#why does he play so many bisexual characters

[lavenderdreams205]

spn thoughts as requested

tw & spoiler warning

they should have kept the grungy filter and aesthetics from the early seasons

bring back the southern / midwest gothic vibes

dean would've listened to and loved 90's & 2000s grunge - I know that the whole "there's no good music past '79" is a key part of his personality but pre series/early seasons dean is soo nirvana / Weezer / smashing pumpkins coded

there is too much flannel in the later seasons - I miss the carhartt and leather jackets so bad

BRING BACK DEANS JEWELRY

there's so much about cas that we don't know. there's all the episodes where he just isn't there and they never tell the viewers what he's doing or where he went

on the same note, cas's personality isn't nearly as flushed out as sam's or dean's are. who is his favorite musician? what's his favorite place to travel to? why does he like the pimpmobile so much? does he actually like the trench coat or does he wear it just because it's there?

so many people characterize cas as a little guy, and while he is cute, it's important to remember that he's also an incredibly powerful eldritch horror who leads angelic armies and brands Michaels vessel just because

dean is bisexual and in love with cas - I won't take the time to list all of the reasons here, but you can definitely find those reasons somewhere

i would've loved for them to use the handprint as a physical manifestation of their bond instead of having it be just a scar that fades with time

i'm actually really ok with the way cas dies, I think it makes sense for his character and provides closure (for him, at least, not for dean)

the parallels of cas and dean meeting in a barn and then dean dying in a barn

cassie is deans first love, cas is his last

the imagery of the empty as cas's wings in 15x18

why do the subtitles spell cas as cass, its awful

there's a few lines in the early seasons that seemingly reference dean getting roofied / sa'd and are subsequently played for laughs, Jensen Ackles confirmed that dean would've done underage sw when John didn't leave them with enough money. I believe that this trauma is a major reason that dean never accepted his sexuality

the way deans alcoholism is overlooked and joked about is actually insane

having dean be completely ok after 15x18 is also insane, especially after the widower arc where the show specifically shows it's viewers how deeply dean grieves cas when he dies

deans death is literally so stupid. I get that the show is trying to make a really meta point about the characters not having plot armor anymore because chuck is gone, but dean deserved to find peace. if the events of the show had never happened and pre series dean had never gotten pre series Sam back into hunting it would've ended the exact same way - dean dead on a hunt and Sam dying from old age

dean spends as much time on earth as he did in hell, and while he would never be the same, I like to believe that if he had been allowed by the narrative to live longer he would've gotten back a little of the twinkle in his eyes that he had before hell

in 15x20 Bobby says that cas helped rebuild heaven but if he was there he would've gone to see dean. additionally, there's no way cas should have been able to escape the empty. this is such a glaringly obvious plot hole and it drives me nuts

I would've liked to see cas's wings in the show - not just the shadow of them

the only time I tolerate serious discussion of wincest is in the context of ethel cain

i am a Sam disliker - while he does have many positive qualities, I have a really hard time getting past him not looking for dean when he was in purgatory and him joking about deans alcoholism and other traumas

i like Sam the best when he's with Eileen, I think they're adorable together and I'm mad they killed her off

I am a chronic jack defender, that boy has done nothing wrong

it would be interesting to explore cas and jacks relationships with their respective genders

there's no way being forced to murder the dean clones didn't affect cas, we only saw him kill the last one but the first few he had to kill had to have been devastating

i'm really disappointed by 14x13 Lebanon, we get the scene with John and Sam but I would argue that dean has significantly more reasons to be upset with John and it's unfortunate that the episode just glossed over this - I believe a screaming match between the two would have cleared the air a bit and been at the very least cathartic for dean

i'm fairly sure that it's canonical that John sent dean away on his 17th birthday to kill lesbian ghosts. my personal hc is that John suspected that dean was bi and sent him to teach him a lesson

i saw a post on here comparing hunting culture to biker and cowboy culture and viewing those things through a queer lens and I thought it was fascinating - there's so much spn could've done if it cared about the show more than money and losing viewers

every time cas and dean beat the shit out of each other, it serves as further proof of their relationship rather than discrediting their relationship - ie demon dean and cas fighting in the library is used to parallel Cain and Collette. it could even be assumed that their love is stronger because Cain killed Collette but dean left cas alive

The purgatory love triangle was so silly

once dean worked through all of his trauma and toxic masculinity he would've been a swiftie

all of the main characters have old / vintage cars but in like season 13/14 dean sam and cas just collectively own and use this really ugly silver truck from the 2010s. its such a small detail but it absolutely ruins my viewing experience every time I see it

dean is actually really smart but most of the fandom overlooks it because Sam is characterized as the smart one. if you know anything about cars you know it takes an insane amount of brains to build a car from scratch (he did this with baby multiple times throughout the show) also he just makes an emf meter using basically nothing. if dean had been given the same opportunities he gave Sam, he would've been an engineer or something

i will always be a John hater, if this man has 0 haters, I am dead

#spn #supernatural #dean winchester #castiel #sam winchester #destiel #ethel cain #grunge aesthetic

[davidtennantgenderenvy]

My Two Cents On The “ Is David Tennant Queer” Drama

As some of you know, I spent a solid third of the past year working on a movie-length video essay about David Tennant. This video essay features an eight minute section titled “Gender, Vulnerability, and Why David Tennant Is A Queer Icon”, which does not speculate on David’s own sexuality, but discusses the queer coding and subversion of gender norms in plenty of his roles and his importance as an ally to the LGBT community. At the same time, I was also coming to terms with my own identity as nonbinary and bisexual, and it ended up playing a crucial role in me finally working up the courage to come out to my parents. Characters like Crowley and the Doctor, both in terms of how they present themselves and how and who they love, have been absolutely instrumental in me developing my queer identity, and my comments section was full of people who had had similar experiences, who’d realized they were trans, nonbinary, gay, etc thanks to David and his characters. And as a result, I won’t deny that if David himself were to be queer, it would mean a lot to me.

Do I think David is queer? It’s certainly possible. I see a lot of how I express my queerness in how david chooses to express himself, most prominently through his frequent queer coding of characters who don’t necessarily have to be played as such. This can especially be seen through his Shakespeare characters, such as Richard, Hamlet, and some would argue Benedick as well. When I was 15 I played Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, who I chose to play as a closeted young gay man harboring an unrequited crush on Romeo. I think I saw this role subconsciously as an outlet for my own repressed queerness, both of gender and sexuality, as I had experienced an unrequited crush on my female best friend the previous year which I was still in denial about. I’ve described my gender identity as “a girl with a chaotic tortured gay man inside of her that needs to be let out every once in a while”, which has never been more true than with Mercutio- a character who I might add, I took a great deal of inspiration from David when playing! In terms of using roles as an outlet for one’s queerness, I could absolutelt see this being true with David, especially when it comes to Crowley, who seems to have had an impact on David’s style, behavior, etc in a rather similar way to how he’s impacted me. I don’t want to act like David wearing pink docs means he must be gay, I think people should be allowed to wear whatever they want regardless of sexuality, but taken in conjunction with so many other things about him, it does make one wonder, and the fact that a seemingly straight man has been so many people’s queer awakening is a bit puzzling to say the least. I won’t pretend that these “signs” (if you interpret them that way), haven’t been increasing somewhat in the past year, and if I got to share my own coming out journey with the man who inspired it, I would be absolutely thrilled. I also can’t specifically think of an instance where David has SAID he is straight, as opposed to Taylor swift, who has.

With all of that said, where I personally draw the line is when mere speculation crosses into interfering with the subject’s personal relationships and the sense that one is OWED something. I believe that what matters to David more than anything is being a husband and a father. I believe he adores Georgia and his children and would not do anything in the world that he believes would jeopardize his family. As happy as I would be for David if he were to come out (probably as bi) I realize that that would put so much unwanted attention on his marriage and family and I think that’s the last thing he wants. I don’t think it’s IMPOSSIBLE that he and Michael Sheen are having a passionate love affair behind everyone’s backs, but I absolutely don’t consider it my place to insist that they are, because as much as I may feel like I do, I don’t know these people! And besides, if David were cheating on Georgia, he really would not be the person I thought he was.

So many queer people see themselves in David and his characters, and that is beautiful. And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with having theories that David might be queer himself. However, it must be acknowledged that these theories are THEORIES, and they should not be used to invalidate people’s real life relationships- after all, it’s totally possible to be bi/pan and also be in a loving and healthy heterosexual relationship like David and Georgia at least seem to be in! If David were in fact “one of us”, I would welcome him with the openest of open arms, but unless and until he himself decides to proclaim himself that way, I will not expect anything of him other than to be the incredible artist and person we know and love.

