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not-poignant · 1 year

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This is the anon the said 'safe'. Your tags hit me hard, since I'm actually starting a transition but am avoiding hrt. I've been getting pushback on it, and been told I'm not really trans without it. I know what I want to change to feel like myself. Also what I don't want to change. That's probably why 'safe' was my choice. It sucks when you think you should belong, but still feel like you aren't good enough. It helped to hear you have felt the same. I just want to give you a big virtual hug.

Ahhh I have a similar story, anon <333 I'm so sorry you went through it too.

Under a read more because it contains transphobia towards a nonbinary person from a binary trans person. My experiences are from a nonbinary lens, anon, so take the bits that are useful to you and ignore the rest, depending on where you sit on the trans spectrum <333

When I started realising I was transmasc (I'd known I was non-binary for a while) I remember that I talked to a trans man about it, he'd been going through the process for a couple of years at that point and we'd talked about that too at different points.

And I remember mentioning that I'd thought about hormones, but I was still on the fence because I'm nonbinary, not like 'binary trans' (i.e. I'm not going from point A to point B, where you move from AFAB to man or AMAB to woman), and I was talking about wanting they/them pronouns and maybe he/him pronouns at that point.

And he said: 'Oh cool, yeah, hopefully that helps until you decide for sure with testosterone and surgery.' I had this moment of like ??? and he was like 'when you realise and can be brave enough to commit to being a guy, I hope that goes really well for you.'

It was one of the most transphobic things I'd ever heard, not because it was said from a hateful place (it really wasn't, I'm still friends with this guy), but because it came from a friend, I was being very vulnerable during the conversation and it left me feeling like I didn't have a right to consider myself trans at all for about two years after that. It pushed me into this space where I'd been defined by a fellow trans person as a 'coward until I decided to be officially a man.' And then for two years I kept looking for that inside of myself, denying my non-binary-ness in favour of looking for a very clear and decisive 'I'm a man!' moment. It was a horrible period of time, gender-wise. Because being identified exclusively only as a man or a woman is dysphoric to me, so trying to do it to myself was like cutting at myself with an axe.

It's also very much like when gay and lesbian folk would say to me - back when I identified as bisexual - 'get back to me when you pick a side / become a real queer.' There's a real phobic bent among folks who are 'one or the other' (sighs) towards people who are in the liminal with this stuff and that's where they belong. And it hadn't occurred to me that I'd hear a version of that from a fellow trans person. You'd think I'd have learned, right?

He and I are still friends, but I stopped talking to him about all of my experiences as a trans and nonbinary person. It was clear to me, in that moment, he saw me as a much lesser version of an identity he'd embraced and was living. You know, how so many people think of nonbinary transmascs. (It's also frustrating, because trans men also don't need to have hormones or surgery to be trans men, and it makes me furious when people take this attitude with binary trans folk too, but I'm mostly focusing on my own experience here, of the myriad ways we encounter transphobia in the trans community).

I never heard anything quite like that again, but I've had one other trans guy be like 'when you're ready for testosterone, I'll support you' like he was waiting in the wings for me to 'fully make a decision to be 100% a man' which isn't a decision I can make, because I'm not 100% a man, lmao, I'm like 80% of one, and 20% something else, and 0% woman, lmao, which is why I call myself nonbinary transmasc.

I was lucky that through research and listening to voices in nonbinary transmasc spaces and more open-minded trans spaces that I realised that I'd encountered transphobia, and that this specific kind of transphobia is particularly common in the trans community, especially in cases where a trans man or woman has a period of being nonbinary as an experiment to see what transitioning feels like before they fully commit to the surgery and/or hormones and name etc. that they often wanted all along. So they often project this onto other people, because for them being nonbinary was a midway point, or the middle of an evolution. But being nonbinary isn't an experiment for most nonbinary people, it's literally our identity and it always will be. (And any binary trans person reading this, don't ever use this rhetoric with your nonbinary friends, or your fellow binary trans friends who have elected not to use hormones or surgery - it's transphobic.)

These days, I'm proudly trans and proudly part of the trans community, but I'm also aware that there are a lot of binary trans people who will treat me and other trans folk as 'other' because I haven't suffered through the same surgeries or adjustments that they have. That's...their transphobia, and it's not me expressing my identity wrongly, or being 'lesser', it's just straight up transphobia. It belongs to them, not to me. I don't believe we have a unique word for nonbinary transphobia, it all comes under the same umbrella, but that's definitely what it is.

When you start to feel like you don't belong, anon, remind yourself that this is internalised transphobia, not to punish yourself, but to remind yourself that it's not true. Those feelings belong to the people who gave them to you, but they're not innately or inherently true, they actually have nothing to do with how valid you are at every stage of your transition.

