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iraprince · 6 months

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I adore all your art with cookie and was interested in Sapphicworld- but I’m curious (so plz don’t take this as a negative-) what exactly in your opinion sets it apart from other Queer PBTA hacks like Thirsty Sword Lesbians?

I’d just really like to hear your thoughts about it as a system and world especially given you are a indie developer yourself?

hi!! thank you!!

so, a few caveats before i start off — one, i actually haven't played many other pbta games (like for example i know Of thirsty sword lesbians + own a copy that i've poked around in but im not very familiar w it), so i honestly can't provide much in the way of comparing/contrasting it w other pbta stuff in the same vein, and my impressions of sapphicworld are pretty much just contained to the game as its own thing, not so much sapphicworld as a Type Of Game

and two, while i am a dev myself, i'm a huge novice! like, i'm proud of the stuff i put out and i love doing it, but i personally feel like my lack of experience is such that like, i don't think my opinions in this case are particularly informed by my own work as a dev or anything. all this to say im happy to answer this question, i think i just gotta tackle it from a different frame than what ur specifically asking!

BUT ANYWAY. i can still talk abt why im so excited abt sapphicworld in a way that has kind of outstripped other stuff in general, and for me it's about the world 100%. like i honestly spend close to no time thinking abt the fact that sw is even pbta to be honest. not that the mechanics + gameplay aren't important, bc they are thoughtfully crafted and well done and fun, and i'm saying that from the perspective of someone who playtested earlier versions that have now been reworked! it's just like, not what comes to mind first for me — what's exciting and fresh and irreplaceable abt the game in my mind is like. it is fully committed to immersing you in an extremely lush, strange, richly fleshed out world, one with a long history and folklore/mythology and a TON of really fun npcs who all have different subcultures and its own calendar with seasonal holidays and regional terrain with specific fleshed out dungeons/towns/etc to discover and even like, specific FOODS typical to each different region and and and and —

and maybe at first that seems kind of overwhelming, and tbh it is. when i first got into it and i was going thru the playtest document (which if im remembering right was like. ~300 pages shorter at the time than the current playtest doc) i DO remember anxiously thinking to myself "god this is a LOT and idk if i'll be able to retain enough of this to rp convincingly" etc etc. but like... it's just really compelling, and it does an incredible job of mixing humor and gravity and horniness in a perfect ratio that always comes across as intensely earnest and makes it equally easy to have a fun goofy time or a really emotional time, which i think is REALLY hard to do.

and while normally it's hard for me to get thru something that dense and long all i can really say is that i just straight up like it enough and was charmed by it enough to pick away at it until i grasped it and felt like i understood a bunch about the world, which also has a curve to it bc in structure and tone its very different from any of your... idk more Standard fantasy or sci fi worldbuilding, so it's not like u can immediately slot in ur expectations from other settings and just learn some new vocab words, it's a world that from my perspective also Functions differently than a lot of other fictional settings in a way that's a little hard to describe succinctly. (none of this is succinct to begin with but ykwim). it makes me want to gm my own campaign, really really bad, when usually i have always been absolutely Terrified of the idea of gming! idk man. it has a Flavor. it's full of Vapors. u get transported somewhere else reading it and playing it in a way i haven't experienced in a while and a lot of times after a playtest session i felt like my brain stayed behind in sapphicworld for a pretty long time.

i feel like i am sounding a little melodramatic and incoherent but like. genuinely sapphicworld is just a fictional world that i am really bone-deep charmed by and interested in and when i WAS reading thru the rulebook for those first days it did not take me long at all to find myself constantly thinking "i want to play in this world, i want to play in this world, i can't wait to play in this world," and i just think that's really special. and like — just as your curiosity abt comparing sw to tsl was not intended as a diss or a negative, what im abt to say is similarly neutral — im a person who sometimes finds it a little difficult to click with or feel excited abt a lot of the Queer Indie Stuff that i see get popular with other people, bc it just doesn't connect w my specific lesbian + trans experience; not that it feels inauthentic but that im like, oh, idk, i think these guys are just. not My Zone, ykwim. on the flip side so much of the humor and heart and transness and sex in sapphicworld is something that really resonates w me and just Clicks in a way that i have also found really special.

rounding myself off before i ramble for like five more paragraphs but just as one more morsel of something i like abt sapphicworld that is a little more concrete than me spinning around the room yelling "I JUST LIKE IT OKAY": one of the most fun parts of character creation is getting to mix and match your kind (sort of like ancestry/species, the form ur physical body takes) with a subculture. so u get things like a werewolf babe (cookie! babe being a subculture that focuses on being Like, Totally Hot), or a centaur knight, or a minotaur debaucher, or a vampire cowboy, or an organist (cthulu-y tentacle guy) scenester, or a skeleton wizard, etc etc etc etc — there are SO MANY to pick from that when i was trying to bait my friends into playing w me i couldn't find a convenient way to list them all so ppl could start thinking abt their characters. and every possible combination basically is interesting and amusing and fun and practically THROWS a great oc into your lap and i literally think i could amuse myself endlessly just Making Characters in sapphicworld and never actually playing w them.

[panting, disheveled] so tldr. i like it. uh. what sets sapphicworld apart from other ttrpgs to me is that i have fallen balls to the wall in love with the very soul of it to the point where i don't even really think about it in comparison to other games at all and it has just become an Experience to me and i suppose i cannot guarantee anyone else will fall into insane homosexual hysteria in the same way but here we are. HOPE THAT HELPS

(ALSO PSSST. idk if this is just perfect timing or if ur curiosity was specifically prompted by this but the @sapphicworldttrpg patreon DID just launch and if any of this has been intriguing u should check it out. okay mwah bye)

#anyway thank u bc ive been so busy these past few weeks/months ive had no time to rotate it in my brain #and im not caught up on the most current versions etc #so this was a nice opportunity to slow down and take a breath and geek out abt something i like a lot. :D #sapphicworld #ttrpgs #also hi eclipse i am a little embarrassed to have tagged u onto a post of me just like. Gushing-#-but i want ppl to be able to find the game account lol. [waves sheepishly] i like ur art. as u know.

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ignitesthestxrs · 7 months

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I know you said you’ve gone back into it slowly but any book recs?

yes absolutely!! i have read some bangers lately tbh. also another thing i am trying to do is start uuuh reviewing what i'm reading so i will link a couple of those as well. but here is a sporadic collection of my reading enjoyments of the last year or so!

IF FOUND RETURN TO HELL // THE DEATH I GAVE HIM by Em X. Liu

em is hands down one of the best writers i know with prose that will punch you in the face and leave you asking if you can have another, please.

IF FOUND RETURN TO HELL is a queer found family novella featuring a done-with-this protag working in a wizarding call centre who abruptly comes down with a case of 'sweet angel baby boy possessed by demon hell child' in a broken magical healthcare system where following protocol is more important than like, helping people. so what is journeyman wen to do if not, you know, help anyway?

THE DEATH I GAVE HIM is the queer scifi hamlet retelling of my dreams, which is funny because i didn't care about hamlet until this book taught me how to. a thoughtful exploration on the nature of adaptation, death & immortality, and also what happens when your best friend is an AI and you wanna fuck him.

IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote the original true crime novel. still stuck in my truman blorbo moment. full review here

ASSASSIN'S APPRENTICE by Robin Hobb classic 90s fantasy with surprisingly emotional focus on the protag in a way i really dug. unhinged levels of accidental queerbaiting in a way that i enjoyed rather than despaired of. full review here.

PANDORA'S JAR: WOMEN IN THE GREEK MYTHS by Natalie Haynes a great overview of classical women that takes into account multiple sources and the way they have been read over centuries, and how the time in which a tale is being told affects the tale just as much as what the text of the story actually is. does a good job of walking the middle ground between like, historical sexism and the reflexive girlbossification instinct.

IN OTHER LANDS by Sarah Rees Brennan the queer harry potter offshoot we all actually deserve. portal fantasy with an acerbic main character who will save the world out of sheer spite because the world doesn't seem to think he can save it, or want him to do it even if he could. a genuinely lovely musing on the nature of loneliness, what abuse does to a child, how it's hard but possible to overcome the prejudices you learn when you're young, and how eventually, you're going to have to make the decision to let yourself be loved.

SHE WHO BECAME THE SUN by Shelley Parker-Chan truly i don't have the word for how fucking excellent this queer epic fantasy is. set in mongol-ruled china, this book is a masterclass in political intrigue, historical fiction, military fantasy, and also genderfuckery. feat. the kind of tragedy you see coming for several hundred pages and still takes your breath away when it hits, and also lesbian fisting. anyone who says books based in history can't get queer can get fucked.

A MARVELLOUS LIGHT by Freya Marske for a total 180 in mood, here is your queer romantic fantasy set in an Edwardian England that is reflective of the fact that like, queer people did in fact exist in Edwardian England. A lighter fare that nonetheless will hit you right in the heart and leave you delighted that a) there's a second book out now and b) the third one is coming soon. also Freya is an Artiste when it comes to writing good sex scenes, which

i belatedly realise it seems like i'm focusing on in this post but i just! like a queer text that tackles queer sex with nuance and interest and the horror and/or joy of the body, and the above authors are all fucking masters at their art (which includes, but by no means is limited to, writing about fucking)

#hannah answers asks #book recs

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forkaround · 11 months

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Classic BL Watch: MasterPost

Namaste besties. @waitmyturtles started a challenge watching Older Thai BLs and it got me thinking as well. I've seen a few, I've DNF-ed a few, but I wanted to see the progression with my own eyes. Thus we be here.

The basic premise is to watch and review Thai BLs from Love Sick 2014 (which I believe is the first Thai BL) to present time.

I'm going to make a few changes to the format and include BLs from other countries as well, including China (if I can find it).