#David tennant #michael sheen #georgia tennant #queer #lgbt #bisexual #nonbinary #Rpf #Personal #meta #I try really hard not to discuss David’s sexuality online #But people are so divided on this topic and I wanted to voice my thoughts seeing as I stand somewhat in the middle #good omens #doctor who #Crowley #The tenth doctor #hamlet #the fourteenth doctor #much ado about nothing #benedick #richard ii

[bombsquad9]

𝐋𝗼𝐯𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞 + 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫/𝐒𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝗼𝐧𝐬: 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐄𝐯𝐢𝐥 (PT. 1)

Characters Included: Ada Wong, Alcina Dimitrescu, Albert Wesker, Ashley Graham, Carlos Oliveira, Chris Redfield, Claire Redfield, Ethan Winters, and Finn Macauley.

><—><—><——><—><—><——><—><—><—><

𝑨𝒅𝒂 𝑾𝒐𝒏𝒈;

—> Ciswoman (She/Her), Bisexual w/ no preference

✞ Gift Giving: God, this woman loves to spoil her significant other. Anything she sees and think they'll like? Boom, it's bought within a second and being taken home to them as soon as possible. Did you mention something? Boom, next thing her partner knows is that the same thing is on their bed with a little note. What's the point in having someone to love if you can't shower them in things they want?

✞ Physical Touch: It may not be full blown cuddling most of the time, but small subtle touches. The kind that leave a person wanting more in seconds. Ada loves having that charm on her partner, but of course she's a sucker for some hugs from behind and kisses. It really just depends with her, but she loves it regardless.

𝑨𝒍𝒄𝒊𝒏𝒂 𝑫𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒄𝒖;

—> Ciswoman (She/Her), Lesbian/Sapphic

✞ Gift Giving: Considering she is filthy rich and quite literally a lady of an entire castle, she'd like to spend some time pampering her significant other with all the things she can give them. Anything they mention wanting around her she'll find a way to acquire, even if it means a limb from one of her many maids. She'd do anything to get her partner's eyes to light up (within reason) and happily watch them as they get excited over the gifts. What can she say, she likes to spoil her baby.

✞ Quality Time: Alcina LOVES to spend time with her significant other. It doesn't matter if it's a small dinner with them, them sitting with her whilst she plays piano, etc. She loves the idea of being in the same room as her partner and having her full attention on them (and vice versa). She may be able to live a long time, but depending on the circumstances, her significant other may not be able to and she wants to have every moment with them. Don't get her started on if anything bad happens either, she just wants good memories with her special someone.

𝑨𝒍𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒕 𝑾𝒆𝒔𝒌𝒆𝒓;

—> Demiboy (He/They), Pansexual

✞ Gift Giving: Another gift giver, Wesker is not good with words, and he definitely does not like being touched. He's a powerful being, and why not show that he can do whatever by getting his significant other whatever they want?

✞ Quality Time: He's a very busy man, and if he likes his partner enough to actually be with them, then might as well spend time with them. His idea of quality time is quietly sitting in a room while both people are doing their own things. What's more ideal then spending time with your significant other and getting work done?

𝑨𝒔𝒉𝒍𝒆𝒚 𝑮𝒓𝒂𝒉𝒂𝒎;

—> Demigirl (She/They), Straight

✞ Gift Giving: Ashley is the presidents daughter, so she's bound to come from a wealthy family, why not spend some of that wealth on her partner? Gifts can range from expensive jewelry to expensive dates even. Though, I feel like she'd also like making little trinkets for her special someone.

✞ Physical Touch: Ashley would be a very touchy person, always holding her partner's hand, giving them small pecks on the cheek, etc. She loves to show affection to the ones she loves, and is shameless about it. She does know there's a time and a place though, and if they want space she'll gladly give it to them (with a bit of a pout).

𝑪𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒐𝒔 𝑶𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒊𝒓𝒂;

—> Cisman (He/Him), Pansexual

✞ Physical Touch: You cannot tell me this man wouldn't be touchy, he would be all over his significant other. He would have an arm draped around their shoulders, and arm around their waist, etc. If him and them were at home he'd be laying on them in their arms. He just loves the feeling of contact, it assures him that they're real and there, which puts a smile on his face just thinking about it.

✞ Acts of Service: Carlos would do anything to make his significant other's life easier, even if it was just by a little bit. The thought of lifting a weight off of his partner's shoulders when they're exhausted or have no motivation to do something makes him happy. It makes him feel useful, he thinks of it as a way to pay them back for putting up with his smart ass all the time.

𝑪𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒔 𝑹𝒆𝒅𝒇𝒊𝒆𝒍𝒅;

—> Cisman (He/Him), Bisexual/Demiromantic/Demisexual

✞ Quality Time: Chris has been through a lot, and has lost a lot of people. He can't get the thoughts out of his head that something bad is going to happen to his significant other, so he wants to make every second count. It doesn't matter how, him and his someone could be in the same room, quietly doing their own things even. He just wants to have enough time with his significant other before anything can get in the way and cut that short.

✞ Words of Affirmation: Sometimes he just needs to hear from his special someone that they aren't going to leave. As I said before, he's lost a lot of people, most of them being very meaningful to him. He can't bear the thought of another person leaving, so hearing the words come out of his significant other's mouth in sincerity helps soothe his nerves, even if it's just a little bit.

𝑪𝒍𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒆 𝑹𝒆𝒅𝒇𝒊𝒆𝒍𝒅;

—> Demigirl (She/They), Omnisexual w/ a preference for women

✞ Quality Time: Claire thinks making memories with her special someone is extremely important, and what better way to do that other than spending time together? Whether it be a little date night or just laying in each others arms and conversing, she cherishes every moment of it. She likes seeing her partner happy, it makes her happy to know she's doing something right.

✞ Words of Affirmation: Claire loves praising her significant other, whether it be something as simple as a "I'm proud of you" or an "I love you". She wants them to know she loves them, and words are definitely a good way to do that. Expect her to shower her special someone with compliments and praise as much as she can.

𝑬𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒏 𝑾𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔;

—> Cisman (He/Him), Bisexual w/ a preference for women

✞ Acts of Service: Ethan would quite literally go through hell and back to make his significant other happy, so why not do simple things to make their life easier? He likes doing things for people, and he loves his partner so they're a prime target off that. He takes no protests, especially if it's something so simple he could do it in like five minutes.

✞ Physical Touch: I feel like Ethan would be the kinda guy to walk up behind his significant other while they're cooking, and give them a long hug from behind. He'd come home from work after a long day and just wanna lay down with his partner and embrace them.

𝑭𝒊𝒏𝒏 𝑴𝒂𝒄𝒂𝒖𝒍𝒆𝒚;

—> Transman (He/Him), Omnisexual w/ a preference for men

✞ Acts of Service: Finny here would do anything for his significant other. Similarly to Carlos, it helps him feel useful when he makes your life easier. Since he did a lot of the C4 work for his BSAA team, he just kinda got used to doing things for people too. It's a win/win for him, he gets to keep his brain active and some of your needs get met.

✞ Gift Giving: I feel like Finn would love to give his significant other little trinkets he sees or finds, or little things that reminds him of them. He likes to see the smile on their face when he comes home with a little gift for them. It warms his heart and he can't help but smile too. He also loves to give them things with a lot of sentimental value, whether it be something related to an inside joke, or something they mentioned a while back.

><—><—><——><—><—><——><—><—><—><

𝐓𝐚𝐠 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭: None Currently

A/N: Comments and reblogs are appreciated! <3

#resident evil 1 #resident evil 2 #resident evil 3 #resident evil 4 #resident evil 5 #resident evil 6 #resident evil 7 #resident evil 8 #resident evil village #claire redfield #chris redfield #carlos oliveira #ada wong #albert wesker #lady dimitrescu #finn macauley #ashley graham #resident evil headcanons #resident evil x reader #resident evil smut #carlos oliveria x reader #chris redfield x reader #albert wesker x reader #ada wong x reader #alcina dimitrescu #lady dimitrescu x reader #albert wesker headcanons #chris redfield headcanons #carlos oliveira headcanons #ada wong headcanons

[utilitycaster]

Unpopular opinion: parts of the cr fandom are really dismissive/ reductive of Travis’s characters. It feels like it’s due to Travis being seen as THE cis het man of the group, and by extension his characters must be heteronormative and bad, despite the fact that you could have queer interpretations of his characters. At the very least, Travis’s characters explore masculinity and the different ways it might look. It’s like the people who are all “ew men are gross and shitty” and act like that’s an absolutely normal reaction to a man just existing.

So this is another one in that I agree with the initial statement, but I'm actually not sure re: the reasoning why. I think it's possible but I could not tell you for sure.