You're fully a trans man if you don't take hormones, and you're fully nonbinary if you do. Whatever you need (or don't need) to affirm or express your gender for you, is what you need, and that deserves to be respected and fully validated no matter what, at any time. Whether it's binding or not binding, hormones or not hormones, hormones and then 'not for the next few years' and then hormones again, surgery or not surgery, etc. Whether you're a trans man, woman, nonbinary, agender etc.

People have this idea of what it is to be a 'proper' trans, bi, gay, lesbian person (like the 'gold star lesbian' which is horrendously disgusting as a term and concept), but all you need - literally all you need - re: these things, is to just... know you're these things. That's it. That's how a gay person can know they're gay without having sex. That's how a bi person can know they're bi without sleeping with someone of the same sex. And it's how a trans person knows they're trans without looking perfectly androgynous or perfectly binary trans (depending on what they desire) on the outside. (Don't get me started on fatphobia in androgynous and nonbinary spaces, and the equation of true 'nonbinary androgyny' with thinness, because that's a whole other rant for another day, lol).

I'm sorry you've experienced that pressure to be 'more' of something from society / particular people. I can specifically relate on the hormones front because I actually went quite far into looking into taking T, to the point where my doctor was ready to sign off with an endocrinologist, before I realised that it wasn't the right decision for me. It might be one day, but right now I know I'm transmasc without it, and I'm concerned about some of the side effects with my neuroendocrine tumours. There are other ways I affirm my gender that work great for me. But I did have a moment of knowing that would impact how other people see me, and it's one thing when it comes from all the cis people, but it's another thing when it comes from the trans community as well. :( Thankfully most people are really validating now, use the right pronouns, and I just don't confide nonbinary vulnerabilities with folks who saw being nonbinary as a midpoint of their own evolution/journey, just to be safe, lmao.

Wishing you fortune and strength and much validation, anon <3 You are amazing as you are, whatever you decide to do or not do in the future. :) *hugs*

#asks and answers #personal #queer culture #i'll never forget that experience #i had the chat right here on tumblr actually #and i remember sort of sitting back in my chair and feeling like something had broken in me #because i'd been supportive to this friend through their transition #and sort of expected the same #and instead got a sort of 'well see you when you get here' conversation #that made it clear that he thought my gender as it is now #was just a weak little scaffold #for the 'end point'#it still makes me emotional thinking about it #i really hope folks who are trans men or women #think about how they talk to nonbinary people #and fellow trans men or women #who are electing not to have one or all of the surgeries or take hormones for many valid reasons #our transness is not defined by how much #we do to our bodies on the way to gender affirmation #we are trans before we ever experience a scalpel or take another hormone #or change our names or birth certificates #all these things can help #and they can hinder #everyone's experience in this is unique #administrator Gwyn wants this in the queue

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jonathanstims · 4 months

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gonna talk about writing as an aro person and it might be a little long

I really like to write—specifically, world building is my favorite thing in this universe. But I feel like, a lot of the time, I could never get the actual story out. I’ve been getting back into the actual outlining of my book, and looking over my old outlines…a lot of them centered romance. I’ve been working on this book for years, so I barely remember what I was thinking about at first, but here’s how I feel now.

My most recent outline was after I knew I was aro and came out. I scrapped all romance for the mc, but actively made a new character to give the mc’s best friend a partner. This is what’s really annoying to me—I had written a crazy long outline, a ton of worldbuilding, symbolism, and had like four hundred catchphrases/snippets of dialogue/folk sayings to fall back on. I had gotten super into it. but this only happened before I made that new character.

after I put them in, I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t give them a name, could barely scrape up a backstory, and stopped drawing my OCs.

I saw a comic recently about how an aro artist really struggled with figuring out how much romance they have to put into a story for people to care enough to hear it, and I reblogged it as usual and moved on. (I really don’t remember this person’s username I’m sorry)

but I was talking to my friend about my almost year-long distaste for the story I’ve been obsessed with for almost a decade, and how I tried to write a romance into it but I just couldn’t give them any chemistry, and they said maybe I should stop. And just not have romance in my book.

and for some reason, even though I’d read that comic and sat for hours agonizing over this side relationship, I didn’t realize that was an OPTION. I just thought there had to be at least SOME romance, yknow? But, after throwing away that clearly forced relationship, I have been able to write and DRAW again, which is absolutely insane for me. I can keep this character, whose backstory I’ve finished fleshing out, and not force them into romance with someone whose main relationship is the friendship he has with my protag. And I just feel so much more relaxed now that I’m not forcing myself to make my characters romantically love each other for allo queer points.

if my work ever gets published and popular enough to gain a fandom, I think it’d be lovely for people to make ships! I really have no problem with that at all, especially because the only character I consider to be aro is the mc, and aromaticism is a beautiful spectrum that absolutely allows for him to be in a qpr or other sort of relationship. I just can’t make myself write that stuff—it’s not something that I want in my canon. I think people can absolutely go wild in fandom! Make them kiss. I’m not a cop. I’m just not gonna do it for you.

