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#and it is true that there are women who fetishize gay relationships
ed-nygma · 1 year
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"Only girls read/watch yaoi" was a weird discourse talking point people who've never talked to any cis gay "weeb" used to try to delegitimize the identities of transmascs who used bl to explore their sexuality and gender lol
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autolenaphilia · 1 month
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It's interesting how intellectually inconsistent the arguments against "problematic" kinks like fauxcest, CNC and ageplay is. Like the anti-kink people get very heated about those kinks for "fetishizing/romanticizing" abuse. And the thing is, that's true for bdsm in general. It relies on roleplaying power inequalties, which would be very abusive if they were real.
That was in fact the argument of the 70s radfems who created the type of anti-kink discourse that relies on exploiting feminist concerns about abuse. They were against all forms of bdsm, including among (cis) lesbians. They used the same arguments we see against fauxcest and CNC today, for what is normal bdsm play.
And the radfems kinda lost this battle of the feminist sex wars, probably because it alienated a lot of the cis women they were recruiting from. Nowadays queer people of all genders do a lot of bdsm and anti-bdsm views don't get a lot of airtime.
Nowadays you see this anti-bdsm rhetoric mostly among proud terfs who use it to prove their hardcore bonafides. (Although I've seen some tenderqueers who admit that they think all bdsm is problematic too.)
And i think that's because the anti-kink people have decided to do a strategic retreat on this question. The radfems took a too extreme stance and alienated people who they otherwise could have recruited. So they have gone for easier targets. Kinks which are seen as extreme compared to "normal" bdsm, like fauxcest and CNC. And they target individual transfems accused of being into or even just "defending" these kinks with callouts and mobbing instead of condemning all the cis gays and lesbians into bdsm.
This leads to intellectual inconsistency. It's fine to play with whips in the bedroom,but doing CNC play is evil. One type of roleplaying abusive relationships is fine, but the other is bad. It's obvious hypocrisy to broaden the appeal of the message.
And of course, their transmisogynistic bias is obvious and I and others have noted this before. And even if the anti-kink people weren't transmisogynistic bigots, they will naturally target us for their moralistic crusade out of opportunism. We transfems are easy targets for callouts on these subjects, because transmisogyny primes people to easily view us as perverted sexual predators and those doing the callouts tend to have tme privilege over us.
And as I said before, the 70s radfems anti-bdsm position and their transmisogyny were intertwined. Janice Raymond literally diagnosed trans women in "The Transsexual Empire" with sadomasochism, something she views as inherently pathological.
And of course their arguments are bullshit anyway. Like sure a lot of kink fetishizes abuse, but I don't see that as a reason to condemn the people doing it. I don't see why I should care if someone gets off on a rape fantasy or CNC roleplay, because it's Not Real. I don't care about fictional murders for the same reason. Most arguments to the contrary tend to rely on the arch-reactionary concept of sexual degeneracy: "if you do enough fauxcest and CNC it will warp your mind and you'll eventually rape your relatives for real, or inspire someone to do so." It ignores the material societal conditions that lead to abuse in the real world.
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olderthannetfic · 3 months
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Oh, golly! A known youtuber was recently exposed for plagiarism also turns out to be an extreme misogynist?? Who could've noticed such a thing!
It's not like in multiple videos he went on rants about how female authors are big bads for writing about MLM couples and female fans are big bads for daring to enjoy those ships.
In his Killing Stalking video, he attacked women for enjoying the manga and (it's been a long time since I watched that video, and considering that he nuked everything, it's not like I can go back, but I'm pretty sure that he said that) we are raised with the belief that the abusive relationships between two gay men are ok to fetishize while we'd never read the same thing between a man and a woman (not only this is stupid and untrue, but notice how a third kind of couple is missing, here. Wonder why.)
Later on, he talked shit about the author of Love, Simon, forcing her to come out, then proceeded to keep addressing her as a "straight" woman, and whined that the book/movie erased the characters of any kind of sexuality despite the women wanting to see gay men do the nasty.
Later, later on, he rambled about Red, White, and Royal Blue, and this time he complained about that the evil women who fetishize gay men were against genuine displays of sex acts between two gay men (???).
For years, he blabbed about how women are the true enemy of gay-men-focused medias, and even then he couldn't keep his story straight (do we like to see these gay men fuck or not?? James, which one is it??).
Not to mention the fantastic take of "Queer women had it easier throughout history," because that's such a punch in the chest that we can't ignore it.
Guys, this shit was always in plain sight. He never tried to hide it, there was no need for a bald bisexual man to make us notice it. We gotta stop turning our faces to blatant misogyny simply because it's being expressed by a gay man.
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Yuuuup.
I'm genuinely sorry for the people who didn't spot it, but I am not sympathetic. Somerton was not even a little bit subtle. He was a toxic, rancid piece of shit for many, many years.
Also, even the plagiarism accusations are years old. People just didn't listen because nobody youtube-famous had made a big video about them.
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notashadowbutawave · 2 months
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i almost posted this on the true detective subreddit episode thread but thought better of it:
I've gotta say… I feel like a lot of complaints people are having about this season of the show don't pass muster objectively when held up against Season 1. Melodrama, "unrealistic" dialogue, complaining about being shown too much about people's personal lives and not caring about the characters…
There is so much unrealistic dialogue in season 1. The way Marty and Rust during their video interviews just come in talking about some big philosophical idea or "life wisdom" nugget in the middle of the episode (nobody talks like that IRL). The scene with Marty's daughter and the princess crown, for example. Marty cheating on his wife multiple times isn't like, objectively "more interesting" than Evangeline's sister having mental health issues or Liz being sexually promiscuous and a mess.
I've seen season 1 probably 10 times and I adore it but a lot of the angry comparisons people are making to S1 kind of just come off as straight up misogyny at a certain point. Like it rubs people the wrong way because it's women. Complaining about Liz and Evangeline going to the dredge without backup but when Rust and Captain America Marty Hart do something like that it's believable?
I don't think anyone's obligated to like the season by any means but you can just say you aren't feeling it as opposed to trying to make these apples-to-apples comparisons to season 1 that really don't hold water; I think people are just a lot more willing to accept this type of storytelling when it's about men and kind of has a fetishization/shame angle with masculinity in general. Like S1 is very masculine but it's also a love story. idk. I'm gay so I should probably stick to Tumblr for talking about this show, ya'll are wild.
