#and piss the fuck off with your I'm Fine With Gay Characters Until It's Someone I've Heard Of

[talknerdytome18]

Seeing all the shit regarding people's opinions on Seb after S4 that went down on Twitter just made me feel frustrated. Since I don't post on Twitter since I only use my personal account, I will just come on here instead.

You can dislike a character all you want. That's fine; I dislike many characters. Nobody is saying that you have to like a certain character; it's FINE to not like certain characters.

However, it is NOT okay to attack others who may like that character. It is NOT okay to erase the impact that character, especially with a character like Seb who is a part of the first openly gay couple in the HSM franchise. You can dislike Seb all you want; THAT IS FINE, but you DO NOT attack others who actually like his character. Stop calling Seblos stans losers all because you don't like Seb/think Carlos deserves better; we all know damn well that you never cared about Carlos until s4. I've seen your opinions about him TWITTER 🙄

Fandom is meant to bring people with the same interest together. People who may feel excluded may find comfort in fandom. By actively bullying others who have different opinions than you, that makes you a bully. You can go off and say "IT'S JUST A JOKE HAHAHA STOP GETTING UPSET", THAT MAKES YOU A FUCKING ASSHOLE. PEOPLE COME INTO FANDOMS BECAUSE OF THEIR COMMON INTEREST; THEY DON'T COME INTO FANDOMS TO GET HARASSED FOR THEIR DIFFERING OPINIONS. STOP WITH THE EXCUSES; I'M FUCKING SICK OF IT.

Seblos especially means a lot to many members in the fandom. To many, they have made many feel seen especially in a time where queer shows are being cancelled. Seblos was the first ship I had ever felt connected to and it makes me feel disgusted whenever I see people discrediting their impact all because of s4.

If you constantly make excuses as to why you're bullying others in the fandom, then you're just an awful person. You people are nothing but bark and no bite; you guys can dish it out all online, but are too scared to dish it out in person. This especially goes for a certain fanbase for a ship that, while is a beautiful ship, has the worst fanbase I've ever seen. I will not group all members as being bad as I've met some lovely shippers who have been kind and respectful. Why can't that be the same for Twitter?

All in all, this type of behaviour is fucking embarrassing. HSMTMTS is over and yet people are still arguing like children all because of Seblos being endgame. You can whinge all you about it, but you're not going to change it - they're endgame and that's that. You don't have a say and your non-existent spinoff will not change that.

You can be upset with the cheating storyline. Many Seblos stans are upset with it too, but it is not an excuse to harass us for still liking the ship.

You can dislike Seb. That is FINE, but it is NEVER an excuse to harass people who like Seb. This goes for anyone who likes a certain character (unless it's someone who is completely unredeemable).

This behaviour has gone on too long and was partially the reason why I deleted my fandom Twitter in the first place. Bullying others will never get you anywhere in life; stop excusing this behaviour all because it's a "joke" to you. It may be a joke to you, but it hurts for the person affected.

And if I, someone who has been trying to move on from HSMTMTS to AGGGTM, have to come here and say this, then you know that I'm pissed. I'm sick of seeing people feeling pressured to leave the HSMTMTS fandom all because some certain members with holier than thou attitudes think it's okay to harass others.

To anyone who has been bullied in this fandom/any fandom space for a silly reason, I am sorry that happened to you. You deserve much better. This blog sees your worth ❤️

Do better HSMTMTS fandom. - Em

#hsmtmts #seb matthew smith #seb x carlos #carlos rodriguez #seblos

[forestlingincorporated]

I hate the way the media sensationalizes when legacy characters come out as queer, because it always starts some bullshit fake outrage from people that don’t even read the damn comics. 

People wanna be mad “Green Lantern” and “Robin” and “Superman” are “gay now,” and it’s not even a character they damn well know. They shout to the heavens that Superman’s in love with Lois Lane and would never date a pink haired man, and it’s Not Being Homophobic, It’s Just Not Canon™, and they haven’t read the comic, and they haven’t read more than the headline, because if they did, they’d know they were talking aBOUT LOIS’ FUCKING SON. 

It’s the same BULLSHIT that happened when Alan Scott was gay at the start of the New52. People who had NEVER FUCKING HEARD OF ALAN SCOTT AT ALL saw “Green Lantern’s Gay Now” as a headline and wrote up whole ass think pieces about how Hal fucking Jordan is a ladies man and what has the world come to and It’s Not Homophobic, It’s Just Not Canon™, and how the gays are “ruining things for everyone.” 

The comments about Robin where a bit different, because the joke for people who didn’t understand the queer Robin was Tim Drake and not Dick Grayson, or even that there were more than one Robin, was generally “lol, of course he is, he’s Batman’s boyfriend.” And that’s just ALWAYS been uncomfortable, because it’s not a gay joke... it’s a gay pedophilia joke. It’s a gay, incestuous, pedophilia joke. And that’s homophobic for entirely different reasons. 

And here’s the Thing. It shouldn’t MATTER if Hal Jordan, or Dick Grayson, or Clark Kent was revamped or revealed to be queer. There’s still hundreds of other characters who are straight, a small handful of big name characters revisited as queer should mean NOTHING to straight fans. If you truly ONLY relate to Hal Jordan because of he’s a straight man, and DC suddenly decides to “make him gay,” well damn, go read a fucking Kyle Rayner story, the world is your goddamn oyster. 

But these fucking clickbait titles just stir up made-up bullshit attacks against the queer and queer-affirming fans. Now I have to see fucking posts on facebook joking about how some rapper who went to prison under unknown circumstances “probably saw Superman kissing that dude and just lost it lmao” - a joke that both trivializes whatever actually happened there, and also very casually endorses the gay panic defense and homophobic violence. 

All the while, Jon Kent being queer shouldn’t matter to anyone but queer comic book fans. Make your fucking think pieces about how Alan or Tim being queer is “bad” because they were “straight” for 71/32 years, but Jon? Jon has only been a character for 6 years. He was a small child 3 years ago, before he was aged up. There’s no “he was straight before,” he doesn’t have the history to be “established” to be fucking anything. This is his establishing, early characterization. 