This is a long post so I divided it into chapters: - Some History - The Method to Potential Madness - List - Rating System I've made individual posts about each under #org: subcategory

I've been fascinated with BLs for over two years. To find that there was an entire world of queer content out there which A) existed and B) didn't queerbait or bury the gay, was a revelation. How could this be? I'd watched Yuri!!! on Ice in 2017 and I guess assumed that BLs would be the same (E7 blocked kiss). So while BLs were on my radar for a while before I started I didn't get into them until relatively recently. I got so into them that I started a YouTube Channel about it.

See I'm a writer and watching art transform in front of your eyes is a relatively recent phenomena and it makes my brain go brrr...

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Some History:

I'm Indian. I'm queer. We didn't have any rights until 2018 when the ban on homosexuality was lifted. We've had queer movies but they were your traditional Oscar-bait type things until very, very recently. By that I mean until last year where we had Maja Ma, a Madhuri Dixit starrer movie about a mom coming out as a lesbian which shocks the family and makes trouble for the son's marriage. It's a brilliant movie with one of India's best actresses as the lead. But it was a Netflix Original. Before that there was Subh Mangal Zyada Savdhan and Badhaai Do, which are both good queer movies which aired in cinemas from 2020 and 2022 respectively. All to say, queer media is very very very new in India. As such, what was a young queer to do but follow the Indian Dream and go to America. Which I did, in a literary sense. In fact watching Nyssa Al Ghul kiss Sara Lance was my queer awakening. (I love Ava but this ship was really something.) Between the good writing and queer chars being present, I wasn't coming back to India like any typical NRI.

I've mentioned before about how for the story I started writing at 15 there was no other love interest for the female lead except for another girl. It just won't make sense. This was before 2018, mind you, so not a chance in hell this would be published in India. I consoled myself with 'We'll publish in America. It takes place in space anyway, so it's fine.' But then came a story that just won't work in America. Think: what if Succession's terrible people protags were queer and Indian but it's written from a 'truly believes in romance' pov. Confused already right? I'd already given up hope. I love this, but it won't be anything more than a webnovel.

Par kahte hai -

(It is said, if you love something with all your heart then the entire universe will conspire to get it to you.)

And somehow I found BLs. A world of queer stories the likes of which I'd never seen before, brimming with love and support and honest and real and queer. The Bollywood fan in me lived again after a decade 6 feet under.

I love BLs. There's no two ways about it. I love them for the love they give, the hope they have, the cringe, the drama, the stupidity, the honesty, the realness. It's everything I ever wanted queer media to be. To start it from 0 and learn what made them what they are would be an amazing learning experience and to share that with other people... well how can I not?

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The Method to potential Madness:

My tastes are a little peculiar. I have seen media from all over the world, the good and the bad, what it has taught me is nothing is every going to be perfect and I will miss things that are important to other people but what else I've learned is that I don't really care about something being good. If it's broken, a little difficult, a little cheap but made with love. I am all in.

See when I was young during Janmasthami every year these guys from an organization called Yogeshwar would come in white kurtas and perform nataks(plays) in our society. They didn't have sets, 2-3 props, just that white kurta and pants as outfits and yet it was entertaining. It was fun. I loved it. So money and pure intentions have never been barriers for me.

(an example of Janmasthami natak)

What I do care about is competence. That the writer understands what they are writing about. The best actor can't pull off a bad script but a bad actor can be tolerated in a good script.

To get you an idea of my tastes some of my favorite medias are Legends of Tomorrow, Guardian (Cdrama), Supernatural, Agents of Shield, Agent Carter, Chains of Heart, Kinnporsche, LITA, The Eclipse, The Devil Judge, Crash Course in Romance, SRK movies from '00 like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Main Hoon Na, Kabhi Khushsi Kabhi Gham, etc. As you can see, very widely ranging. I love competence and I love heart. Everything else I can live without. To that end some shows I didn't like/DNF-ed: Bed Friend, Step by Step, Big Mouth, Eve, Game of Thrones, most Netflix things, Mr. Robot, Supergirl, The Flash, Elite, Witcher, Coffee Melody, War of Y. If you get too PC without the narrative backup I'll leave; If it's too nihilistic, I'll leave; If it's too monotonous, I'll leave. I have Psychotic Depression, I don't have the time to deal with this shit.

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List:

To borrow from @waitmyturtles, a list of shows I'll cover:

ThaiBL: 1) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 2) Make It Right + Make It Right 2 3) SOTUS + SOTUS S 4) Together With Me 5) Love By Chance 6) He’s Coming To Me 7) Dark Blue Kiss 8) TharnType 9) Puppy Honey 10) Theory of Love 11) Until We Meet Again 12) 2gether + Still 2gether 13) I Told Sunset About You + I Promised You the Moon 14) Manner of Death 15) A Tale of Thousand Stars 16) Lovely Writer I will group these into either productions i.e. all GMMTV or by writer i.e. all MAME, all Jittiran, all Sammon, etc

Korean BL: 1) Where Your Eyes Linger 2) Color Rush 3) To My Star 4) You Make Me Dance 5) Nobleman's Ryu's Wedding 6) Light On Me 7) Peach of Time 8) Kissable Lips 9) Long Time No See 10) Cherry Blossoms After Winter 11) Blueming 12) Our Dating Sim 13) The Eighth Sense Others like The Tasty Florida, Where Your Eyes Linger, Semantic Error, etc. I've already seen and don't include on this list.

Japanese BL: (from @absolutebl's recs) 1) Seven Days 2) My Love Mix-up 3) Restart after Come back Home 4) Mr. Unlucky Has No Choice but to Kiss! 5) Life: Love on the line 6) Man who defies the world of BL 7) Takumi kun 8) Boys Love 9) Cornered Mouse Dream of Cheese 10) Eternal Yesterday 11) Ossan's Love 12) Given Others like Cherry Magic, Old Fashion Cupcake, Minato Coin Laundry, etc. I've already seen and don't include on this list.

Taiwanese BL: 1 - 5) HIStory Series 6) Be Loved in this House: I Do 7) See you after Quarantine? 8) DNA says I love you 9) We are Gamily 10) Your Name Engraved Herein 11) Papa & Daddy 12) Plus Minus 13) Love is Science Others like We Best Love, About Youth I've already seen and don't include on this list.

Chinese BL: (If I can find them) 1) Addicted Heroin 2) The Untamed 3) Advance Bravely 4) My Esport Genius Brother 5) Like Love: I love you as a man 6) Mr. CEO is falling in Love with him 7) S.C.I 8) Irresistible Love 9) Mr. X and I Others like Guardian and Word of Honor I've already seen and don't include on this list

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Rating System:

Range: 3 Wonderland to 3 Wasteland. Wonderland = Good. Wasteland = Bad. 3 Wonderland = Best Ever. 3 Wasteland = Worst Ever. Categories: Writing/Script (character work, world building, pacing, etc.); Production (technical stuff, camera work, visuals, etc.); Acting; Joy Levels (how much I enjoyed it); Feeling (satisfied, confused, angry, etc.)(totally subjective, grain of salt metric) and a Final Rank.

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Tags: classic BL watch; [show]; fork watches; fork report;

[16/06/2023]

#classic BL watch #org: masterpost #type: masterpost #thai bl #asian bl #korean bl #japanese bl #taiwanese bl #chinese bl #youtube #fork report #fork watches

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sanversandfriends · 1 year

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Art and intro by @thelxiope1. Thanks, pal! (,:

Last but not least! It is an honor to do the mini-view intro for our esteemed and gifted event organizer, the one, the only: @smarterinabsentia. You know her mostly as a writer of incredibly rich and detailed Sanvers fics filled with cinematic drama, action, passion, history, science, aliens, magic, music, and a vast knowledge of all things Super. She is also a talented artist and a superb beta reader. But today she shares her thoughts on writing and finishing one of her epic and ambitious works.

Tell us a little about yourself. How did you get started writing fic? Have you written for other fandoms? What are your favorite tropes?

Unless you count an Alien sequel as a kid, I really didn’t start writing fic until Sanvers. I’m a lifelong DC fan and read Maggie’s first appearance right off the stands, so I was excited to finally get a version of the character who wasn’t a name drop or a blip in an animated series. What I didn't expect was THAT chemistry and THAT coming out arc, and being able to witness the S shield become so indelibly associated with queerness it made my heart sing. So when Maggie walked out of Alex’s apartment for the last time, it was both a devastating loss of rep and the start of a careless and very painful dismantling of the world they’d built in Season 2. I’d been lurking on A03 and, as so many of these fic origin stories go, I thought, “I’ll just write one chapter. What could possibly go wrong?!"

For as much as I hate Alex’s S3 body snatching and the reasons for the breakup, I’m a sucker for the reluctant parent trope. I do like to put Maggie with kids, not as self-sacrificing mother figure, but someone who treats them very much the way she would an equal. This backfires on her sometimes, but counterintuitively makes her a better parent than Alex.

What were your inspirations for this particular story? What was it about this/these ships that grabbed you?

I’ve always been fascinated by the Soviet side of the Space Race and how they achieved so much on fewer resources--not to mention putting a woman in orbit two decades before the U.S. The U.S. had its glamorous flyboys, but the Soviets had women cosmonauts, not to mention soldiers and pilots and snipers, and something like 42 percent of doctors during World War II—a number that rose to 70% in the 1960s.

I’d just finished Svetlana Alexievich’s Unwomanly Face of War, an oral history of the women who'd fought on the Eastern front, and while I didn't expect to encounter any out lesbians in those interviews, the dearth of queerness felt pronounced. I started thinking about who Alex and Maggie might have been in that war, and soon enough, they were fleeing the Germans on a boat on the Moskva river. This is probably nothing new to folks writing historical AUs, but being new to fic at the time, it was eerie just how snugly those characters slotted into the tapestry of Soviet history, from Maggie’s navigating the power shifts in the NKVD/KGB to Alex strugging under the chokehold of Lysenkoism. Every character fit, and every character became this deep-dive learning experience about the era/s.