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idk watching people who are probably white dudes complain on Reddit that we are seeing too much "native culture" on the show strikes me as really icky.
i recognize that these are reddit comments and not like, actual media criticism but i think it says a lot about how people are conditioned to understand storytelling in general. like there's still so much fucking misogyny and white supremacy in our mainstream media and i realize a lot of people wouldn't say it out loud but i think they genuinely just find it exhausting that they're being asked to contemplate the interior lives of native alaskans and women by watching this show lmao
(that's not a value judgment about how well it is doing at depicting  Iñupiat culture because i'm not the person who gets to make that judgment but it REALLY rubs me the wrong way that people can't STAND even seeing it depicted)
(i think the fetishization of the American south also has a lot to do with it, like people are very willing to accept the aesthetic style of the American south as a vehicle for crime/mystery/possibly supernatural storytelling because it really doesn't challenge any conceptions they might have about the genre) (it helps that Woody Harrelson and Matthew McCounaughey are native southerners with great acting talent and natural screen chemistry who really took Season 1 to a higher level, in no small part thanks to their uncredited script doctoring. with lesser actors I think the story falls flat as hell because you need them to sell a rich relationship and complex inner lives with their performances because SO MUCH of their relationship is subtextual) (so when people see these great acting performances in the context of a police procedural set in Louisiana i think they're very pre-conditioned to elevate it to an almost mythical status in the genre because it doesn't present TOO many challenges to a conventional worldview about who has power and agency in stories)
like I said i've watched season 1 probably 10 times. it's very good. but it does MANY of the same things that people are complaining about regarding season 4/night country in terms of showing a lot of relationship/sexual drama for the leads and their Tragic Pasts. they just don't like it. which is fine. i just think it's a disingenuous angle to approach criticism of the show.
like if any actor other than McConaughey were doing Rust's monlogues in S1 it would not have been very good because it would have come off like self-serious edgelord shit, which is what it actually was (pizzolatto sucks) before it ended up in the hands of competent producers and performers. instead it really comes off like a man who has suffered and developed this worldview genuinely, within himself, not as a way to wield power over others but to protect himself from harm.
anyway....
for my part, i wanna know what the fuck is up with the spirals and the bad CGI polar bear visions and i'm going to be disappointed if it's not just some massive red herring designed to freak people out a little because that's what we deserve.
but in terms of like, the characters' lives, i generally find them very interesting. the opening scene of episode 3 with annie genuinely moved me to tears. annie seems like a fucking cool person and i would love another flashback about her.
i love that liz is a fucking asshole who is constantly being forced to confront her own behavior as racist, self-centered, impulsive, etc.
i love that evangeline is a very lonely person just barely keeping it together. kali reis is putting on an amazing performance. also, for the record, i'm VERY gay.
i wanna know more and there are only 2 episodes left and i hope it sticks the landing so i can write a big actual essay about what it did well from a storytelling perspective!
gosh i just love serialized fiction on the television
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sinimake · 4 months
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Big agree with what you said about Johnshi. I've been in fandoms for a fuckton long time and this isn't new but damn does it bother me that in the year 2023 we still have to go through this.
It isn't only how the story goes for both Kenshi and Johnny (they meet at their lowest, go through hell together and come out of it as better people). It's also the banter in the intros (not only between them but also the fact that Kenshi and Johnny talk about each other to the others). And don't get me started with how their designs work : the blindfold is now forever tied to Johnny and the whole red/blue design going on.
But no. We can't have what would be the most organic relationship in the whole MK1 story. Instead we have Syzoth and Ashrah (which, don't take me wrong I LOVE them both) who happen to breath in the same room and possibly bond outside of the mainstory?
Agh sorry for the rant but sometimes I get bitter bc we couuuld have it aaaaaall >:(
EXACTLY 😤😤 I AM SO MAD!!!
Let me rant some more about this.
NRS was the first to introduce the first ever gay character in the fighter style video games. Love them for it, love that Taleena is canon. However, they're still pussayh for not making johnshi canon.
So i have been fangirl for more than a decade and IT IS ALWAYS THE SAME DAMN PROBLEM WITH BIG PRODUCTION COMPANIES they're so afraid of public backlash.
Let me tell you why not making Johnshi canon situation is different from Taleena and Kung Jin by opening big ass can of worms.
1. MK is dominated by cis hetero males. Yes, many people from various bg play the game, but it is undeniably true that the majority of fan base is men.
2. There's a phenomenon called the fetishization of lesbian and bisexual women. I am aware that I'm being controversial by saying this, but this fetishization makes the general public be more "accepting" of lesbain couple than the rest of the queer community, and it resonates mostly in straight men where they see queer women as objects that are simply putting on a show for the enjoyment of those watching.
This leads to my next point that it is a high probability that Taleena is allowed to be canon because the backlash from the cis hetero male fan base will be less than having gay relationship in the game. And let me tell you, Taleena interaction is bare minimum in the story mode!! I mean, yeah, they're trying to hide their relationship from others and the story is not exactly focused on them but they can be so much more! I can gloss over the lack of taleena content but was hoping for more in the future installment. But guess fucking what? Alternate universe Tanya and Mileena are rumored to be married to men in the upcoming mk1 side story.
Like imagine the vast possibility of having alternate universes where you can notch up the teased Forbidden Lovers trope but instead of having Taleena being happily united, NRS makes their only queer relationship straight???? *maniacal laugh* Honestly i will fight NRS on SIGHT. In my eyes, this only proves that they don't really care about queer representation, they're just filling the diversity qouta.
3. With what i said, NRS is a fucking coward for not making their popular male characters gay. You might bring up my boy Kung Jin but listen to me, debuting new queer character and making existing fan favorite character queer are completely different things. Kung Jin is first introduced in MK X and his sexual orientation is subtly suggested in the game. While Johnny Cage has been rated among the top Mortal Kombat characters by various gaming media publications.
If NRS made Johnny gay and in a relationship with Kenshi, imagine how fucking big the media coverage of them would have been. Literally, the second coming of that beer company queer backlash would have happened. Every gaming news outlet would be making articles on it. Johnshi would be trending on twitter.
I understand that it would be quite a risk to that to your business but guess what? They gave the most organic, the most heartfelt, the most tender story arc (ok i could be lil baised but you cant deny the chemistry) then slapped good ol' guys being pals and best friends forever crap on them 🙃
If Johnny and Kenshi were opposite gender, no cap, NO FUCKING CAP THAT THEY WOULD HAVE A FUCKING COUPLE.
4. I think Johnshi arc takes almost half of the story mode because we go through Johnny, Raiden, Kenshi, Baraka, Ashrah, Syzoth POVs till they come back from Outworld mission and in every chapter, Johnny and Kenshi get significant moments. And those moments are exclusive to only two of them, specifically tailored to them.
People say they're just friends, but i think the difference really shines if you consider that Kung Lao and Raiden are equally friends with them too. During outworld mission, Kung Lao has minimal dailogues and screen time when Johnny and Kenshi have interaction. If Kenshi and Johnny were just friends, they should have shown Kung Lao's reaction to Kenshi's blinding, Kung Lao's worry for Kenshi in the Shang Tsung's real laboratory, Kung Lao's line for Kenshi's regained sight RIGHT ALONG SIDE WITH JOHNNY.