You’ll find people who bitch about “pandering” or “bandwagoning” when ANY character is gay, but revealing a character who’s only been a teenager for 3 irl years is bi can’t even count as a retcon. 

And nobody outside the DC community would be saying their dumbass stupid shit about it if the reporting on it wasn’t calling him “Superman” in their goddamn titles. 

#rant #this is a rant #i am mad #bisexual characters don't owe anyone years and years of Word of Gay before finally dating someone of the same gender #and gay characters dont owe you their gold star membership #and piss the fuck off with your I'm Fine With Gay Characters Until It's Someone I've Heard Of #tw: homophobia #tw: biphobia

[abarbaricyalp]

Idk if you are still taking prompts, but you know the vine two dudes chilling in a hot tub 5 feet apart cause they're not gay, and a girl quoting it in a park about two girls in the distance and one of them hearing and going "Actually I am gay" Like that scenario, only involving them fixing the boat? Maybe Sarah quoting it to give Sam shit when she thinks Bucky cant hear and Bucky goes "Wait, no I'm gay" or something, or just the general gist of that. Sorry if this us too specific, I've never sent anyone a prompt before :P

Hello Friend! Thank you so much for sending anything in at all! I know the vine you're talking about, but I couldn't find it on Youtube. (I did find a two day rabbit hole of old compilations though) This was also my first foray into writing Sarah as a fully fleshed character! I was excited to get the practice 'cause I had an idea bouncing around in my head about her and Bucky talking after he wakes up in the Wilson house. I kept her a little more like she had been in my other fics pre-show here. I so wish we got a little more of her!

Feel free, anyone, to send me Sambucky prompts!

The North American Superhero in a Domestic Situation

Sarah Wilson loved her brother deeply. The kind of soul crushing love that could only be formed through family, loss, and approximately four thousand brawls around the living room throughout their life. She looked up to her brother more than she could ever imagine looking up to anyone. Even when they were fighting or picking on each other, she couldn’t help but feel a swell in her chest when he came into her line of sight.

That didn’t mean she understood him. In fact, from the age of eight, watching her brother interact with the world had become her go-to pastime. Why did he have to roll every pea around the plate individually before eating them? Why did he and his friends spend seven years socking each other in the arm to prove friendship? Why did he talk to himself in the mirror, even when he knew Sarah or someone else was standing in the doorway?

Sam Wilson was just deeply weird. She had no idea how he had tricked the Avengers, a plethora of bad guys, and half of the media world into thinking he was remotely cool. She saw a news story once that had King T’Challa standing on a platform with Sam and the newscasters talked about how impressive Sam’s suit was. It was unnatural, the effect he had on people.

And in all her years, she never thought she’d see anyone weirder than Sam. But then James Barnes had showed up. It was like a complete reversal of Sam. Sarah was taken in for approximately three hours by his charm and face before she realized he too was deeply, deeply weird.

She justified sitting on the edge of the Paul and Darlene, watching her brother and James Barnes spar off about some dumb trivia fact, by deciding it was an anthropological expedition. The North American Superhero in a Domestic Situation. She watched Sam watch Barnes take a long pull off his beer. She watched Barnes kick his feet up near Sam’s legs and then draw them back quickly when a current jolted the boat. She watched Barnes’ fingers tap-tap-tap against the edge of the boat, inching closer to Sam’s shoulder before he chickened out and brought his hand back to his own lap. She watched Sam suggest Bucky take his jacket off, ‘unless you plan on sun blinding me with the robocop arm.’ She watched Sam look away when Barnes did shrug his jacket off.

When she was seventeen and Sam was fifteen, she had found Sam crying in his room, pillow pressed to his face to muffle the noise. They were at the age where going into each other’s rooms uninvited started international conflicts, but Sarah, who watched her brother intently, felt like she knew what was going on. So she let herself in through their Jack-and-Jill bathroom and shut the door behind her.

Sam didn’t stop crying, not even to yell at her to get out, so she sat on the end of his bed and rolled a baseball under her foot for a while. Finally, she’d said, “You don’t have to tell Mom and Dad, y’know.”

Sam had just about wailed and bit the corner of his pillow to stop himself.

“That’s gross, stop it,” Sarah ordered and pushed Sam’s shoulder back enough to yank his pillow free and then reached over to wipe the tears from his cheeks. “I should make you do the laundry this week so I know I’m not touching your snot germs,” she teased softly.

“How did you know?” Sam hiccuped out. Tears were still brimming at his eyes, but they didn’t fall.

“I’m your older sister. I made you. Like a doll. You think there’s something about you that I don’t know?” she joked. And when the tears did spill over his long lashes, she sighed and pulled him closer to her side. “I just know the way you interact with that boy from the basketball team ain’t just friendly.”

“Jesus, do you think he can tell?” Sam asked and she could hear the mortification in his voice.

“Sam, he’s a freshman in high school. The only thing he knows is that he’s scared of everything too. No one’s paying that much attention to you.”

“Screw you,” Sam muttered.

“What’re all these tears for you if you didn’t make a move and get shot down?”

“God, Sarah, can you not say things like that?”

“Watch your mouth,” Sarah warned with no heat in her voice. “Come on, tell me what’s wrong. I’m not leaving until you do.”

“I just…” Sam sat up and worked his jaw for a while. His chin dimpled and his eyes watered but he managed to control himself. “I’m scared, Sarah. I’m scared of never being in love. Of having to leave if I am. I’m scared to say something and I’m scared not to say something. I’m so scared of...losing any of it.”

“Sam,” Sarah sighed and pulled Sam into another hug. “You’re fifteen. You’re not supposed to be in love yet. You don’t have to think about any of that. You just have to focus on passing Geometry, alright? Mom’ll whoop your ass more for failing than anything else.”

“I have a B+, that’s not failing!” Sam snapped. He kept his face against her shoulder for a second long before he sat up and wiped his tears away. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“Who am I gonna tell? I told you, my friends don’t like you as much as you think they do.”

“Your friends like me more than they like you,” Sam shot back and he almost sounded normal.

Sarah smiled softly and patted Sam’s cheek. “I won’t tell Mom or Dad. Of course not. That’s for you to do. But--”

“I’m always going to tell them when you sneak out the window.”

