#to not unpacking their racism / homophobia or whatever. all of which come up every time this discussion does

[ladyluscinia]

Not going to put this directly on the long discussion chain that prompted it because it's somewhat topic adjacent at best and I have no intention of derailing a discussion of fandom racism, but - while reading some of the "Izzy critical" responses that @bromelads got - I did see mention of one thing that I have both passionate feelings about and a near constant desire to elaborate some oft ignored context for. So.

One of the things mentioned as a source of discomfort in fandom for "Izzy critical" poc was posts rejecting that Edward was growing or healing in 1x09 and 1x10, suggesting that it mostly serves to empathize with Izzy over Ed and to make Izzy's actions look better at the expense of Ed's character / softness. The same person who gave this example later agreed that there's some truth in the idea that Izzy crits' misinterpretation of Izzy fan meta has something to do with the (very baffling) perception that we all don't like Ed or think he's the simplified villain of Izzy's story or something, which I just want to a) appreciate for a second because I do actually adore Edward so much, and b) mention specifically because I think the whole Ed healing debate is a great example of that.

I'm not going to argue why I am staunchly in the "Ed wasn't healing" / "Kraken was inevitable" camp because I've done it before, but I do want to point out some related thoughts around that argument that I've picked up on each time it loops back around.

I feel like a lot of the people who strongly disagree with or get mad about that take frame it as though we are minimizing or rejecting the existence of Edward's softness entirely. It's like... Ok, so there is a distinct sequence of moments where Edward is displaying emotional vulnerability or a draw toward fine things that fans noticed, and then they interpreted the pink robe Ed's "healing" as all that starting to pay off in his character development (before being interrupted by an external obstacle: Izzy). A very straightforward A -> B. Only when I push back against B and say "hold on I don't see any healing in 1x10," then I feel like people hear me rejecting that all the moments of A meant anything at all. If I see the shadow of the Kraken as an internally motivated obstacle being built in earlier episodes, then I must think that's the dark and violent payoff, and the evidence of softness was a diversion or manipulation or just not going anywhere significant in character terms.

Which is very frustrating to me because Edward is a romcom protagonist.

Yes, this is very obvious to everyone. But it matters in this debate because protagonist status comes with very significant guarantees - namely, Edward is going to grow / heal / get his happy ending, etc. We've even got Stede's S1 arc (which remember is still unfinished too) as a good example of structure and focus on internalized character flaws framed by plot hurdles. There is no version of this story arc where Edward ends as the Kraken, and I have never seen anybody suggest he's not currently on a character arc toward growth and healing and a circle of true companions in Stede's crew who love him for who he is.

So when I or anyone else says he's not there yet, it's almost exclusively because we are arguing about where he is on this character arc in 1x10. Of course the appreciation for fancy clothes and slow mornings with overly sugared tea is going to pay off! Of course he's going to become friends with the crew (I'm rooting for Frenchie S2 bonding)! Of course he's going to get to beat back that self loathing he's carried since his dad! But people get defensive and angry like you are personally targeting them and declaring their blorbo an irredeemable asshole because you suggest character development major enough to drive a character driven show probably takes more than a few weeks of easygoing vacation to reach final form. That's not what I'm saying at all!

Interpretations upsetting or offending people even when written with a complete lack of malice is nothing new, but it really seems like making up a whole army of guys to get mad at for takes is happening more and more. (And I'll admit I'm probably getting more and more guilty of this myself as my understanding of what exactly people are arguing in different fandom city states gets more and more fractured. Meta builds off of meta, and if you randomly see one post by one blog you already disagree with, you might be missing a lot of context to clarify what they actually mean vs "of course that's the awful take you would have".)

#our flag means death #also since i am addressing a very specific style of accusation let me tack on a disclaimer #there are a lot of lists / vagues / rebuttal metas / etc. floating around by izzy crits that attribute izzy fans' 'problematic' takes #to not unpacking their racism / homophobia or whatever. all of which come up every time this discussion does #and plenty of those takes (like maybe this one?) izzy fans read and go 'are you kidding me? agree with my dumb take or you're racist???' #and then that can lead to annoyed 'well actually *your* interpretation has a bunch of racist / homophobic implications???' #(see the entire 'woobifying ed is racist' vs 'making ed violent is racist' debate) #so just for the record: fandom has problems but i *don't* think accusing wide swaths of meta of being driven by unconscious bigots helps #obviously no take is immune from criticism but unfortunate implications happen and all poc aren't a hive mind to pass judgement #i'm far more likely to assume an izzy crit's takes suck because they are boring and have bad taste than i am to figure racism into it #ofmd harassment #< technically #ofmd meta #blackbeard ofmd #edward teach #ofmd 1x10 #ladyluscinia

[servicetopkaradanvers]

I'm not sure if this is exactly the right place to say this, but I don't know if there is. And you're a smart person and critical thinker who has talked about this before. If this is totally weird, you can just delete it ofc. I've never properly watched Supergirl but I started reading fanfic around the time my mental health got real bad so it was a comfort thing I didn't bring too much thought to. I really identify with Lena and in the past, part of me has understood her actions-

and I know that they're wrong. The anti-alien rhetoric is obviously an allegory for racism or homophobia. She's violated people's basic human rights. And I'm scared that I'm a bad person because sometimes, I kind of get it. Which is insane because i'm a lesbian enby of color, i mean i get targeted by most of the -ist/ism actions. And I'm also too tired to think about things critically all the time. Supercorp was my comfort fic, content thing-

I knew it was problematic (the whole James thing makes me sick to my stomach, scared and sad) but I didn't know that Lena as a character was written that way. The metaphors never really clicked in my head because I never thought about it, but now I feel absolutely horrible about myself because I like and identify with Lena. I'm not really sure how to move on from here- I'm just tired. I wish there could be just one thing, one piece of media that wasn't prejudiced (granted sg is not the place to go if you want decent rep and the like) and all of those things I said earlier. Its just me somehow trying to justify how I felt and empathized with something I shouldn't have. So yeah, sorry that was really long. I hope you have a lovely day- sorry for the spam

FIRST of all, you’re fine, babe! Both in sending me this and in enjoying The Bad Media. That’s my thesis here: You’re fine. With this in mind, let’s unpack this big ol suitcase:

We’re living in a fandom moment where more than ever before, we’re thinking about the ideas we consume in fiction and how they may or may not affect us. This is a net positive! Fiction is not reality, but it undeniably impacts it, so for this and many other reasons, we should always think critically about what resonates with us and why. Does this mean dissecting every facet of something to find all the ways it might fall in line with oppressive power structures? Absolutely not.

You, as an individual, do not owe anyone an explanation for why you enjoy anything. Period. How you relate to a given character or why you like them is nobody's business but your own.

Supergirl, as a piece of media, is singularly awful in its lackluster lipservice to progressivism while simultaneously refusing to deliver any progressive themes. Socially and politically, it is a useless liberal wet dream. Kara is an immigrant from a dead culture working as the muscle for a secret FBI offshoot with zero accountability for all of the other aliens in diaspora she has rounded up and dumped into a cell without trial. Alex is allegedly a lesbian, but the key points of her endgame relationship are constantly deemed not important enough to get screen time, which is made even more absurd when examined from the angle that this series is marketed directly toward LGBT people. An embarrassing percentage of villains on this show are women of color, which is particularly loud when there are only 2 women in the main cast who aren't white. And "main" is extremely generous, given that Kelly is just there to Give Advice Good and everything M'gann says and does is as dry as toast.

My point here is that the whole show is rotted to its roots, and whatever quietly libertarian or even fascism-enabling bullshit they push onto Lena in a given week is par for the crusty, shitty course. Kara deciding that she's ok with the alien detection device because "there are bad aliens" is a lovely (read: awful) microcosm of why this show sucks so fucking hard. "People are entitled to their opinions" is for debates on whether pineapple goes on pizza, not for whether we should casually out, endanger, and disenfranchise our [insert minority metaphor here] because some of them are mean.