What Kenshi and Johnny have exclusively belongs to them. That sets the difference between platonic friendship and the connection of those two.
Straight couples have less fucking interaction than one fucking scene and they are magically together. So tell me why the fuck Johnshi is not real
They SHOULD BE REAL and I'm so DONE with NRS
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panvani · 3 months
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Anyway general breakdown of my thoughts on Scott Pilgrim:
Perfectly solid romantic drama. I'm actually kind of impressed that the story does not feel dated (except in, like, having flip phones) despite it having by now been copied to death. I'd even dare to say it was ahead of its time. A lot of that is purely through the lack of apprehension with which it portrays gay people, particularly gay men, which like, no one was doing in the early 2000s. That isn't exactly praise, and it comes with a lot of caveats, but it's worth saying. The art was Fine. There was some truly repulsive comic art coming out in the early 2000s and while I'm not a fan of the art style, it's not terrible.
Neither Scott nor Ramona are particularly interesting characters on their own, and their relationship is (deliberately) plain and stereotyped. This is somewhat lampshaded in the story, but still a bit dissonant when compared to the cultural impact of * their * relationship on the general Heterosexual Culture. Ultimately, their romance was the least interesting part of the story, which I think Bryan Lee O'Malley knew.
Knives is kind of the obvious emotional core of Scott Pilgrim, and (by Bryan Lee O'Malley's admission) has the most true and complete character arc. She's, in my opinion, the articulation of a lot of the greater thoughts and anxieties held by the author as opposed to Scott, who is a general representation of a (white) everyman. There's a lot I could say about Knives specifically, but it really comes down to Knives being too big a character for her story. Despite all of her development and screentime, her arc feels starkly incomplete. This isn't really * inappropriate * -- the central idea of her character is that she is a child, ergo still developing -- but it does make the conclusion feel more empty than it should.
The way this is most obvious, I think, is the discomfort with which Scott Pilgrim (series) handles The Existence Of Gay Women. Bryan Lee O'Malley is obviously pretty damn comfortable with the existence of gay men, but seems to have difficulty in processing intimate, sexual relationships between women. Knives is (subtly) written as gay from the get-go, but this aspect of her character (despite, arguably, being a core motivational factor to every other aspect of her character) ultimately produces a lot of momentum to have nothing much done with it. By the beginning of volume 4 it's evident that the author has noticed this dissonance and attempted to address it, but ultimately did so ineffectively. What resulted was a strange, forced kiss between an adult woman and an underaged girl that had essentially no lasting narrative impact, and also Ramona Is Gay, Btw, Not That This Will Ever Be Acknowledged Again. (I kind of have nothing to say about the bizarre pedobait in that volume that was subsequently backtracked.)
The last point I'll allocate to this post is how taken aback I was by the pervasiveness of race as a source of conflict in Scott Pilgrim given that I'd literally never seen someone acknowledge race as a source of conflict in Scott Pilgrim. Knives, aside from her conflicts as a gay girl, is also an articulation of the author's anxieties when it comes to race, particularly the perceived inadequacy of Asian men and the vulnerability of Asian women. This, while fairly understated, is very deliberate and very heavily saturated within the text of the story. Just as Scott has a fetish for gay women, he's implied to have a fetish for (young) Asian girls, and while his repeated and specific assertion of physical dominance of Asian boys/men is never brought up in those terms, it's pretty obviously A Thing.
I think this is probably the most interesting aspect of Scott Pilgrim from a "what's this author's fucking Problem" perspective given that Bryan Lee O'Malley has a Korean mother, though I don't particularly want to go into too much depth. I will say the one way in which Scott Pilgrim felt especially dated was in its particular slew of Orientalist stereotypes, which were in themselves pretty telling: Japanese people have scary cyberpunk shit, Chinese people do martial arts, and Korean people are entirely beneath mention. As I was finishing the story I had to wonder how the story might be different if it were made today, specifically in that Korean people are now at the forefront of North American pop cultural consciousness in a way they were not in the early 2000s. I had to wonder the author's relationship to his own identity informed his decision to not include any prominent characters of his own ethnicity.
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vexingwoman · 1 day
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I’m loving hearing everyone’s thoughts on whump. Many such cases of ostensibly straight or bisexual women consuming nothing but torture porn (with a tasteful side of woobie coddling or “caretaking”) for gay male pairings almost exclusively. Extreme rambling below because I’ve been thinking about this forever and I’ve never seen anyone else talk about it in a meaningful way.
The non-sexual elements of whump are actually even more interesting to me, especially since even that is still reserved for gay male characters (or straight male characters being written as gay for fic). The whole caretaking part, the way so many whump writers often deride canon material for failing to properly explore the sort of pain they think their fandom faves ought to feel (more accurately: exhibit). Many whump fics are non-sexual but the voyeuristic attention to the suffering of its gay male protagonists feels sexual, in a fetishistic way. There is no similar equivalent to people paying this much precious, mawkish attention to the traumas experienced by female characters. Even if it mirrors or exceeds the actual amount of canon emotional catharsis experienced by their male counterparts.
And I really don’t think these women are a 1:1 equivalent to men who can only get off watching extremely violent porn about women. I don’t even think it comes close to the level of harm those men cause. But I would like to ask the people who consume and produce this content: Why is it only ever about gay men? Why is suffering, crying, rape, terminal illness, torture, etc. such a heavy erotic fixation for them?
And unfortunately I cannot picture any response that isn’t either 1) pornsick or 2) violently defensive.
Very eloquently said. In my experience, aside from admitting that it’s a fetish or misogynistically claiming that male characters are more complex and easier to empathize with, the most common answer I’ve received to the question of why this community focuses almost exclusively on male characters is that it’s an “unexpected and intriguing reversal of gendered expectations.” And while this may be true for some, I’m not convinced this is the main reason.
Because obviously, having a female character abuse and torture the male character would also constitute as an unexpected reversal of gendered expectations, but this community isn’t fascinated by that. Both the character executing the abuse, and the character receiving the abuse, are virtually always male—and the character who plays the role of the caretaker, of course. Coincidentally, I just ran into some stats which really emphasize the point, not that they were needed:
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Also, have you noticed a strange upsurge in ridiculously abusive and shockingly violent homo-erotic media? I’m referring to stories like Killing Stalking or Hannibal here. Of course, these kinds of stories have always existed, but I feel like the fascination in them has recently spiked. I recall that even ten years ago the most popular media on gay male relationships was mawkishly adorable—what some would call “fluffy.”
You have to wonder how much of a role that plays in all this. I know for many girls, these vicious homo-erotic stories were their first real exposure to whump content. Maybe they prefer gay male whump content because it’s all they know? But again, that seems too convenient an answer.