“No! Sam! You can’t! You owe me now!”

“Going to field parties is not the same thing!” Sam said in a shriek as Sarah leaned over to pinch his sides. They grappled for a second before Sam managed to push Sarah off the bed.

“You owe me,” she reminded him as she walked back to the bathroom.

Sam wiped his eyes again and nodded. “Sure, Sarah. I do.”

Sam almost had the same look on his face now. Like there was something he wanted to reach for that he thought was too impossible to hold. The Older Sister Instinct to Antagonize into a Solution kicked in.

“Two bros, chilling on a boat, five feet apart ‘cause they’re not gay,” she sing-songed. Sam looked mortified again but masked his face into something more irritated with a roll of his eyes when Barnes looked over at him.

“Ignore her. It’s this old video--” Sam started.

But Bucky interrupted to say, “Actually I am gay,” as he looked back over at Sarah. “Sorry if I got your hopes up,” he added with a grin that really did get the hopes up.

“What?” Sam asked and Sarah, ever watchful, could see the beer bottle shaking in his hand.

“What?” Bucky repeated innocently.

“He said he’s gay,” Sarah clarified.

“Thank you, Sarah,” Sam ground out. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Bucky snorted. “When would I have said anything? ‘Sorry for ripping your wings off and kicking you off of a hellicarrier, by the way I’m gay.’?”

“You did what?” Sarah asked.

“‘Sorry for claiming I didn’t bomb the UN only to be reverted back to the assassin who would have done that and then fighting you again. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘Thanks for saving my life. Sorry about the giant undersea prison. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘There’s an imminent battle with weird ass space dogs that want to eat our faces. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘Sorry about Tony Stark, whose life I kind of ruined. Lovely funeral. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘I’m in the middle of being pissed at you about the Shield. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘Maybe don’t take me rolling through a field of flowers. It does things to me ‘cause I’m gay.’ ‘John Walker’s fucking insane. I’m gay, but definitely not for this bullshit.’ I mean, come on, Sam.”

“Flowers?” Sarah asked.

“Besides, why would you care? I don’t make it a habit of telling straight guys I’m into guys.”

“You don’t seem to make a habit of telling many people that,” Sarah pointed out. “I googled you. Nothing suggesting that came up.”

Bucky shrugged. “I’m a guy from the 30s. It was trained out of me.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Sarah said quickly. “Back up away from that because we’re not gonna try to Oppression Olympics our way through our histories. Did you just say Sam was straight?”

“Sarah!” Sam hissed.

“Sure. I mean, I saw him with Romanov. Hill. He has Tinder on his phone.”

“Samuel Thomas, you better not,” Sarah warned lightly. “You’re better than that.”

“He’s a lady-killer.”

Sarah snorted and had to bring her hand up to her face. “He definitely is not. There has been no lady-killing on his end for a long time.”

“Sarah!” Sam tried again.

“You explain it to him then. Mr. 30s is gonna need the long way round explanation.”

Sam sighed and dragged his hand over his face. “Dammit. Fine. I’m not straight either, alright? I’m...bi, or something. It’s been a while since I’ve had to think about it.”

“What?” Bucky asked, not unlike Sam had.

“He said he’s bisexual. Interested in both parties. Swings either way. Hit a homerun and then hasn’t really swung since.”

“Sarah, Jesus Christ,” Sam groaned.

“What?” Bucky asked again.

“I was engaged. To a man,” Sam said.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Bucky asked, clearly missing the irony.

“Oh, it was inconvenient for you but I had plenty of opportunities, huh?” Sam asked. “Ms. Tell-It-All over there wasn’t joking. I haven’t swung any direction in a while. Not since before I met Steve. My fiance died. And then it never came up.”

Bucky blinked at Sam. He kept bringing the bottle halfway up his body and then setting it back on his leg without ever taking a drink. “Fuck, Sam, I’m sorry,” Bucky said, which was not what Sarah was expecting and it clearly wasn’t what Sam was expecting because Sam finally moved closer to Bucky on the bench.

“What for? You didn’t do anything. This time.”

“Yeah, but if I’d known you were into me too, I woulda kissed you in Germany.”

“Oh, I am so not into you,” Sam denied. “And I wouldn’t have our first kiss ruined by immediately running into the government’s roving show monkey.”

“That’s the worst,” Bucky agreed and also finally moved over on the bench until they were pressed thigh to thigh. “Tell me how much you don’t like me again,” he challenged.

“I can’t stand you,” Sam answered and brought his hand up to Bucky’s jaw.

Sarah couldn’t fight down the grin that came to her face and turned to prop her feet on the pier, back to Sam and Bucky. Just this once, she didn’t need to watch her brother to understand him.

Read on AO3 here!

#anonymous #prompts #sambucky #writing #fanfiction #i answer things #sarah wilson #sam wilson #bucky barnes

[chrispaulcolfer]

i hate romantic blam so much but for some reason, everyone else adores them and says stupid shit like "blam would be so much better than toxic klaine, their friendship was so strong and they always supported one another unlike klaine"

first off, i think that if people don't think klaine was supportive, they watched the wrong show.

second, do these idiots realize that if blam had actually happened, the writers would have ruined them the way that they "ruined" klaine?? like...are they really dense enough to not realize this?

kurt and blaine had a fairly innocent friendship in s2 and look how that turned out.

people act like crackships are better because since it never happened on the show, they can create their own version of what would happen with the pairing, so they can make their ship unproblematic and hold them to an impossible standard that canon ships would never reach.

but the truth is that given the opportunity, if blaine and sam had dated (which i am so thankful that they didn't) their relationship would have been "ruined" as well, because the glee writers are just that incompetent.

also, going based solely on canon and not meta-wise, kurt and blaine's issues are kurt and blaine's own individual issues. if blaine was dating sam, he'd still be "clingy" and "needy" and would still have issues with self-confidence and abandonment and would still be every part of himself that caused his issues with kurt.

that just doesn't change just bc he's dating someone different. so i imagine that a lot of the fights and problems would be the same tbh.

