but...some of you at this point are just reinventing "UGH why do you freaks have to make EVERYTHING gay?" and claiming it's not homophobic because you are also gay.

Yes, the queer elements are a lot more subtle than you might get in 2022, but that doesn't mean this is just "internet shipper goggles"; you don't even get the full power of the themes if you don't acknowledge the complex web of attraction going on here. There's a running theme of characters obsessing over the ideal of something to the point of destroying the real thing they're based on - from "heritage"-obsessed nationalists destroying priceless, irreplaceable historical and cultural artifacts as acceptable collateral damage to take out one enemy, to Joe straining all his family relationships and driving himself deeper and deeper into debt in the interest of propping up their image of the perfect, loving, wealthy, glamorous unit; to, yes, the entire mess of the Andrey/Goncharov/Katya/Sofia would-be polycule. They contain so many examples of this running motif that you can't deny that the whole tangled net of homoerotic attraction is there without sacrificing the thematic integrity of the entire film.

And hell, with that - even if it wasn't part of the writer's intention, well, this is what "death of the author" means, not "the author is a prick so Hatsune Miku wrote it". If the themes of a piece have better payoff if you include an unintended subtextual detail - who cares that it was unintended? It's still THERE, echoing and amplifying the themes. Whether he intended to or not (and it's pretty clear from the interview that he did), he wrote a bi4bi couple being thrown into chaos because suddenly they couldn't pretend they were straight anymore.

(Speaking of which, while I can't fully agree with the reading that Goncharov and Katya's marriage was exclusively one of convenience, I can't say I really have a problem with it as a whole either...but can some of you out there please stop insinuating that it HAD to be because they MUST both be totally 100% Kinsey 6 gay? Bisexual people can have sexuality crises with body counts in the dozens too, thank you~)

#goncharov #unreality

[hiskillingjar]

Okay, now I want to hear more about Strade's queer alternative scene phase, it sounds so interesting and I can see the potential.

WOE, STRADE HEADCANONS BE UPON YE!!!!!!!

cw for BRIEF mention of underage sex n...typical strade nastiness lmao. gore, necro, the fun stuff!!

so. he lost his virginity to a boy he worked with when he was sixteen (he was on top)

wasn’t really that satisfied by Regular Gay Sex but chalked it up to maybe not being as gay as he thought he was. whatever, nothing lost

moved to berlin after his dad passed

figured "okay maybe i'm just into weird sex" so gets involved with the queer S/M scene of berlin. goes to local dungeons, gets a tattoo in a basement, pierces his ears with a needle, has a few shitty D/S relationships here and there, the lot

things still aren't working

he also had a couple of on-and-off relationships with men again. just to see if he was still into gay sex

figured out that he liked men just the same as women, but he was STILL not satisfied with what was going on. was he just not into sex? he sure as shit jerked off a lot, so what's the deal?

definitely doesn’t label his sexuality. he’d never call himself straight but he’d also never say he’s bi or gay (maybe queer just to be subversive cus hey it’s the early 2000s and he likes making people uncomfortable lol)

had a somewhat long-term relationship with an older man (he’s a verse :)) called stefan that he didn’t like thaaaat much (despite being into the tattooed-pierced-eurofag look) but it was stable and stefan was well off and basically paid for his lifestyle in berlin, it's whatever

stefan liked that strade was basically sweaty trade who fucks like a jackhammer when he's high on poppers and slapped him around. it's win-win

they lived in a warehouse apartment in berlin together, due to stefan’s work (he was writer for a gay lifestyle magazine).

it's here that strade kinda gets plugged into the internet, early social media, anddddd livestreaming, since stefan covered the early introductions of live porn shows

this is a big deal. for obvious reasons.

he gets pretty plugged into the digital stuff, and quickly finds out about the existence of shock sites, liveleaks, ogrish, best gore. that's interesting! maybe this was the thing he needed?