But what I would love for this fandom to wrap its head around, and what I hope you understand, anon, is that just because it happens on the show, doesn't mean we have to give a rat's ass about it. What the hell is The Canon, anyway? Especially in the case for Supergirl, which can't even get its own continuity right. Especially for an IP that has been rebooted dozens of times before and will be rebooted again in the future. We can just decide that Lena realized the horrible injustices she enabled through her position of power. We can even decide that they just didn't happen at all! This is all fake. It's not set in stone. Who came up with it, anyway? A network with a list of buzzwords they want included and a couple of D-tier showrunners cranking down caffeine to meet an absurdly tight deadline. It's not special. I can guarantee that you care about it infinitely more than they do, and you haven't even watched the damn show.

On a more personal level, people who are hurt, depressed, or traumatized have always and will always look for themselves in fiction. Myself included! And despite what lofty platitudes there may be on the matter, suffering does not make us kind. It does not make us better. Sometimes it's just suffering. Often it pulls us further from who we are meant to be. Often it just makes us "worse."

Trauma has made Lena emotionally brittle. A lifetime of manipulation and abuse has taught her to compartmentalize herself and lock her feelings behind a maze of doors. When she does let love in, she accepts it so wild and vulnerable that she can't see the red flags behind the rosy lenses. She latches so hard onto people she deems virtuous that she holds them to a standard none could fulfill. Her pain has to go somewhere, so it oozes out of her, into Non Nocere, into the post-reveal rift. She's a powder keg, and Kara spent 4 years shoveling more gunpowder onto the pile while holding the match between her teeth.

And despite these fatal flaws that make perfect sense through the eyes of Lena's trauma, she is so full of love. Like Kara, her suffering did not make her kind. She is kind in spite of her suffering. These are the characters we are drawn to when we're hurting. Lena’s trauma is an inextricable part of her, but it is not all of her, and neither are her mistakes.

There truly is not and never will be a piece of media that is absolutely innocent of the harmful structures thrust upon us by society, because we ourselves also participate in that society whether we are critical of it or not, whether we strive to change it or not. I'm flawed. You're flawed. Bettering ourselves is not a journey toward an ultimate destination of perfection. It is a garden we nurture in an endless labor of love because the joy that comes from seeing it flourish and change vastly outweighs the work we put into it and the weeds popping up around its unkempt edges. This is a lesson Lena herself could probably stand to internalize. Probably with lots and lots of therapy. Lots. And lots.

So, to circle back to the start of this? You're fine. You recognized the logic in a traumatized character's mistakes because our own gravest errors more often than not stem from the ways we have been harmed in the past. It's what makes Lena (or, at the very least, the many adaptations of Lena that exist in this fandom) a good character. She is, to her core, characterized proof that a crumbling foundation and poisonous soil do not define us. Which is why watching her heal and grow and learn a healthier kind of love is so, so wonderful.

In closing, I think it's worth mentioning that being critical of media does not mean that we stop enjoying the parts of it we like. There is a lot of gold to be pulled from the steaming pile of shit that is CW Supergirl, and that's why we're all here in the first place. So I really hope you can continue to enjoy it in whatever way makes you smile <3

#Anonymous #lena

[aeondeug]

So while I was reading GtN and HtN I occasionally stopped to be like “Wow, it’s great how these can be just so gay!” And like. That is really great. Super great. I love that about them. But I also remember at least once stopping and going “Wow, it’s great that there’s no homophobia here!” And like at the time I just kind of nodded along to myself. Around when I just finished GtN, I remember being very fond of the bit after the book with like the guy explaining like. The deal with necro/cav relationships in The Media and throughout history and how actually none of these things have ever been romance. This is just a pure relationship, unaffected by naughty things like ROMANCE. WHY DOES EVERYTHING NEED TO BE ROMANCE?! shouts the author of this paper. And I laughed at this. Because it reminded me a lot of people who do this shit with queer love. They do it with history and just go “Why does Sappho have to be gay, why can’t she just have passionate feelings for her BFFs”. Which is mindbogglingly stupid to me and anyone who has so much as LOOKED at some of the poem fragments. But like people do say that shit. And they do this a lot over like queer anything in fiction unless it like punches you in the face with rainbows immediately. “Why do Bubblegum and Marceline have to be gay? They’re just friends!” is a take that I legitimately saw on the day of the finale. And not just once. I saw it a few times. And I’ve seen that happen over so many ships in so many things, whether or not the ships end up canon. “Why does it have to be gay?” and the specific sort of outrage over it I’ve seen in essay length posts is just common, and that sort of outrage reads very similar to the argument that dude made about necro/cav relationships. It reads like that and close enough so that I made a joke about it even. I didn’t think too, too much on this at first though because I mean. We have Abigail and Magnus. They’re right there. A man and a woman, a husband and a wife. So like I was able to simultaneously go “omg it’s just like those why can’t they just be friends WHY DOES IT NEED TO BE GAY people” and also “wow it’s nice that there are spooky negative queer experiences of SADNESS here”. Which has got me thinking. Ok. So we have that essay. Now what else do we have in the books? I suppose could point at the entirety of Gideon and Harrow’s just furious refusal to admit that they might actually be in love with one another. Even though it appears to be obvious to literally everyone else in the galaxy. And is obvious to the readers. Hell, Gideon even has a moment of feeling like she needs to tell Harrow something the day before she dies. Something which is heavily romance coded, I don’t know the word for it. But like a “Wow I feel a need to tell them something and it’ll be my last shot” before a death just kind of always reads “It was an ‘I love you’. They needed to say it and didn’t get a chance”. So we’ve got that and, specifically, we’ve got their outrage at the suggestions. Gideon stresses that she’s JUST Harrow’s cav. And she’s very fucking insistent on that. Part of the why is that she knows Harrow is in love with a fucking dead girl in a casket but like. It just hits a certain way. There’s also Harrow’s just repeated disgust she expresses towards the concept of necro/cav relationships. She needs to explain away to herself that like, well, Abigail and Magnus were ALREADY married before he was named her cavalier primary so maybe that makes it fine. And even then she’s not like super duper comfy with the idea. A taboo has been broken, Harrow feels, and she needs to get really rules lawery to find any comfort with that. Other small things that feel of note to me here are the nature of the ways we know that these two are gay outside of like. Their weird thing for one another. With Gideon we’re introduced to it basically immediately with her joke about titty mags. Harrow specifically makes a comment at some point that some of the magazines Gideon gets are very gross, yes. Her interest in women is explicitly made sexual from the get go, and the idea that The Gays are just weird sex fiends and there is no love there is a frequent one. With Harrow meanwhile we know because she says she’s in love with the girl in the Locked Tomb. Who is very much dead. A thing that is fucky enough that like there is an entire song and dance about “GIDEON THE FIRST IS MAKING OUT WITH A CORPSE??????” and how Harrow is a hypocrite for being so offended by that all. Also the girl is behind the door. She is something that isn’t supposed to be seen or known about or, heaven forbid, woken up. That is all the ultimate taboo and Harrow not only fucking broke that but she looked at the girl and went “Wow I’m in love” on the spot. So we have this collection of things that could be read as some sort of metaphor for like...The taboo nature of queer love. “Why can’t they just be friends?” and issues of purity and the lack thereof. And we have characters who are very clearly in love but who can’t just admit that because they think there’s something fucking wrong with that. Gideon’s JUST her cav and Harrow is also in love with a dead chick. We also have Magnus and Abigail around who are just like. Happily married and fine with things regarding their whole necro/cav aesthetic. Ianthe doesn’t seem to give a shit that Gideon’s into Harrow at all. There’s a fondness for necro/cav relationships enough that there’s an entire romance genre centered on them and like characters in the cast are fond of those, some of them. Things appear to be Fine, at least as far as their friends are concerned. Maybe the asshole writing the essay that kicked this pondering off would have an issue and a stuffy old grandma would pitch a fit. But like their friends don’t have a problem with necro/cav shit. But we still very much have Gideon and Harrow being “Well no. We’re just a necromancer and their cavalier. GOD.” Now part of what got me thinking about this is that I recently decided to start watching Bly Manor. Because fuck it we haven’t yet. And specifically part of why is I remember seeing an analysis of it done by Rowan Ellis which had this bit where like the argument that “Bly Manor proves you can do queer stories without homophobia being a part of it!” is brought up and like...Ellis is like “Ok but we very much do just lock a queer woman in a literal closet while she screams to be let out”. And lo and behold in the first episode we very much do just lock a queer woman in a literal closet while she screams to be let out. In an episode showing that she’s like just unable to go back home for...some reason. And that she has some sort of difficulty with her relationship with her mother. No, the show is not having the character literally go “Wow I sure am in the closet and I kind of fucking hate that woe is me I am so gay”. But figuratively? It’s all over the place in that first episode. I’m not sure about the others because I haven’t watched them, but it is there in the very first one. And that’s something horror does very well. It takes things that are scary and uncomfortable and bundles them up in shades of metaphor. It hides them from  you by showing you the thing cleverly disguised. Maybe you do not notice it the first time through perhaps. Maybe you felt that a certain thing like the closet scene resonated very hard with you and you’re not sure why. But you perhaps don’t consciously go “Aha! It is the horror of being closeted!” Upon looking back on it or back through it though you might notice it. And be like “Oh that was there. Holy fuck.” Now maybe you’re also someone who isn’t like. Comfortable. With straightforward depictions of specifically queer suffering. Maybe it’s just too scary. But with this show hiding it in a metaphor you got to sit through that. You got to be brave enough to sit through a very, very scary thing. And afterwords you go to think about it. This is the power of metaphor and it’s something horror has been very, very good at doing for ages. Maybe racism or homophobia or whatever else is too nerve wracking for you to look at face on in media, but maybe you can watch a movie or a show where the horror of those things are very much there but cloaked in metaphor. And so maybe we are getting that with Gideon and Harrow’s weird issues around how “taboo” their feelings are. Two people who are just unwilling to believe that it might be that thing, in part because that thing is “taboo”. Except instead of the taboo being literally “They’re lesbians, Harold,” it’s instead cloaked in a comforting metaphor of necro/cav relationships and some dude who is really fucking offended at people’s space ao3 fanfictions about his historical favs. Which is important because every fucking scrap of anything one gets is an argument. It can’t just be that they’re in love. It’s that you must PROVE it and some asshole with a degree or just a bone to pick is going to come by and be like “WHY CAN’T THEY JUST BE A NECRO AND A CAV” about it all. And like I’m someone who’s known they’re into other women for a long while now. At least half my life. We have conquered that hurdle. But we haven’t entirely unpacked all the weird little societal bullshit that is still in there. Hiding. Lurking. And that societal bullshit specifically frames that sort of love as something gross and taboo and “Why Can’t They Just Be Friends?”. With that last thing hurting a lot. I’ve constantly run across people going “Why can’t they just be friends?” or going “They just have a sisterly relationship!” about things I shipped. Even when those things involved shit like the characters kissing on screen or mentioning that they’ve been dating in a sequel series. I can’t simply like my ships. I can’t simply see myself in romance. Because my sort of love is so taboo that it is, in itself, a debate. Maybe being shown the thing cleverly disguised as another thing might help me unpack that. At the very least it helps me look at it. When it’s something that hurts a lot to this day.