i forgot to add that the finale of glee just shows why blaine and sam would never work. blaine is a city boy. he belongs in NYC, that's where he thrives and that's where his dream is. sam, per his own words, needs to be out in the open space - he needs to be in lima, ohio. blaine offers sam a room in his apartment and sam actually declines it, because that's not where he belongs. it's not where he could ever be truly happy.

so if canon blaine and sam were ever to get together, their relationship would never last because no matter where they lived, one of them would be unhappy. i'm sorry to all you blam shippers but they are just fundamentally incompatible just like finn and rachel.

oh, and sam is straight. but apparently that's a controversial opinion now because if men are affectionate and open with other men then they must be gay or bi 🤪🤪

THAT LAST PART THO. I mean, I'm agreeing with everything you said, BUT THAT LAST PART IS A PET PEEVE. And not in the sense that no one should be shipping what they want, even if in canon the character is straight. But in the sense that preaching about men needing to be more open about affection, be less about toxic masculinity, and get in touch with their feminine side. And if a straight man (real or fiction) does show emotion with another guy - NOPE, CLEARLY GAY. CLEARLY NOT STRAIGHT! Hate. It. And hate them.

But yes, I've been around people who think bl/am had way more chemistry than klaine did. Some even saying that they used to ship klaine until they saw the chemistry between Blaine and Sam and it just changed their mind. And then proceed to indicate that Blaine Anderson through writing is this nerdy, subservient guy who manages to fall into helpless situations where he needed constant saving because "his poor feelings" 24/7. Couldn't stand up for himself once. Couldn't think for himself. But OH, THE BEST THEY WRITER FOR BLAINE WOW. Like get fucked you pretentious, dim witted dumbasses. Thanks for weakening Blaine's character I guess. uwu bl/am 5ever because Blaine's attraction to Sam's lips is better than anything klaine had uwu. And Sam is superior because he never was biphobic uwu (because we ignore Sam being racist, noooo Sam is just hilarious and a dork, never did anything wrong. Oh also underage stripping is fine because it's hot as that's all Sam is reduced to I guess. Oh and abandoning your family to help a glee club isn't thoughtless - no no, Sam NEVER made dumb decisions, he's perfect for Blaine because impressions!!!). Give me a break.

Not every shipper is as awful, that much is obvious because every ship (being for it or against it) is going to have level headed shippers who can logically enjoy a ship without hating on the other canon love interest. But god, almost everyone I've been around who thinks it's necessary to hate on Kurt just to say their ship is more superior with "chemistry wins" logic pisses me off and we don't affiliate with those people anymore (thank god because you lose sanity around people like this). Wishing harm (sometimes death) on another character to upraise your ship isn't you being hilarious and quirky. It's just you being total assholes. And that goes for everyone.

#anti blam #mostly anti blam shippers too tho #you summed it up I'm just ranting my personal frustrations #long post #but they've seriously ruined my enjoyment of sam in s4 and the first half of s5 (and the long hair didn't help) #It just reads as a ship based off lustful simping for chord because the damn ab thirsting goes overboard every single time #IS THAT ALL SAM IS?! a nerd with abs?! GEEZ give his character more growth than that! #answered

[savrenim]

mx savrenim! mx. savrenim! I have a writing question: Im writing a story about people who can see the future, and I'm wondering how you made it feels more like a memory not like, a gut wrenching tragedy? Its deffo painful, but Im pretty sure you mentioned wanting to give it a happy ending? If so: how. The concept of future vision is so cool but the implications and the way it plays out is horrifying and heartbreaking rip. I just wanna give my characters some chance at a happy ending

gods okay this is a good question that I have a lot of Weird Strong Feelings about bc time is the single thing that I have the strongest opinions about let’s go under the cut

so the thing that makes your question interesting to me-- “how do you make a story with future powers not a gut-wrenching tragedy”-- is that..... to me, at least, there is absolutely nothing inherent in the setup of future-seeing powers that should imply that the story should be a gut-wrenching tragedy? your problem is assuming that there has to be anything tragic involved. free yourself from that perception and you will be free to write whatever you want.

ifmlam is a gut-wrenching tragedy right now because the feeling that I was going for was “hmmmm the exact gut-wrenching feeling that The World Was Wide Enough makes me feel” and it’s having a happy ending because I decided to write a fic bc “goddamnit I need a fix-it, like, right now.” Seeing the future is cool but it’s also just a plot-and-setting device. and the story feels the way it feels because I designed how it works around exactly how I wanted it to feel?

my current other major project, trash novel, is about a seer who hunts down other seers for dramatic stop-the-world-from-devolving-into-war-and-maybe-ending reasons. except the vibes are... SO different. the vibes are “shit there’s like a dozen way way overpowered teenagers and twenty-something-year-olds who hold the fate of the world in their hands except they’re being dumb assess getting overly involved in personal drama with one another and are maybe going to blow up the planet.” and so instead of this quasi-religious worldwide honor around a single Seer and visions of the future that work one particular way and the main character being this poor fragile darling that needs to be protected and the reverence with which the plot treats the usage of future-powers, the main character of the opus series named herself “Fuck You” and has the power to see like ten seconds tops into the future and uses it to be really fucking good at magic fistfighting and accidentally gets involved in trying to take over a foreign/soon to be enemy government while trying to make friends with the ambassador that it’s her mission to protect him and like spy on that government to make sure they’re not messing with the future, but because he’s really pissed off at his ex and his shitty parents kind of for trying to force him to marry his ex and also his entire home country for siding with his ex he decides to take advantage of the fact that Saes thinks that overthrowing a government is maybe appropriate friend bonding activities to Take Revenge. and overthrow the government. meanwhile his cousin just outright admits in her second scene that she is trying to take over the first their government in then the world and is like 90% of the way there and really isn’t trying to hide the fact that she has committed to a plan that makes everyone think she is The Villain but Saes in particular bc Saes doesn’t want her home country to be conquered, but while Saes thinks this makes them moral enemies Asterna thinks that Saes is very hot because Saes is the single person who can beat her in a fistfight. they get into a misunderstanding fake-dating relationship for at ~80k words of the first arc. the ex is also trying to take over the government partially bc he feels the family pressure to continue their influence and partially bc he’s still in love with Luka and wants to try to win him back. at least three main characters have very poorly thought out one-night stands with other characters just for spite. there’s a character whose name is “Godkiller.” 