#my writing #aromantic #writers on tumblr

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buddiebeginz · 8 months

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I just watched Red, White, and Royal Blue for the first time the other day, loved it. I think I've watched it at least 10 times since then. 😝 Haven’t read the book yet so as usual I’m behind everyone else. But I wanted to make this post because I’ve seen numerous comments on social media criticizing the movie for not having lgbtq actors playing the main roles.

As someone who is bi I’m really frustrated that this continues to be an issue the lgbtq community is pushing. I've seen it happen with other movies and shows where actors have been harassed on their social media because they've taken queer roles and they're straight or straight presenting to the world.

I definitely believe we should push for better and more representation for lgbtq actors (especially poc and trans people) in Hollywood but that doesn’t have to mean every lgbtq role needs to go to an lgbtq actor.

For me as a queer person what matters most is that our stories are told by people doing it with the most care and authenticity possible.

One of my favorite shows of all time is Queer as Folk (the original US version from the early 2000's). The cast included a few lgbtq actors (and had lgbtq creators at the helm) but was mostly made up of straight actors. The show isn't without it's faults especially for the time period it was made in but for me personally it's one I most identify with. I never felt like the cast was just doing their job and the relationships especially within the main group felt real and relatable. The show also never shied away from showing true intimacy between their characters. At a time when gay sex was not a thing in media at all let alone on tv QAF was not afraid to be as raw and vulnerable with their characters as possible. No matter where the show took things the cast whether gay or straight always came off as people invested in the scene. You could also tell their commitment to the show when they did interviews back then and again years later when they've done reunions etc.

You can see the same kind of commitment to the story with Taylor and Nick in RWRB. You can see it in the movie and in some of the interviews we've been able to see when they've talked about their roles or working with each other and how much working on this has meant to them.

I get why people want to see queer parts go to queer actors when they don't get cast as much as they should and as I said that needs to change but I think we can push for changes while still praising important moments like this movie being made. I also don't think that actors should be pigeonholed into being hired solely based on their sexuality. The more society pushes for this it won't be helping rather it will hurt lgbtq actors who already have a hard time getting roles that aren't specifically for queer people. Gay men in particular are often passed over for leading man roles because it's a long running stereotype of Hollywood that no one wants to see a gay man as a straight romantic lead or an action hero.

The other problem here is I think we need to stop with this obsession of needing to know celebrities sexuality. Just because a character is lgbtq doesn't mean we need to verify that the actor is too especially if that's not something the actor wants to talk about it.

I think that Nicholas and Taylor deserve every bit of praise for the job they did. I don't think their sexuality matters here whatever that is because at the end of the day they both put their all into telling Alex and Henry's love story. Just as much as they would have if they were acting with someone of the opposite sex more so in some ways I'd argue. You can tell they felt the gravity of what they were making and and how important this story already was to so many people.

#rwrb #rwrb!#rwrb*

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golivefest · 4 months

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How i Stop Death with... my Uncle Jimmy

by +

'i wanna thank u 4 helping me reach the understanding'

My uncle Jimmy inspires me to protect black women in a world w/o police when i think about how he took care of his daughters, wife, sisters & mother. Despite others' oppression, aggression & depression he provided for them every moment of the day. Generations came out to celebrate his life... it says everything that his transitional thoughts and experiences were with his eldest granddaughter and youngest daughter. Lucky man.

i always put black women first and i've never known a guy other than my uncle who woke up and went harder for our queens. 💜🔊

My Uncle Jimmy reminds me to raise #reparations for free homes + fresh food when i think about one of our own final memories showing him a peapod before it headed out to our free food forest on 79th. Later he would pop up while i was at my granddad's. i think his father and i talked about trading raw veggies, i probably took home some tomatoes & peppers while they shared recipe secrets and such. i also cherish planting seeds with a grandson of Jim's, my cousin's son, when he was a toddler. Handing down agricultural knowledge to black men is the greatest gift, something i could only experience through these legends on my mother's side of family. 🖤

My Uncle Jimmy inspires me to #StayHome and end the virus when i think about the symptoms of his passing. Calling in close friends after provided the largest support for the #COVIDstrike ⬛ petition to date. But for years i feared this day would come. Knowing he had no choice (as a King in the so-called Sandwich Generation) to be there for his four daughters, own parents, numerous grandbabies and everyone else a black village holds. i cringed and worked harder hearing about him getting sick over and over, his housemates being holed up with COVID when he didn't have it, knowing how no matter what kind of cough lingered it paled to the necessity of having to check on my grandparents to make sure they were ok, ate today and bringing them food if they haven't. In-between picking up and dropping off 3 other generations of people.