#the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #spoilers #this is a bit painfully long #but i have FEELINGS about uncomfortable things being hidden in metaphor #and that metaphor being the thing that helps you be brave enough to look at it

[kitkatopinions]

Can we talk about the rampant bi/panphobia surrounding Yang "looks at guys like they're fresh meat in the first 3 volumes and chibi" Xiao Long? Blake's gets brought up a lot as 90% of her reason for existing is to be the romancable NPC, but it's hardly talked about with Yang. She has shown express interest in guys. Even if Bees goes canon, it's not a Bi/Lesbian ship. It's a Bi/Bi or Bi/Pan ship or what ever other possible identity that doesn't erase Yang's attraction to men. I get the whole wanting rep thing but there's more lesbians in RWBY than any other LGBT identity and they aren't really that good in terms of representation. Do we really need another angry/aggressive/problematic lesbian in RWBY? And whenever it does get brought up, Lesbian!Yang fans always go "oh, it's just comphet". Um, excuse me? Isn't comphet not supposed to be a thing in Remnant?

Okay, so there's a lot to unpack here, and I do get why you're so frustrated because as a bi person, it gets so frustrating dealing with not only a huge lack of representation, but also feeling boxed out of, undervalued by, and invalidated by your own community sometimes. I myself have been really frustrated and even hurt by the way many RWBY fans (and specifically Bumblebee fans) have talked about Blake and Yang's sexuality, like they would be less gay or less rep if they were bi, how shipping them with men is 'wrong' because it's 'straight behavior' and 'validating the straights,' and I got particularly annoyed once by a post that claimed that people only shipped Yang and Weiss so that they could force Blake - who they claimed was a canon lesbian - into a relationship with a man. I think it's clear why people talk about Blake's status as bi more than Yang's - Yang has one moment in eight seasons where she acts clearly attracted to men, whereas Blake has had two canon romantic relationships with men, Adam being her ex and her having gone on a date with and kissed Sun on the cheek. When people dispute Blake's status as a bi, sometimes they (rightly) come at it from the point of view of 'this is just my own personal headcanon for my own benefit.' But too often, Blake's attraction to men is dismissed outright and fans try and find every excuse to invalidate it so that they can insist that Blake is a canon lesbian. That's pretty openly biphobic imo. (Also I don't agree that 90% of Blake's character is a romancable NPC. I think maybe she's become mostly not an active character who only really exists as support and romance, but the idea that it's 90% of her overall show character is weird to me, Blake is done dirty by the show but that doesn't mean she's not a character for the first five seasons.)

But Yang is also worth talking about. Because of the fact that her moment of displaying clear attraction towards men is brief and early in the show, many fans have just... Thrown it out entirely, and decided that not only does it not count, but that anyone who brings it up is living in the past and is stupid for paying attention to the early seasons. That's obviously really dumb. The idea that after the first five seasons, Yang is displaying clear romantic attraction towards a girl for the first time, she is now one hundred percent a lesbian in canon because she's only displayed romantic attraction towards men once... That's also rooted in biphobia. Being attracted to men doesn't just suddenly go away because you're attracted to women and vice versa, no one chooses to be bi, gay, straight, ace, whatever. If Yang was sexually attracted towards men at seventeen, that part of her doesn't stop existing just because she's sexually attracted to women too. The thing is, headcanoning Yang (or even Blake!) as a lesbian is totally fine. I think the RWBY creators did say that sexism, racism, and homophobia doesn't exist in Remnant, but like ??? Idk why they'd decide something like that if they were gonna make jokes about Jaune and Qrow wearing skirts haha laugh at the non-gender-conformity of men, and if they'd write the first five seasons with literally one gay character, while tons of straight relationships that get credence, everyone else expresses no clear romantic inclination towards the same sex for five years of the show running. And we're supposed to think there's no heteronormativity at least? Cardin and Jaune both have clear toxic masculinity problems that Jaune grows out of, but we're supposed to think that toxic masculinity has nothing to do with any sexism or homophobia, however internalized? I think if people want their fans to believe there is not sexism or homophobia or racism in their fake world, they need to make good and sure their own internalized issues don't leak into their work. So I don't think it's wholly invalid when people decide that in their headcanon, they think Yang just acted like she was attracted to men because she thought she should. I especially think it's valid for people to headcanon that Yang had acted like she attracted to men because she thought she was. She was only seventeen, seventeen year olds put on behavior that they think is cool and she is the niece of Qrow 'wink at Winter to piss her off' Branwen, and Yang could've realized maybe during school that putting on behavior was all that was, and that she isn't actually attracted towards men and likes girls - specifically the girl dancing with Sun at the school ball. That's perfectly valid as a headcanon. But that's all it is, a headcanon.