Has the time spent away from your story changed your outlook or approach to any of the storylines or themes? Have you had any new inspirations or breakthroughs/revelations in the meantime?

I’ve had some more insights into the characters, especially Jami, who surprised me, and there was a retcon I had to do with a reveal in the dialogue, something I realized was a big moment I should have saved for … the big moment (so I hope no one notices, haha!) And this is probably because I use world building as a means of procrastination, but I’m in this place right now where I’m as excited about the world I’ve set up at the end of the fic as I am about the fic itself.

Any advice for new or aspiring fic writers?

This goes back to something I wish I’d said at the Sanvers research panel a few years back. You might hesitate to write because you think you don't know enough about a particular subject, but that desire is often a signal that you know more than you’re giving yourself credit for. Once you get started, you'll discover you've gotten a lot right out of a mix of prior knowledge and spooky action at a distance. So absolutely do do the research and be respectful of the material, but don’t let a perceived lack of knowledge put you off from getting started. What turns out to be accurate in those first drafts will feel like magic, but what you have to correct in your seconds and thirds will stick and be the best kind of learning experience.

If you were going to promote this fic with a single line, what would it be?

Lesbians live and so does Laika.

Link to the story if you have one.

#Supergirl #Sanvers #Finish the Fic

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old-school-butch · 3 days

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just wanted to say that following a butch older than 40 on here is SOOOO amazing like it blows my mind as a baby butch, it makes me feel like there actually is a future for me embracing being female AND being masculine. bc usually it's one or the other in today's "queer" circles. ppl have acted threatened of me being comfortable as a woman honestly?? like i can tell they just don't understand. a friend of mine even told me they (transmasc) just can't see me as a woman. i was like what do you mean? and they said idk i just can't, you just don't have the vibes. you feel so genderless. later i told them it hurt my feelings bc coming to terms with my womanhood meant a lot to me since i'm detrans, and they apologized and blamed it on their ex-girlfriend having had a looooot of internalized misogyny, and them needing to unlearn it. and now my brain is like... wondering if maybe that affected them identifying as nonbinary. idk. i still try to use they/them if ppl prefer it bc i try to be kind and i myself don't use my birthname and would be weirded out if ppl tried to use it for me. and from my history of dysphoria i know how painful (yet irrational) it can be. i'm just so aware that some ppl out there are identifying as nonbinary not bc they enjoy the identity but bc they're repressed and/or traumatized and have a lot of internalized bs. it makes me so, so sad. i want to help but if i say anything i'm a bigot, and i'm extremely scared of being seen as bigoted, it's a big source of anxiety for me. i'm living a double life right now, most of my friends irl are nonbinary but i have a radfem blog and i'm becoming very critical of gender. it feels like you just can't have a neutral conversation with someone about this. i tried with my nonbinary ex and they visibly started freaking out, and... not to be shitty but it really reminded me of how they acted when i saw them during cptsd episodes. it was like they were full of anxious energy, i couldn't say anything even slightly gender critical. there was a moment where i tried to pry a bit into their internalized sexism and they got this really harsh tone they had neverrrr taken with me in the 5 years we were together. they also regretted going on hrt and they had a moment of regretting top surgery too, but they pretended it never happened afterwards. anyways. it's just wild these days, and i worry about ppl who identify as nonbinary for the wrong reasons, for reasons that actually harm them. i hope there will be more resources for them over the years :/

Pretty interesting that your ex can keep a grip on control over you by ‘acting out.’ That’s not an irrational action, it’s effective. Which sadly describes the grip gender orthodoxy has on our community.

I completely hear you, I never told people I was trans and, if anyone asked had critiques of gender just kind of bubbling inside, but the reality was that other people told me I ‘must be’ trans. One said I was ‘a gay man trapped in the body of a lesbian’, so… I guess when I did something feminine I did it in a masculine way? Or, ya know, how I act is labeled in different ways because of reasons that have nothing to do with me and my existence as a woman.

Don’t beat yourself up about this - all the language and concepts were shoved down our throats. If women are people who identify as women, and if we accept that as true, what are the implications for our own existence and identities? The people creating this language didn’t care about us, and our silence trapped our doubts inside us.

Women won’t be free until we learn to care for ourselves as much as we care for others.

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9w1ft · 1 year

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Flowers anon. Is it okay to be a little potentially controversial on your blog? Or... more like, mention a controversial subject? If not, it's okay. Just don't post me or let me know you'd rather not. I know you like to keep your blog drama free. I just find the shifting opinions on this interesting and I'd like to poll your audience some. Here it goes. //

I don't really know where the line is between expression, freedom of it, trends, and community. It's Karlie using the word 'tribe' that calls that to mind. When I learned sociology, we used the term 'social tribes'. I don't know if it's problematic these days, or not. But... As very cliché examples, different tribes in the school grounds would be: the metalheads, the jocks, the preppies, etc... (yes I was born in the 80s....) and when it comes to fashion, or music, or language, from gbe beginning of time, the barriers have been porous, right? That's how music styles have evolved, how food traveled the world and dishes have versions on every continent. How things are copied from one tribe and twisted into the expression of another (see: Burberry from preppies to punks, for example), etc... So... When someone picks one or two things from a social tribe, whether it be fashion aspects, ticks of language, inside jokes, themes, whatever, I don't generally assume they're part of that tribe, or they wish to be, or they wish to signal that they are. They could just... like those things. And they chose to try them on, play with them for now or for a long time. Right? Right. But. The more someone gives me coded hints of a specific tribe or community, the more I'm getting the message that this is one, not incidental, two, probably meaningful. (Basically: if you show up one day with a Black Sabbath t shirt, you might just have gone to H&M in the last decade. If your entire wardrobe consists of metal t shirts, then either you're a huge poser for no reason, or you really did metal) I know you know where I'm going with this. If there seems to be queer doing in a lot of what you make, and in time there's more and more, and it's less and less subtle... There's a point I don't even question the messaging. I got it. I hear you loud and clear. No room for doubt anymore.

// So I'm curious. Where's your line? Where's everyone's line? Do some tribes/communities have a line that's different, for you? (less okay to roll with the assumption that someone's queer rather than the assumption they're a Pratchett fan? If so, why? Is it more 'wrong'? If so, why?)

Do you have One Thing that convinced you, one way or the other? Was it because on its own it made it click? Or was it because it was the one too many thing that made you go "Alright, I get it. Guess that crazy Tumblr theory was right on the money, huh."?

i do hope i’m understanding you 🙈 circle back if i have it wrong. you’re basically asking, at what point do i assume that someone is queer? or, when does doing queer things hit a critical mass and become a signal that someone is queer?

i think about american middle school and high school in the early 2000’s (so we’re talking acronyms like GSA (gay-straight alliance) we’re talking it being ordered GLBT) and about how i gravitated to all the other queer kids in my grade and we gravitated to one another without ever really asking specifics.. just knowing we felt more comfortable if we hung out at the dances as a group. in retrospect, we really had a piece of each even though we didn’t have all the words at the time to articulate the specifics 😆 two friends were gay, two more friends started gay and then realized they were trans, another is nonbinary, one is asexual, one was bi and then lesbian and then bi again, i went with bi but now pan feels more natural to me… but we really didn’t know all of this at the time, not until maybe senior year i guess?? but for many of us it all crystallized in adulthood. heck i still remember the first time someone came out in the history of our school. but my friends and i we all knew. and honestly for me it was and always has been that: vibes. a feeling of safety. maybe it was like, hearing someone say several times they thought a somewhat gender nonconforming celebrity or character was hot. idk. eventually you’d just say “i think so too XD” and the rest is history. and i’m curious what peoples thoughts are! i don’t feel i have anything that doesn’t sound nebulous, i fear.

and now, apologies for what i’m guessing is a competitively controversial tangent.

one thing came to mind when i read your anon and i want to share —because i think it’s something that might make me (hopefully more people than just me 😭) somewhat unique— is that i sort of came across all of this in a way that probably seems inverse to a lot of gaylors: i was a casual listener of taylor’s until i got curious about who the muse for reputation was, and then fell down the rabbit hole. initially, i became entirely convinced of one thing: taylor and karlie are soulmates. next, given the fact that they’re both women, i concluded that taylor likes women. so an attempt to understand her preferences and how that colors her life experience was something that came second for me in terms of the progression of realizations.

from there i’ve had five years of being able to walk back and reflect on her whole body of work and time in the public eye and seeing all of the ways she expresses her queerness, and i have a deep appreciation for this aspect of gaylor‘ism’ but for me, it’s always been through the lens of knowing (believing) first and foremost that she loves karlie, that the girl in her story has always been karlie, that the growing body of her work stems from this story, and so the queerness i see in her art is, in turn, demonstratively true.

i think for a lot of people, especially post lover era gaylors, it’s the opposite. first and foremost taylor really pings, (because she’s been so loud!!) and the second question becomes how is she pinging, and then who is she dating. and i think the first and second questions get debated very intensely because people want to look at it holistically and explore everything that is out there at this very macro level and it often veers into Big Questions such as what does it mean to be queer… where for me, im coming at it from a place of those definitions not being so important to my understanding of her work because for me, the tell is that all these songs of hers so clearly are written about the same muse, who happens to be a woman. that’s all i’ve ever wanted or needed to know. i mean, i have my opinions but they’re guide by my understanding of this eras-long story. so while i understand why the debates happen i also just think a lot of it without kaylor becomes a cyclical debate with no end and nobody really being satisfied. so this is why i tend to not want to throw in my two cents. i hope this makes sense.. i’m not sure i articulated it properly.

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handlewithcharacter · 7 months

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I was reading your tags for Kara/Lena and Drarry and got so curious about the supergirl fandom what happened??? Was the supergirl actress homophobic?? The one who was in glee and that’s why she wasn’t?!?