I used to, again, think this was people carrying through Campaign 1 elements well beyond the point where C1 had ended, and so Grog having an intelligence of 6 was being applied to Travis; and this definitely does come through to an extent when people treat Fjord (objectively as smart as Beau without her circlet) as stupid or act shocked that Chetney is the brains of Bells Hells or that he can play a Cerrit, Fjord, or Nathaniel. However, again, I think this is one of those opinions that pops up among people who weren't around for Campaign 1 (or early enough in C2 to be exposed to it regularly) so I don't know if that's the case anymore. It could still be - it could be that Approved Fandom Opinions get passed down even when the logic behind them has long since been lost; that's a really common thing in institutional memory. But I can't say for sure.

I also have in the past credited it to, as you said, people assuming his characters are the cishet guys and then writing them off. That's still possible - I've seen both Fjord and Chetney called "token straight" despite considerable evidence of bisexuality, and they also paradoxically are both commonly headcanoned as trans while still getting called "token straight," which sort of ties into a post I would need to find from someone else from quite some time ago about which cast members are granted agency by the fandom in their choices vs. which are assumed to be the victims of circumstance. And I do think that there are people in fandom who have decided men are icky or whatever, and I used to think this came from a place of bigotry and a slide towards t*rf ideology but I now do genuinely think it's just idiots who don't grant interiority to characters outside their own limited understanding.

But I think it's also useful to consider a few things, most of which I've brought up before:

Travis is extremely offline. He is not here to entertain your headcanons; he has been politely but openly dismissive of some (imo, really fucking dumb) fanon/fan theories. I think the cast frequently talks about how it's their table, and I think that's valid and correct, but Travis is one of the players who lives it the most. He is playing this game with his friends, and he'd like it to be a good story, but if you don't like it, he is not here to make you like it. I think that really fucks with the parasocial connections some people desire with the cast.

Travis's characters tend to examine masculinity as a performance but also the general performance of the self, and the fact that you cannot in the end control how you are perceived entirely, and I think that really unsettles people who have equated presentation with reality and are again, looking for external validation of the self.

Travis can play it big but he's often extremely subtle, especially with his more serious characters, and he's not as easily quotable out of context as some others at the table. I think because he is a lot more naturalistic than dramatic at times (Chetney notwithstanding) and isn't as pithy and quotable in his characters as many of Taliesin's PCs are, and a lot of the strength is in the delivery, he gets overlooked despite being very good with words on the fly.

And finally: this would be a whole post on its own but people are still very foolishly wed to this idea that pressing the big red button in D&D is Wild and Chaotic and haha Big ADHD Man when it's actually how you play D&D if you're not a coward; the button is where the story is stored, and a lot of Travis's strength is that he is extremely good at understanding what the GM wants and supporting it with sufficient grace that it's only visible if you know what you're fucking doing.

#answered #Anonymous #in the end although it's frustrating the fandom often sells him short #every gm is like this man is the greatest player i've ever had so who's really right in the end #anyway. watch candela chapter 2. #opinions rating ask meme

[turtleblogatlast]

Thinking about the Don Suave scene and what it means in terms of LGBTQ+ representation because my brain does nothing if not torment me with random topics to ramble about on the regular.

Anyway, I just wanted to ramble about why I like the scene but to get it out of the way - the scene can very easily be interpreted in so many different ways, and all of them are valid. I personally see it as Leo having at least some attraction to a man. And the following is an explanation of my own interpretation and thoughts on it and what it means especially for Leo’s portrayal in the grand scheme of things.

Long-winded interpretation under the cut!

Now, to start with, it’s important to me that in the scene Leo looks at Don Suave in the very beginning and then for the entirety of the rest of the time the man is on screen, Leo’s eyes are closed. Yet, in the end, he is still visibly enamored with Don Suave, happily cuddling up to him as he’s being carried away.

You can very easily interpret this as Leo being spellbound and that’s honestly super valid and I believe he likely was at least somewhat in the beginning, but considering how fast he looked away and how he never looked again, I personally think it makes more sense to read it as Leo just finding the man attractive, at least somewhat. (For the record, I personally headcanon Rise Leo as bisexual with a heavy preference for men, but I want to be blunt when I say that any interpretation is valid. Literally any. Ace, pan, gay, bi, none of the above or a mixture of something new literally all of it is more than okay and fair. Hell you could even interpret this entire scene as more romantic attraction than physical and it would still work. Anything goes!! Don’t bother people, guys, really.)

The main reason I take this scene to be at the very least LGBTQ+ adjacent isn’t just because of how it’s portrayed, but because of who Leonardo is. Not in terms of Rise of the TMNT, but in terms of the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles™️ franchise.

Leo’s a character who, while changing with each iteration, has still at his core been around for decades upon decades as “the blue one”. One fourth of the team. He’s the one most are going to look at as the Leader, and oftentimes he is the one closest to having the title of Main Character. Not to say the others aren’t just as important, but Leo’s presence in the A plots of basically all TMNT media is often something very main character-esque.

And that’s very, very important to note. Here we have a Main Character of a prolific and decades long-running franchise distributed by a children’s television network. You can play around with his and his brothers’ characters all you like, but there is always going to be challenges to dodge around, especially since this was still in 2018-2019.

For example, you can play around with their designs so long as they’re color coded turtles, but their sexualities? Now that’s tricky.

“But what about Hypno and Warren?” Not main characters and also they’re Rise originals. They have a lot more room to play around with than a character like Leo does. But even talking about main characters in the franchise, you could arguably have an easier time playing around with Donnie or Mikey’s sexualities than Leo or even Raph, as (unfortunately) the former two tend to get more B plots, so they’d likely have had a little more leeway (still not a lot though.)

So, where does this leave us?

It leaves us in a place where outright stating and/or showing undeniable proof of Leo’s attraction to men is very, very difficult. So, workarounds!

Workarounds like the entire Don Suave situation.

To be honest, as left up to interpretation and lowkey and deniable as it is, this whole scene means a lot to me because of who Leo is as a character. It’s just nice when we get so see even the bare bones of representation with characters that have been such a large part of pop culture for decades, y’know? Even if more would be so much nicer, this is better than I thought we’d ever get for these boys.

And, again, literally nothing I’ve said is the only way to interpret it, I’m more than happy when people interpret media on their own honestly, it’s just something I’ve been thinking of lately and I was wondering if others felt the same way.

Whatever you think when you interpret this scene or Rise Leo as a whole, I just thought this would be interesting to think about, even if it was ramble-y, haha.

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt headcanons #rottmnt leo #rise leo #rise don suave #rottmnt don suave #I lied I’m back to ramble because I’m just #so bad at keeping my mouth shut #or uh #not typing word vomit #anyway- yeah this is my personal interpretation #I believe Leo was legitimately mesmerized by Don Suave’s powers…in the beginning #but even the series’ creator says it was ‘at least PART of what was going on with Leo’ so #idk it’s something that’s been on my mind and I was wondering if anyone else felt the same?? #may delete this later who knowssss #pleaaaase feel free to disagree I just like to talk lol #but yeah sometimes I look around at how much media has LGBTQ+ rep in it now and it honestly makes me emotional?? #(we always always ALWAYS could use more but) #we did not have even a crumb of this as kids #but also like most of that rep is new properties #and I just was thinking about what that could mean #idk man idk #once again please don’t take this as facts it is VERY MUCH NOT #man I was looking around for good images to use and found jack all #anyway tho did you know Donnie often has bi colors around him and Leo is often dressed in the colors of the trans flag- #okay anyway back to the caves I go this comic won’t draw itself #I gotta spray myself with water any time I go to type long winded essays because they’re not great for the mental health fr

[nenilein]

Hello! Apologies for sending an ask out of the blue but considering your familiarity with localisation differences in persona 4/golden, I was wondering if anything comes to your mind regarding this aspect and how the game depicts queerness and queer themes? Thank you!

Heya! Don't worry, I was thinking people would probably ask stuff like this. After all, I already replied to somebody's tags asking this same thing previously, but I know not many people saw that, so let me use the chance to go into more detail:

Unfortunately, Persona 4's treatment of queer themes is not a result of the translation. The only things that were down to translation choices were small things, such as which pronouns are used in which situation (because Japanese does not at all have the same concept of third person pronouns as English, and the way first person classifiers that mean "I" work is very complex and a lot more vibes-based than actually tied to gender.)

But for the most part, everything is pretty much the same. Kanji's reaction to Chie mumbling about something being "off" about how he interacted with Naoto that first time, the tent scene, Yosuke's extreme insecurity in his own sexuality in addition to everyone else's... I think maybe the only thing that's a biiit better in Japanese is that Teddie is kiiinda genderfluid in Japanese, with the artbook outright stating that he doesn't necessarily consider himself "male" when he's in his bear form, unless it's necessary for a joke.