Yang is not a canon lesbian and it's perfectly valid and supported by Yang's canon interactions for people to consider her bi or pan, and people can even headcanon her as ace if they want. Trying to demand that other people see fictional characters as the sexuality you prefer them in is just going to drive wedges, especially when so much venom seems to be directed towards bi characters, with others acting like they're literally less rep if they also have romantic interactions with people of the opposite sex. Like, people literally have the idea of "I love that Blake is bi, but I hate that people are shipping her with men or talking about Blake's romances with men and idk why the show put any focus on her romantically interacting with men." Like, sure, okay, so you support bi characters so long as they don't be bi too obviously. But... I'm getting off topic.

Here's the thing... I would caution not to get too deep in this "there's too many lesbians," concept. We're supposed to all be one community, supporting and fighting for each other. The problem isn't that there's too much representation for lesbians, the problem is that there is not enough representation for bi people, or pan, or ace, or trans men, or trans women, or non-binary people, etc. We don't have to wish less for other gay people to wish for more for ourselves. I agree that disregarding Yang's moment of attraction to men maybe isn't the way to go, but it's not that there are already enough lesbians in RWBY. There are only three side characters (by the way, two of them aren't confirmed lesbians, just because they're in a relationship with each other,) two of whom made a very minor appearance in all of two or three episodes and will likely never return to the story. As you say, the rep that lesbians have gotten in RWBY isn't very good. Them desiring more representation is perfectly valid, and I even get them wanting that representation from Yang, despite her single moment of lusting after boys in season one. That's a perfectly understandable desire. I myself want gay Neptune despite him expressing interest in women. It's not wrong. The only thing that's wrong is villainizing and mocking people for their own very valid ships like BlackSun or Yang x Jaune or Yang x Mercury or Blake x Ren or whatever ships people like. I'm sorry that I can't agree with you here, but if there was a scene in RWBY where Yang discusses her feelings for Blake and says that she realized she's a lesbian... I might not be particularly happy with the writing staff, because I already heard there's an element of disregarding Blake's former relationship with Sun in things like the comics, which is frustrating as a bi person. But I would be happy for the people who would find in this something that speaks to them and makes them feel like their own experiences are represented. Sometimes I can feel excluded from the LGBTQ+ community due to my attraction towards men, and that's hard, but I'm not going to start devaluing the victories of other gay people because of it, I'm not going to start getting upset when they get representation, or when a character they love claims an identity that reflects their own.

I do get where your frustration is coming from though, and it's perfectly valid to feel upset and exasperated both with the way MKEK write their queer relationships and in how people in the fandom tend to disregard the bi identity of characters.

#rwde #anti rwby #rwby criticism #rwby critical #representation in rwby

[humwrites]

THERAPY

It’s ironic - I try to advocate for uncomfortable topics, things that would have been considered taboo. When it comes to talking about my own experiences, I struggle. A lot. It’s hypocritical in a lot of ways, but I’m also aware I’m being too harsh on myself for saying that. I’ve tried to get better with talking about it in the last couple of years, but I feel palpitations whenever I mention it in front of a new group of people. 

I’ve been in therapy, on and off, since I was 13. I was diagnosed with anxiety when I was 18. I’ll openly admit that I’ve done a lot of self-work over the years, and have been so proud of my own progress. But, there’s always more work I could do. My therapist and I talk about that often. 

With lockdown, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, I worried about losing everything that I’ve built to be ‘mine.’ I couldn’t do the things that would help me feel better after an episode. I couldn’t reach out to my confidants, or be with them, in the same way as I would normally have done if I needed it. I’ve found myself cycle backwards into old habits, feeling ‘trapped’ again. I was obsessively finding and reading everything I possibly could about COVID-19. Comparing countries and trying to figure out statistics, predicting the next move. I knew it wasn’t healthy for it to be consuming my every thought, and yet it remained. A disconnect was slowly starting to build - I knew logically that it was okay for me to feel whatever I was experiencing, but I’ve found it harder than ever to practise that.

And then the world listened. And heard. Black lives matter. They always have. This time, we weren’t going to let it slide and we were not going to lose the movement to a 24 hour news cycle. As a result, the discussion surrounding racism - covert and overt - came into light. Personally, there was a necessity to stand and be an ally to the black community. History shows us that if it had not been for them, then South Asians would not have been allowed the opportunities we have now. It was not enough for us to stand with them, for them. We had to be using our privilege. 

However, it became more and more apparent of one thing. The discussion of racism meant unpacking and revisiting trauma that all BIPOC people have experienced. I watched President Trump address the nation, calling the protests “acts of domestic terror” (Trump, 2020) My anxiety caved in and caused me to have a panic attack, remembering comments and threats directed at my family and I whilst I was growing up - following 9/11. Whilst I tried to stay afloat, it’s hard for me to admit that the trauma I thought I had learnt from began to resurface. 

I found myself desperately trying to do what I could for the movement. If I wasn’t able to join a protest, I would help in other ways. Donating, reading, sharing, talking. A handful of the many ways we know now that we can help. But with nothing else, it became easy to sink into a cycle. One that’s stayed. One that’s drained me. Finding myself disassociating and having trouble staying in the present. 

But, I was a voice that had to be involved in the conversation, right? I don’t shy away from knowing I am usually a minority in the company I keep, so I simultaneously believe it to be an obligation and a duty to have to discuss these issues. (see also: sexism and homophobia, and how those intersect with issues of race and culture)

This happened to roll into Pride month, and the internet so rightfully redirected attention to Stonewall being led by Latinx and Black trans women. An intersection I’ve struggled to find - a cross-road between experiences of racism and homophobia. The acknowledgement of, once again, needing to unpack trauma. Trauma which was enforced by the belief that these could not co-exist. To be raised Muslim, to be raised as a Pakistani, a Bengali - I couldn’t be bisexual and vice-versa. Coming to terms with your sexuality will always have it’s own struggles, but couple that with wondering if you’d have to choose one over the other - the damage can be detrimental. 

I’ll remind you again. I’ve been in therapy since I was 13. I’m 20 now. Seven years in therapy. This was the first in which I started talking about the trauma I’ve experienced with racism. My therapist is a white woman. If I, or my family, had acknowledged the need for representation, I would like to hope we would’ve found a South Asian therapist. But the truth of the matter, is that I’ve felt comfortable with my therapist. Enough so, that we were able to have an open dialogue about the ways in which things would probably be different, if that was the case. The reason I hadn’t brought it up before wasn’t because she’s white, it was because I had become so deeply uncomfortable with my own trauma that I wasn’t able to verbalise it. I had been taught to keep it to myself. To be ‘stronger.’ It somehow seemed easier to address my journey with my sexuality, if it didn’t coincide with my experience as a woman of colour. To hide amongst ‘bisexual/gay culture,’ which was dominated by white figures in the community - not knowing how that could translate into my own. 

It always felt untimely, inappropriate to be discussing the affect the current political landscape was having on my own mental health. That leads me to have to remind myself - that’s what I’ve always my identity was perceived. 

Untimely. Inappropriate. Impossible. 

I am not any of those things.

“I am inimitable. I am an original” - Hamilton (2015)*

So if not now, then when would I be able to express my experiences, and all the ways in which they interconnect with one another? BIPOC mental health month is now floating around on the internet. In the surfacing of this era, it remains crucial that we remain inclusive of all BIPOC stories - and that means looking at those in the LGBTQ+ community, those who were already impacted by class issues/pay disparities and how that becomes even harder during the pandemic.