OH MY GOD OKAY I AM SO SORRY FOR WHAT IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN

The place? San Diego Comic Con. The year? 2017. Everything seems normal. Casts of shows are doing interviews, cracking jokes, it's a good time. And then the Supergirl cast are interview by MTV. And Jeremy Jordan sings a little musical recap of the previous season, in which he jokes that Kara and Lena are just friends. Well, I say joked...he very enthusiastically insists they're just friends. It is, shall we say, tactless. The cast seems surprised but are all laughing to various extents. Later on in the interview they're asked about shipping, and Jeremy Jordan says he's probably going to get some hate for his having "debunked Supercorp." Melissa Benoist tells him that he's "very brave."

Thus ends the part of this story that physically takes place at Comic Con 2017, but the real drama is just getting started.

(the page break is here for dramatic effect, but also because this somehow got very long)

You have to understand, anon, this is in between the second and third seasons of Supergirl. Karamel (Kara and Mon-El) were season 2's highly divisive power couple and the Karamel stans were making it everyone's business to know they had come out of the season on top. And you'd think they'd be in the midst of a great ship war with Karolsen (Kara and James) who decided to just be friends at the start of the season, but nope! No, their big enemy was the Supercorp fans. It was heated. It was tense. There was a block list that got circulated.

I'd say the Supergirl ship wars were the worst I'd ever encountered, but I would go on to join the Timeless fandom, and learned the very hard lesson of why small fandoms and ship wars should not mix. That being said, I'd put the Supercorp/Karamel drama as worse than the Clexa/Bellarke drama, if that helps put things into context for you at all.

So, suffice it to say, the internet was in upheaval over this.

Since I was firmly on the Supercorp side of the Supercorp/Karamel divide at the time, I can't say with much certainty how Karamel shippers reacted, though I assume they were pleased with themselves. But Supercorp fans were not okay. See, anon, I don't know when you started your journey into fandom, but in case it was after this, 2017 was a much different time. Lesbian ships weren't really shipped with the intention of them becoming canon since it was only recently that lesbian ships had started becoming canon, and wlw fandom spaces were all still reeling from the Great Lesbian Purge of 2016, in which roughly 40% of the canon queer women on television were killed off during the television season. (To this day I will watch shows and a queer woman will unexpectedly die for seemingly only shock value, and I'll be horrified, until I see the date the episode aired. Spring of 2016? Yeah, that tracks. Deep sigh. Lost another one to the Bury Your Gays.) Lesbian ships did not have the strength in canon that straight ships had, or the mainstream nerd appeal that gay male ships had. Not only did you have to contend with bitter ship wars, you had to contend with everyone telling you that you shouldn't be shipping the ship in the first place, that having a vested interest in a ship that would never happen was a lost cause and a question of sanity. To be a fan of a wlw ship was to be shut down at every single turn when you weren't even asking to go down the road and were just looking to see a potential view.

(Supercorp was far from the only ship to ever have to put up with this. If you take a look at fandom history, you'll see this countless times. Heck, the Xena fans who wanted Xena to end up with Ares were very determined that the lesbians would not overtake their show.)

But for some people, Supercorp was their first wlw ship. Their first queer community. Their first validation that it wasn't wrong to look at the main character of an incredibly popular show and wonder what it would be like if she kissed her same-gender best friend. I sincerely hope, anon, that whatever flavor you may favor, you have found that kind of validation in your media. It's liberating.

And now here you had Jeremy Jordan and Melissa Benoist "debunking" the myth that Kara and Lena could ever have feelings for each other. In all ways except physical, it was like the Supercorp fandom had just participated in the ice bucket challenge. And, whether it was as part of the Supergirl fandom or elsewhere, the Supercorp fans had already been through hell. It got ugly. Then there were memes. Then there was a lot of hate tweeting. Then there were people yelling about the hate tweeting. Mostly everyone was just a weird mix of angry and sad. These were two actors, two of the leads on this show, engaging in this behavior. It was a gut punch when everyone was already down.

Friday night, Jeremy Jordan releases an apology. It's not really an apology. It's an "I'm sorry you're upset" with a lot of condemnation and self defense. It has the general vibes that we'd describe in 2023 as "it's not that deep," but instead of addressing it to the fans, he condescendingly addresses it "Hey Kids."

Yeah, he'd spend the weekend regretting that.

Sunday, Jeremy Jordan would put out another apology. It was a sincere one this time, admitting he messed up and didn't truly understand the implications of what he was saying or the deep roots of homophobia in fandom culture. Most people accepted this - he was an idiot who made a mistake. Time would tell if he made it again. (Spoiler alert: he did not.) Some people, however, are still mad.

And then there was Melissa Benoist. Mind you, I don't think she personally acknowledged any of this at all. But her publicist sent out a statement (according to the fact checking I'm doing as I write this, it was in a private email to a fan, who then posted the response to tumblr) that Melissa was a proven ambassador of LGBT acceptance, as shown by her work on Glee. Uh, yeah. So that became a meme.

This, more or less, is where our story ends, unless you count a since-deleted Blind Item put out by TVLine that may or may not have been about the cast of Supergirl (but was heavily speculated to be about the cast of Supergirl) in which someone overheard two actors fighting before an interview the following day about one of their behavior, that ended when the other said "I just can't talk about this right now." (I am so bummed I cannot link this article, anon, you have no idea.) (The leading theory was that Katie McGrath, who of course came to Supergirl already having amassed a sizable queer following from her role in Merlin and also possibly her role in Dracula, gave Mr. Jordan a piece of her mind about what was and wasn't acceptable to say to a queer fan.)

And that's my tale. In addition to the season they were promoting, the cast of Supergirl would go on to do four more seasons and manage to get out of the Arrowverse without overstaying their welcome or being cancelled unceremoniously. And they moved on. Jeremy Jordan went back to New York, where he returned to Broadway and Off-Broadway and he's soon to be Off-Off-Broadway in the premiere of The Great Gatsby: the Musical. He also along the way ended up playing one of Hallmark's very first gay main characters. Katie McGrath went on to be a bisexual character on an Irish show, do the audiobook narration for a lesbian period romance novel, and is a masked evil lady in the new John Wick tv show. And Melissa Benoist went on to do a lot of incredible things in her personal life that don't necessarily belong in this little essay I've written here.

Genuinely, I wish everyone in that cast all the best.

Anon, I am so sorry this got as long as it did. I hope this answered your question!

#tl;dr it was a bunch of silly drama #and no one is actually homophobic #also me saying melissa did incredible stuff in her personal life isn't tongue in cheek or anything #I just didn't want to muddle those accomplishments by making them some kind of redeeming end to this story #because it's not relevant #and also her story doesn't need redeeming #this was wild drama but it was also just a moment #so please do not take away from this that i think any of them are bad people or anything to that effect #can't believe i can spend two hours fiercely dedicated to writing this but not any of the actual essays i have to write #would you believe i actually took out a whole little tangent?#it was about agents of sheild and skimmons #god i have to wake up in like four hours #asks

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idiealotdontworry · 2 years

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i really hate this trend on here of assuming any queer person with exclusionary or reactionary beliefs is just a Young And Stupid Teen Who Doesn't Know History. sorry to say, but I've been harassed by more late-20s-early-30-somethings on here than any other age group. it's not usually teenagers telling me to die because im aroace or a trans guy or because i think mspec lesbians are fine actually. Way more "young people" are decent about it than you think. (I put young people in quotations cuz, yknow, your 30s is still pretty damn young actually, but nobody treats it like it is.)

that's not to say these people don't exist or aren't especially prone to absorbing misinformation through no real fault of their own. (let's not pretend any of us were better when we were teenagers, and let's especially not pretend that they're coming up with these ideas on their own. Exclusionism and bigotry far predate any 16 year old.) But I think it's really shitty to chalk it up to being young instead of addressing the actual root of the problem, which is isolation.

Reactionary mindsets of any kind thrive when the person in question is isolated and alone, feels like its them against the world, etc. And no amount of "you're too young to Get It, go read a history book" is going to remedy that. You can't be mad that people aren't learning Queer History ™ (specifically American Queer History ™ bc that's all anyone on this website seems to care about) when the only people telling them to are condescending as fuck about it, denying their struggles, and dismissing their concerns. (Even if those concerns are stupid. which, yeah, the concerns of exclusionists usually are. But people who just have genuine questions deserve genuine answers.)

You wanna know why I've mostly been harassed by people older than me? Because those people went unchecked for that long*. Because the people older than them didn't teach them shit. If you don't want that to keep happening, you need to do better. If you actually want kids and teens and early-20-somethings to be better, you can't condescend to them about it. You can't pretend like being older actually means you Know Better, because it really doesn't, certainly not Inherently, if all the prominent terfs on this site and in academia are proof of anything.

What I'm saying is this: You seriously can't expect that giving the queer equivalent of the "Kids These Days" speech is ever going to get through to anyone. Did it ever get through to YOU when you were a kid? No! And for good reason! Most people who have that attitude about kids and teens are complaining about things that aren't a real problem. If you want to bring actual issues to light, you can't talk about it the same way that your dad talks about millennial's supposed lack of work ethic. Change tactics.

I'm also really tired of people pretending that exclusionism and bigotry and in-fighting doesn't happen IRL, or that it wasn't a problem until recently. As united as the queer community at large has always been, there's also always been people inside the community who have felt the need to tear each other down. That shit is not new, especially not when you remember that white queer people have always been shitty to queer poc. "Kids these days" are not inventing this shit. They learned it from the seeds set by people decades older than them.

It's just exhausting. Post over.

*Also because they grew up on Wild West Internet where you could literally do and say nearly anything with zero consequences. I also grew up on that kind of internet, but at the tail end of that era, so it phased out pretty much as soon as I'd grown accustomed to it.