you can probably tell from the description that it’s very VERY different vibes from ifmlam. there are seers with more longreaching abilities than 10 seconds in the setting, who are trying to use their powers to seriously manipulate outcomes of events, and some deep political implications of that; it’s not all flashy ridiculousness. there are parts of it that get tragic (gods do parts of it get emotional and gods are some of those emotions tragic), but it’s never terribly tragic for very long, and it never feels like a heart-wrenching tragedy as a genre. everyone is a gay mess, extra emphasis on the gay AND the mess, and it reads like ridiculous action drama intrigue almost like a DnD campaign? 

and it’s because of both (a) the seer powers that are being highlighted work differently but also (b) the seer pov character has a fundamentally different perception of themselves. Aaron Burr sees himself as pretty much a McGuffin and he hates it and there’s a large portion of his character and character arc and hence the plot itself that revolves around him not feeling like he has any sort of control over his life or the impact of his powers. he’s afraid of himself and what he can do, he’s afraid of letting people in and being used, he’s afraid of the impact that he or someone wielding him might have on the world, and he doesn’t quite see himself as a person, more like a glass statue of one housing powers -- and that contributes to the tragedy and vastly affects the tone of the whole thing. when the viewpoint character feels helpless, when the viewpoint character doesn’t believe in themselves, when the viewpoint character is pretty much a McGuffin: incredibly powerful and useful to powerful people, but unable to control their own fate -- that gives the story a certain feeling.

Saes Imirin is nothing like Aaron Burr because Saes isn’t afraid of herself. Saes is completely at peace with what she can do, and actually thinks it’s pretty cool. She’s working for the people she’s working for because she’s decided that’s probably where she’ll do the least harm in the world, and also because she likes her apartment. if she changes her mind she changes her allegiance. she has stared down armies and has never really feared for herself, because she’s a fucking badass, and she knows that she can always pick the future where she wins so why should she ever feel afraid.

if you don’t want your characters to feel tragic, then don’t have them be afraid of themselves. don’t have them doubt themselves. but also, construct the way that future-seeing powers work so that they’re not set up to be a tragedy. the biggest being the most important pair of questions: how accurate/specific are the powers? and how unchangeable is the future?

Saes Imirin’s powers are 100% accurate and 100% specific, albeit contained to usually one to three but at most ten seconds. The future is also 100% changeable; the way her powers works is that she sees all possible futures and then physically moves the way that she did in the one where she’s won. Aaron Burr’s powers are..... death visions I’d put at, like.... 90sh % “accuracy”? in that they always show a possible and in fact usually most probable for the timeline we’re on now sort of death for someone. but they’re also very changeable. but time itself has a momentum and “pushes back” against those changes in the plot of ifmlam (someone doesn’t die in one duel will die in another, etc) which lends to a strong feeling of inevitability despite the relative amount of freedom those powers have. 

imo, future-seeing usually lends itself to tragedy when it’s about seeing something terrible/attempting to subvert something that cannot be fixed because it is the future. if you establish early on that all visions/prophecies must come true exactly, that will usually put a fair amount of tension on your plot and it will make things feel tragic, especially if characters end up getting a future that they really really don’t like. the more unchangeable things are, the more it usually tends towards tragedy.

(I say “usually” because, like. I’m still waiting for a story in which future-seeing is absolute and someone gets a prophecy that “and if you choose to go forward and step through this room your fate will be sealed, you will die on this specific day in this exact way and nothing in the universe can change that”, the character goes “cool”, does it, and promptly begins taking advantage of their immortality up until that day to do Utterly Ridiculous Things to become a weird hyper luck-based superhero of, like, “I can jump off this building bc in the vision I was fine and unhurt so I can’t get wounded in any sort of way that’ll make me unable to run and jump around” “I can totally try eating this mystery goo let’s see what it does” “hmmm the enemy fired their superbomb into the heart of our capital guess I just have to sit here next to it so that it will keep malfunctioning in some strange unspecified way and not going off because it can’t kill me here and now my fate is set in stone” etc. just. someone give me that comedy p l e a s e. I’m picturing Monty Python level of shenanigans.)

but yeah, usually, the more set in stone a future is, the more likely a story is to take a turn for the tragic, because when the future isn’t ~set in stone~ prophecies function more as useful warnings that can be interpreted to do useful things and save the day and not terrible foreboding omens of doom. high accuracy with high changeability is a cool superpower. low.... specificity, at least, leads to stories where usually you go “oH SHIIIIIT” afterwards as you get the end and the last thing clicks in place and now the entire plot in hindsight is So Much Different and they only lend themselves to tragedy if they’re useless as warnings and are just “fuck oh THAT’S what it meant and if I understood it I could have changed it”. and then inherent low changeability is both easiest to lend to tragedy and imo the hardest to write because you write yourself into a corner? (and you also make some pretty deep philosophical statements about determinism and free will depending on how you characterize time.) but so long as everyone has a chance to change things, the story won’t feel hopeless.

this has gotten long and rambly bc it’s ungodly o clock in the morning and, like, if the heart of the thesis of your story is “knowing the future is Fucked Up and Fucks You Up” and your story is on the deep seated societal implications about a world where some measure of seeing the future exists, like.... there are ways in which things might be tragic, but there are ways to counter that by making things mundane? a la lightening benders in legend of korra working at electricity plants. having seers with tiny mundane powers and/or who don’t really care about their powers and don’t use them too much or who just think of them as annoying side noise, but at the heart of it, oops stealing also from mob psycho 100 bc oops I just rewatched it and am mildly obsessed with it and its message and just dear gods how it manages to pull off its emotional impact....

psychic powers are just another trait. like people who can run fast or who study hard or sing really well or have strong body odor, or have psychic powers. they don’t make you any more special than anything else. who you are and what you do isn’t set in stone, it’s choices that you can make.

and finally, if your world is tragic bc you’ve decided to lean into the “the public perceives seers as special / dangerous / other “ and so you don’t want to adjust how the powers themselves work and how the public sees it, there’s always the trick of just, like.... let characters’ actions have meaning. let them win. and it won’t be a tragedy, not really.