When folks started talking about frontline workers, they didn't mention community caretakers like my uncle. When #cynical folks decided it didn't matter if the elderly or very young passed away and decided to keep going to work and school they signed a death certificate not just for folks with disabilities, like my littlest cousins or my oldest living ancestors. But for everybody, all of us in the middle. COVID tore the heart out from my family. And i can't lie and say we're just going to persevere. We won't, without more folks joining in to change the status quo. i've seen the decimation of families around us & i just want to see mine safe.

Jimmy reminds me to go live and use celebration to stop death. Wiz Khalifa's "See You Again" is one of the biggest rap songs ever and he's one of my favorite rappers meanwhile "We Dem Boyz" is the song of his that was mentioned at my uncle's funeral. He lives on through another man's work, on its waves. We are all dem boyz. And it's black art that gives me the confidence to say i hope i will see him once more. Not in a fictional heaven but in a science based paradise. If we can isolate DNA and consciousness, regenerate or redirect what life is. Every day i will wake up and do the #After12 💜🔊 worksheet tapping in to bring resources together, go live, build utopia and stop death.

After i wrote a previous personal essay about leaving my mother's my relationship with my Uncle was somewhat colder. i was one of those blackballed for calling out #YCAharm 💜 after years of fighting as a queer man to be respected and i came home to folks not calling me by my chosen name. A lack of respect for my choices i felt was further forced by me foregoing the accolades my peers accrued. Jim was a sensitive boy, protecting these women since before i was even here. He never called me by my true name but still: we had love. My mother has been sharing a happy essay i wrote 20 years ago about us. And i remember how his hands felt this last time we broke bread. Until i see him again, i will take care of his granddaughter's world. With all you.

How are you building utopia? How does pop culture inspire you? Leave a message or tag us in a post to be featured in the Utopian Canon~*

#after12 #stopdeath #golivefest #mtvxo #reparations #utopia

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rantsintechnicolor · 8 months

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The sharks are circling

Maybe. I mean. That’s what it feels like sometimes. There are some people flirting with me heavily. But. Do they know I might be available for the right person? W and I are not, like, OUT as an open relationship. The only way someone might know is if they are on the apps. I’m not. But she is.

One person kissed me on the cheek and held me extra long in a hug, and my mind lingered on it. Was it just friendly? This other one is letting me know that they have the house to themselves for this week unexpectedly and would enjoy some mutual massage (euphemism?). And this other one is so attentive, and sweet, and W thinks they are into me, but they have just started dating again…

Either the sharks are circling or these folks are just enjoying the fantasy that comes from flirting with a married woman. Which is it? Is this is an opportunity, an actual offer, or just a flirtation, all pretty words and excitement stopping short of any meaningful intimate activity? Whatever it is, they know or they don’t, I find this behavior incredibly annoying.

And of all the sharks, which is the right one? I’m so shy of all of it, wondering if it could end as badly as the last two attempts. I have so much to give. I am so tempted to jump into the mouth of the shark that is clearly offering a tryst. But I’ve known him for so long, long enough to know he was steeped in the questionable men's movement which makes me wonder, what philosophies from that have survived in him. He managed to piss off a number of queer people at one party and has not been to the tasting room since and yet he is excited to support a trans artist Ethel Cain when she visits the Henry Miller Library in October. Would he say anything to stick his dick in me? What’s going on in his head? I don’t know. But he seems to be the only one blatantly offering…

---

He’s been circling her for years. He’s been attracted to her for years. And through all that time, she has always been with the same person. The closest he ever got was grabbing her breast when she wore pasties to that electronica festival in San Francisco. She wasn’t expecting it, and it certainly didn’t get him very far. In fact, it changed her behavior. She grabbed butts only with permission after that, and then asked rarely, and so abstained entirely. She had actually been grabbed far worse by strangers at that same festival. And she never wore pasties in public again.

They stayed distant friends all these years but recently found a connection through writing. He had just been doing it to seduce women and help others seduce women, but she had been doing it more seriously as art. It didn’t matter their different reasons for getting words into sentences. The important part was it served as a point of connection. And he would use it. He had wanted her from the beginning and maybe now, after twenty years, he might have her.

Have her? What did that mean? He should probably spend more time thinking about that. Because he felt like he was close. He had been so complimentary, but he wondered if she noticed. She was smart, of course, she noticed. But she was ignoring it. Deflecting it, actually. She was keying into other things to change the subject. But he was not deterred. Lately, he doubled down on the hints. And when he did, he thought her silence was telling. Of course, she noticed. So why didn’t she say anything? She liked the attention? She was thinking about it? She didn’t know how to politely ask him to stop?