#queer #lgbtq #personal #eh kinda #for the record I am very much a 'other people's identities are not my business' kind of person #and all of my friends are too! even the ones younger than me! shock and gasp I know #treating that like it's rare to see from anyone under 28 is really fucking weird #and shows that the only experience you have with current queer youth culture is the minority of people who are shitty to each other online #which is sad bc we as a community should be learning from each other. not putting the youngest of us down for the crime of being young #forgive how rambly this is im still sick w covid and my head has been hurting fucking constantly since i took dayquil last night #wtf do they even put in that shit that makes my head hurt so bad

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cowboyjen68 · 2 years

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Hey Jen,

I just had my first year of college and thusly had my first gay relationship with a girl. I am having some ups and downs about “getting over” her and don’t know how to begin processing our relationship. This post might be a bit of a long one as I have quite a few things I am seeking advice for from a queer elder that, especially while at home for the summer in a small rural town, I don’t have the luxury of having.

For a bit of context. We started our relationship very soon after she ended her relationship of 2+ years on good terms. We were together from the start of freshman year to the end, mutually agreeing to not do long distance. I am grateful for that, as I don’t think that we would be compatible in the long run anyways. We ended our time together on awkward terms. We haven’t spoken since her stating that she needed more time alone to sit with things. That is a very abbreviated gist of all that happened.

I see vignettes of her online and it is hard to feel anything but longing and disappointment in myself for having hurt her. Have you been in a situation similar before? I am having a lot of issues with how to break down my feelings about the range of things that happened with us and how much I /really/ miss her friendship.

I have also been dealing a lot with being in the same town as my ex boyfriend, who caused me a lot of emotional distress and damage during our time together (and that’s a whole other story ! ). I feel like I have been tussling with the label of lesbian because I have had a lot of vicious returns of comphet/bordering intrusive thoughts of talking/romancing/being physical with a man

Forever grateful for your advice,

- A young butch

First relationships that form in college or high school do not have a good track record of lasting. We just change so much during that time due to age and the massive amount of experiences we are having. Our lives are planned for the moment but rarely for the long term so it is hard to solidify common future goals together.

Breaking up because distance was inevitable is a good reason. One year of making memories and learning about navigating a relationship with a woman is a gift.

One of my lesbian mentors once told me that a relationship length is the measure of its value. Short term, destined to end, romantic and intimate relationships can be rich and fulfilling and teach us so much about ourselves and what we like and don't like.

Those early relationships are a time for growth and building skills to help as we get closer to a time and age where we can and want to settle down for longer.

It is way better to hurt each other with a break up while things are ok because waiting until things go bad can cause so much more damage and result in resentment. In my experience, after some time and distance you will come back around to a friendship based on mutual memories and shared history.

I dated men in high school, well, boys. We were young and I only knew I was SUPPOSED to date men. I didn't really think women were an option even though I knew something wasn't quite clicking. I had one last go with a man after college and actually had sex with him. Our two week dating period is a blur of alcohol and me trying to convince myself it was "doable" over a life time.

I started hanging out with more lesbians and really listening to them. They way they talked about intimacy and chemistry with women made me realize i was exerting so much effort into making myself like men and they were just easily and effortlessly loving women. They didn't say thing like "she is nice". They said things like "she is spectacular and warm and I can't wait to look in her eyes again". It was like reading an dry news article about the stock market as opposed to lovely and flowery poetry. I knew then that I was working to fucking hard when I could just stop that and embrace what came easily to me, IF I let it.

Try that. Try looking at how much exhaustive time and energy you put into thinking men are what you want. Instead of climbing a dirty, stinky, hot and sharp rocked mountain (men) lay in the soft grass in the sunshine (women) and just youself be surrounded by comfort and passion. Less work much more fulfulling.

YOU deserve to be happy. Don't let society or an abusive ex tell you differently.

#butch #lesbian #breakup #dating

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anabanana-romanova · 11 months

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I...

To all my US friends, are you okay?????

WHY ARE BOOKS BEING BANNED?

Not just Queer and LGBTQIA+ books, but books that talk about the dark side of American history? Books that are too "graphic" and "violent"? Books that talk about diversity and shed light onto topics not often discussed?

Books that make some people uncomfortable?

GUESS WHAT?

They're supposed to do that

Especially history books.

Coming from someone who wants to be a modern historian, history is never supposed to make you feel proud or happy. It's dark, it's upsetting and sometimes really gut-wrenching.

The fact that they're banning books to hide history and racism and anything different is absurd. You wanna know what I was reading when I was 6? Tintin. What does that involve? Kidnapping, drugs, guns, forms of violence. And guess what? I turned out perfectly fine. One of my favourite Wings of Fire books that I read in year 8 had a lesbian couple in it. There was a book I read in Year 9 that was incredible and about a Chinese girl feeling completely isolated from the world because she was so different. I was learning about the colonisation of Australia in year 4 and knew what the Stolen generation was by year 5.

Stop banning books. Books are the windows to the world, to other lives we've never lived and may never live. It's important to read books that are different to us and what we know because it teaches us to be more compassionate and understanding of others. It helps to see inside the worlds of those around us and get an idea of what it's like to be someone else. If we are only fed what we know, we don't learn or grow or empathize with anyone.

Now, you can still buy them from bookstores. Do you know how expensive books are? Far too expensive for my liking. And, as a kid, you don't go a bookstore and buy a book you've never heard of because you might not like it. You wander aimlessly through the library until you find something that catches your interest and then you discover a whole other world. Not everyone can afford to buy books constantly, and if books are being banned in libraries, what's to stop people from banning them in stores?

When I hear about book banning, the first thing that comes to my mind are Nazis. Not that I'm saying it IS Nazism, but that level of controlling and restricting people's ideas of others is damaging. They banned Jewish books because they didn't want people to view Jews as people and as equals. When you ban books written to present a specific point of view, you are essentially doing the same thing.

Isn't it ironic that the supposed "Land of the Free" is now starting to seem like the complete opposite?

Stop banning books. Stop banning growth and learning. Stop banning diversity and stop being pricks

That is what I have to say to book banners.

#stop banning books

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mzminola · 3 years

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Community

Straight and cisgender people being part of the broader queer community is good in a variety of ways, and the example from my own life is growing up queer in a small town with parents who were supportive before either they or I knew I was queer.

My mom and dad grew up in Berkeley CA and were involved through their youths in a variety of extremely nerdy things like the Society of Creative Anachronism, Dungeons & Dragons (and a Star Trek inspired sci-fi variation), theater, etc. Within those groups, and other parts of their lives, they had a lot of queer friends.

They moved around a lot as adults, and this was the pre-internet era so staying in touch was harder, and even when they stayed in touch they didn’t necessarily see people in person much. I wound up growing up in a small liberal town in western WA. Statistically, due to the small population, I just did not know any out queer adults in my hometown when I was growing up. There was no GSA at the school, either.

But for years I had stories of queer adults, long before I ever knew I needed them. I never once worried my parents wouldn’t accept my bisexuality, because I was so very used to my parents talking about queer friends of theirs who were giant nerds, with the exact same fondness and nostalgia as all their other friends. Stories of queer-specific shenanigans were told alongside all the other shenanigans.

We had semaphore flags in the costume playtime box because Dad’s a nautical history nerd, and we had big motorcycle goggles designed to fit over chunky glasses because Mom used to catch rides around the Bay Area with lesbian biker friends. That blend and casualness was just a normal part of my childhood.

I learned from stories of my parents’ friends that you could take stereotypes and turn them into in-jokes; gay friends playing backyard baseball or catch or other sports totally flubbing a throw, and heckling each other with “What’s the matter honey, your wrists too limp?”

I learned about the AIDS epidemic, of the loss, the grief, the stigma, and of the ways people fought back. Supported each other. I learned a lot more when I was older from queer adult survivors of the epidemic online, but I learned first from my parents, who were still grieving friends they lost.

This was not distant history, this was not something that happened to “other people” this was something that happened to their community.

My father’s mother’s brother is gay. My great uncle. He raises tropical birds. When he was a much younger man than he is now, the signaling style of wearing a diamond earring in one ear was starting. Now, at the time, most men to wear a diamond earring as a signal of their sexuality wore very small, discreet flecks. Just this little flash of light that might catch your eye, that might make you look again.

Great Uncle inherited his mother’s engagement ring, took that honking big “look at me and admire how I got engaged! Look at me, look at me!” diamond to the jeweler, and got that sucker turned into an earring. You could not fucking miss it.

And you know what? That’s how I learned about queer signaling as a thing people could do, it was presented as a fun family story, and I wouldn’t have heard it if not for my parents, because Great Uncle lives in a completely different part of the country from us and doesn’t travel much, so I’ve only met him twice, during which everyone was catching up on current life, not stories of his youth.

When my mom, dad, and their friends were all young adults who’d recently left home and were living in a different state from their families, one of their friends was a butch gay man who’d recently come out to his parents. And his mom wanted to be supportive, and she was a person who sewed clothes herself. So she made him shirts. She had his measurements, and she’d regularly mail him care packages with beautifully hand-made button up shirts in pink and purple fabrics. Because those were the gay colors at the time, and she wanted to make sure he knew she supported everything about him, that she would never want him to change himself to fit in society’s mold.

Now the thing was, pink and purple were not actually to his taste. They were not colors he’d normally pick out for himself. But he and his parents didn't live in the same state anymore, this was pre-Internet, if you wanted to share photos you had to take them, develop the film, and mail them. So she wasn’t seeing his style regularly, she was seeing the style of the out gay men back in the Bay Area, and doing her best.

He wore the shirts. He was running around the Oregon countryside as a butch gay man in the early 1980’s in pink and purple button ups, because his mom made them for him with love, he loved her too.