#loooong post below cut #my writing #advice

[vykinq]

Some thoughts about 212

Okay so we all know that 212 was a doozy because of a LOT of things no matter who your fav is, but i've been particularly thinking a lot about the relationship between Koito, Tsukishima, and Tsurumi in this chapter. Obviously this will contain spoilers, so if you haven't caught up already I suggest doing so before reading this post!

Alright, so basically first thing's first- Koito got his shit royally wrecked. This time, unlike when he got his shit royally wrecked at the drift ice, he doesn't just bounce back up and walk around. Something else strikes me as different as well- his reactions.

Let's quickly compare all of young Koito's near death experiences, shall we?

Firstly, when he was kidnapped, when literally told 'sorry kid you're just gonna have to die for the sake of your country'. What was his response, fight back passionately. He tells his father he's sorry for not being the son his brother could be, and immediately headbutts the russian man later revealed to be Ogata.

When he's caught in an explosion with Tsukishima and confronts Kiroranke, his arm is stabbed completely through to the other side and he's badly beaten, and yet his only response is to push back, fight harder, and curse Kiro for hurting his men. But more on that a little later.

What's different about this time is that upon being stabbed, he isn't overcome with this perseverance. He's not hellbent on surviving. He's not determined. What does he do?

He makes a meager attempt to raise his gun. His expression is distant and afraid, but not the same as

See the difference? Screaming and fighting versus....

So I thought why on earth isn't he fighting back? Sure he just got stabbed completely through his chest (shoulder?) But usually he's so focused on completing the tasks ahead that a little stab won't do much. Except then I remembered chapter 210. Since finding out that Tsurumi isn't this amazing war hero he worshipped, and is instead someone who doesn't give a single shit about him, Koito has been more or less crushed. He isn't excited for Tsurumi to meet them again, and when the arrows came flying in 211, Koito didn't make a move to go take an arrow for Tsurumi like Usami did. Instead, he made moves to save himself. Even though he had a very strange breakdown and screamed over how incredible Tsurumi is at the end of 210, it's pretty clear that he obviously doesn't think that's the case. He's been manipulated almost since childhood into being the kind of soldier who would give life and limb for Tsurumi, only now being told that Tsurumi absolutely wouldn't do the same for him. And unlike Tsukishima, Koito doesn't seem like he's content with being a throwaway pawn. I'm not convinced Tsukishima really is either, but... that's a different post. Kind of.

Back to the scene, we next see Tsukishima yelling his name and coming to the rescue, and a few interesting things happen.

Koito tries to take the knife out. He may be young and dramatic but he isn't stupid- taking that blade out will most likely kill him and he should know that. On top of trying to quicken his death or escalate his injury (which of these is true I'm not sure yet, hopefully the latter), he tells Tsukishima to leave him alone. This isn't the first time he's done this- on the drift ice we've seen koito declining help from tsukishima.

Even though he's badly injured himself, Koito doesn't even want to be helped until he's done. However, this is different. Now Koito doesn't seem determined, he just looks resigned. Helpless. He knows he won't be fine but he doesn't seem to care all that much because he's failed Tsurumi before and he's failing Tsurumi now, and even if he wasn't, that man doesn't care about him. Listen, I know the straight explanation for Koito's behavior is that he admires Tsurumi's abilities as a leader, but there's just no way. Kioto is so gay coded it hurts, and with the extent of his obsession towards Tsurumi it would be a reach not to think he had a romantic attatchment to him. And he really is so crushed by the blow to his pride and the betrayal of someone he would lay down his life for, and so he just tries to pull out the blade.

Then there's what Tsukishima does. For someone who wants to watch the Tsurumi theater from the front row seats, he sure isn't going to see much by staying behind against Kikuta's orders and lovingly attending to Koito. His superior is badly wounded and I'm sure he probably knows how down in the dumps Koito is, what with the mental breakup he just had, and instead of asking some other soldier to take care of him, Tsukishima literally takes things into his own hands. This man cradles Koito, gently shoves his hand down, and softly scolds him for not listening to him today, despite so patiently hearing him out the day before.

And before going forward, can I just say:

Okay. Anyway, so he ALSO mentions Koito heading into this being emotional, but upon finding Sugimoto and Asirpa and asking them to cooperate, Koito literally seemed devoid of emotion. He wasn't angry or eager to please his abusive superior... which leaves me to wonder, what did Koito and Tsukishima talk about between their conversation in 210, and meeting Tsurumi in 212? Maybe they didn't even have to talk for Tsukishima to know Koito was, in general, feeling pretty lost and reckless. I don't know, it's just some food for thought, fic writers. Wink wink.

And lastly, I want to talk about this trainwreck of an ending.

NODA WHAT DOES THIS MEAN????

I've seen a few different theories on Twitter, but here's mine. I want you all to remember how much Tsurumi has taken away from this man, and how much he's seen Tsurumi take away from Koito. Since he was around to stage the kidnapping, Tsukishima has watched this kid be manipulated into being, basically, a dog. Loyal, obedient, questionless, and absolutely head over heels for the first lieutenant. This is after Tsukishima already lost Igogusa, and I have no doubts that in some capacity Tsukishima's become fond of Koito. He probably felt a bit of the same way for koito as he felt for Edogai, when he watched this young man throw his life away for someone who's literally the biggest snake alive. Part of me hopes that even though Tsukishima's apparently okay with the tsurumi theater and being a puppet, maybe he isn't as okay with watching others, people younger than him, being roped into the same thing. Tsukishima has always been caring and selfless to a degree, and in Igogusa's case, fucks shit up for the people he loves. That's why after watching as Tsurumi coldly ignores Koito dying on the ground, maybe Tsukishima's realizing he's sick of it. He thought he'd be the one to have to kill Koito, and be forced with the choice to either do so or rebel, but all of a sudden and all too soon, his superior is dying in his arms. And tsurumi doesn't give a single shit. I don't think that's a knowing glance he's giving Tsurumi, I think he's absolutely fucking pissed. So basically in short, Tsukishima talked big game about having to kill Koito if the other disobeys, but literally one single day later he looks like he's about to rip Tsurumi's head off for letting Koito just lay in his arms and die. That being said i HOPE he doesn't die and I doubt he will given that every other character has been able to survive so much so far, but I'm rlly scared.