But now she was saying they should talk. He hoped she would come into his bedroom and close the door. He hoped she would wear a light cardigan that she let him easily slip off her shoulders. He hoped she would be wearing a dress he could just slide down over her breasts, and that he could press his face into them as she tugged at his shirt. He hoped she would reach for his waistband as he kissed her and felt her nipples on his bare skin. When he pulled her toward his bed, he hoped she would pull up her skirt and straddle him, wearing no underwear, moist and soft and swollen, unsurprised and unafraid of his length and girth. He hoped Goose, the blued eyed cat with flame points, would stay asleep in the window and not interrupt. He hoped to see her pleasure, hear her cry out with it that the neighboring lawyers office might hear, and feel her tense around him as they came. He’d been waiting so long to have her. And he didn’t mind waiting a little longer.

#beef #donkey #he has a reputation #he might be snipped but i would still insist on a condom #casual #fwb #enm #don't worry i'm not going to fuck him #i'm more likely to pass on them all

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cyrusstarchaser · 1 year

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Different anon and no need to respond if you don't want to because I know I've seen people get horribly harassed for even just talking about this user by name which is probably why most people are super hush-hush about it and just make vague references to them but the user that's been accused several times over the last few months is neckspike. I have seen several of the victims say they have contacted the police or filed reports but from what I can tell, none of these victims seem to live in America while the groomer themself does which could be a problem, and I hear of online groomers all the time but I've never heard of any being arrested so I don't know if it'll do any good to report them anyway?

Especially since in this fandom there seems to be more people defending neckspike than defending the victims and the people who defend the victims seem to get harassed just for doing that, there's a gif maker on here who is only 15 and has been getting violent threats for months now and yet a lot of people in the fandom don't seem to care for whatever reason especially now that another user like flowers has come out to echo neckspike's talks of all their victims who accuse them of multi-account harassment being terfs when not a single one is by saying her harassers are all terfs when it's probably once again just neckspike using multi-accounts like they infamously did to their other victims.

It's a pretty messed up situation, and I guess anyone who doesn't follow any of the victims or any of the people defending the victims would be pretty left in the dark, so I don't blame you if you don't know about any of this! I just wanted to help explain a little bit because I do follow one of the victims and I keep up with the conversations about all this😅

Once again I am assuming good faith and answering in kind, and I do thank you for offering some info.

1) Have the victims offered any proof? I apologize anon but I am not gonna believe someone just because they said something on the internet. But also it's most important to report to someone who can do something about it.

2)You absolutely can report some one for shit even if they live in another country. The VAST amount of countries take this very seriously, so you can report to local authorizes and also American ones. And to be clear: this is why SWATTing works - because you can 100% report 'crimes' committed by Americans even if you aren't one. Hell you can report some for cyber harassment as well, which I ALSO recommend people do if they feel like that's happening to them. If there are multiple victims with SOME sort of proof then a case should be easy to make. To be clear: if you or anyone has proof you can do something about this - something real.

3) As a queer in this day and age I see the term groomer hurled at pretty much anyone, for any reason so quite frankly I am leery of this whole thing from top to bottom. Gonna be honest: folks are innocent until proven guilty, that accusation has simply been slung onto too many innocent people for me to accept at face value with no proof.

4) Not every single person arrested makes the news. If some one WAS arrested why do you think people would learn about it? Unless you know the person irl then them disappearing and them being brought up on charges would look the same right?

5) I hope I don't have to say this but of course it sucks a kid is getting harassed or worse, but making tumblr posts will not get that to stop.

And let me super duper clear here: If any of the accused are guilty then I hope they get brought up on charges and the victims find peace - but that's only if they are found guilty. And I am in no way condoning harassment of anyone, I am instead encouraging the victims to seek actual help. Accusations with no proof should be paid no mind. And also to be clear: I OR ANY OTHER TUMBLR USER am not who you need I convince nor show proof to IT'S THE FUCKING COPS. If the bastards in blue have one redeeming feature the this is it. ANY countries CPS will do something about this with proof.

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c-is-for-circinate · 3 years

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For a long, large part of my life, being queer in a media landscape--finding queerness in a media landscape--has meant theft.

I'm a Fandom Old, somehow, these days, older than most and younger than some, in that way that's grown associated with grumpy crotchetyness and shotguns on porches and back in my day, we had to wade through our Yahoo Groups mailing lists uphill both ways, boring and irrelevant anecdotes from Back In Those Days when homophobia clearly worked differently than it does now, probably because we weren't trying hard enough. I've seen a lot of stories through the years. I've read a lot of fanfic. (More days than not, for the past twenty years. I've read a lot of fanfic.)