In conclusion, I think this is just a mixture of fetishization and internalized misogyny, as I’ve said. In another post, I’ll go further into why I think it’s actually false to argue that male characters are more complexly written and easier to empathize with, and how the real culprit is not the writing, but gendered stereotyping and unconscious misogyny.
If anyone wants to chime in and give their perspective on this, please do.
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showmey0urfangs · 11 months
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I'm the previous anon and would like to clarify because I feel like some people have been misinterpreting what I said completely (not you however so thanks for that), obviously there is commentary about patriarchy and gender in the show. The issue becomes, again, when people insistently refer to a gay male character as "basically" a woman to the extent that some members of this fandom do. I have quite literally seen far more people talk about the supposed misogyny faced by Louis (a man who profited of the exploitation of women!) than Claudia, an actual female character.
The other issue I have with large swaths of fandom when it comes to this topic is how many people seem incapable of acknowledging that one person can have both masculine and feminine traits, which manifest in different ways, and that two gender nonconforming men could be attracted to each other. It's really frustrating because iwtv is genuinely one of the only pieces of media I can name, at least in the mainstream, that features two gender nonconforming male protagonists who are in a relationship with each other and whose narratives and experiences are taken seriously instead of treated like a joke. The attempt to downplay Lestat's feminine qualities by some people also becomes very weird if you know how bisexual men are stereotyped as only ever being "straight-acting," it's like people don't even know this is something bi men face at all, or that Lestat is one of the few bi male characters to represent gnc bi men. It comes off very ignorant. But then, I've also seen numerous people claim that the show isn't "for" gay men anyway (despite being about them?), a sentiment that is not unique to this fandom in the slightest. It's the same shit as basically every other slash fandom ever.
I understand why a lot of people retaliated against all the omg lestat mother shit especially when it IS absolutely true that he acts like a patriarchial maniac but how is the solution to just swap it? or refer to this fact uncritically? people are out here acting like louis WANTS to be treated like lestat's subjugated housewife when in reality he was always uncomfortable with lestat's disrespect and humiliation of him. it's equally cringe to act like louis is basically The Woman and lestat is The Man and refuse to acknowledge the nuance in both their gender presentations. as you said, it also feels misogynistic and the fact that a lot of people seem to inherently associate womanhood and victimhood is genuinely concerning, especially with how common that line of thinking is among TERFs and SWERFs. as if, what, gay men can't be victims of abuse? as if abuse is somehow feminizing? (another a real sentiment I have seen in this fandom.)
if I seem heated it's because I kind of am at this point, because this shit is pretty much ruining my fandom experience if I'm honest. you so much as point out that maybe certain sentiments can be taken too far or expressed in ways that are problematic or that one extreme isn't better than another and people just twist your words. the fact that so many people would rather double down on their homophobia instead of simply own up to and dial it down even slightly is very telling. it's so disappointing, because i feel represented by this show but i guess not even canonical, nuanced portrayls of queer characters are safe from your average fandom bullshit
Hi there, thank you for clarifying and I totally understand your frustration. There is a tendency in fandom to wanna break down characters into archetypes or tropes even if the source material doesn't fit into it; Grumpy vs Sunshine, Aggressive top vs innocent virginal bottom (I've seen fans try to fit Louis into this even though the guy used to own and run several brothels 😂), Clueless cinnamon roll vs Life-hardened tough guy, high school quarterback vs loner loser etc. And this feminine vs masculine is just another trope that can often veer into fetishization, especially when it comes to M/M pairings.
I'd say Louis and Lestat both exhibit some of these traits, but they don't fit neatly into any defined category and that's what makes them interesting. They don't conform to heteronormative gender presentations because newsflash—most people don't actually, real humans are a lot more nuanced than that and well-written characters should/will reflect that complexity.
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gleefuldarrencrissfan · 8 months
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Alright, I’ve seen several articles and posts lately asking what it is about straight woman shipping gay male couples, and I have to say I’m guilty. I’m going to try to explain.
It’s not a gay porn thing or even about sex at all. It’s many things, but I think it boils down to the relationships and how they are with each other. I realized there are straight ships (like Monica and Chandler and Leslie and Ben are the two that pop into my head) that I have too, and I love them for the same reason. Support & friendship.
These couples are not just a couple. They support each other completely. They are each other’s best friend. They make each other better. It’s a true partnership. They truly look out for each other and have their back.
I think most of the stories I seek out show this. I believe that many past movies and films like to depict guys as masculine and tough, and although a woman appreciates this quality in a man, I think what she really craves is a man who can share his feelings and show vulnerability occasionally. Not all the time. But as a woman, I know safety is so much more than just feeling like my significant other can protect me if there’s a break-in. I want to feel safe if I have a break down. I want to feel safe to express or share when I’m not feeling strong, but I want him to do the same. I want my partner to talk to me, hold me, hug me, and that be enough. I don’t want to be propositioned for sex afterward. Lol.
I think what I love about these characters is that they talk about the hard stuff and they’ve made it clear that they are going to love each other through all of it. They are going to support their other half with the things that maybe others have found unloveable or maybe even things they are insecure about regarding themselves.
To me, these relationships are beautiful. They are not perfect. The characters are flawed, and I like them that way. Blaine has depression as does Charlie. TK is a former addict. Kurt has major anxiety. Nick and Carlos both have insecurities about their identities and struggle with self acceptance. But they share these struggles. They allow one another to fall apart and support them when they need it most, like Carlos calling TK’s sponsor when he realized he wasn’t the person TK needed. Kurt pushed Blaine to talk about when he was insecure about his weight gain. And Charlie never pushed Nick to come out. I think that’s what I find beautiful. Nick does the same for Charlie in season 2, but I’m not posting spoilers. Lol
My favorite fics about these couples are not the ones that are pure smut. They go deeper. Ok, that sounds dirty. Lol. My favorite stories let them talk, hold one another’s hand, and just be there when the other needs it. Don’t get me wrong. I won’t pretend I skip over all the smut. Lol. I used to when I first started reading it. But I think what I started to realize was it’s true when they say that what women really crave is not sex but intimacy. There’s a difference.
I like reading about those couples that share that connection. That can have a conversation without saying a word (but they don’t rely on that.) Those conversations have happened and these characters will continue to talk through insecurities and feelings in their relationship. Because that’s what they have is a real relationship; a true connection; real intimacy.
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You may say it’s a fetish. But maybe it’s deeper than that. Maybe we’re craving this. I love the touches, the looks, the hugs, the reassurance. It’s not about the kisses or sex. It’s the connection.