A lot of this can be traced to the really odd relationship the game's director, Katsura Hashino, has to queer themes. In interviews about Catherine Fullbody (a game which infamously has a rather weirdly handled gay romance route which, however, is notably also the only romance route in the game that cannot possibly result in a bad ending), he talks about how he's always admired queer people for being "strong" and wanted to write queer stories, but couldn't really do it until Fullbody because Atlus higher ups were afraid of backlash from the fans.

Traces of this are actually seen in Persona 4 Vanilla's data, where remnants of a surprisingly well done romance route for YOSUKE, of all people, are still present. That route made it far enough into development to have voiced lines in both, English and Japanese. However, it was dummied out in the final game and its script content was removed. Yosuke STILL has the "girlfriend flag" in the code that all the female romance options also have, but in the finished game it only checks whether you can hug him during his social link or not. Everything else was dummied out. You can still find the voice files on the cutting room floor if you want:

And yes, the "I like you" line is unambiguously romantic in Japanese. His wording is very hard to misinterpret.

However, in the finished game and the rest of the franchise Yosuke's bisexuality was reduced to an in-joke of the developers. It's most poignant in Persona Q (the first one), where if you get the "marriage" scene with Yosuke in the second dungeon, his reactions differ WILDLY depending on which Protagonist you are playing as, far more than other male characters. With Makoto Yuki he acts nonchallant and deadpan about it. With Yu Narukami he acts like a blushy Tsundere and panics constantly. So, yeah.

Okay, so, if the director had interest in writing queer stories since before Persona 4, why is Persona 4 the way it is then?

Well, because - and there's no way around it - he sucks at it.

Katsura Hashino has to be one of the clumsiest "gay activists" I've ever seen in my whole darn life. He finds queer people "cool", but seemingly never had any queer writers or sensitivity readers on his teams and it's caused enormous blunders in how these themes have been handled. For example, when after Persona 3 it was pointed out to him that the writing of the female characters in interaction with the male characters was bad, he immediately hired more female writers and gave them free reign for how to handle the female characters from then on out. But apparently the same thing never happened with his mishandling of queer themes. He wants Catherine's Erica and Rin to be empowering figures for trans women and gay men, but makes a lot of blunders in how he has other characters interact with them to the point it buries his good intentions. Erica's boyfriend having gay panic upon realizing she's trans is treated as "funny and cute", even by Erica herself. Rin technically being a monogender alien really undermines his story of becoming more secure in his sexuality. It goes on and on like that.

The intention with Naoto's story was to point out the extreme sexism in Japanese society and how it forces female nerds to find alternate modes of self-expression, but the clumsy choice of including surgery themes in Naoto's dungeon completely buried that for especially western queer audiences. Most people don't even remember Naoto's dungeon was outright modeled after a Kamen Rider villain hideout. They completely shot themselves in the foot with this one. Additionally, the way Naoto is handled AFTER the dungeon makes her (I'm using that pronoun because she calls herself a "woman" in Japanese in the game) seem more like someone who's on the verge of discovering they are X-gender (the japanese word for "nonbinary") than a repressed girl. Like, right down to how she has Rise help her experiment with clothes in the canonical drama CDs only to realize she really is uncomfortable with skirts and go for an androgynous but less restrictive look going forward. The way she dresses in the Golden epilogue and P4D is pretty X-gender core if you ask me. If they had leaned into that they could have genuinely have had something AMAZING, while also presenting the themes of sexism they wanted to explore, but the lack of queer sensitivity readers kind of ruined it.

Same for Kanji. The way they write him makes it seem like he's bisexual or pansexual, rather than straight, but they kinda shove that part of him aside after his dungeon is done, leaving his actual orientation up in the air and wasting a really good chance for representation. NOW, given what happened to Yosuke's social link, it's quite possible the original intent WAS to explore this more and it got cut, but as it stands, we'll never know. The huge problem of the internalized toxic stereotypes his Shadow presented never being reflected on and put into their right context in the rest of the game, when his social link could've given a great opportunity for that is also a huge shame.

All of this happened because of Atlus being unwilling to let their writers go all out with queer themes in fears of alienating a cishet audience AND because Hashino never sat his writing team down with any actual queer writers to sort this shit out and learn how to get across what the team was ACTUALLY trying to say. Now, given, Persona 4 was far from the only Japanese media property with that exact issue at the time, but it hurts especially much in its case because of the game's themes of exploring the truth to its logical conclusion, as well as psychology. These are issues that a remake REALLY would do well to address and correct. I feel like they actually will HAVE to do that, because sensitivity readers have become the NORM in handling these themes now in Japanese media, rather than the exception. You can thank trail blazing mainstream works like Zombie Land Saga for that.

All in all, Persona 4's handling of queer themes is an exercise in frustration that I hope is corrected soon.

#Persona 4 #Neni Replies #Naoto Shirogane #Kanji Tatsumi

[weeb-polls-with-pip]

Autistic Anime Boys Round 5 Match 1

Propaganda:

L -

"You KNOW he had to be on this list. He's the icon, the legend. Hates shoes. Sits bisexually. Holds everything like it's on fire. King of remote work (responsible, probably predicted the pandemic ten years before it happened). Decided to handcuff himself to his #1 suspect for the most dangerous murderer in human history. There's some bonus material in one of the newer death note side-story collections that confirms he does not dress himself and bathes by being put into a washing machine. Can fly a helicopter. Special interest is knowing exactly where you live. You know who this man is."

Ishimaru -

"His title is "Super High School Level Hall Monitor" or "Ultimate Moral Compass" (depending on which translation we are going with). He was literally scouted by Hope's Peak Academy because he is very best at being the best boy. He is so hell bent on being the best student possible, that when the killing game starts his first concerned with not being able to attend classes. He's so hard working that he struggles to socialize with his peers (which is very relatable). When he tries to step in as the class leader, everyone else ignores him (which is also relatable). He naturally talks loud and doesn't seem aware of how strongly he comes off when talking to others. But even when he is scolding someone for their misbehavior, he does so because he wants to bring out the best in them. Kiyotaka puts 300% into everything he does on principal (and because he feels like it is his duty to restore his family's name). Many of his Free Time events center around him trying to figure out the "logic" in what other people do (such as why they would spend time playing video games/watching TV or why Makoto wears his jacket when it is against the school's dress code). Ishimaru Kiyotaka is easily one of the most autistic-coded characters in the Danganronpa series."

#tumblr polls #autistic anime boys poll #original poll #l lawliet #l dn #dn l #death note #l death note #death note l #dn #danganronpa #kiyotaka ishimaru #ishimaru kiyotaka #dgrp

[amageish]

So, Felicia Hardy mentions having a girlfriend in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and this has resulted in a lot of discussion... I wanna talk about it!

One thing I find really interesting about the conversation is that so many articles discussing it credit Felicia's bisexuality to this moment from 2021, where she and Odessa Drake have an on-panel kiss followed by an off-panel one-night-stand.

While this is pretty friggin' gay and good for them, I feel like reducing the story to "Black Cat kissed a girl in 2021 and that's why she has a girlfriend in the video game" is missing a lot of the larger context... so let's discuss some of the history of Felicia Hardy, AKA the chaotic crime bisexual Black Cat.

Felicia Hardy debuted in 1979. Tamara Blake, her "oldest friend" and female lover, first appeared in 1984, only 5 years later, debuting in the Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Annual "Cat and Mouse."

Dropping by for a night of "harmless frolic," Tamara robs Felicia, aiming to play a game of cat-and-mouse with her friend. While their relationship is not explicitly romantic in this story, Tamara is portrayed as very close to her ex-partner-in-crime and very familiar with her relationship habits. She is surprised by the reveal that Black Cat is trying to settle down with Spider-Man - and to be skeptical about if Felicia will be able to tie herself down to one man... almost as if she knows Felicia has a pattern of behaviour when it comes to monogamy.

I don't know if this story was intentionally gay or not, but it would be used as a foundation for later queer storytelling about Felicia, so it seems worth mentioning it here!

What is pretty explicit, however, is Felicia's relationship with her partner Diana in the 2002 Spider-Girl series. They are just called partners, not lovers, but the framing and discussion of it is obvious enough that, in my opinion, if you know that gay people exist and can accept the possibility of them being gay, then you probably will read this and go "Oh, yeah, they are gay."

This story does not take place in Earth-616 and is primarily focused on Mayday Parker as Spider-Girl and Felicity Hardy as Scarlet Spider, but Felicity does have two moms - and we love that for her!

Jumping ahead a bit, Tamara returned via flashback in Black Cat #10, released in 2020, and this fleshed out their backstory together. It revealed how they trained together under Black Fox as their mentor and clearly shows them using slight-of-hand to hold hands and canoodle without Fox noticing what they're up to.

This is just a super-cute panel to me. That's such a clever use of slight-of-hand; I love it so much...

The next year, in Black Cat Vol 2 #3, there's a vision of Black Cat surrounded by a harem of her lovers, which includes Tamara and Odessa alongside several of her more famous male affairs.