Most importantly, the humane problems we all internally battle with on a daily basis.

It is very human of all of us to be going through what we consider to be universal problems - family, friendships, relationships. The truth of the matter is that we’re all working through those in our own ways, and there’s no one way to do that. Interactions during the pandemic are strained enough, so if you’re anything like me, you might be getting impatient with how long it’s taking you to overcome those. You might even be feeling as if they are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I wish I had answers. I wish I had some wisdom to share. All I can say is that none of that is true. It’s what it is to be human. Taking care of yourself is just as important as it is to stand up for what you believe in. So many of us are right there with you, and maybe there’s some comfort in that. 

Do something you enjoy today. Remember that you’re loved and appreciated for everything you’re doing.

Take care of yourself x

https://issuesintheworld.carrd.co/

* = As someone who hopes to be able to return to the theatre landscape, as soon as it’s safe to do so, I found comfort in the release of ‘Hamilton’ on Disney+. Hope remains in the persistence and dedication of those in the arts. That we can come back stronger than ever. The hunger of those communal experiences, as seen through the eagerness of its release, helps reignite passion. I am aware that the show is far from perfect, and in fact remains to not be an accurate representation of Alexander Hamilton’s story - but I remain forever grateful as the show proved that parts for BIPOC individuals can exist, outside of supporting or stereotypical roles. 

#bipoc #bipoc representation #bipoc voices #bipoc mental health month #mental health #writing about mental health #mental health awareness #lockdown #quarantine #therapy #trauma #racism #sexism #homophobia #writers #writing about anxiety #anxiety #writerscreed #illustrans #tumblr writing community #spilled thoughts #spilled ink #queer writers #queer woman of color #queer woman #queer asian #brown girl #pakistan #bangladesh #self care

[hellolittleogre]

Idiots in Love, 2nd chapter, part 2

Billy, squinting into the darkness: Is that a Good Decision I see before me?

“Welcome everybody!” Horne opened. “This is our second GSA student pub for the year and we are really excited! Last year during orientation one of the things that kept coming up was that our members want help in building queer relationships and networks, so we are taking the first step today, and have arranged Speed dating for Friends!”

Billy wants to groan, he didn’t want to speed date for friends, he barely wants to speed date for the chance of a hookup, and yet here he is, trapped  like a fox in a snare.

“Your goal for tonight,” Horne continues “is to make a connection with a stranger. And if somebody sits down opposite you that is not a person you’d think you’d have something in common with, just give them a chance and see where it leads you.” 

Horne smiles shyly at the room, giving the impression of a man who is uneasy in front of a crowd, in spite of being a tenured professor.

A bell clanged and a girl with bangs and bottle red hair sits down opposite Billy and starts talking about Care Bears.

Half an hour later Billy’s head is aching and he’s not even sure he is gay anymore. These people are just fucking weird. One person Billy couldn’t even tell the gender of said it was a “genderqueer Oxford boy dyke” and Billy could sort of puzzle out four of those words individually, but he has no idea where and how the Oxford fit into anything, or which of the boy or the dyke had a bearing on what kind of persons they would be interested in? Was it a boy dyke or a boy dyke? And how were you a boy dyke anyway, wasn’t the whole point of being a lesbian that they were not boys?

One woman tells him that saying “straight” as in the fucking direction, is upholding the “heterosexual hegemony” and that he should always say “gayly forward” instead and that he should write to his congress representative to petition to have it changed on GPS voices to end directional oppression , which is...is just, what?

Next is this guy who looks Billy over for a second before he got his out his phone, saying, without even looking up: “Sorry not my type” as he swipes left and left and left, which is just fucking rude, especially since they were ostensibly here to “speed date for friends”. Like Billy was is even his type enough to talk to for a whole minute. Unfortunately he can’t think of anything cutting to say before the bell chimes and they were all switching anyway (something he now, thanks to Goodnight, knows is called esprit de escalier) and Billy sits down in front of a handsome, dark haired guy with a t-shirt that not only stretched nicely over his chest, but also featured the logo of Billy’s gym.

The guys’s name is Bartholomew, which is a fucking stupid name, but Billy has become much more lenient on stupid names since he met Goodnight, and he’s funny. They talk about the gym, about college and films and when the bell rings Bart waves to the person behind to pass by their table so they can continue talking.

“You are the hottest guy I’ve met this evening,” he smiles and if Billy wasn’t not so taken with the experience of having a guy (!) say he’s hot (!!) to his face(!!!) he would describe that smile as oily. “I’m not letting you go now, some of these other people are psychos.”

“The care bear girl?” Billy ask in sympathy and Bart laugh. 

“Yes! And some guy who wont stop talking about fucking squirrels.”

“Is that as in, uh, goddamn-fucking, squirrels or as in fucking squirrels?” 

Bart  leans over the table and looking into Billy’s eyes with earnest desperation, his eyes dark and gleaming.

“I don’t know,” he whispers urgently and Billy broke out in a startled laugh. When the bell rings he’s still  laughing and Bart gets his phone out.

“Could I get your number? I’d better move on before the mountain man gets me for ruining the spirit or whatever.” 

Billy hesitates for a second before thinking oh, what the hell. It feels like a small victory when his phone vibrates with the incoming text. Bart stands next to the table, popping his hip against the edge and leaning down on one arm to smile at Billy. He is a little taller, rangy and whipcord, with the beginnings of a receding hairline and Billy thinks he might be a little into that.

“You’re cute,” he smiles, looking Billy up and down, “And pretty built too. I’m normally a strictly “no fats, no femmes, no Asians” type of guy you know? But for you I might make an exception.” Bart winks and smiles like a wolf, all teeth before he saunters off to the next table, hand raised in nonchalant goodbye.

Billy’s first feeling is one of insulted astonishment because who the fuck just says something like that like its normal? And the way he had said it, like it was completely normal, something Billy should know about, have heard of, an established fucking phrase, a good natured joke. Is he so alien to the gay world that there is a fucking phrase for it?

 And Billy has given him his number. He might call. Jesus Christ, the entitled asshole might call and Billy has no idea what to say to him, other than to ask him to fuck all the way off.

He is still working on scraping his jaw off the floor when Goodnight sits down opposite him.  He looks good, there is a flush to his cheeks and his eyes are sparkling and it’s lucky that t-shirt is normally delegated to the bottom of his closet because if he wore it more often it’s likely Billy would just fail right out of college in pure distraction. He is all that yet all Billy can feel in that moment is overwhelming relief at a familiar face.  Someone who can help him make sense of what the fuck just happened.

(Billy knows what the hell happened, but just like when he was twelve and a car pulled up next to his bike and the driver yelled “Go back to your own country” at him and then drove off, some part of him refuses to accept that this has actually happened and is trying to reconstruct the narrative into something else)

“You have got to help me, I just gave my number to a complete asshole,” is the first thing that comes out of his mouth and Goody blinks at him.

“Of course..anything” he says, looking puzzled at Billy and then down at the table. Without even knowing he’s done it Billy’s both hands has grabbed on to Goody’s where it’s resting on the table, one hand gripping onto his fingers and palm and the other curled around his wrist, in desperate urgency. Embarrassed Billy let go of one hand but experimentally held on with the other and tried not to flush with pleasure when Goody adjusted his grip to hold on more securely.

“Is “no fats, no femmes no Asians” a thing?” Billy asks, voice rising and watches Goody’s face twist into that grimace of discomfort liberal white people get when confronted with how racism affects people who are not them.

“I’m sorry,” Goodnight says, shaking his head “I think yeah,its a, uh, a thing.”

“Right,” and wow, if Billy didn’t want to make kisses on Goodnight’s stupid face so bad he would opt out of this gay thing before it even started. “Why is it a thing?”