That's really all i have, if you wanna scream about this chapter with me more or have anything to add, u know what to do

#long post #golden kamuy #chapter 212 #spoilers #musings #discussion #tldr tsukishima is in love with koito and hes gonna beat tsurumis ass #i wanna see this man CRY if koito dies

[incarnateirony]

Why do you think so many people in fandoms of tv shows, movies, games and pretty much anything have such a strong resistance to a character being revealed to be LGBT? I've seen it so many times, and I know you've seen it a lot as well, and it's just so weird to me how offended people are by this. A recent example is in the fandom of a videogame I'm in, were many are just outraged by the notion some believe that a main character, a white, male soldier that exists since 1997 could, maybe, be LGBT.

The fight over this crap is kind of intersectional. Everything from homophobes to our own. This is heavily tied to (America, since this is intersectional with an american show, but also global) opinions shifting on things like oh, gay marriage. (x) Such as modernly 15%~ of citizens are homophobes and think The Gay Sexinating should be illegal. Which sounds shitty as all kinds of fuck until you scale that against 43% in 77′, and 77 was actually *before* the AIDs epidemic really became central or anything so you can imagine what those numbers realistically became then.

We’ve made progress, and there’s still progress to be made, but it was literally less than half a century ago – two generations ago – here, in many of our lifetimes, or at least in the lifetimes of people the younger reading audience here *knows* – that this landscape wasn’t even *recognizable*

So socially speaking this works in waves of conversation– be that the gays being cursed by god yadda yadda and thus deserve to die of AIDS and be treated like lepers – down to “Why do they even need included in anything” following shortly after, with a mindset of “perversion” still heavily steeped in the population that would plague children of the 80s and 90s heavily. You wanna deal with some internalization, there’s some internalization.

Keeping a thumb on the fact that the needle *has* shifted is a great deal of it, I think – obviously not “OK! WE’RE DONE NOW!” but being aware there’s not a 50%~ chance someone you walk by thinks you should be arrested or killed anymore, that more than 1 in 8 douchebags are going to be whole thundergeese about it, and that it is what it is, and it sucks, and we’re waiting to get further-again. Also there’s whole other issues WRT MLM vs WLW and what earns what kind of resistance but that’s a WHOLE other rant.

The thing is, when people grow into an environment of being *disadvantaged*, if they don’t as much take time to celebrate our *progress* as much as rant about everything that *isn’t going perfectly right*, we lose our scale. It maintains this feeling of being the completely 100% hated unseen minority that the whole world still hates, when we can’t look back and go, you know what, in 2019, 83% of people don’t think it should be illegal, 2% have no opinion. That’s just a very congealed residual screaming mass of assbags and subconsciously we all know it, but continuing to gear the conversation as if we’re fighting from the pits of the 60s or 70s is??? really weird???

But at the same time understandable?

So on the one hand you get The Gays arguing from being an angle of being incredibly more disadvantaged than they are. And then, you get people from this shifting demographic – be it the 15% remaining douchebags congealed into a screaming lot, or the 40% slide that have come to realize we’re just minding our own business and loving who we want between 77 and now – that, still lost *in* that dark history and frankly propaganda hold onto *resistances*. So if we’re talking about a character that, say, probably straight white guys have attached to since the 90s, if they attached to that character in the 90s, odds are, they were fairly developed and at least 15 years old if not more already. And odds are, they were subject to everything from the impact of the epidemic to just older nonsense clouding their vision, and whether we like it or not, these people *will* have likely resistance.

Because we may not like that chapter of history, and we give no excuse for homophobia, but in perspective when an entire country’s homosexual population was ravaged by something ignored by government and hospitals, and dismissively packaged as a curse by evangelical america in a country about 75% christian, just how *much* that *completely* fucks up people’s internal understanding. It’s the same dehumanization that was used against anyone else genocided, in other major historical moments we all know about. It doesn’t make the passivity right, but welcome to how literal propaganda can fuck up entire populations.

So to roll back to the Nonnie: These fights in general seem to strike me as a mix of intersectional… lack of understanding. Young Gays that don’t really get what the world was like 40~ years ago or even 20~ are absolutely baffled why anyone would get so reactive to an idea. Old Gays do want better representation, but some have had a hell of a time *from* internalizing those ideas.  The Straights of the time have a WHOLE other mess of shit to sort out in their heads before coming around to being open and understanding. Everybody’s talking across each other, instead of talking with each other, and some have unfortunately entirely convinced themselves they are still as hated as they were back then, which turns into more circular representation visibility fights, which turns into another circus, yeehaw. 

Which sometimes even turns into striking down their own representative work (be that SPN here or the goblins we all know on this hellsite that tear down anything that looks vaguely like representation because it isn’t XYZ enough). Because in the interest of arguing with *maybe 15 percent of the population that doesn’t think you have the right to exist* about *fictional content* being made to *represent YOU, not them*, we ironically do a lot of damage to our queer canon by just stomping on current incrementalization and expansion without minding the history and steamroll it. Which frankly makes us all look like disorganized lunatics trying to Make Everything Gay™ even if that’s not what it is remotely.

And because I know this will be misunderstood I’ll continue to frame this point from a few angles before it’s misrepresented: Wanting rep/seeing queer narratives wherever you go is fine and the nature of the fight, I’m just trying to explore the divide between r/NiceGuys that get mad at the gay vs the modern LGBT comm and frankly the general bloated, inflated relevance they have that the community at times lets, or even invites dialogue of, their heteronormative framings, often rooted back from times of REALLY DARK PROPAGANDA AND GENOCIDE and how it affected culture – to damage and bury their own content, generally in the logic “if they don’t see it, then it doesn’t count!” when, if-and-when queer coding or open in your face textual coming-out canon or even just low-visibility text is conscious, that is content for *you.*

And it’s not saying “stop and settle” to put this into perspective. It’s “don’t piss on the work everybody else did before you – or worse on what they’re doing right now – just to argue with the couple of assbags left in the universe.“ They’ll go away too eventually. It doesn’t happen overnight. And they’re not going to stop happening overnight. No matter how many gay video game soldiers you find at this type, no matter if Dean Winchester just quietly voices his repeat encounters with men in a way that landmarks it so loudly you NEED to break out alt-right dialogues those same 1 in 8 have that I have beaten to death – to choose to interject that kind of long-ago-addressed conversational edge is literally to choose to interject homophobic dialogue into conversations of how LGBT rep should work and honey if you need an indicator that you may be leaning in the wrong direction, there’s your sign.