Shortly thereafter, she kissed Odessa on the lips, as discussed earlier. In case the earlier evidence was not enough for you, Felicia Hardy is now formally unquestionably a girl-kisser. We even later get to see her and Drake's one-night-stand via flashback, in case there was any lingering doubts about what happened.

However, it also doesn't end there. It's not like Felicia just kissed a women, Marvel patted themselves on the back, and now she's been back to dating Peter Parker exclusively. There are plenty of comic characters who have had one defining "queer moment" and mum's been the word on their queerness since then... Felicia, meanwhile, is very loudly bisexual.

Immediately, she got a Pride variant cover in 2021 and has been on at least one cover every year since. My favourite is probably this one from 2022, which is both very poly and also features Peter Parker... I'm sure if you'd ask Marvel corporate they'd say he is just there as an ally, but it's still funny to me.

In 2021, she was the character used for the grand return of Jessie Drake (Felicia really has a thing for women with last names that end with -ake, apparently). Jessie was Marvel's first explicitly transgender character, debuting all the way back in 1992. After getting off to a rocky start, Felicia blows up a building with Jessie's help and they go out for dinner.

(This story was not followed up on as the book it was supposed to lead into got cancelled. Drake has not so much as cameoed since. F in the chat for Jessie Drake).

In 2022, there was an 5-issue mini-series all about Tony Stark and Felicia bonding over their mutual problem of supervillain ex-girlfriends trying to murder them. Of the two halves of the pair, Felicia gets the better deal - Tamara not only teams up with Felicia and Tony to fight Tony's ex, but they do so much flirting that Tony forgets that are not currently dating.

And, finally, in 2023, there was another Felicia story in a Pride issue wherein she hooked up with a pseudo-diety and also worked with Gambit to fuck with some transphobes in the process. Good for them!

This is not by any means a definitive list of everything gay Felicia has done - she famously flirts with MJ and Cindy a lot, for instance - but I hope it provides some larger context to Felicia's sexuality in the game.

Moreover, I hope it shows that queer storytelling isn't always about writing a single gay kiss that generates headlines. A lot of Marvel and DC queer storytelling that goes viral isn't the actual multi-issue multi-comic-run queer stuff; it's the one big kiss or something subtextual that happens to feature MCU heroes with better SEO then people like Felicia have... and I think it's the more under-the-radar stuff that's often more valuable.

#felicia hardy #black cat #spider-man 2 #tamara blake #odessa drake #jessie drake

[plutodetective]

I have to work today, but there’s a lot I want to say about Jonathan and gender, and I won’t have the time to organize it in a proper essay, so here are some points:

1) Of fucking course men can have characteristics usually attributed to women and still be men. I’m working on a series of sci-fi adaptations of fairy tales, and in my Sleeping Beauty the protagonist is a (cisgender) boy, precisely because I want boys to see they can be vulnerable and need rescue too. And I completely understand if someone prefers to see Jonathan as a cis man because it’s so rare to see men in this role, surviving abuse, when it does happen in real life. I start my Gothic Heroine Support Group fic with Belle making precisely this point. Men can be prey, women can be predators. She knows this because that’s what happened to the original Beast, and kudos to Gabrielle Suzanne de Villeneuve, the author of the original Beauty and the Beast, for making this point centuries ago.

2) That being said, Jonathan seems to identify with women on a deeper level than being on a role in which women usually are. For me, what cements the headcanon is when he chooses the women’s quarters to sleep in, seeming to long for “a gentle life”, even if it involved sadly waiting for the menfolk to return from war. He seems to identify with the female identity, not only the female role. That’s only my personal interpretation, I fully acknowledge that. But seeing as it’s one that a lot of trans people in the fandom seem to share and, more importantly, to identify with, it’s one that is more than valid: it brings people joy. I’m cis. I’m also bisexual, and I know the joy of seeing myself in a character through subtext, and also how frustrating it is when people say it’s not true because it’s not 100% explicit in the text. If trans people are telling me they identify with Jonathan, I believe them and I take that as there being reasons I acknowledge I cannot fully understand why Jonathan is potentially a trans woman.

3) I assume everyone here has heard of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. But it’s less likely that everyone has heard of Gail Carriger’s The Heroine’s Journey. I fully recommend this book to everyone. But the point she makes is that whether someone is a “hero” or a “heroine” according to hers and Campbell’s analysis doesn’t depend on their gender. Women can follow Campbell’s Hero Journey, and men can follow Carriger’s Heroine Journey. And non-binary people can follow either. The names come from the gender of the characters who originated the archetypes, with Campbell’s being classic Greek heroes, and Carriger’s being ancient world goddesses. With that in mind, although no one has written a “Gothic Heroine’s Journey”, Jonathan Harker is a gothic heroine, regardless of whether you see him as cis man or trans woman, because he follows that story type step by step.

4) Does anyone here know of a transgender gothic heroine (in the gender neutral sense explained above)? Because I don’t. If anyone does, seriously, please point me their way, I’d love to increase my gothic knowledge. But it’s a type of representation I’ve never seen. As a member of a lot of minorities, I feel very happy whenever I see any of them represented in ways I’ve never seen before, and I can only imagine it’s the same for trans people. So what’s the harm in letting Jonathan be that? Seriously. All that is missing so far from Jonathan being a fully classical gothic heroine is him going around the castle in a flowing white dress. If I ever get to adapt my written version of modern day!Dracula, I’ll absolutely put Natália (my version of Jonathan) in a white nightgown, just to give a transgender actor the chance to play out this scene that I’ve seen so many cis women do over the years. Again, I understand if someone takes empowerment from Jonathan as a cis man surviving abuse, and I’d never want to take that away from them. Jonathan being a cis man is an absolutely valid reading too. But I think trans women deserve empowerment too, deserve to see a trans woman playing out a story so many of their cis counterparts have always had. The book is in public domain. We can each adapt them the way we choose. Cis man Jonathan and trans fem Jo, Natália, or whatever name you prefer for her, can coexist and be important to the groups of people each of them are important to. 

#dracula spoilers #dracula #jonathan harker #dracula daily #re: dracula

[samble-moved]

Sayaka is Biyaka (or, a Lesbian Tries to Disprove the "Sayaka is a Lesbian With Comphet" Bi Erasure Theory)

For some reason, there's a loooot of belief in the PMMM fandom (this was especially bad in the mid 2010s) that Sayaka isn't bi (despite her canon, on screen romantic interested in both Kyosuke, a guy, and Kyoko, a girl), she's "just" a lesbian struggling with compulsive heterosexuality.

While many lesbians do struggle with comphet, erasing Sayaka's status as bi/pan/omni/mspec to claim she's a lesbian is...not great!

Usual signs of comphet include, but are not limited to:

Only attraction to guys involves ones who are entirely unobtainable (ex. a celebrity, fictional, etc)

Any man you fantasize about is faceless/nameless

Interest in men in theory, but not practice

"Choosing" a man to have a crush on to seem "normal", or because it's expected

Attraction based on logic, not actual emotion (ex. because your parents would approve)

Liking a guy until they return the interest

Being attracted to certain guys just because of something like a talent

(...and more examples here!)

However, Sayaka's attraction to Kyosuke doesn't seem based on any of these, but seems more to be genuine attraction/interest.

For one, Sayaka has been close to Kyosuke ever since she was a child. They're described and shown as childhood friends, and he isn't a guy Sayaka "just met" and "chose" to be into.

Sayaka also just isn't into Kyosuke at a surface level. If she held no true attraction towards him, why would she willingly trade her relatively safe, happy life for his happiness? Her wish was to heal his hand. While this was the stated wish, it's outright shown that Sayaka didn't just want that. It's outright shown canonically that, while not fully said, Sayaka wants Kyosuke's appreciation and recognition for this. She wants him to know the miracle was her doing, and wants him to love her for doing it.

The various interpretions of this won't be majorly touched here, as whether or not Sayaka's thinking there is "selfish" isn't important. What is important is that Sayaka shows a true level of attraction to Kyosuke, and wishes it was reciprocated.

It's not that she "just" likes him for his skills (she still visits him in the hospital, even during a time where it's implied that he won't be able to play his violin again). It's not that he's a guy out of reach — he's a childhood friend. She's not being pressured into liking guys. She literally jokes about Madoka being her wife in front of Hitomi, publicly.

Her feelings are obvious and genuine enough that Hitomi tells Sayaka that, if she wants, she will give Sayaka a day to confess to Kyosuke before Hitomi does.

A bisexual person who ends up later liking someone of the same gender later on isn't "actually gay" instead. A bisexual person with a preference isn't "choosing a side". Erasing a canon bisexual character's identity to claim "ummm, akshully, 🤓 they're Really X sexuality instead" is biphobic!