“I’m sorry that had to be the first thing out of the gate,” Goodnight answers, he’s sounding both pissed off and uncomfortable. “I mean there is a lot to unpack, with racism and internalised homophobia in the gay community, I might not be the best person…, I... ” he trailed off. “I didn’t even know you were here.”

“I thought you were out with Sam.”

“Oh he’s here, this was all Sam’s idea, the bastard. He thinks I’m too solitary here and I need to get out more, build some queer networks. We were quite involved in the GSA at home so...I mean, he means well you know?” Goody’s free hand sketch a gesture through the air that could mean quite a lot of things.

“I’ve never been before. I’m not sure I like it.”

“Yeah, you mentioned an asshole?” Goodnight says wryly, one side of his mouth ticking up in a smile and Billy groans. Goodnight had started growing a beard since Christmas and it should by all rights have looked stupid but it also framed his mouth so every time Billy looks at him his gaze gets stuck on the plump swell of Goody’s lower lip and his charmingly crooked teeth. It is deeply unfair.

Billy is halfway through relating the incident when he realise that he is loud, he has his hands out and he has forgotten about half the room. 

After the incident in the gym showers Billy hadn’t spoken in school for a week. He’d learned to be quiet, to not really talk to anybody besides Jujin. It had been a joke amongst the guys at the gym that with Billy you either picked up sign language or telepathy, because it wasn’t like he was going to talk. It was as if he had decided that as long as he was quiet he could mask it, could hide himself away under a gruff exterior, under a stereotype of stoicism and coldness. But a year at college had chipped away at the facade and the realisation that without even knowing how it had happened he is out of his shell hits like a blow to the head. He talks in class and with friends, makes small talk in the coffee shop and if you ask Red or Vas or anyone to describe him they were more likely to say that “loud opinionated bastard” rather than that “Asian kid who doesn’t talk”. It is a good feeling. His hair is long enough now that he can pull it back into a bun on the top of his head. People sometimes call him ma’m in stores and his Halmi has asked if he wanted money for a haircut, but the point is that he had let his hair grow without worrying what it might say about him, that people might look at him and think “gay”.

“And now he has your phone number?”Goodnight ask, eyebrows disappearing into his hairline in consternation.

“Yeah,” Billy says grimly.

“I have a revolutionary idea, and that is that you block his number, and if he insists on calling I’ll answer instead and say he’s called, um, like the number service, or Fats Gay Bakery in Louisiana. Or the morgue!”

Billy smiles. “Pansy’s Dancing school.”

“Miss Pansy speakin’” Goody says, exaggerating his southern accent. “Oh sugar, why don’ you come on down and give us a whirl? We are just full up of fat Asian drag queens, an’ the girls are all dyin’ to see you.”

“You realise that the second you actually do that it will be my Mom on the phone, right? And then she’ll really think I’m living it up.”

“She’ll send you another bottle of pharmacy lube. Does the army surplus store sell lube? Like a no brand gallon of lube. We could lay out a rubber mat, pour it out and have a very strange fetish party in our dorm.”

“Make a slide in the corridor. And a human bowling alley.” 

Goody let out a high pitched, undignified giggle. “Really build some queer networks.”

When the bell rings again Billy is laughing almost too hard to hear it and he doesn’t think he makes too good an impression on anybody else, red-faced and giggling and as soon as the bell rang for the final time he looks around for Goody and Sam.

They are by a table at the back wall, Sam sitting down with a beer and Goodnight standing up and talking with a tall guy, the last person in his dating run. Billy had met him earlier in the evening, he was part of the Socialist Rambler’s club and spoke very glowingly of Horne. Coming closer something about Goodnight looked eerily familiar to Billy, something in his posture, the soft smile and the way he tilts his head just so.

He is flirting, and the reason Billy can tell it is flirting is because Goody does the same to him.

He recognises that soft curve of Goody’s body, and the way he’s looking up through his lashes, recognised it from nights and nights in their room, from how Goodnight looked at him, his hands dancing and fluttering around Billy, leaning his chin on the back of his knuckles and just looking at Billy like he is the most interesting, compelling, thing in the universe even if he’s just talking about going down to the corner store for milk. He’d held Billy’s hand the whole time at the table without even questioning it and Billy had just ignored all these things because it was much safer to believe that Goodnight was unavailable.

And Sam is sitting right next to him, just there, poking at his phone and looking content, but Sam must be able to see it too. Must have seen Goodnight and Billy and known. Billy is pretty sure nobody knew about his crush on Goody, not because he's an expert at hiding it, but because nobody would be looking, or recognise what they were seeing. But Sam would know. Sam would recognise that Goodnight was having...having an an, an… emotional affair with Billy right in front of his very eyes, and Billy suddenly feels sick to his stomach, with a spinning sense of nausea over what he's done.

Sam, who’s been nothing but kind to him, who befriended Billy with good humour and ease in spite of Billy’s initial spiky attitude. While Billy looked on Goodnight had given the tall guy a final slinky smile and sat down next to Sam, arm easily around his shoulder and their heads tight together to look at whatever Sam was doing on his phone, stealing a sip from his beer without even looking up. The swirling anxiety rose up from Billy’s gut and before he knew it he has set course for the bathroom, confused emotions thumbling round and round inside him like a spinning drum.

Grace had raised Billy to be fastidious, and under normal circumstances he would rather be dead than on the floor of a public bathroom,but since he felt like he would rather be dead than anywhere right now, germs and sticky floors seemed the least of his worries. The tiles are cool and the sound of the bar lessened, and Billy pulls his knees up to lean his forehead against them and tries to even out his breathing and not vomit. He feels terrible, like food poisoning and lying to his mom all rolled up into one clawing, cold-sweaty emotion that held his stomach in a terrible grip. 

“You all right there?” Billy look up at Sam, nod,and then he has to look away again when another roiling wave of nausea hit. He isn't all right.

“Yeah sure you're all right,” Sam says and reached down to hoist Billy up. “ that's why you're sitting on the floor in the toilets, because you are so all right. C’mon up you go.”

Billy allowed Sam to hustle him to the sinks and obediently washes his face and hands,before Sam grabs him by the scruff of his neck and drags him to their table like a lost puppy.

“Billy, Sam, I'm just going to the bar,you want a beer?”

“I want a beer,” Sam says, “and he’ll have a ginger ale or a coke.”

“People found nearly hurling in the bathroom don't get beer,” Sam says when Billy gives him an indignant stare. “So Goody said you met some asshole?” He continues, sitting down next to Billy. 

Billy tells him all about it, and Sam listened and nodded. 

“Where do I even go if I'm not welcome here?” Billy finish, finally out of steam. Talking it through he’s realised how much it bothers him, yeah he was out to his parents but they had yet to see any of that in practice, and he still hasn’t said anything to the rest of his family, he hadn't told his grandma or his cousins, and he had sort of thought that was what the gay community was for, to support you if things got hairy with your own family but if he was as unwelcome there as he might be at home, then what? 

“I'm going to have to be in it right?” he asks Sam. “I mean, I thought I could be gay without being gay, you know? If.. if it was just...who I liked, I could just skip the..the.. demonstrations and limp wrists and being covered in glitter and walking like a girl but that's not how it works? And if I want to change it I have to get in there and be a part of it, right?”  

“It does sound like you’d have a better chance than when doing nothing?” Sam admits mildly.

“What’s going on?” Good sits down with them, carefully handing Billy a glass of ginger ale and Sam a bottle.

“Billy is solving systemic racism in queer spaces by committing to being a full time gay,” Sam says  and Goody nods appreciatively.

“Mazel tov!” he says and his smile makes Billy’s ears hot and he cant help glancing self-conciously at Sam because this must look so weird and then he froze like a deer in headlights when he spots Bart on the other side of the bar. 

“Sam! Goody! Asshole o’clock!” he all but squeaks in panic and Sam immediately slapped Goody's shoulder when he cranes his head to look. 