When people my age start groaning and sighing at conversations about representation and queerbaiting, when we roll our eyes and drag all the old war stories out again in the face of AO3 is terrible and Not Good Enough, so often what we say is: you Young Folks Today have no idea how hard, how scary, how limiting it was to be queer anywhere Back In Those Days. Including online, maybe especially online, including in a media landscape that hated us so much more than any one you've ever known. And that is true. Always and everywhere, again and again, it's true, we remember, it's true.

We don't talk so much about the joy of it.

Online fan spaces were my very first queer communities, ever. I was thirteen, I was fourteen, I was fifteen--I was a lonely, over-precocious "gifted kid" two years too young for my grade level in an all-girls' Catholic school in the suburbs--I lived in a world where gay people were a rumor and an insult and a news story about murder. I was straight, of course, obviously, because real people were straight and anyway I was weird enough already--I couldn't be two things strange, couldn't be gay too, but--well, I could read the stories. I could feel things about that. I would have those stories to help me, a few years later, when I knew I couldn't call myself straight any more.

And those stories were theft. There was never any doubt about that. We wrote disclaimers at the top of every fic, with the specter of Anne Rice's lawyers around every corner. We hid in back-corners of the internet, places you could only find through a link from a link from a link on somebody else's recs page, being grateful for the tiny single-fandom archives when you found them, grateful for the webrings where they existed. It was theft, all of it, the stories about characters we did not own, the videotaped episodes on your best friend's VHS player, one single episode pulled off of Limewire over the course of three days.

It was theft, we knew, to even try and find ourselves in these stories to begin with. How many fics did I read in those days about two men who'd always been straight, except for each other, in this one case, when love was stronger than sexual orientation? We stole our characters away from the heterosexual lives they were destined to have. We stole them away from writers and producers and TV networks who work overtime to shower them in Babes of the Week, to pretend that queerness was never even an option. This wasn't given to us. This wasn't meant for us. This wasn't ours to have, ever, ever in the first place. But we took it anyway.

And oh, my friends, it was glorious.

We took it. We stole. And again and again, for years and years and years, we turned that theft into an art. We looked for every opening, every crack in every sidewalk where a little sprout of queerness might grow, and we claimed it for our own and we grew whole gardens. We grew so sly and so skilled with it, learning to spot the hints of oh, this could be slashy in every new show and movie to come our way. Do you see how they left these character dynamics here, unattended on the table? How ripe they are for the pocketing. Here, I'll help you carry them. We'll make off with these so-called straight boys, and we only have to look back if somebody sets out another scene we want for our own.

We were thieves, all of us, and that was fine and that was fair, because to exist as queer in the world was theft to begin with. Stolen time, stolen moments--grand larceny of the institution of marriage, breaking and entering to rob my mother's hopes for grandchildren. Every shoplifted glance at the wrong person in the locker room (and it didn't matter if we never peeked, never dared, they called us out on it anyway). Every character in every fic whose queerness became a crime against this ex-wife, that new love interest. Every time we dared steal ourselves away from the good straight partners we didn't want to date.

And: we built ourselves a den, we thieves, wallpapered in stolen images and filled to the brim with all the words we'd written ourselves. We built ourselves a home, and we filled it with joy. Every vid and art and fic, every ship, every squee. Over and over, every straight boy protagonist who abandoned all womankind for just this one exception with his straight boy protagonist partner found gay orgasms and true love at the end.

Over and over, we said: this isn't ours, this isn't meant to be ours, you did not give this to us--but we are taking it anyway. We will burglarize you for building blocks and build ourselves a palace. These stories and this place in the world is not for us, but we exist, and you can't stop us. It's ours now, full of color and noise, a thousand peoples' ideas mosaic'ed together in celebration. We made this, and it will never be just yours again. You won't ever truly get it back, no matter how many lawyers you send, not completely. We keep what we steal.

Things shifted over time, of course. That's good. That's to be celebrated. Nobody should have to steal to survive. It should not be a crime, should not feel like a crime, to find yourself and your space in the world.

There were always content creators who could slip a little wink in when they laid out their wares, oh what's this over here, silly me leaving this unattended where anybody could grab it, of course there might be more over by the side door if you come around the alleyway (but if anybody asks, you didn't get this from ME). We all watched Xena marry Gabrielle, in body language and between the lines. We sat around and traded theories and rumors about whether the people writing Due South knew what they were doing when they sent their buddy cops off into the frozen north alone together at the end of the show, if they'd done it on purpose, if they knew. But over the years, slowly, thankfully, the winks became less sly.