So I heard this story growing up, and I learned from it. I learned parents could love and wholly support their queer children long before I ever heard about parents who rejected theirs. I learned love is in the actions we take. That it’s going to be imperfect, but what matters is we’re trying our best, and accepting that from each other.

I’m bisexual, and I’ve got some weird gender stuff going on. I did not know any out queer adults in my hometown growing up. I did not find any writings until the early 2000’s when the Internet became more accessible. My school did not have a GSA.

But I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew pieces of west coast queer culture and history. I knew queer people could be giant nerds, could be outdoorsy, could be silly and serious and fully rounded people with rich, wonderful lives. That their friends and family could accept them wholly without hesitation. Because what was there to hesitate over?

I’ve said before my hometown is liberal, and it is, but it still had enough prejudice to keep me semi-closeted as a teen. I had peers insist to me that “a child needs a mother and a father”, had adults insist civil unions were fine but marriage equality would violate religious freedoms, heard peers use “gay” as an insult from late elementary school onwards (and the teachers just ignoring it).

I needed all those stories from my childhood. I needed them. And I had them. Without ever having to ask.

And my brother had them too. He’s straight and cisgender, and he has never been anything but 100% supportive of me. He was arguing for equal rights and refusing to use the derogatory language peers were before I ever came out to him.

When I see people trying to gatekeep the queer community, this is what I think of. I think of being a kid in a small town, without knowing any local out queer adults, hearing people around me say bigoted things, but having all these stories burning in the hearth of my heart, and I think…

You want to douse that flame?

You want to reach back in time and wrench those stories from the child I was?

You’d rather I grow up isolated, confused, lonely, and scared, than have my straight, cisgender parents in the queer community? You want me to be isolated now, you want my brother to abandon me?

Really?

Identity and community are intertwined, but they are not rigid, nor should they be.

Community being broader is good.

#long post #queer tag #queer community #AIDS mention #fuck gatekeeping #Min and their entire family are all giant nerds #my dad's family just does NOT do subtle #this essay has been in the works for a while now #Min writes stuff #edited to change the last sentence from #community being the broader of the two is good #to just #community being broader is good

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betaoctillery · 3 years

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its really weird how queer communities on twitter have become more inclusive of queer identities than on tumblr? like im so glad the ones i involve myself in dont treat labels like fandoms or saying that certain identities can be "contradictory" while in the process erasing enormous chunks of the overall queer community. if theres one thing tumblr desperately needs to understand is that no one else gets to decide ur identity for u, ESPECIALLY if its bcus they dont understand how u actually identify or why.

since i know a lot of u are probably itching to know, yes im referring to bi lesbians. its no fucking coincidence that almost every single bi lesbian ive met have been a trans woman or nonbinary & yet its the identity that receives some of the nastiest backlash despite being an identity decades older than the average userbase on tumblr lmfao.

no, cis men arent pretending to be lesbians bcus of this label. they do that anyways bcus theyre lesbophobic. no, cis men are not going to think its okay to hit on lesbians bcus of this label. they do that anyways bcus theyre lesbophobic & biphobic to blame queer ppl for the queerphobia of cis men. full stop.

learn ur queer history guys im not fucking joking its really embarrassing watching you all parrot dog whistles from 80s political lesbian talking points ("lesbian means doesnt like men" is probably the one yall the say most until ur blue in the face, even though historically it had always meant "likes women" UNTIL political lesbian separatists started attacking, policing, and excluding members of the lesbian community that had always been a huge integral part of their community.) by redefining lesbian to mean "doesnt like men" they could use transphobia & biphobia to push out trans & bi women, as well as butches, all for having a "relationship to masculinity" (a huge reason why many butch lesbian bars disappeared around that time & immediately after). its why it will never be a equitable or historically accurate definition of lesbian. especially when lesbian is already an m-spec term, unless youre implying all nonbinary ppl can be lumped with all women, which i really shouldnt have to say is nby/transphobic as fuck.

please use critical thinking & stop attacking other queers who arent doing anything but identifying in a way that offends ur ignorant, bigoted sensitivities

also dont message me about this bcus its exhausting trying to talk to ppl who cant use google at all apparently. i cant tell yall the number of ppl who only try to "talk" to me about this so they can impose their (morally and historically wrong) opinions on me when i know for a fucking fact ive read & learned more about bi lesbianism from actual historical sources than they have, or are willing to (lavender woman comes to mind off the top of my head, & no, random carrds with unsourced info dont count as historical sources)

#secret octocat meow #the hill i will always die on is defending marginalized queers #bcus yall fucking suck and are always out for someones blood even if they didnt do a fucking thing but simply exist as themselves #i used to like this site it was very progressive about queer identities but its become so overrun with terfs and cryptoterfs its insane #bi lesbian #mspec lesbian #mspec identity #queer history

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ailuronymy · 3 years

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do you think every disabled character in wc is handled poorly? i understand theres def some cases of ableism but at the same time when i hear ppl say that its usually bc the disabled cat wasnt able to become a warrior due to their disability. and i feel like ppl forget, that not everyone irl CAN do what they want after they become disabled. ex. someone wants to be an athlete, but their legs have to be amputated. a cat like briarlight esp i feel is p realistic and could be a source of comfort

Hello there, thank you for writing in. I’m going to reply to this question with a series of questions I think are a bit more useful, given what you’re trying to ask me. I hope that’ll clarify what is a deeply complex, multilayered issue.

Do I think Erin Hunter handles anything in the series “well”? Not really. I don’t have a high opinion of the work of the collective and, broadly speaking, I think every right note they play, metaphorically speaking, is an instance of chance rather than effort, skill, or intention. Stopped clocks are right twice a day, mediocre writers will sometimes do something cool by accident, similar principle. That’s not to say Erin Hunter hasn’t ever done anything on purpose--just that overall the underlying drive of the series isn’t so much quality as it is quantity, and speed of production, and it shows.

Do I think Erin Hunter puts any significant research into how they portray disability? No. I do not think it is a priority for this series. They’re not trying to make a meaningful work of literature, or capture a realistic experience of disability, or tell especially impactful or thoughtful stories, or even make a particularly good or coherent fantasy world. Warriors is a specifically commercial product that was commissioned by HarperCollins to appeal to a particular demographic of drama-loving, cat-loving kids. It’s not really trying to do anything but sell books, because it’s a business, so the text in many ways reflects that. They’re not going for disability representation, in my opinion. They’re including disability in many cases as a plot-point or an obstacle.

Do I think this means that people can’t connect to these characters and narratives in meaningful ways? No. Often I say that a work is completed only when it is read. Before that point, it doesn’t have a meaning: a reader finishes the work through the act of reading, and interpretation, and filling in the spaces and resonance of the story with their own values and experiences. When people talk about subjectivity, this is what they are talking about. What this means in the context of disabled characters in Warriors is that these characters and their stories can be multiple, conflicting, even mutually exclusive things at the same time, to different people, for different reasons.

Do I think characters have to be “good” to be significant to someone? No. I think genuinely “bad” (i.e., not researched or poorly researched, cliche, thoughtlessly written, problematic, etc. etc.) characters can be deeply meaningful, and often are. Ditto above: for many people, and especially marginalised or stigmatised people, reading is almost always an act of translation, wherein the person is reading against the creative work of the dominant culture in a way that the author likely didn’t intend or didn’t even imagine. There’s a long documented history of this in queer culture, but it’s true for just about everyone who is rarely (or unfairly) represented in media. Disabled people often have to read deeply imperfect works of fiction featuring disability and reinterpret them in the process--whether to relate to a kind of disability they don’t experience themselves but which is the closest they’re offered to something familiar, or to turn positive and meaningful what is intended as narrative punishment, or simply to create what’s commonly called headcanon about “non-disabled” characters who echo their personal experiences.

Do I think everyone has to agree? Extremely no. As I said before, people will actually always disagree, because all people have different needs and different experiences. What can be interpreted as empowering to one person might be very othering and painful for another. There is no “right” answer, because, again, that is how subjectivity works. This is especially true because marginalised communities are often many different kinds of people with different lives and needs brought together over a trait or traits they share due to the need for solidarity as protection and power--but only in a broad sense. It’s why there is often intracommunity fighting over representation: there isn’t enough, there’s only scraps, and so each person’s personal interpretation can feel threatening to people whose needs are different. You can see examples of this especially when it comes to arguments over character sexuality: a queer female character might be interpreted as bisexual by bisexual people who relate to her and want her to be, while being interpreted as lesbian by lesbians who also relate to her and want her to be like them. Who is correct? Often these different interpretations based on different needs are presented as if one interpretation is theft from the other, when in fact the situation is indicative of the huge dearth of options for queer people. It becomes increasingly more intense when it comes to “canon” representations, because of the long history of having to read against the grain I mentioned above: there’s novelty and, for some people, validation in “canon” certainty. And again, all of this is also true for disabled people and other stigmatised groups.

Do I think this is a problem? Not exactly. It is what it is. It is the expected effect of the circumstances. Enforced scarcity creates both the need for community organising and solidarity and the oppressive pressure to prioritise one’s self first and leave everyone else in the dust (or else it might happen to you). The system will always pit suppressed people against each other constantly, because it actively benefits from intracommunity fighting. Who needs enemies when you have friends like these, and so on. A solution is absolutely for everyone in community to hold space for these different needs and values, and to uplift and support despite these differences, but it’s not anyone’s fault for feeling threatened or upset when you don’t have much and feel like the thing that you do have is being taken away. It’s a normal, if not really helpful, human response. But until people learn and internalised that the media is multifaceted and able to be many things at once, without any of those things being untrue or impacting your truth of the text, then there will be fighting.