“Don't fucking look Goody!” he snaps, while managing to keep his face entirely relaxed. “Is he coming over?” he asks Billy who threw a glance over at the bar

“Not yet but he looks like he might ,” Billy says miserably. It's not that he's afraid of telling the bastard to fuck off, it's just that he'd rather not. He also feels a hot surge of shame for giving out his number to the first guy who was even remotely nice to him.

“Ok” says Sam, clearly thinking very hard and gaze still glued at the table. “Billy, get in closer to Goodnight, and Goody put your arm around him.”

Both Goodnight and Billy froze and then Goody muttered something that sounded like aw what the hell, and gave Sam a dark glare and swung his arm around Billy's shoulders pulling him in close. It wasn't too weird, to be honest they were closer than this on most days, however on most days they were not in front of Goody’s fucking boyfriend. Being this close actually made Billy relax, made him braver than he usually would be, he was always so busy with holding himself back whenever Goody touched him, but this time actually dare to snuggle closer, and leans his forehead against Goody’s temple with something of a sigh of relief. 

“Thank you,” he mutters against Goody's throat and can feel Goody’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. 

“Any...anytime,” Goody replies somewhat unsteadily and shuffles closer and Billy makes himself small, molding himself against Goody’s side. It is heavenly. Goody smells good, and familiar and it feels like Billy's skin is buzzing with pleasure. For once he doesn’t give a crap about what sort of weird thing Sam and Goody have going on, maybe it’s an open relationship? In any case Goody's own damn boyfriend is right there so he can show some shame for once if he's worried about it. Billy is taking a break from worrying right now.

“Is he still looking?” he asks Sam who very unobtrusively glance towards the bar.

“Guy with the forehead, right?”

Billy nods. 

“Yeah he’s still looking,” Sam says, frowning, “You could be stuck like this for the rest of the evening,” the last he said with a slightly pointed emphasis to Goodnight and Billy could feel him shrug minutely.

“I’ve definitely been stuck in worse places,” he says warmly and Billy does his best not to blush and settles in more comfortably..

“For sure you have, Goodnight.”Sam says and grins like a shark. “Has ever he told you the time he got stuck for three hours in his hookups basement without pants?  Goody makes an indignant noise next to him, sounding like a wet cat.

“Sam! For the last time, we were not hooking up! I was tutoring him. In French.The lack of pants was…. incidental.Circumstantial evidence at best.”

“The lack of pants might be circumstantial evidence but as such its highly incriminating,” Sam says winking at Billy while Goody continues to sputter.

“So Goodnight had the worst crush on this complete boneheaded football guy-”

“He was not boneheaded Sam, he was dyslexic-”

“And they were in the basement fooling around and Goody here lost his pants because at heart he’s a slut-”

“A faint heart never fucked a bobcat Sam, not that we were. We were conjugating french verbs and I spilled soda! Billy, don’t listen to him, I’m a paragon of virtue, anyway, spilled soda on my trousers and Stephen had gone upstairs to get me a pair to borrow when a friend of his came around -”

“His girlfriend Goodnight! So of course he had to pretend there was absolutely nobody in his basement and he thought that the best way to get you out safely was to distract her upstairs and you then you could sneak out, except for the fact that Goody here had no pants on and were stuck down there.”

“He was looking out for me, thats all. Preserving my dignity, however his family came home just after that and he had to go to dinner because they were very strict about that sort of thing, Billy and it wasn’t like I could go through his house pantsless so…”

The story is long and meandering but culminated in Sam idling his car like a getaway driver for Goody as he wriggled out of the tiny basement window like a skinny red-faced eel in only his underwear, having to make an undignified scramble across the backyard before he could dive headfirst into Sam’s car.

Billy decides that he likes Sam’s laugh, which makes his front teeth stick out just enough to make his handsome face just the slightest bit dorky.Billy can imagine him twenty years from now happily making dad jokes and singing along to oldies on the radio. Next to Billy Goodnight rolls his eyes excessively and sucks his teeth in an effort to hide his smile.

A while later Goodnight is more or less propped up against Billy, warm and boneless and slightly hicchoughy, jumping thoughtlessly between Louisiana French and English, his hand tangled in Billy’s hair, pulling slightly every now and it felt good in a way Billy had to try really hard not to think about in public. Bouge has dripped off pretty early on, after Goodnight had made a show of nosing affectionately along Billy's hairline and over his ear, but Billy feel pretty unrepentant about not telling Goodnight or Sam about it.  

“Maybe we should get going?” Sam says with a meaningful look at Goody who is rosy and droopy and thoroughly charming and Billy nod. He's been on ginger ale rations the whole evening apart from a few sips from Goodnight's bottle and is pretty much sober. 

In the cold night air Goody sobers up a little and he and Sam talk about who they had met and if anything interesting had come up. 

“I love a good old GSA meeting,” Goody says happily. “Makes me feel nostalgic for high school. The only thing that could make it perfect was it the abstinence society had the room opposite, do you remember that Sam? Our best recruitment pool.”

“Were you involved in your GSA in high school?” Billy asks, a little wistfully (he can vividly remember walking miles in roundabout ways to avoid the corridor where the information leaflet sat, just in case anybody could see him next the rainbow flag and make the obvious connection. Being subconsciously closeted had sucked balls). 

“Involved?” Goody scoff, “we started the GSA in our school.” He gazed out in front of him as if looking out over conquered realms, his face fond and nostalgic. “I was gay. Sam was straight. It was a fated alliance!” Goody says, expansively and throws an arm around Sam’s shoulder and trying to pull him down to kiss his cheek. They weren't much for PDAs and Billy can tell it is more for the sake of being obnoxious than anything else. 

It makes Billy laugh. “So you got together after high school then?” 

“What?” Goody says so abruptly that it makes Billy falter a little, unsure where he had lost the thread. 

“Um,you said Sam was the straight part, so obviously he’d, uh, let go of that when you started dating?”

Both Goody and Sam freeze up, staring at him. It ought to look funny, the two of them standing stock still in the freezing night and staring, Goody halfway trying to climb up on Sam, one leg thrown over his waist and arms locked around his shoulder in an attempt to reach his face. 

“We what?” Sam says, sounding stunned. 

Goody is hastily scrabbling to let go of Sam, who is just as quick in letting go of his coat and scarf and they stumble apart, still staring at Billy. 

“You thought we were together?” Goody ask, waving his hand between Sam and himself. 

“Yeah?” It seems still to Billy like no big deal, he can’t understand why they are acting so weird.

“Oh my god,” Goody says and Sam turns away with a hand over his face, making an odd high pitched noise. 

“We’re not together. Really really not!”

“You're not? I thought you were dating?”

“No we’re just best friends!” Goody says frantically.” I mean, of course there is nothing just about being friends, and not to demean the sacred bond of friendship, and Sam is the other half of my soul (“I’m really not,” Sam cut in) but I, we, we’re not dating. At all.”

“Ok, so, uh you just have sex?” Billy asks, bewildered.

Goody’s mouth drop open in a scandalised “O” in horror and Sam is still turned away, shoulders heaving with laughter.

“No! Of course not, I could never with Sam! That would be…” he makes an aborted gesture indicating the complete impossibility of him and Sam which Billy thinks was pretty damn insulting given that he’d seen it with his own two eyes. 

“But you go on cute dates! You know each other’s coffee orders. You have a picture in an Our First Date Frame!” 

This is true, it sat on Goodnights cork board, and Billy hadn't noticed it until Goody had moved it to pin the secret Valentines card. It’s a fucking adorable photo from the top of the Empire State Building with a windswept baby Goody in a striped t-shirt holding hands with, and beaming at, an equally baby faced Sam in truly regrettable glasses.

Goody opened his mouth but Billy is on a roll, and also quite indignant that they would try to keep this from him.

“You sleep in the same bed! You make out! I don’t know why you’d think I wouldn't be cool with it.”