A teenage boy put his hand on another teenage boy's hand and said, you move me, and they kissed on network TV, in a prime-time show, on FOX, and the world didn't burn down. Here and there, where they wanted to, where they could without getting caught by their bosses and managers, content creators stopped subtly nudging people around the back door and started saying, "Here. This is on offer here too, on purpose. You get to have this, too."

And of course, of course that came with a whole host of problems too. Slide around to the back door but you didn't get this from me turned into it's an item on our special menu, totally legit, you've just got to ask because the boss throws a fit if we put it out front. Shopkeepers and content creators started advertising on the sly, come buy your fix here!, hiding the fine print that says you still have to take what you've purchased home and rebuild it with your semi-legal IKEA hacks. Maybe they'll consider listing that Destiel or Sterek as a full-service menu item next year. Is that Crowley/Aziraphale the real thing or is it lite?

And those problems are real and the conversations are worth having, and it's absolutely fair to be frustrated that you can't find the ship you want on sale in anything like your color and size in a vast media landscape packed full of discount hetships and fast-fashion m/f. It's fair to be angry. It's fair to be frustrated. Queerbait is a word that exists for a reason.

There's a part of me that hurts, though, every time the topic comes up. It's a confusing, bad-mannered part of me, but it's still very real. And it's not because I'm fawning for crumbs, trying to be the Good, Non-Threatening Gay. It's not that I'm scared and traumatized by the thought of what might happen if we dare raise our voices and ask for attention. (Well. Not mostly. I'll always remember being quiet and scared and fifteen, but it's been a long two decades since then. I know how to ask for a hell of a lot more now.)

It's because I remember that cozy, plush-wallpapered den of joyful thieves. I remember you keep what you steal.

Every single time--every time--when a story I love sets a couple of characters out on a low, unguarded table, perfectly placed to be pilfered on the sly and taken home and smushed together like a couple of dolls, my very first thought is always, always joy. Always, that instinct says, yay! Says, this is ours now. As soon as I go home and crawl into that pillow-fort den, my instincts say, I will surely find people already at work combing through spoils and finding new ways to combine them, new ways to make them our own. I know there's fic for that. I've already seen fic for that, and I wasn't really interested last time, but the new store display's got my brain churning, and I can't wait to see what the crew back at the hideout does with this.

Every time, that's where my brain goes. And oh, when I realize the display's put out on purpose, that somebody snuck in a legitimate special menu item, when the proprietor gives me the nod and wink and says, you don't have to come around the side, I know it's not much but here--there is so much joy and relief and hope in me from that! Oh, what we can make with these beautiful building blocks. Oh what a story we can craft from the pieces. Oh, the things we can cobble together. Look at that, this one's a little skimpy on parts but we can supplement it, this one's got a whole outline we can fill in however we want. This one technically comes semi-preassembled, and that's boring as shit and a pain to take back apart, but that's fine, we'll manage. We're artists and thieves. I bet someone's pulling out the AU saw to cut it to pieces already.

And then I get back to our den, which has moved addresses a dozen times over the years and mostly hangs out on Tumblr now (and the roof leaks and the landlord's sketchy as fuck but at least they don't charge rent, and we've made worse places our own). And I show up, ready for joy--ready for a dozen other people who saw that low-hanging fruit on that unguarded table, who got the nod and wink about the special menu item, who're ready to get so excited about this newest haul. Did you see what we picked up? The theft was so easy, practically begging to be stolen. The last owner was an idiot with no idea what to do with it. The last owner knew exactly what it could become, bless their heart, under a craftsman with more time on their hands, so they looked away on purpose at just the right time to let me take it home. I show up every time ready for our space, the place that fed me on joy and self-confidence when I was fifteen and starving. The place that taught me, yes, we are thieves, because it is RIGHT to take what we need, and the beautiful things we create are their own justification. We are thieves, and that's wonderful, because nothing is handed to us and that means we get to build our own palaces. We get to keep everything we steal.

I go home, and even knowing the world is different, my instincts and heart are waiting for that. And I walk in the door, and I look at my dash, and I glance over at twitter, and--

And people are angry, again. Angry at the slim pickings from the hidden special menu. So, so tired and angry, at once again having to steal.

And they're right to be! Sometimes (often, maybe) I think they're angry at the wrong people--more angry with the shopkeeper who offers the bite-sized sampler platter of side characters or sneaks their queer content in on the special menu than the ones who don't include it at all. But it's not wrong to be mad that Disney's once again advertising their First Gay Character only to find out it's a tiny sprinkle of a one-line extra on an otherwise straight sundae. It's not wrong to be furious at the world because you've spent your whole life needing to be a thief to survive. It's far from wrong. I'm angry about it too.