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kuruk · 11 months
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the rest of this post was whatever because calling m/f bi couples butchfemme is kind of gay but this is literally kind of true except the bi women they do this to usually aren't even very gnc at all it's just that they are usually bi women of color. I can't really say it's biphobia because it's almost always other bi people doing it but bi women who aren't white are especially always taken as this kind of joke and immediately inserted into this role because it's like funny or shocking to people it doesn't really matter if the women are gnc or not they suddenly are unfeminine and dominant just by being bisexual. which people think of lesbians too honestly I think it's a lot of homophobia and misogyny and with bi women there comes an assumed essential part of us that is our relationship to men and the high importance placed on that. it's as if people think bisexual women are just a straight femdom fetish and that being a bisexual woman is more about How you love men rather than about Who you love which um includes women
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dearweirdme · 5 months
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when i sent the ask i knew the first thing you would bring up is their relationship with women. so, to answer your question, yes, i actively criticize ALL people who hyperanalyze their sexuality, whether they’re straight or queer is literally not our concern? but also, the taekook shippers are quite literally the most pervasive and most invasive in this entire fandom. but we’re not fans of their sexuality. we’re fans of them as artists. i’m not homophobic. i’m a literal queer, bisexual woman telling you as a queer person that this is super disrespectful. for ANY person. this goes beyond being “interested” in their personal lives. it’s so dehumanizing to have literal strangers deciding FOR you what your sexuality is. deciding FOR you if your friends are actually your friends. deciding FOR YOU that you can’t come out bc of a company when it’s possible that if any of them ARE QUEER they simply may not WANT to come out. why do you all feel entitled to pushing them to? why do y’all feel entitled to deciding what their sexuality is and deciding why their sexuality is and deciding what would be the result that makes THEM happy when y’all are not them?do you guys seriously not think it’s disrespectful? when did i EVER say them being straight was the default? in fact i never mentioned me thinking they were straight at all and simply said that analyzing their sexuality when they didn’t give ANY OF US consent to do so is unethical and dehumanizing no matter what way you look at it. you can try to say i’m homophobic. i truly don’t care bc i know that i personally really like woman and men equally. this isn’t at ALL about my sexuality or my outlook on people being queer. at what point did i ever state or insinuate that *I* think they’re straight or that *i* think something would be wrong if they were straight or queer? i’m literally saying that information is not only irrelevant but not for us to know or to force our way into knowing. i’m saying it’s inappropriate to speculate on their sexuality as a whole. straight. gay. bi. pan. or otherwise. it’s literally not our business and has NOTHING to do with being their fan. you’re talking about love yes but you’re also making grave assumptions about their relationships with other people and across the board these narratives impact real life people? like y’all are treating like they’re people only in the fantasy of the ship. i think this of all shippers who genuinely believe their ships to be reality and go around actively spreading information as if it were true when none of us know. and the answer to the apparent mystery about their sexuality has literally fuck all to do with liking bts. if you only like them bc of their sexuality then you don’t like them and this is a fetish. if your entire narrative around being their fan is convincing other people that they’re queer or straight or ANYTHING that they themselves didn’t disclose, you are not a fan. this is fetishizing.
Hi again anon!
I do apologize for thinking of you as homophobic, it’s just that usually asks like yours come from that side of fandom. I guess you just don’t like people talking about celebrities private lives in general, which I understand. It is however a huge part of being a fan for many many people, it is something that magazines rely on and make money of, it is something that companies and artists themselves lean into at times. For me, being a fan means that I care about their private lives as well.. I cannot really help it, it’s something that happens automatically. I think it happens for many people automatically in general. If that’s not your way of being a fan, that maybe you should refrain from looking at blogs like mine. I will not have you make me feel bad about caring about the members like that.
What I have seen is that even amongst queer persons there’s many opinions on how to talk about these things. I know I have many queer followers who do want to talk about this, I think their opinion is just as valuable as yours.
Again, I agree that many shippers take it too far.. I don’t personally think I am though.
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redheadbigshoes · 7 months
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So there's this page on Instagram, @/thetinmen and they're basically a men's rights activist page. And they were doing a post where they posted a bunch of statistics about men but crossed out "men" from it and replaced it with "Group X" to point out how we'd be a lot more sympathetic if they weren't men and one of the slides was this:
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the FACE I MADE 😭
Instagram has a bunch of those accounts…
People really are stupid to not think about this. I hate this discourse of “gay men suffer more” because it usually comes from people who don’t have critical thinking to try to analyze the situation.
Why does it seem that gay men are less “accepted” than lesbians in society? Or that lesbians are more accepted than them? I’m just giving a hint that it will all go back to misogyny.
1) People see gay men and they think they’re weaker because they compare them with women. Because society thinks only women are supposed to want and be in relationships with men, so when there’s men who want the same thing women are supposed to want, they’re treated as worse, as less men…
2) People see lesbians and (a lot of the times) don’t take us seriously and don’t think we actually want to be in a relationship with another woman, that we’re deep down attracted to men because that’s what women are supposed to want.
3) People (men) fetishize us lesbians.
Some things those people also need to take into consideration is that gay men (usually) don’t need to deal with people invalidating their sexuality because people usually do recognize they’re gay, a lot of the times they just don’t accept that. When it comes to lesbians we need to deal not only with people constantly invalidating our identity, by thinking we’re deep down attracted to men and not believing us when we say we’re not attracted to men, but also by people not accepting us.
Another thing it needs to take into consideration is that gay men are still men, they still hold the power over lesbians because of their gender, they’re still the oppressors when it comes to their gender. So gay men suffer from homophobia, lesbians suffer from homophobia and misogyny, not to mention the combination of both: lesbophobia. Lesbians are the main victims of corrective rape, which in case of gay men is way less likely to happen to them.
Gay men have way more visibility than lesbians (and everyone else in the community)…
So saying gay men have it worse than lesbians it’s just ignorant. I’m not trying to make a competition, just pointing out how that statement isn’t true.
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natividadmoon · 9 months
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It's going to be long but I wanted to give an opinion on the whole controversy of Jace's couples
I feel that it is much more complex to speak than just accuse of misogyny or homophobia
ironic because Sara Snow is a character with dubious reality but she is the one who started all this, lets go
I've been with Sara Snow's label since she started hinting at her name since the previous season and I've seen how it all escalates little by little
I don't know who was the first to mention it but I know that the first response was from the Baela x Jace chargers, at that time Cregan x Jace were not very active, it began to become popular with chapter 10
That he gets with the speech of humiliation and debasement of the black woman before a white one by Jace and Alyn (mrd's speech in my opinion because Baela will not stop being a white woman from a racist society no matter what complexion the actress interprets her, the infidelities were made as a white woman) ironic that those were fans of Daemyra (they even celebrated the beach scene) and I saw few complaints with the treatment of Laena, which was the true crime of the series
"That how they were going to take it from Jace" as if his were a prize, etc, etc. They seemed to be more people who didn't read the book yet or didn't remember that Baela was much more than two lines with Jace.