Both Sam and Goody look somewhat sheepish, and Goodnight keeps shaking his head.

“We have been best friends since high school but we’re really not together. I, I might give Sam ….a...a….a” Goody fumbled for words, “a chaste peck every now and then, but I’d hardly go so far as making out more...ah..uh…”

“More like you have a chronic allergy to personal space?” Sam supplies smoothly and Goody nod eagerly and as realised what Sam had said he glares at him

“Sam!” he spits indignantly.

“No really?”Sam asks Billy affably,, “how long had you known each other before he was basically picking wax out of your ears?”

And well, put it like that. Billy could remember their first introduction lecture where Goody had casually put a hand on the back of Billy’s chair and lent into his personal space like it was nothing, while Billy sat there stiff as a rod and tried to not act like a spooked cat. And then finally, finally Billy felt like a lightbulb went off, throwing everything in blinding, illuminating light.

“So, you, you are not together?” he asks and Goody stares back at him, seemingly struck by the same thing, mouth half open and his eyes enormous in the dark, shaking his head.

“Yeah,” he says breathlessly.  “I mean no, no we’re not together.”

“And, uh, and you’re not seeing anyone?” Billy stutters, his heart beating like a steam engine and Goody looks at him, almost dazed.

“No, no I’m not, I’m not seeing anyone,” he says, eyes glued to Billy’s.

“Oh,okay,” Billy says stupidly, his face feels weird and it takes a moment before he realised he was smiling, widely and helplessly, that bright smile that only came out rarely and Goodnight is smiling back equally dopiley. Sam standing in between them and looking from one to the other, his eyebrows climbing higher and higher with each turn.

“Ok, I have no idea what the fuck is going on here but its subzero out here and I hear one half of Goody’s paltry doormroom bed calling my name so lets move it people.”

“Sure Sam,”  Goody says unusually docile, wrapping an arm around Sam’s waist. “Onward!” Billy wraps his arm around Sam’s waist from the other side so his hand can rest on Goody’s elbow.

“Onward!” he agrees cheerily. Sam looks unimpressed from one head to the other.

“Don’t know what the fucks wrong with either of you but let's go home anyway,” he says and Billy can feel Goodnight move his hand so it's loosely wrapped around Billy’s wrist, catching the thin skin between his glove and sleeves.  Goody’s fingers feel cold and bony and absolutely, absolutely amazing.

#idiots in love #Billy x goodnight college AU #second chapter #tw casual racism #writing #the magnificent seven #this is not the final part #one more bit coming #tw no fats no femmes no asians #this chapter is heavily inspired by Alison Bechdel

[bigskydreaming]

I'm gonna be honest, your posts and my own perception of dc comics + fandom + its treatment of my most favorite fictional character makes me want to write a spite fic, but I have OCs in my head who are not leaving anytime soon AND I wanna write a good old fashioned romance with Dick but I have never written romance ever I don't even understand it... And I write scenes rather than a whole story. So I'm genuinely afraid I'll start something and it will neither be cohesive nor finished. Regrets..

Honestly? I say just fucking go for it anyway. Put it out there. If you’re worried about leaving readers high and dry or whatever, just be transparent about that in your author’s notes....just say up front hey, I’m not sure what my updating schedule will be like or if and when this will be finished, but here’s what I have, hopefully some people will enjoy it for what it is.

Like, that thing people keep saying to me in arguments about Ao3 and creative responsibility, about how “well fans aren’t getting paid for what they create so they don’t owe anyone anything?” I’ll say til the end of time that’s effing crap when it comes to things pertaining to social criticism, stuff like racism, homophobia, pedophilia in their works. No, they’re not getting paid but they’re still presenting things to society for their consideration, and they still owe the bare basics of what everyone in society owes each other....ie things like not being racist, homophobic, predatory to children, etc. 

I bring that up here because the place where I ACTUALLY think “well fans aren’t getting paid to create their fanworks” is relevant....is stuff like you’re saying. Being worried about not finishing something and upsetting people.

THAT’S where I feel you don’t owe people, because devoting your free time and energy where and when you have it, to creating fanworks that you then offer up to the rest of fandom to hopefully enjoy, is not an obligation or a commitment to continuing to devote your free time and energy in order to continue to do so, if things change in your life or hell, if you just don’t want to anymore. Its your free time and your energy. That other people have benefited from it in the past, or reaped the rewards of your work in the form of entertainment they enjoy, is not an invitation for any of them to ever regard themselves as your boss and prioritize them as someone you need to please, more than you need to take care of yourself and what’s best for you.

There is a vast difference between ‘responsibility’ and ‘entitlement’ and so many of the issues I have with fandoms in general is the weird way in which so many people treat the two as flip-flopped and feel entitled to things they have no right to and meanwhile feel no responsibility to prioritize the basic decency everybody should have a right to enjoy.

In an ideal world, we’d never be without the endings to fics we invest a lot of time and energy into reading and enjoying, but other peoples’ enjoyment is not a responsibility we take on when we share things for free. This is one of those times when people need to be accountable for themselves. If they know they really hate not reading the ends of stories they really enjoy, and never getting the end to a story they’ve really been a fan of will upset them, that’s a them problem. That’s on them to factor this into their fandom experience and how they go about interacting with fanworks. 

There’s an easy solution to never being left hanging by an unfinished fic.....wait until a fic is finished before beginning to read it. Does that mean they might not get to read or enjoy the early chapters of something a lot of other people are reading and talking about? Yup. But if they’re gonna be bothered anyway after reading those and ultimately the fic goes unfinished, then there was never a scenario there that ended ideally. If you want the enjoyment of at least having sampled every creative idea in the fandom, you have to accept the possibility that some of those ideas will go without conclusion. If you want the surety of never being left bothered by an unfinished fic, you have to accept that there are some stories and ideas you’ll miss out on entirely.  *Shrugs* Its just how it is. 

Doesn’t mean that its still not frustrating to reach the end of a WIP and not know if there’ll ever be more, or flat out told there won’t be....but being frustrated is not the end of the world. Its a thing they can vent about on their blog, and a thing that can result in posts that make you feel targeted by and stress you out about not having updated lately, but that’s just because of how widespread the ‘really loved a WIP and now it’ll probably never be finished’ phenomenon is throughout every fandom, and has been pretty much from the start. And yet, fandom is still here, and none the worse off for the vast multitude of unfinished fics. 

Yeah, it sucks, but ultimately, its not a thing that actually hurts people, and its not a thing that you ever need to beat yourself up over. I mean, I’ve been there on both sides of the equation.....feeling super stressed and guilty over not updating a fic, and feeling frustrated by realizing a WIP I really loved is probably never going to be updated again. Neither is ideal, but it just is what it is. 

For what its worth, the thing I’ve received the most positive feedback on in literally any fandom I’ve been in over the past sixteen years, is Chapter 3 of my YJ fic, Born Under A Bad Sign. Only three chapters of that fic ever got around to being posted so far, with Chapter 3 posted like two years ago, I think.....and yet that one chapter alone has generated me more comments, private messages and emails than anything else I’ve ever written. It was a really personal chapter that allowed me to really unpack a lot of my own issues, like, Dinah basically acted as a proxy for all the things I wished someone had said to me at various points in my life...and even though I really hate that I’ve been too sidetracked by real life drama to return to that fic, I am so, so glad that I posted that chapter as soon as I wrote it anyway. I’ve been told by a lot of people that it really helped them as well, just to read it, because they felt like it said a lot of things they wish they’d heard before now too. And even just hearing it in a fic, said to a character they relate to....*Shrugs* It can help. You never know what can help someone, or what will really speak to someone, or what can have an impact. 

So I say if you cared enough to write it, someone’s bound to care enough to read it and be glad they did, even if you never write a single word more of it. If your biggest concern is leaving someone without more of something they enjoyed and came to love, just take comfort in the fact that you gave them something to love and some measure of enjoyment in the first place.