Do I think my opinion on disability on Warriors is all that important? No, not really. I can relate to some characters in some moment through that translation, but my opinion on, say, Jayfeather is nowhere near as worthy of consideration than that of someone who is blind. I don’t have that experience and it’s not something I can bring meaningful thinking about, really. That’s true for all these characters. If you want to learn about disability, prioritise reading work about disabled rights and activism that is done by disabled people, and literary criticism from disabled people. And as I mentioned above, remember that community isn’t a monolith: it’s a survival tactic, that brings together many different people with disparate experiences of the world. So research widely.

Finally--do I think there’s only one kind of disabled narrative worth telling? No. For some people, a disabled character achieving a specific, ability-focused dream is a good story. For other people, a story that acknowledges and deals with the realities, and limitations, of disability is a good story. The same person might want both of those stories at different times, depending on their mood. That’s okay. Sometimes there’s power and delight in a fantasy of overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles and defying all expectations. Sometimes there’s value and catharsis in a narrative that delves into the challenges and grief and oppression experienced because of disability. There’s no one truth.

To round all this off, I’m going to give my favourite example of this, which is Cinderella. I think it’s a great and useful tool, since for many it’s familiar and it’s very simple. Not much happens. In the story, she is bullied and tormented, until a fairy godmother gifts her over several nights with the opportunity to go to a royal ball, where she dances with a prince. The prince eventually is able to find Cinderella, due to a shoe left behind, and they are married. In some versions, the family that mistreated her are killed. In others, they’re forgiven.

Some people hate the story of Cinderella, because she is seen as passive. She tolerates the bullying and never fights back. She does every chore she’s told. She is given an opportunity by a fairy godmother, and she doesn’t help herself go to the ball. She runs from the prince and he does the work to find her again. Eventually, she’s married and the prince, presumably, keeps her in happiness and comfort for the rest of her life.

For some, this story is infuriating, because Cinderella doesn’t “save herself”: she is largely saved by external forces. She is seen as a quintessential damsel-in-distress, and especially for people who have been bullied, infantalised, or made to feel less capable or weak, that can be a real point of personal pain and discomfort.

However, for some others, Cinderella is a figure of strength, because she is able to endure such hostile environments and terrible people and never gives up her gentle nature or her hope. She never becomes cruel, or bitter. She is brave in daring to go outside her tiny, trapped world, and she is brave to let the prince find her. She doesn’t have to fight or struggle to earn her reward of happiness and prove her worth, because she was always deserving of love and kindness. The prince recognises at once, narratively speaking, her goodness and virtue, and stops at nothing to deliver her a better life.

Depending on the version, the wicked family disfigure themselves for their own greed--or are punished, which for some is a revenge fantasy; or Cinderella forgives them and once again shows her tenacious kindness, which for others is a different revenge fantasy.

The point? Cinderella is the same character in the same story, but these are almost unrecognisable readings when you put them side-by-side. Which one is right? Which one is better? In my opinion, those are the wrong questions. I hope this (long, sorry) reply is a set of more useful ones.

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shadowfae · 3 years

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We’re all pretty aware that the tumblr otherkin community is at a huge decline; I was wondering if you have any theories as to why that is?

American Protestantism, the decline of queer oppression in North America and the AIDS crisis, helicopter parenting, web 3.0, morality politics, and Tumblr’s porn ban; roughly in that order and rolled up into one bombshell that was a few years in the coming but nobody really saw it and understood it until it was far too late.

That was a mouthful and probably only made sense if you follow current cyberpolitical theory. For some of you reading this, as with every other hot take I have this has a chance of being passed around, that alone is enough. But for others who had no idea what I just said and need the ELI5 version, let me explain that. Buckle up, this’ll be a long one, and will go into fandom history a bit as well because it is actually relevant.

As we know, tumblr is a very American-centric platform. Twitter is also this way, but less so, but tumblr has it bad. Now, I’m ‘lucky’ in the fact that I’m Canadian and a twenty minute drive from the American border, so that puts me in the ‘privileged’ majority. (I say privileged because I’m not really sure what else to call it. Most of the information going around about politics either directly affects me or indirectly affects me approximately one or two links of contact away. Someone who’s only influenced by American politics because it makes their sister’s online friends sad is not going to be privileged in that way.)

This means that American politics and their social climate overwhelmingly affects tumblr’s social climate. This also bleeds through into other fandom spaces, on twitter, instagram, and Pixiv to name a few places; but here’s where I spend the majority of my time so here’s what I’ve witnessed.

America’s main religion, as far as I understand (from the raised agnostic and currently neopagan view I have), is some weirdass capitalistic-Protestantism that is so many miles from what the actual Bible says that if I were a betting man and knew more about cults than I did, I’d say it’s some weird fucking cult and never set foot in the country again for any reason that isn’t gaming free shipping through a PO box. If you have no idea what I just said but are at least vaguely familiar with Christianity, this graphic explains it pretty well. So we can see there’s some glaring issues with that ideal.

The decline of queer oppression and the rise of queer rights in North America, which is to tenderly include my own country but we all know when people say ‘in NA’ they mean ‘America, and Canada where it applies because the right-wing Republicans are really good in the propaganda department to convince everyone that Mexico is a drug-lords-and-anarchy wasteland to the point where even I don’t actually know what’s down there other than bad drivers and heat’; means two things. One, it’s a good thing by a long shot and do not mistake this as me thinking queer oppression being lessened is a bad thing. But two, it means that thanks to the AIDS crisis, queer folks lost a lot of first-person sources as history.

The queer elders in NA who survived are typically either a) bitter anarchists who are often POC, probably still dirt poor and do recreational drugs or b) university-tenured TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists). Category A are the people who Republicans have deemed worthless in every way, because racism, queerphobia, ableism, and all the other ways to be wrong and different and Evil that they can’t handle, because Jeezus would never want them to actually learn to love someone who wasn’t just like them, and they don’t have the compassion to do better. Category B are the people who want to be different in just a teensie little bit, typically with TERFs they want to be lesbians, but they don’t want to challenge the status quo. They’re fine with the way things work, they just want to be on top oppressing others over ripping the whole damn thing down and building a more forgiving system.

Now, due to all those ‘isms and the cheerfully malicious aid of the Republicans, pun not intended but drives home the cruelty of it all, we also see the rise of helicopter parenting. The invention of the internet did not really help this. Basically what you’ve got is a whole bunch of parents who saw the civil rights movement, just got access to the internet and things going viral, know the world is changing, and like all parents, they’re scared for their children. Now instead of parents knowing one or two people in their classes who just went missing one day and everyone assumed they ran away, they hear about eight homicides in the city of kids going to parks at night and dying. The Satanic Panic was another event around this time that contributed to that, but I’ll let you research that one.

This means that all of these parents, instead of doing what their parents typically did and let their kids wander off for the day so long as they’re back by sundown, they can’t let their children out of their sight. There might be a freak accident where their child is decapitated on the playground swing! Their baby might get murdered by an evil Satanist walking home from school! Their dearest darling might go online and tell their address to someone who’s got a 100% chance of being a pedophile who will show up and kidnap them in the night!

…You get the idea.

Combine those three things I just established, what we’ve got is a lot of queer kids who have a lot of internalized shame for being different and wrong, because they’re queer, and they can’t find spaces offline to be themselves, because all of the elders who would do that are dead and/or inaccessible and their parents won’t let them go to any clubs that aren’t school-related, which they’ll never find a GSA or queer club because Republicans, ‘isms, propaganda, and the war on Category A queer adults have all done their best to ensure that those spaces don’t exist.

So you have a generation of kids who I am the youngest of. The first generation on the internet. The late Web 1.0 (usenets and Geocities) and early Web 2.0 (livejournal was the big one, ff.net too, also 4chan but fuck those guys) generation. What we were taught was: trust nobody on the internet with your real info no matter how much you like them, this is a wilderness and any crimes that happen won’t be punished or seen so don’t put yourself in a position where you’re going to be the victim of one, and everything you put online is never getting taken down so don’t put anything up that you’re not willing to have on the front page of your local newspaper.

This worked out pretty well, actually! You had kids who knew that if they got in trouble, there was no backup coming to save them. Because the form that backup might take - parents and police - wasn’t going to help. Best case, they’d be banned from their friends and online support groups for being queer. Worst case, they’d be jailed and put in juvie and conversion therapy and turn to drugs and become evil Satanists just like everyone says they secretly are already. So they learned very quickly to take care of themselves. Nobody was going to save them, so they learned to not need saving.

And then, well, Web 2.0 shifted to Web 3.0. Livejournal died because parents - the Warriors for Innocence was the big name - went “gasp how horrible my children are being exposed to the evil pedos and homosexuals they’re going to do drugs and die of AIDS!”. Which is uh. It’s filled with a lot of bigotry, and I’m not excusing them - absolutely I am not - but you can kind of see where they’re coming from, if you tilt your head and squint.

Either way, LJ died, tumblr took its place, Facebook was fast taking off, and the fandom folks who had seen mailing lists go inactive, web admins take their fanfic sites down due to copyright, entire fandoms burnt to the ground in flame wars, said ‘fuck that we’re making our own place’ and that’s how AO3 got made.

That’s important. A lot of folks move to AO3, because well, the rules let them. The rules say ‘you can throw literally anything up here so long as it’s fan content and is not literally illegal, so we don’t get taken down’. It’s a swing for the first generation internet users, those kids who know this place is a wilderness and are carving out our own sanctuary.

But. The children under us. The children for whom AIDS is a nightmarish fairy tale, for whom the ghost stories are conversion therapy, for whom know they can’t really talk to their parents about being queer but can trust they probably won’t get kicked out over it. The children who haven’t spent ten seconds without supervision except online, and their reaction isn’t ‘oh thank god I’m finally free to express myself’ but ‘if I get in trouble, who will protect me?’.

And there’s nobody there. Because we went in knowing there was no backup. And that was fine. But now, the actual adults have figured out that hey uh, maybe we should make cyber laws? Maybe we should make revenge porn and grooming children over the internet crimes? And they grew up with that. They grew up learning that no, even if your parents are suffocating and controlling, they’re always be there for you! Some adult will always be there to protect you!