I'm probably not the best person to make this post, as I am a lesbian, not bisexual. However, people erasing a bi character's sexuality to call them a lesbian instead is not okay, and it wouldn't be okay the other way around either. It's not "progressive" to insist a bi character can't possibly be bi, they have to be gay. Sayaka shows no sign of comphet, no sign of "just" likely Kyosuke because she feels it's "right". She shows actual, real interest in him and Kyoko, and that doesn't make her "actually a lesbian". She's bisexual. A character being bi isn't some stepping stone to them being "really" gay later on, and it isn't a dirty word to call them bi! It's an identity like any other.

Most fans ignore Kyosuke. This isn't something I think is a major issue, as Sayaka seems to lose interest in him after Rebellion (saying Hitomi deserves better). He's probably not the best guy. But that's not an excuse to erase Sayaka's identity, because she liked a not-so-great dude. A lesbian with a shitty ex isn't suddenly not a lesbian, and a bisexual person with a less than stellar former crush isn't suddenly not bisexual due to it.

Tl;dr:

#pmmm #madoka magica #sayaka miki #sayaka #biphobia tw #bi erasure tw #meta #long post

[whencloudwavesbreak-if]

When Cloud Waves Break Pinned Post

LINKS: DEMO [UPDATED 30/03/2024] | COG FORUM

SUMMARY

When Cloud Waves Break is a work-in-progress murder mystery/Lovecraftian horror interactive fiction story. After returning to your hometown of Golden Gulf, your older sister is brutally murdered. The method? Poison. The location? The Twin Suns restaurant, on its reopening night. It's up to you to find her killer. But it won't be easy. Between dealing with your hostile brother-in-law, the police force interfering every step of the way, and your own memories about why you left, you're in for a rough time. And that's not even taking into account the weird dreams you've been having…

FEATURES

Play as male, female, or non-binary; straight, gay, or bisexual.

Customize your sister: choose her name, her personality, and determine your relationship with her.

Choose between four possible occupations: actor, doctor, soldier, or dilettante.

Learn more about the history of Golden Gulf, how your family ties into it, and what it has to do with your sister's murder.

And maybe stop a cult. Or join them. It's up to you.

ROMANCE OPTIONS

Officer Casey Young (NB) "I'll keep you safe. I promise."

Description: The officer from Augusta, sent to find and arrest the leader of the Burning Waters crime gang, Nina Wu. They don't trust many people. Maybe you can be the exception?

Appearance: Faded tattoo of a monkey on their neck; wild hair; friendly, but cautious eyes.

Personality: They are kind, with a spine of steel, and will always do the right thing. Even if everyone turns against them and they risk losing everything. Make them care for you, though, and the choice will destroy them.

Evelyn Ross (F) "You and me? It just feels too good to be true."

Description: Your brother-in-law's administration assistant. Duty and logic drives her every action. To her, love is a silly afterthought. Maybe you can change her mind?

Appearance: Petite. Lustrous, thick hair. Bright eyes. Glasses. Conventionally attractive.

Personality: Her calculating mind is her greatest strength, but also her greatest weakness. She's aware of all the possibilities stretching out before her, but also of the consequences. And it paralyzes her. But reassure her, become an anchor for her, and she'll lift you up in turn.

Jeremiah/Jessamine Callahan (M/F) "I'd forgotten what this felt like. Thank you for reminding me."

Description: The sole survivor of the wealthy Callahan family. You grew up with their spouse, Riley. They've loved and they've lost. Maybe you can help them learn to love again?

Appearance: Hair braided in cornrows; ragged and tattered clothes; an air of sadness that hangs over them like a cloud.

Personality: They aren't afraid to say what they think and have a very strong moral compass. But it can sometimes lead them to jumping to conclusions. Get them on your side though, and they'll follow you to the very end. 'Til death do you part.

Oscar/Ophelia Lovelace (M/F) "You are everything that I imagined you to be."

Description: The interior designer contracted for the reconstruction. Love wasn't enough to keep you in Golden Gulf. But maybe they can?

Appearance: Very tall and graceful; eccentric sense of style; an ever-present smile.

Personality: They project a polite and mild mannered façade. But their true personality emerges through their design work, which they are obsessively dedicated to. Catch their attention, though, and they'll never let you go.

ADDITIONAL INFO

OTHER IMPORTANT CHARACTERS:

Your Older Sister: She was many things, to many people. How did you see her? Was she self-absorbed? Naive? Arrogant? Or charming? But none of that really matters now that she's dead... Does it?

Benjamin Mullen: Your sister's husband. He's a difficult man to get along with. He also has a problem with you specifically, and isn't afraid to tell you so.

INSPIRATIONS:

Agatha Christie mystery novels, Lovecraftian horror, The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers, the TTRPGs Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition and Brindlewood Bay, and Slay the Princess by Black Tabby Games.

#interactive fiction #choicescript #dashingdon #choice of games #hosted games #when cloud waves break #when cloud waves break if #if: intro #if: wip #cyoa #if intro #if wip

[mpregnateyourocs]

My Problem With Countess Strahd

I know I'm going to get flack on the lesbian vampire website for disliking the lesbian vampire, but the truth is I don't dislike genderbending Strahd, what I dislike is the way she is implemented, partly this is because there is a very popular fan supplement that does exactly what I DON'T want to see in a female Strahd.

Spoilers below the cut, and also bitching

I understand why some DMs want to genderbend Strahd. Maybe the themes of abuse that come with the story are more palatable when it's a woman doing the abuse. Maybe bisexual vampire lady sexy. Maybe the DM can't do male voices. As I said, nothing wrong with wanting Countess Strahd, the problem comes in how she's portrayed.

Strahd's character is fairly well known. A powerful and intelligent general, he turned to dark powers out of a fear of his own mortality. Right off the bat, that's a great villain, regardless of gender. But so many people who want "female Strahd" don't settle for "male Strahd but with different pronouns, they want to make her...A Woman.

The DMs who genderbend Strahd always feel compelled to change major aspects of her character and backstory. And THAT is where I start to have problems.

When it comes to the personality, rather than play him as the arrogant, commanding, lawful evil monster he is, female Strahd tends to be a seductress who manipulates her way to the top of the pile, using her looks and Feminine Wiles to get what she wants. Gone is the commanding and deadly attitude, now she's someone who lurks in the shadows, often lying to the party and claiming she's much less dangerous than she really is.

Which ties back into the backstory changes. Strahd was the firstborn son, raised to be a king and a general, spending his entire life at war. Female Strahd never gets to be a general or a king. The story is always changed so she is forced to marry a man (usually abusive) and all she wants is to be taken seriously for her big brain. Her resentment toward Sergei is changed so that, rather than being jealous that he had an easy life and she had to fight, he gets to be king and she is passed over.

"This makes sense" a DM says, "that a woman in ye olde timese would want to be king but couldn't." Except it only makes sense because you decided that Strahd's homeland was a patriarchal society. Except we know almost nothing about Strahd's homeland and what little we do know does not suggest a firstborn daughter couldn't rule. You're literally making up sexism where it doesn't exist. All in the name of making Strahd a grrrlboss struggling to Fight The Patriarchy!

Usually this leads to problems, when you make a female Strahd with a more sympathetic backstory than male Strahd, 9/10 times the DM goes running to the CoS DM subreddit crying 'my players want to redeem Strahd what do I doooo???'

The handling of Ireena and Tatyana is perhaps the most varied change with a female Strahd. Some just have her be bisexual and chasing after a female Ireena, some have her be bisexual and chasing after a male Ireena or Ismark. If Tatyana is a woman a DM will often make it so either Strahd couldn't confess because "that's forbidden love!" or she and Tatyana were having an affair but that mean Sergei forced Tatyana to marry him (once again back to the "I've made female Strahd more sympathetic than male Strahd" problem). Sometimes things get...weird like changing it so Strahd is actually Tatyana's abusive mother, which is an oddly common thing. A female villain MUST be a mother, because that's a plot for Women.

Incidentally, this is similar to the reason why most Villain Tatyana leave a bad taste in my mouth. Tatyana is a character we get no unbiased information about, what little there is about her in Official Books is written from the point of view of Strahd who, being in love with her, is the most biased a person can get. What we do know of her is that she was ultimately a victim, of Strahd, of Sergei, and of the games cosmic forces played with their lives. She is strong, yes, breaking free of a vampire and throwing herself off a cliff rather than just 'giving in' takes strength. But ultimately she was the victim, she was the one who suffered the most. So taking a victim and going "oh she's evil now she wants to do bad things and now you have to kill her" is maybe the most distasteful interpretation of the Tatyana story that exists.

Anyway, there is no real conclusion other than if you're going to give Strahd (bigger) boobs she should still be Strahd and not Sexy Vampiress.