But it can be hard to unplug and stop thinking the world is still as bad as it is back then, BECAUSE you run into those assbags that resist it loudly. But like many things, numbers show they’ve died off into a minority. We still have a way to go, but this is a weird ongoing self-inflated fight that seems heavily unaware on WHY people react like that (as per the original ask) much less how ridiculous it is to keep dragging dialogues born in the AIDS epidemic days into these discussions.

Simple point? If you aren’t able to really mobilize on content (yelling online generally ain’t it, chief), ignore them. Enjoy your content if it’s yours, because there’s a lot of effort in simply erasing normalizing queer content because if it’s not EXTREME enough to win against THOSE GUYS *POINTS AT* then NYEAAAAAAAAAH.

It was never gonna be enough to win on those guys, even if it was full queer cinema canon LGBT stories and not stories that just include LGBT people normally.

Look I don’t even know what soldier you’re talking about, and I don’t care. Enjoy your shit your way and remember how easy it is for a minority to be ruthlessly loud when they can connect themselves across the wholeassed internet. 

But until people really learn the history of why certain mindsets cropped up or how they invaded conversation or what rattled entire generations to their core, prople are gonna have a hard time fucking communicating with each other instead of just talking over each other. And sometimes even talking over their own within the community/engaging in deletion/the carousel runs in a circle.

But *why* that mindset exists? It’s not difficult. It’s because this nation got saturated in propaganda that warranted letting the homosexual community suffer and die in numbers that would make your head spin, where everyone knew someone with it, as coffeebrainblog has said, where we were treated like lepers, or “cursed by god”, or as lesser, inhuman things and climbing out of that hole has been a hell of a ride, but the community has to also de-internalize that propaganda and realize WE’RE PRETTY MUCH THERE. Like the road isn’t over, the war isn’t 100% won, but if the statistics alone don’t get you, if you *really* sat and read this reply, maybe where the din and eternal upset has buried our *progress*, you’ll realize that progress has dramatically pitched that into being the minority.

But it keeps everybody arguing from disadvantaged levels and even some choosing to self-handicap by creating their own definitions, rules, boundaries and almost states of the universe they’ll accept, because 1 in 8ish people hate them, but they’re still stuck in a world where 1 in 2 might want you dead, somewhere in your headspace. It’s like setting your own handicap bar which… is kind of the opposite? Of what we’re supposed to do? We’re supposed to knock down those cages? And point out we’re the same as everyone else? Running to prove things to people who still think we might carry God’s Plague And Be Judged that haven’t listened to decades of correction so far, just to dissect and dismantle your own contents or enjoyments – it’s a really, really weird backwards pedaling thing to aim for.

I *get* why people think it’s the right way, again, as per all of this, but it’s… it’s pedaling backwards and thinking it’s moving forward. 

So while I don’t know what soldier you’re talking about, it was a chance to address A) why there’s resistance in some generations B) what that did to us, as a community C) where sometimes we lose track of ourselves in a carnival of competition.

EDIT:

This note by @amitywho rings home:

Excellent analysis. I’m extremely ancient - I was a grown-ass adult in a flyover state back in 1980 when the first whispers about “the gay cancer” in New York and San Francisco began to make their way to us. I had to drive 150 miles to find a bookstore that carried any kind of gay-positive literature. We parked across the street to watch and see who might be loitering in the neighborhood - if they had baseball bats, no one would be coming to help.

I’ll also add there seems to be OUSA influence, but I centered on the american demographic of an american show; but it still impacts online worldwide net conversation. That OUSA influence varies between highly oppressed countries having heartier ala-80s POVs on LGBT, to on the exact opposite OUSA fans not really having their heads wrapped around the American side of the history beyond what it means in a few articles if they came from more progressive countries that didn’t, like, genocide their gays. So even older LGBT OUSA people look at it from the disembodied angle of a few headlines they remember, not being in the blast zone and resulting fallout.

Also to drift to another topic of LGBT exploitation: If you want to know why CW has “dare to defy” as a slogan just behind the idea that they have PoC or gays on their channel, I really need someone to sit and think about that. Welcome to a bunch of older people that remember these days that see it as *DEFIANT* to do at our current intersection. Nevermind them now exploiting that to try to find a new center for their network after CBS fucked them WRT Netflix, but hey. Yeah. Put that in scale. Why does it need virtue signal marketing, and moreover, what are they “defying”? This. This kind of mindset. Which is heavily sourced in an age demographic likely to be the core of CW Exec boards and marketing. 

If you want an idea how deep rooted in our psyche stunted dialogues are, the fact that few people even blink at that says a fuck of a lot to me. No, we dared to defy decades ago, you’re just trying to profit on what you still run through marketing and demographics and ho-hum but think you can pull money from. There’s a difference. But it does betray the minds behind it. It should be more like “DARE TO LOSE 15% OF OUR PROFIT MARGIN AND HOPE WE GET THAT 20-30% OF GAYS INSTEAD” – it’s profiting off of the work the LGBT community did and acting like they’re brave for doing it at a point that they actually risk more losses to NOT start. It’s signaling themselves as heroes in a battle they had nothing to do with. And it’s pretty standard fare.

(And, ON that aside, it spins me out how often I’ve seen in misc fandoms fans acting like queer content that is canonically queer doesn’t count if it’s not overtly marketed and shopped explicitly as LGBT content, rather than content that happens to have LGBT elements – why are you BEGGING to be exploited before you consider yourselves valid, I’m confused. We’ve already had our big grand coming out stories and tales of struggle and there’s a whole queer canon history I’ve posted about this. The whole point of our current junction is getting content everywhere that reflects how normal-and-everywhere we are, why are y’all like this)