AND THEN MURDER HAPPENED. AND SUDDENLY EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE.

okay so it wasn’t exactly murder.

stefan asks to get choked during sex and strade went wayyyyyy too far and accidentally killed the guy. and then fucked the corpse. multiple times. and buried it in the middle of the night.

immediately packs his shit and moves. for obvious reasons lol.

and the rest is history! :)

#if gato said anything to contradict this. no she didn't #oh how i wish i had the attention span to write this properly. i want to so bad #strade btd #strade ykmet #grease trap #qs #headcanons

[straightbaittournament]

may the best bait win! propaganda under the cut:

twelve and missy:

they literally kiss and flirt all the time but canonically are meant to be like. best friend turned mortal enemies turned ALLMOSOST best friends again not not because of a heartbreaking misunderstanding/turn of events. missy is referred to as 12's "man-crush". but ultimately the nature of their relationship is ambiguous/not "endgame"/never consummated in any sense of the word, platonically or romantically. they like CANNOT tell each other how they feel about each other

Used to be queerbait. Decided to switch it up. They are gay and in love but also m/f presenting. If a rivalry last longer than a few millennia you aren't rivals, you're just gay.

Although the Twelfth doctor and Missy appear straight presenting, two genderfluid beings are not really "straight". Missy and Twelve had romantic undertones and even kissed a few times but ultimately did not end up together They are so so gender. They used to be two guys in gay love. Now they appear to be a man and a woman but really do they even have gender at all? I say no. It's just a fun game to them. In their future they literally swap genders. The universe would be better off if they had ended up together but they still wouldn't have been straight <3

roman and gerri:

a very queer coded Hetero relationship. slime puppy is real that’s s real thing she says

they absolutely have a weird fucking thing going on. weird coworkers with benefits mommy dom undertones thing going on except they never actually touch they just flirt and dirty talk obscenely and show-typically office talk about taking over the company and backstabbing. this is a thing for like one season and then it's dropped with little to no mention of what's in store for them or like what the fuck happened. no development no conclusion it just happened and then uhhhhhhh. they got screentime as a pair like once in a blue moon. romangerri girls were gnawing at scraps

milf x ratboy. they have like a weird sexual thing going on until they mutually betray each other on several occasions and then they end the show on bad terms but where they both still clearly have lingering feelings for each other. romangerri is basically just like queerbaiting but with straight people. have you seen their season 2 promo poster

#straightbait tournament round 1 #this one is a win win for me tbh #however i think everyone knows how i will be voting kjfhskljfglksjfd #if twissy loses any of these polls i will change my icon either to a sad twissy pic #or to a pic of whichever bait ate them #and so on and so forth #succession #doctor who #romangerri #twissy #poll #polls #poll tournament #so few tags needed for this poll i love it lmfao

[my-castles-crumbling]

Hi! How r u?

I'm kinda confused and have had this question on my mind for a while now. So the thing is that I'm straight but i fully support lgbtq community and kids in my school use words like gay or lesbian as an insult which really irritates me. I want to show that I support gay culture ( sorry if that's not a term) so i hv decided to use pride symbols to show my support . But what I am confused about is that, am i allowed to wear a pride pin or keep a pride flag on my desk even though i m straight??

I'm very sorry if this question offends you in any kind of way, im just a confused kid who'd like to show ppl that not all straight people are homophobic.

Thanks!

Hi! <3

This isn't offensive at ALL! I would love to help!

So, you are ABSOLUTELY allowed to wear a pride pin to show that you support the LGBTQIA+ community and that you are a safe space. Pride pins aren't like...specifically reserved for queer people, you know? I think the only downside of this could be like...how do I say this...people might be more likely to think you're part of the community. Personally, if I see someone wearing a pride pin, I tend to think they're queer. And maybe that's my mistake? I'm constantly working to question assumptions I make about people, as we all should. (For the record, I don't think people thinking you're queer is a bad thing at all)

You do have some alternatives. There is a flag that has been made for allies that looks like this and you can find buttons of it. It's...meh. But I MUCH prefer safe space/safe zone buttons (shirts, signs, etc). The reason I prefer it to 'ally' gear is because 'ally' things sort of...separate the wearer from the community completely. Safe space/safe zone buttons say that the person wearing them is someone who is specifically safe for LGBTQIA+ people, and who may or may not be queer themselves. It leaves it ambiguous. It also shows you actively want to support people. Here is a page on etsy that shows a bunch of stuff available. But if you don't have the money (totally valid, I am poor lol) you can also print out signs from online and maybe put them on the front of a notebook or use clear tape to turn them to stickers for a computer!

I think, no matter what you do, it won't be the wrong thing. You want to show support, and that's what matters. Thank you for being so amazing and being willing to do so. <3

#ask #asks #ask cas