#curse of strahd #strahd von zarovich #curse of strahd spoilers #long post

[monsters-villains-and-bastards]

(I am once again thinking about fallen hero (i never stopped))

Ya know, I feel like one of the reasons that fallen hero resonates so hard, at least for me, is how queer it is. Obviously, you can play as a cishet sidestep, but when you do play a queer sidestep? It *feels* queer.

Its rare that I come across a story that feels unapologetically queer. To me, there's a big difference between a story that features gay characters, a story that "is gay," and a Queer story. And even further, a story that is unapologetically queer.

With Fallen Hero, there's so many moments that are queer in a way I just, don't see often.

(I currently only have 1 sidestep who is a queer transman, so im comin at this from this perspective, but if anyone has played it other ways and would like to add, I would love to hear about your experiences with it)

When I play it, like I said, I currently have 1 sidestep who is a queer transman. So far, I've played it where he romances Ricardo, Wei, and Daniel (plus Ricardo and Wei, and Richard and Daniel). Each of them add something different to the story when they are romancing a transman that I can't help but adore.

The scene with Ricardo in his apartment, and sidestep is about to have the conversation about being trans, sidestep can panic because they don't know what exactly to say, how to do it, and what Ricardo's reaction is going to be. And you know what, yeah, that can be a very scary moment for someone who's trans. How do you tell someone you're trans when you don't know exactly what to say and how they'll react to it? And then, if Sidestep does tell him, Ricardo *cries.* He was so worried about Sidestep, and didn't know if he done something wrong, and he cries. There's also a point where he tries to make a joke or comment to lighten the mood and says something about being more familiar with those parts. And ya know what, ngl, that was a bit in poor taste but really funny. But I'm happy that it was included! Because sometimes people say things trying to lighten the mood and ya know what, sometimes it's a little bit like "why would you say it like that" and sometimes it's also funny. He's not perfect, he doesn't understand everything, but he's *trying.*

Either before or after that ( I can't quite remember, but ik it's within the same set of scenes), Sidestep can talk to him about being bisexual. Depending on the choice you pick, Ricardo can talk about growing up in Texas and that being gay or bisexual wasn't really okay. When he talks about his and Sidestep's past, there's a point where it's like, yeah, he would've been torn to shreds by the media if he was openly bisexual. And yeah, it isn't easy for everyone to come to terms with their sexuality, and it's easier to ignore it that try to deal with it, especially if you're going to experience public backlash on top of being raised in an area that was Not okay with queerness. It's scary!

One of the aspects I specifically love about Ricardo's romance, is that it's messy. You're playing a character that he knew in the past, thought was dead, and comes back into his life after so much has changed. Two people who have been broken down over the years of trauma they had to experience. There's so many ways you can play it that its hard to talk about all the ways in which the variations add their own mess to the situation too. So yeah, the romance can be so queer and so messy at the same time.

With Steel, if you're playing a trans sidestep, he already knows they're trans because of the pictures he got, but it doesn't change anything for him. He's a gay man who tells sidestep that who he sees is a man. It's that simple. He even tells sidestep that he was attracted to Sentinel, who was also trans.

With his romance, there is an age gap, but he didn't have attraction towards sidestep until after they came back, and they tried to become friends with each other. There's also some messiness with his romance if Ortega is a man because he had/has feelings for him.

With Herald, he's open about his attraction, isn't afraid to be who he is, and while at his apartment, he seems a bit nervous, he's also happy. When sidestep talks about being trans, there is a moment where he admits that he isn't sure what to say because he's gotten in trouble for it in the past, but he doesn't care, he happy either way.

For every romance in Fallen Hero, there's something messy about it. Every character has their own past with some kind of shadow looming over it. Everyone makes mistakes, eveyone has something that gives them sharp edges. None of them are perfect people. All of them are struggling with something.

Sidestep is also just an absolute dumpster fire of a person pretty much however you decide to play them. Sidestep, kinda sucks! Even if they're pretty good, by god, do they make dumb decisions!

And I do think its so important to note how much of a mess sidestep is, along with whoever they are with, if they are either a) with someone romantically, b) with someone sexually, or c) not with someone at all, because, imo, it differentiates itself from a story that has gay characters, a "gay" story, and a queer story.

When I think of a queer story, I think of the messy parts. The aspects that aren't "love at first sight" or two people who got it all figured out or "unproblematic" (sidenote: i do think we should remove the term problematic from people for a while), or two conventionally beautiful and young characters falling in love and having the most like. Heterosexual relationship you can have with 2 gay people.

Fallen hero doesn't really have conventional relationships. Even when discussing friendships, it's not conventional.

The story is Queer because of the unapologetically messy characters that exist within its setting. No one is perfect. No one has it all figured out. Sometimes a character doesn't know what to say or they stumble a little during those hard conversations about sexuality and gender. They're allowed to cry, or be confused, or understand. Not to mention that sidestep's morality can fluctuate between a good person who doesn't know what to do, to someone so unapologetically evil and proud. Allowing a character to be queer and their morals to be anywhere on that morality spectrum allows it to be a more queer story imo.

There's so much more that can be said, and could 100% be said by someone who's better at writing down those thoughts. But god, fallen hero is such a beautiful story. The conversations that can be had about it's themes of sexuality, gender, trauma, morality, neurodivergency, among other things is amazing. OUGHA, love this story.

#fallen hero #fhr #fallen hero rebirth #fallen hero retribution #sidestep #fhr sidestep

[unhelpfulfemme]

Halt and Catch Fire is the best show ever and you should watch it if you haven't.

It has amazingly deep and three-dimensional and tender characterizations and a plot that's structured kind of like a spiral, in that you observe the characters over the course of ten years where they keep ending up in similar situations and you can see how much they have or haven't grown since the last time they had to face a similar thing.

It gives you a new appreciation for the wild west days of IT of the 1980s and 1990s, which is something I keep seeing people mention but have actually never experienced on my own unless you count searching for pictures of the W.i.t.c.h. on dial-up and playing some kind of pop the bubble game in 1999.

It has amazing female characters that aren't perfect but also don't have flaws that are sexist stereotypes. The two female leads are an angry punk girl and a hyperfeminine Southern girl and they are both presented as equally competent and given equal importance, even though the hyperfeminine girl gets underestimated a lot in-universe (she has a STEM degree and is as good with computers as the other one, but gets relegated into a "team mum" role a lot).

There is A LOT of focus on friendships and business partnerships and found family - it gives these relationships equal focus to the romances, and they are all realistic and grounded in the characterizations of the leads. In fact, the last episode focuses on the two girls' partnership, not their respective romantic lives. But the romances are amazing too, I have never been invested in a pair so hard the way I currently am in Joe and Cameron, if I weren't bi already they'd be my bisexual awakening. They seem like total opposites but have so, so, many parallels between them, and they have realistically sad backstories that aren't the stock "I was beaten by my mean dad" type. And they have amazing chemistry. And I love how the show is aware of the fact that they need to go outside of their relationship to grow and address their shortcomings because they kind of have the same flaws too, and even though they're still kind of pining after each other they only come back to each other when they're capable of having a stable relationship. This is especially good beacuse the girl is in her early 20s at the beginning and it was so so good to see the show let her grow into her own, on her own, rather than leaving her stuck in an endless back-and-forth with a messed up guy who's her boss and 10 years older than her, but then also respecting the connection they have.

All the characters are realistically flawed, and their flaws come back to bite them in their asses in the end, and the setups for this are strewn across several seasons. And it all makes sense for the character as a whole - for example, the punk girl is rebelling against pretty controlling parenting, but she obviously never learned how to handle relationships except in terms of the dominant person and the one who obeys, so she'd rather live in anarchy and never form any kind of power ladder in the first place. However, when she is forced to do so in order to handle the people who work for her punk IT startup she becomes very autocratic and controlling, and when people try to give her ideas she replies with, "Well, I'm the boss so we'll do what I say."

Why does she do that? Because she obviously doesn't know how to argue constructively. She knows how to a) aggressively overwhelm you, b) get up and leave (as she did to her family) and c) submit (unacceptable).

She does b) to her smarmy yuppie "it's complicated" man who is also one of the main leads - he does something to break her trust, she just abandons him and that's it. But then she gets into a fight with her next boyfriend, and she just assumes that that's it, and he says, "Woah, we're not breaking up, we're just arguing, have you never done that before in your life?"