So as a woman and a fan of Elia it was easy to see what parameters were used to have compassion for a deceived and despised woman if she was not a Targaryen (Rhea Royce vs Rhaenyra is a clear example)
The irony that later en masse they grabbed that Sara Snow did not exist and it was Cregan with a wig. and Baela x Jace chargers who cried that if there was love, now they also seemed to live with the fact that HE WAS ALSO UNFAITHFUL with a man.
What I am going to say should be taken into account that she is being a woman, not a man. And it is that I feel that many times women fall into the fetishization and invalidation towards male couples, seeing as a fantasy or "minor relationship" towards a couple of two men, not a real relationship. This is a larger study, but this is in regards to women reacting to male partner history, as well as personal experience moving in different fandoms that include M/M shipping.
Fortunately @atopvisenyashill gave a very good point of the perspective of a gay man (or bi man too) before the Cregan x Jace couple and that opened my eyes a little. I mean, I'm not a man, but I certainly like how a lot of queer men take that pairing and pray it's canon (I even edited them myself because I'm not necessarily against it) bbut I feel like that applies to real ones, (hate that connotation), shippers of those couples that are far from the conflict Jace x Baela vs Jace x Sara
Regarding Sara Snow in the life of Jacaerys there are two points that will not change:
The relationship (more loving than friendly, although the latter can also work) does work to give Jace more nuances. I'm not saying he's a bad character, for me he was the best heir to the throne and my personal baby. But I feel that his character without errors works wonderfully in a historical book, and Jace is also going to be an important character in the series and when he is in a space of real time it will be noticed that he is not 100% like that (because that is what attracts us to characters of similar ages like Jon, Robb, Sam, etc) He feels the pressure of being heir to his mother, he feels the pressure of being a bastard in the series, even after winterfell he drives the dragon seeds. There is a reason that can be explained beautifully, if he gets to know a bastard.
If he falls in love with Sara Snow in the book or series,it will be blamed on a boy who literally has all that on top of himself, and who finds how different a bastard's life is and what he could have been in another time, Could it be a step to later weave friendships more easily like the one possible with Nettles? possibly
I know many say but Sara Snow has no personality and she is only turning to Jace's narrative. well at that point those are many characters, mainly secondary or third. especially with Jace ending up young as a result of his tragic death. Not to mention Harwin Strong, it's not like much is known about his personality beyond possibly "comforting" Rhaenyra or being on the birthing bed (even being present in King's Landing and Dragonstone, we don't even know the name of his sisters or what happened with them) and yet we all love him in the series and even Martin plans to write a book.
I feel like the fight was never in the Cregan x Jace and Jace x Sara shippers. The conflict was always like the Baela x Jace shipper, and their reactions to those two 2 shipps
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rollercoasterwords · 2 years
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why aren't lesbians more popular in fanfiction?
hello literally no one asked for this but i feel like i’ve seen a lot of discussion about the disparity between mlm and wlw fanfiction, and i simply. have thoughts about it lol. this is mostly focused on marauders fanfic bc that’s really the only fanfic community i’m plugged into, but i feel like it probably applies to others as well -- this is definitely gonna get long so if u don’t feel like reading a lil essay abt it then just scroll past :) 
anyway! i do think the prevalence of gay ships in fanfic is a particularly interesting conundrum given that the vast majority of people who read + write fanfiction are women -- and, particularly in the marauders fandom, i’d guess that the majority of those women are queer. so i guess the question i find interesting can be boiled down to: why do so many gay women gravitate towards stories about gay men?
generally, i tend to see a mixture of three answers in conversations about this question.
1. there’s more canon info about male characters
essentially, i see a lot of people say something along the lines of, “well, it makes sense that there’s more fanfiction written about men, because in the stories these characters are originally from the male characters are main characters/much more developed than female characters.” and i think this answer makes sense, but i don’t necessarily think it’s a sufficient explanation on its own for two reasons:
fanfiction can branch quite drastically away from canon, and there are plenty of popular fics where canon is completely disregarded. even if writers have very little canon information about a character, that doesn’t necessarily mean the character won’t be loved in fandom spaces. which leads to the second reason...
in the marauders fandom specifically, male characters with almost no canon information have become very popular. i feel like i’ve especially seen this more recently with characters like barty crouch jr. and evan rosier, but even some of the bigger marauders characters -- peter, regulus, etc -- have very little information about their actual characters in canon. additionally, there are characters like lily evans, narcissa malfoy, andromeda tonks, etc, who, if we’re going based on the amount of canon information, seem like they should be more popular. 
however, none of this is to say that certain characters should be more or less popular--this is just to point out that i don’t think “there’s more canon information” is a sufficient explanation on its own for why mlm fics are so much more popular than wlw fics. i certainly think it accounts for some of the disparity, but i also think there’s more going on!
2. “fetishization” of gay men
i’ve also seen a lot of people throw out the answer that “it’s because women are fetishizing gay men,” and i...just don’t really think this is the issue that some people say it is. honestly, i think that in most of the cases where i’ve seen people saying this, the term fetishization is being misused. in the marauders fandom, at least, i’d argue that the vast majority of fanfiction is not fetishizing gay men, in that it isn’t reducing gay men to sex objects--in fact, i think that oftentimes the opposite is true. even in heavily explicit fanfiction, the characters are often built out as well-rounded people, and there’s almost always an equal emphasis on the relationship and emotional dynamic between the two characters being shipped together. 
i think when people talk about the fetishization of mlm couples, a lot of times the person they’re arguing about is this imaginary cishet woman who’s like foaming at the mouth to read about gay men fucking each other while simultaneously not really viewing gay men as real, complex people--and sure, maybe there are some women like that. but something that i think this straightforward answer of “fetishization” misses is that there is fanfiction catered specifically to straight women, and it often looks very different from queer fanfic. like, i can almost always tell when i’m reading fanfic whether it was written by a straight woman or not, because heterosexual desire and queer desire manifest in very different ways. and my impression is that the majority of queer fanfic is catered towards other queer people--even if straight women read it, too, i don’t really think they’re the main audience. i haven’t tried to research statistics on this or anything; it’s all just based on my impression of this one specific fandom space, and i’m not trying to claim otherwise. but in the marauders fandom, at least, it seems as though the majority of the readers are queer women; in fact, many writers, like myself, are actually lesbians who literally hold zero attraction to men. so why do we still love reading and writing about gay relationships?
3. *vague hand-waving* misogyny 
once we get past these first two explanations, i typically see people saying something along the lines of, “well, of course mlm fics are more popular than wlw fics, because of misogyny!” and then just...leaving it at that. and it sort of drives me a little insane, because i’m always like, yes, but WHY??? that’s like someone asking why the sky is blue, and answering, “well, because of science.” like--okay, yes, but WHAT science? why?? what’s actually happening??
so, if you’ve made it this far into my little esay, here are some thoughts that have been marinating in my brain about some specific ways in which misogyny effects the popularity of gay vs lesbian fanfiction (and, in some ways, gay vs lesbian media more generally). essentially, there are two big things that it boils down to, in my mind:
the inherent alientation of womanhood
the universality of queer desire
and those two things kinda play off each other, but i’m gonnna take them one by one!