That isn’t the case. It’s not. But they expect it, because it’s always been done for them. They don’t really want to change the status quo, because that means doing it themselves. They can’t do that, because they don’t know how, they’ve been controlled for every single part of their lives thanks to helicopter parenting and without that control, they don’t know how to keep their lives together, and they demand someone come and control it for them, without restraining them.

Effectively, they want someone to ensure they never face the consequences of their actions. Helicopter parents will rescue you from whatever you did, because you’re their precious baby and it doesn’t matter if you punched a kid, you can do no wrong and the other kid clearly started it.

But being queer is doing wrong. Being queer is something Jeezus doesn’t approve of. So they want to make it something he could approve of! But if it’s too off what they consider to be okay, if it’s too different and weird and wrong and evil, that can’t do, that’s still bad, and they’re precious angels, and children, and minors, why are we the adults not protecting them and letting them see it? Why aren’t we being just like their parents but queer-friendly, why aren’t we protecting the children?

The adults who taught us were the children of those who died as a result of AIDS. The eldest of my generation knew some of them personally. My therapist’s younger brother died at 20 of AIDS, and she told me what it was like. But they don’t have that. These kids of web 3.0, they don’t have that. What they have is over-controlling parents, and the expectation that someone will always be there to protect them but hopefully in ways that don’t hurt them this time, no real understanding of why Category A queer elders are the way they are, and so much internalized shame that they have to do some pretty fancy logic-leaping to keep them from collapsing entirely.

They can’t turn into Category A queer youngsters, because they don’t know how to unravel the system around them, because they’ve never had to actually make choices in their lives and live with the consequences, because they don’t have the example of how to do it. They can’t unravel their internalized shame because again, that’s hard and they don’t have their parents to take away the consequences and pain. It doesn’t come easy to them, so it may as well not come at all.

But, you ask, if Category A queer elders aren’t around to teach the kids, then how are they learning anything positive at all? Well, Category B, our university-tenured TERFs, who don’t want to change the status quo but want to just be at the top of it instead.

For a lot of kids who don’t know how to make hard choices but want to be queer, this is an extremely attractive option. But when they go online to queer spaces, a lot of them say fuck terfs, we don’t support your hate, and they go ‘yeah okay that makes sense’. They can say fuck terfs without ever actually questioning why terfs are bad. They’re Bad and Evil, just like drug addicts, just like fairytale nazis, just like the evil homophobes.

And we saw them say ‘yeah fuck terfs’ and we were like, ‘aight you got it’ and we never questioned if they actually understood us. They didn’t. They didn’t, and we didn’t do enough to fix it, because not enough of us realized the problem. So terfs got a little sneaky. They hid behind dogwhistles and easy little comments, hiding their rhetoric in queer theory that you’ll absolutely miss if you just memorize it and never actually question it and understand why that point is being made.

This goes back to America sucking, because their school system is far more focused on rote memorization over actual logic and understanding of the text. They’re engaging with queer theory the way they’ve been taught, which is memorize and don’t think, don’t question. Besides, questioning and understanding is hard. Being shown different points of view and asked what they think is not only hard but requires them to go against all of the conditioning that says to just listen and agree and never question it, which goes back to tearing the system and internalized shame down, and we’ve established they can’t do that so naturally they don’t do that.

This begets, then, the rise of exclusionary politics. They’re turning into Category B queer youngsters, because we told them ‘hey that’s a terf talking point what are you doing’ and they never questioned why. They learned you can do all sorts of things, just don’t say X, Y, or Z, because they never thought deeply about it.

The children who have grown on Web 3.0 do not want to do any heavy lifting to make things easier for themselves long-run. They want to do as little as possible and have things get better for them. There isn’t enough of us left in Category A, because Category B terfs are very good at recruiting young folks and Cat. A is overwhelming poor, dead, and easily dismissed in the system as evil and bad, so we can’t exactly convince the young folks to listen. If all of the young kids could agree to tear down the system, a lot more older folks might listen. Change always starts with the young, and there’s a reason for that.

But Republicans have figured out, if you get people fighting, they never put together a force that can actually stop you. TERFs, who want the exact same thing as Republicans but with themselves on top, are doing this to queer youth, and Cat. A elders can’t fight back because there isn’t enough of them and the odds are against them, and the young folk like me who follow their lead.

People can kinda handle gay people. It’s not so far from the acceptable normal that it’s impassable. But you want them to handle kinky people? Gay people of colour? Kinky gay people of colour? Trans people? Those are bridges too far to step across. The original idea was to get the foot in the door with marriage equality and inch our way through with racial equality, sex positivity, dismantling ableism and perisexism (forgive me if that isn’t the word for anti-intersex ‘ism), and see if we can’t patch up the system instead of inciting a civil war over this and have to tear down the system entirely.

Well, we might’ve managed that if not for AIDS being the perfect ‘Jeezus is killing all the evil gay people for being sinners’ propaganda machine. As it stands now, not a chance in hell. So long as Republicans and terfs keep everyone fighting, nobody has the power to dismantle their empire, and they stay in power.

So then, you ask me, “Lu what the fuck does that have to do with the decline of otherkinity on tumblr???” and now that you’ve got all that background knowledge, here is your answer.

Those children who want their experiences curated for them and the evil icky content they don’t like to be gone because it disgusts them and anything that disgusts them is clearly sinful problematic and should be destroyed, are what we call ‘antishippers’, or anti for short.

They like being progressive. Sort of. They learned what Republicans and terfs have honed to a fine talent: keep people fighting, hold them to a bar they have to constantly make or risk being ostracized, and harass the people who don’t play along into getting out of your sight forever. Sound familiar?

They learned of otherkinity, and particularly fictionkind, because web 3.0 means if something goes viral on one site, it doesn’t just go viral on that site, it makes it to worldwide newspapers and twitter and nobody ever, ever fucking forgets it. They realized the following: “Hey wait, if I’m this character for realsies, not only does it help me deal with the internalized shame I’ve done nothing to actually fix because that takes work, I can also tell these people who draw gross content I don’t like they’re hurting me personally, and that actually sounds credible, and I can shame them into stopping”.

If this is your first time here and that sounds sickening, it damn well should, and I am so, so sorry that any of us had to witness this, and I am more sorry I and everyone else who personally witnessed this didn’t realize what was going on and put a stop to it. I answer asks and browse the tags and clear up misinformation and it isn’t just a genuine desire to help. It’s damage control, and my own way of trying to deal with the guilt of not stopping this. I’m well aware I couldn’t have seen it coming, I was a teenager myself still learning and no one person has that much power. I still feel like I should have done more, and I’ll do what I can to fix what’s within my power to fix.

So back to the story. This all culminates around 2016 or so. Trump wins the election, and every queer person ever knows they’re fucked, and the younger generation’s only ever heard horror stories, never seen actual oppression that this could bring. We’re all scared. We all don’t know what to do. Nobody has any answers or any control over the situation.

So they lash out. They attack others for drawing things they don’t like, for challenging them in literally any way, for asking them to reconsider the vile shit they just said, for so much as defending themselves from the harassment they just got. And when challenged, they yell “But I’m a minor! A literal child! How dare you attack me, clearly you get off on this, you evil pedophile!” and they sling around every insult in the book until one sticks. Pedophile is a pretty good one, so is abuser, and sometimes zoophile works out too. Freak is great, everyone gets right pissed off about it.

The fact that Category A queer elders were called pedophiles and freaks is not a fact they know or care about. The fact that they are quickly making every fandom community super toxic is also not a fact they care about. The fact that the ‘kin community has words and terminology and they actually mean shit, and the fact that they’re spreading misinformation faster than we can keep up with, are not facts they care about.

So they come in, take our terms, make it impossible for us to find new folks. They realize our anger is easily a power trip, because we’re already made fun of, so they get off on the little power they can find and make fun of us too, and then when we get rightfully annoyed and pissed off, they can hide behind being minors.

Then tumblr implements their porn ban, because nobody’s stopping them, because it isn’t profitable to have porn on here. Considering most of the otherkin community, and most fandom communities, are full of adults who do occasionally talk about NSFW things, and the fact that they’re just banning everyone who so much as breathes wrong, this begins the start of a mass exodus, scattering already fragile communities to twitter, pillowfort, dreamwidth, and a few other places. Largely, twitter, where you can’t make a post longer than a snappy comeback and where the algorithm is literally designed to piss you off as much as possible.

So community elders have largely left, because they can’t stand the drama and the pain of what’s happened, and that’s if they didn’t get banned for being kinky furries who do talk about how their kintypes merge with their sexuality. Most community members have also left or stopped talking about being ‘kin, because they get associated with antishippers and toxicity and it’s just not worth it. Those of us who are left get drowned out by misinformation and trolls and wishkin and antishippers who appropriate our terminology because it supports them getting a power trip, and whenever we argue, we get called pedophiles and freaks and worse.

And now there isn’t much left. I hope we get to find a better place. Othercon was a good place to talk about it, I did a whole panel (it’s on Youtube!) about what we want to do about it. But I don’t really have any answers.

But to sum it all up... America’s political climate ultimately culminated in destroying queer spaces, and we survived, and then people who wanted to destroy smaller communities to get on top showed up and we were all but defenseless against something we had never, ever dealt with before on this scale.

One of my twitter mutuals mentioned how kinning and otherkin are now completely separate communities. It’s really the best I can do to keep hoping that continues, until nobody realizes the words are at all connected to each other. It’s the best anyone can hope for, now. I hate it. I hate every part of this. But maybe we can salvage what’s left.

#luteia laments #otherkin #fictionkin #alth #alterhuman #asks #anonymous #long post //#discussions #on community history #on politics #on public relations #commentors feel free to add your own thoughts!#Anonymous

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