At the same time, she forms a partnership with the girly girl and the girly girl starts just going around her whenever she hears the "I'm the boss so we'll do as I say" thing because she's frustrated that she has no say in things. This leads to several fallouts because spiral plot structure, and they're all mostly over one of two things: Cameron (punk girl) is being autocratic or Donna (girly girl) is being manipulative. Eventually they run the company into the ground because they can't listen to each other, and the plot always varies which one of them is right and never paints one of them as the 100% villain because they're both being kind of assholes but also deeply sympathetic.. But over the course of all this Cameron kind of learns how to be more functional in her partnerships, which then helps her with both her love interests AND her career. And then other things happen to address and highlight other flaws of hers, and this happens to all of the characters - three marriages fall apart in the course of this show, several companies with really good ideas are run into the ground and a guy commits crimes and then commits suicide because he bought into a Steve Jobs-type bulshitter's cool aid too much.

It has what I'd call great queer rep because one of the leads being a bisexual man is treated very casually and yet the rare instances where homophobia is touched on fit into the rest of his character and backstory so well (he insults a homophobic business partner at some point, and he also has an AIDS scare, and he recalls being bullied at school and how it affected him, and he makes friends with a queer teen because he notices she's like him and that's it). Like, there's an episode where his ex boyfriend comes into the picture and the plot doesn't revolve around them both being men - the plot revolves around his current girlfriend feeling insecure about the guy still having feelings for his ex and coming off as flaky and untrustworthy. The genders of the characters are incidental.

Like seriously this is the best show ever and I don't know why people don't talk about it more, current stuff like The Bear and Succession can only wish to be this nuanced.

#halt and catch fire

[aces-and-angels]

hii im joining the Joaquin Opinions Party! I bring you a whole ass essay! (sorry) (also its nsfw a bit? do with that what you will, idk if its even legal to send asks this long)

I find Joaquin to be a delightfully fluid character. I mean that in terms of gender and sexuality, sure, but more specifically here, I'm taking about the way he orients himself in the world and in the workplace.

He is quite obviously eloquent and charming, but I find it telling that he asserts himself as someone who could potentially lean into connections with… literally anyone? He often does this via means of flirtation -- see how easily he posits potential connections with MC, with Gabe, with Aislinn.

He makes it seem conceivable that, if he so chose, he could foster a relationship with ✨any one✨ of these people. Like, you wouldn't be surprised to find Joaquin in cahoots with any character imo -- be it social, sexual, business, betrayals. He could have popped up during that one Sadie Dirty 30 and I'd be entirely unsurprised to see him there klsdjf

He's all about power play. In this one exchange, he's simultaneously trying to pique MCs interest sexually/romantically, while also telling them "you're simply one of dozens", "You're special, but you also aren't at all". When MC meets his flirtation with their own dry, cooly unmoved response, he goes for the power play yet again; he sees MC isn't flustered by his flirtation, so he tries to throw them again via means of unexpected wit.

Joaquin will always zig when you expect him to zag.

He keeps people on their toes, he's always working at manouevring himself into a better position.

That fluidity keeps MC uncertain whether or not he can actually be trusted, what his deal is -- he's really playful about the whole thing, but you can feel a kind of calculating intelligence behind everything he says and does, however lighthearted. Is he actually as carefree and unconcerned as he seems on the surface? Or is that all a part of his deft social manipulations?

But he reveals himself a little bit when he keeps just turning up wherever MC is all the time. Sure, he's here to scheme, its all business, he's looking out for number one blah blah... but how many of these random run-ins could have been phone calls? Or needed to happen at all? My guy, why are your words telling MC you're all cool and aloof, but your actions are those of a sad lil puppy?

Looking a little closer at Joaquin, I honestly think he's lonely.

When everyone "knows you", no one knows you. When you are everyone's "friend", you are no ones. He's good at what he does, yes, but his success isn't without its price.

On a lighter note, one of my absolute FAVOURITE things about Joaquin is how his apparent love of mischief and power dynamics plays out in a sexual relationship -- he might do his best to keep the upper hand in public, but in private? Baby just wants to be dommed lmao

His reaction to seeing MC is about to use a riding crop on him is just "ooh yay!!" lol.

He's a dork, he's baby, he's smart, he's stupid, he's delightful. I love him, your honour, he's the bisexual rep I always yearned for💖💖💖

In conclusion: Joaquin is peak jester meme material thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

no apology needed, my friend- i welcome this energy wholeheartedly 🖤🖤🖤

still on the hunt for those joaquin opinions! please read this post before submitting an ask

#also love your mcs name #does it have any relation to the bb universe 👀 #playchoices #choices #joaquin morales #aria-ashryver #tysm for sending in your thoughts🖤 #laws of attraction

[vldkeith]

character bios for my fanfic! 🎥🪩

y'all know how i'm writing a lengthier au fanfic right now right? well i have character bios/intros for it! these basically lay out who everyone is in this au. i just think it's neat and hopefully gets ppl excited 👀

--

takashi shirogane - extremely talented actor with a lot of social capital, despite the fact that he is an out gay man. played the adorable, lovable leading man in rom-coms and sitcoms for a while and has recently graduated to more dramatic roles, which he excels in. everyone seems to love and respect him for the most part. picked up keith when he tried to steal his car at a younger age (10?) and hasn’t stopped looking out for him since; they’re like brothers. 

keith kogane - guy who hates celebrity culture but got foisted into it due to his association with shiro. has a reputation for being handsome goodboy shiro’s naughtier younger brother who flips off the camera, punches paparazzi, and has no filter. hates every moment he’s forced to endure hollywood life, but does so to protect and be there for shiro. has been smeared by the tabloids extensively, both for being a delinquent and for being gay. keith did not choose to come out, like shiro had before him, but instead was outed by a member of a gay forum he frequented who figured out his identity (he was 17 at this point). hates society and has a chip on his shoulder.

lance mcclain - starry-eyed hopeful fresh off of his first non-extra role and new darling of the press. gunning for lead man roles in romcoms; knows he’s bisexual but doesn’t want to come out for fear of his family’s reaction and because he believes it will smear his reputation and thus chances to get the roles he wants. this view is understandable and pretty accurate, but it means that he is actively hiding himself and presents intense complications when he and keith start being “a thing.” has a reputation for being charming (if a little sleazy) and flirty with women, which is both natural to him and carefully cultivated so he has the best chance at getting romcom roles. he idolizes shiro–in part because he’s an out gay man, though he’d never admit that–and wants to be mentored by him so badly he’ll make himself a nuisance in shiro (and keith’s) life until he can. 

(more under the cut)

allura altea - orphaned daughter of famous actress mother and professor father who died in a hit-and-run when she was 16. keith’s best friend; they’ve affectionately dubbed themselves the “dead parent’s society,” but the press likes to call them “?????.” allura was being brought up as a future actress by her parents, having starred in many dcom-esque roles as a child, but when they died she quit all of that and kind of just does her own thing now. currently, she’s enrolled in UCLA as a politics major. 

coran wimbleton-smyth - retired acclaimed director who occasionally signs himself on as a producer for works he thinks are particularly meaningful. he’s the producer for shiro’s next film, a sci-fi space opera a la the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, and he’s gunning for shiro’s character to be explicitly gay. genuinely good-natured and wants to be involved with his projects; has a reputation for being the kind of director/producer to bring donuts in for everyone and cancel shooting days if the weather gets too hot. would support the current (2023) strikes. wants to see everyone succeed, but especially shiro and his family. 

hunk garrett - lance’s bestie and bisexual-awakening! aspiring personal chef to celebrities, but currently works at a restaurant and attends california institute of technology for engineering, because why not? met lance when lance went to eat at the restaurant he worked at and liked the food so much he asked to personally thank the chef; hunk had changed the dish last-minute as it went out the door, ratatouille-style, and so he gets the credit. they’ve been besties ever since! 

matt holt - lance’s young agent! saw potential in lance because of their shared personality-type, but he can be ruthless when it comes to matters of public opinion and which roles lance should take, which lance both appreciates and dreads. committed to doing what’s best for lance’s career, whatever the cost.  katie “pidge” holt - matt’s younger sibling that is pushed into lance’s orbit unwillingly due to her big brother’s job. hangs around because, whatever he may say, she really does like lance as a friend, and warms up to hunk quickly once they meet due to their shared interest in engineering/computers. has a geocities website dedicated to weird lizards and insects. low-profile enough to get away with things none of the others could manage.

nyma - shiro's ruthless but skilled publicist. knows how to turn public opinion around her finger, all while pretending to be innocent and nice the whole time. this doesn't mean she's uncaring, though; sometimes she'll let slip that she actually cares about shiro and keith's images because she cares about them, not just because it's her job and reputation on the line if she doesn't. isn't afraid to advise them to do painful and sometimes downright demoralizing things, but it's always in the interest of saving their necks, at least from her perspective.

--

this isn't an exhaustive list of the voltron characters that will be included btw; i'm going to find a way to put adam & romelle in if i have to die for it. but these are the main cast i have so far :) let me know what you think!

#yes im doing this instead of writing said fanfic. lol. #klance #voltron #klance fanfiction #op💢 #mbim🎥🪩 #this is ok to rb btw!