1. womanhood as a process of alienation
so, this is something that i��ve been turning over in my mind over the past few months. generally, i try to avoid broad generalizations about women/womanhood, because i think of gender much more as a socialized series of performances rather than any kind of fixed identity category, however! that being said, i do think that womanhood is, in many ways and for a majority of people, a gradual and unrelenting process of alienation from one’s own body, sexuality, and desires. 
what i mean by that is that in a patriarchal society, becoming a woman means being taught constantly and consistently that you are meant to center men in your life (which is one reason that so many lesbians have such a complicated relationship to gender--because removing men from the equation essentially knocks out one of the pillars propping up “woman” as a gender category). teaching someone to be a woman means teaching them to ignore and suppress their own sexuality, physicality, and desires in favor of men’s. i think many people raised to be women learn to think of their own sexuality as an object of male desire; we are told that we should want to be wanted, but not that we should want. learning to be a woman oftentimes means learning to separate yourself from your own desires--women aren’t supposed to be hungry, or messy, or loud, or ugly, or ambitious, or sexual.
obviously, everyone raised in a misogynistic society internalizes that misogyny; so i think that for most people taught to be women, there’s this shared experience of alienation from your own body. we are systematically and purposely cut off from lesbian desire, from sapphic desire--from any kind of desire or sexuality where men are not a focal point. this makes it understandably difficult to envision rich, complex, sexual and romantic relationships between women, because anyone taught to be a woman has to spend a significant amount of time unlearning internalized misogyny in order to truly embrace queer desire.
so, yes; i think that mlm fics and gay ships are more popular at least in part because of misogyny. but i don’t think it’s this conscious, purposeful thing that queer women should be condemned for--in many ways, i think that gay fanfiction actually provides queer women (especially young queer women) a space to explore queer relationships and queer desire outside of the patriarchy that hangs like a specter over any relationship involving women. for queer women who are still working through internalized misogyny, who still struggle to envision romantic and sexual relationships between women that exist outside the bounds of patriarchal narratives, i think it’s understandable that gay relationships in fanfiction have become this sort of refuge. we are taught to center male desire and sexuality; we experience queer desire that we must learn to stop suppressing; when we look at these two ideas together, i don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that the exploration of gay relationships in fanfiction is oftentimes a way for queer women to explore their own sapphic desire.
2. the universality of queer desire    
this first point leads me directly into my second, which is that gay fanfiction can oftentimes provide a space to explore lesbian desire specifically because queer desire has a unique sort of universality--it is outside the boundaries of cishet norms and narratives, which often leads to different expressions of desire and different relationship dynamics. for example, as a lesbian, i feel that my lesbian relationships generally have much more in common with gay relationships than they do with straight women, simply because the dynamics of typical heterosexual relationships are so far removed from my own experiences with sex, romance, and dating.   
something that strikes me is that, in many instances, these fanfictions about gay men read to me, a lesbian, as lesbian romances--i find myself reading about these characters and thinking that the way they relate to one another, the way they process emotion, etc, feels very much like a lesbian relationship. i think part of that is because many of them are written by queer women, but it’s also because of this overarching universality of queer desire.
anyway, i don’t really have a final point or conclusion that i set out to make with this. i guess i just think it would be nice to move the conversation a little further past “wlw fics are less popular because of misogyny!”, y’know? at the end of the day, i don’t think it’s inherently harmful that mlm fics/ships/media are so popular in queer spaces, and more often than not i think it’s actually an important medium for all kinds of queer people to explore desire + sexuality + gender + relationships through stories written by other queer people. however, i do think it simultaneously calls attention to the ways in which internalized misogyny and compulsory heternormativity can make it very, very difficult for people to envision lesbian desire and lesbian relationships, and i do think it’s important to like...do some soul-searching, y’know? like, just on an individual level, especially if you’re a queer person, and especially if you’re a queer woman--if you struggle to get into wlw fics/media the way you get into mlm fics/media, it doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong, and it doesn’t make you a bad person, but it does mean that you should probably take some time to think about why that might be! what kinds of things did you learn to internalize that might be preventing you from embracing lesbian/sapphic/wlw (whatever u wanna call it) desire? and i say this as someone who had to spend years coming to terms with their own lesbian desire, who knows how difficult it can be to work through the layers of internalized misogyny, internalized homophobia, and compulsory heterosexuality. but at the end of the day, a lot of this fanfiction we’re reading is all tied together by the same elements of queer desire <3 
this is by no means meant to be a comprehensive or even particularly academic analysis of the situation--i’ve just been thinking about these questions a lot lately and wanted to write down some thoughts to help me organize them. if u actually took the time to read all of this and have any thoughts or ideas to share i am clearly dying to discuss + my dms + ask box are always open :)    
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angorwhosebabyisthis · 3 months
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[cws: non-detailed discussion of both fictional and irl SA/CSA/abuse dynamics, apologia for the previous, homophobia, fetishization of wlw, and anti rhetoric.]
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having a lot of thoughts about the wider fandom's treatment of the various abuse dynamics present in sdmi--supposedly in the name of being anti-abuse--and how instead it's propagated deeply anti-survivor/abuse apologist sentiment and behavior through where they choose to apply that rhetoric, and where they choose to look the other way.
(first off, if you're someone who does not and has not done this, thank you from the bottom of my heart. second, this is not at all exhaustive of my feelings on the subject and there will probably be more posts about these dynamics and people's behavior toward them in future. as you can imagine by the length of this post that is saying something lmao)
one of the reasons i feel as strongly as i do about the way both canon and fandom have historically been about pericles, pericky, and shitting on anyone who likes them because it Normalizes Abuse(tm), is that their fans are pretty open and emphatic about the fact that it's Fucked Up. it's why we find it compelling. it is vanishingly rare that we don't.
meanwhile, velma is the UwU Cute Sassy Lesbian Icon whose relationship with shaggy was Cringy and Immature (and mutually so 🙃) at worst, when it directly mirrored such visceral aspects of my experience with CSA that i almost threw up rewatching the second episode.
and that's not even getting into how normalized it is for women to abuse men in a relationship, in broad fucking daylight in front of other people, and how men are supposed to Always Want It and it's an insult if they don't, and how the vast majority of CSA--which it overtly is in shaggy's case, he is implied not to be an adult yet--is perpetrated by other kids.
and it's also not getting into the fact that the ~cute lesbian relationship~ is almost certainly going to end up with the other queer girl in the show also being abused, because abusers are not Magically Cured by True Queer Love's Kiss. how it is incredibly difficult for survivors of abuse in a wlw relationship to be acknowledged or get support because then they'd be a Traitor, or people would rather maintain the feel-good fuzzy feelings wlw exist to give them, or they're closeted and it's not safe to let people know they're in a relationship with a woman. how queer relationships, especially between women, are fetishized as cute pure healthy fairytale romances and not dynamics involving real people who might harm each other or be harmed and need help.
and that's not even getting into the fact that mlm are seen as inherently predatory to an extent that the majority of other queer identities are not. how older queer men grooming boys is a classic homophobic stereotype used to justify violence toward them, up to and including lynchings, and how that is the abuse dynamic everyone in the show and fandom latched onto to revile as the Disgusting Evil Predatory One while giving everything else a pass. how mlm have a long history of forced institutionalization and psychiatric torture and abuse, and the Predatory Gay Man is subjected to decades of--you guessed it!--forced institutionalization and psychiatric torture and abuse, which is framed as what he deserved and where he belonged. how he's supposed to be unattractive (and the majority of the people who do this shit lean hard on that), while people are way more likely to give Charming Attractive Aesthetically Pleasing abusers a pass.
this is just..... normal, to the fandom. it's treated as completely normal. and i think that's a whole lot more fucking harmful than finding emotional catharsis in exploring an abusive dynamic that would not fly in broad daylight irl in a million years.
#sdmi#scooby doo: mystery incorporated#professor pericles#velma dinkley#shaggy rogers#SDMItag#cws in post#like. everything about shaggy and velma's dynamic in and related to the first half of S1 is *gutwrenching*#it took me up until this rewatch to realize why every time i try to rewatch the show in linear order i can never seem to watch past E02#and end up just skipping around#and time and personal experience have *really* made the 'fairytale queer romance that is a missing stair right into a bottomless pit'#thing hit harder#whereas exploring pericky when i was younger *made me realize things about their relationship were abuse that i hadn't understood before*#'okay so if i go back and fix *this* part that'll make it not abusive anymore and they can be happ--oh. oh geez. this goes deep doesn't it'#and the people who don't like pericky will do the opposite and *actively claim the abuse dynamics that are there do not exist*#because Then It Would Be Shipping and That's Just Gross UwU#because 'this can't have been [X kind of abuse] because [X abuse] is Gross and its potential existence near me makes me uncomfortable'#'you're the one who's gross for seeing it and pointing it out; ew how dare you ruin people's day by making them think about that'#'thank goodness it didn't happen and we can all move on with our lives (and you won't like what happens if you dare bring it up again)'#isn't. you know. famously a thing that happens all the time to gaslight and silence survivors irl and take our words away from us lol#anyway as you can maybe imagine i am bitter about this lmao#but also i just generally think it's worth talking about; especially if even one person understands their own experiences better for it#the crit files#the salt files#SDMIcrit tag#pericky#dyn: when i die i want you to die too
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sharpen-your-blade · 2 years
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Why do u not ship Manorian? I seem to recall u posting or reblogging something about it and I was wondering what ur reasoning was
great question anon! boy do i have an answer for u.
firstly, i feel that the manorian ship was so outrageously random and unnecessary. it really did not give the energy of a pairing that sjm had been cultivating for a while. it felt like she wanted to set up another couple (bc she only had about 20+ others all of which are hetero couples might i add), so she pulled their names out of a hat and went “new ship alert lol”. suddenly they’re A Thing™️ and we just have to…idk like it? even when they have zero chemistry in all their interactions, their relationship is purely lust, and everything in their dynamic is very forced, rushed, and underdeveloped. imo it really showed that sjm didn’t actually plot this pairing out, she just kinda winged it. obviously idk fs if that’s true, but it certainly felt that way. also that scene where he like idk turns her on or wtv while she is literally imprisoned in chains was not very hot to me 🤷🏻‍♀️
secondly, i think manon & dorian getting together came at the expense of their individual characters. i genuinely liked manon as a character—she's pretty much the only reason i bothered to finish the series, and my girl really got done dirty in the end, but i digress—and i have always held that she had the best arc in the whole series. dorian never really held my interest (he had like 2 personality traits lbr), but i did like seeing his healing journey as he dealt with his trauma and grief. when the two got together, however, they felt ooc whenever they were around each other (dorian was all grr i’m an alpha 👿 and manon was all wow i’m so into this arrogant 20smthyo white man he can totally dominate me 😍) and their arcs were sidelined for their boring ass “romance”. i think sjm choosing to focus a lot on their relationship took away from their individual character development and weakened their characters to some extent, because i don’t think manon’s storyline needed a relationship in it and i don’t think dorian was mentally/emotionally ready for another relationship at that point in his life.
thirdly—and this is the big one—i was not happy with manon being retconned into an asian woman, and this hugely impacted the way i viewed manorian’s dynamic. as an asian woman myself, seeing sjm canonically describe manon as a white woman in the entire series before depicting her as east asian in the Fanart That Shall Not Be Named to try and get the readers vying for diversity off her back was so astonishing to me. to think that she really believed with her whole heart that she could just substitute a whole different race for a white character so she could say “look i’m not racist actually!” was just 🫤. the ignorance of that woman is quite literally unbelievable to me. and it’s so much more frustrating because why didn't she just make manon asian from the start??? but anyways, clearly she didn’t think that ✨ethnicity swap✨ through because now i look at manon, an asian woman who is characterized as tough and unyielding (which is what made me love her), becoming pretty submissive to dorian, a cocky white man, and i get suuuuch an ick. this is something that i’ve often seen portrayed in media and not talked about nearly enough—where asian women are harmfully stereotyped as ‘meek’ and ‘submissive’ to men, especially white men, who often fetishize asian women for this assumption of docility and total submission to them. then people go and post things like “omg i love seeing dorian top manon he’s so hot 🥵” and “manon takes no shit from anyone except when it comes to dorian 😌” and i'm like noooo ty ❤️ keep those posts away from me ✋🏼.
and lastly, i think both dorian & manon were super queer coded (however unintentionally lmao) and sjm had absolutely no intention of letting that slide, so she worked her ass off to make sure those two were canonically Not Gay. which is actually so sad to me bc dorian radiates major bi energy and manon radiates extreme ace and/or lesbian energy. just accept it, sarah. let dorian and fenrys confess their love for each other and get married. let manon and her circle of lesbian witches thrive. let her and elide frolic through the witch kingdom. let them all be gay and happy.
(a lil extra thought: just because dorian got with a new woc does not make up for the horrible/unnecessary/horribly unnecessary/unnecessarily horrible death of his old gf—also a woc. if sarah actually thinks she got away with it i’m here to let her know that she didn’t 😙)
anywho, tl;dr: manorian just doesn't work imo and dorian had more chemistry with fenrys (AND CHAOL—DON'T THINK I FORGOT ABOUT THE CHAORIAN ERA) than he did with manon.
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