But this was my den of thieves, my chop shop, my makerspace. Growing up in fandom, I learned to pick the locks on stories and crack the safes of subtext at the very same time I learned to create. They were the same thing, the same art. We are thieves, my heart says, we are thieves, and that's what makes us better than the people we steal from. We deconstruct every time we create. We build better things out of the pieces.

And people are angry that the pre-fab materials are too hard to find, the pickings too slim, the items on sale too limited? Yes, of course they are, of course they should be--but my heart. Oh, my heart. Every single time, just a little bit, it breaks.

Of course the stories are terrible (they have always been terrible). Of course they are, but we are thieves. We steal the best parts and cobble them back together and what we make is better than it was before. The craftsman's eye that cases a story for weak points, for blank spaces, for anywhere we can fit a crowbar and pry apart this casing--that's skill and art and joy. Of course we shouldn't have to, of course we shouldn't have to, but I still love it. I still want it, crave it. I still thrill every time I see it, a story with hairline cracks that we can work open with clever hands to let the queer in.

That used to be cause for celebration, around here. I ask him to go back to the ruins of Aeor with me, two men together alone on an expedition in the frozen north, it feels like a gift. And I understand why some people take it as an insult. I understand not good enough. I understand how something can feel like a few drops of water to someone dying of thirst, like a slap in the face. If it was so easy to sneak it hidden onto the special menu, to place it on the unguarded side table for someone else to run off to, why not let it sit out front and center in the first place? I know it's frustrating. It should be. We should fight. We should always fight. I know why.

But my heart, oh, my heart. My heart only knows what it's been taught. My heart sees, this thing right here, the proprietor left it there for you with a nod and a wink because they Get It. It's not put together yet, but it's better that way anyway. It's so full of pieces to pull apart and reassemble. I bet they've got a whole mosaic wall going up at home already. We can bring it home and make it OURS, more than it was ever theirs, forget half of what it came from and grow a new garden in what remains.

And I go home to find anger, and my heart breaks instead.

#I don't actually know how to tag this #representation #maybe?#C needs help feeding the dinosaurs #because this is very much about being a fandom old #probably also #driveby meta attack #because that's where I keep my impromptu rambles #CR spoilers #technically I guess?#there's one line that references the finale #fandom history

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rationalnerd62 · 2 years

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Wheel of Time Screentime, s1e6

In this first season of the Wheel of Time, "The Flame of Tar Valon" is quite an outlier. Except for the 5m10s cold open, the entirety of this episode 6 is told from Moiraine's PoV. After seeing her distant and secretive for more than half of the season, it was refreshing to discover the humanity of her character.

It is thus not a surprise to get more than 50m of screentime for Moiraine, as she was, well, everywhere. Our Amyrlin Seat, Siuan Sanche, comes 2nd with about 31m of screentime. The characters that follow, Maigan and Leane, were heavily helped by their background role in the two Hall scenes, which lasted 11m13s and 5m03s respectively.

All of our EF folks got between 8min and a bit more than 13min, which may seem small in comparison to Moiraine or Siuan screentime, but is not far from what they all had in episode 4 (from 6m30s to almost 14m per character) or episode 5 (from almost 7m to a bit more than 14m per character).

The gender balance in this episode is, well, vastly different from previous ones. Due to the focus on Moiraine and, to a lesser extent, on Siuan, and the number of women-only scenes, women obtained about 1h47m more screentime than men. No wonder it made me gayer. Side note: during the first five episodes of The Wheel of Time, men had a total of 8h20m of screentime, compared to 5h34m for women. With episode 6, the difference of screentime decreases from 2h46m to 0h59m.

I would usually stop a screentime breakdown on that note, but since I'm a queer and this episode was literally a childhood dream coming true, I will allow myself a deviation in a (huge) follow-up part, which I will call:

The Case for a Siuraine Endgame.

[Some minor book spoilers ahead]

In the book series, Moiraine and Siuan canonically have an intimate relationship during their time at the White Tower. If you have never read New Spring, or if that relationship went completely above your head (which is fine, honestly), you can either (re)read that prequel (it's a very short read) or take a look at this thread. Put on some gay googles if needed, but New Spring felt like the gay cousin in a more traditional Fantasy book family.

What isn't in the books, though, is whether that relationship continued after New Spring. While Moiraine and Siuan are still very close to each other after being raised to Aes Sedai, one ended up running away from the Tower (for politics) while the other got stuck in it (also for politics, kinda). They then only talked once in the main book series, in a few early chapters of The Great Hunt. Both of them have a main male love interest by the end of The Wheel of Time. The quality/development of those relationships is another story in itself.

As a result, making Moiraine and Siuan explicitly and canonically in a long-term romantic relationship is a decision made by the show. Did they take from the books? Yes. Did they have to do any of that? Not unless they wanted to. Sure, it would have been nice in 2021 for them to acknowledge that such an intimate relationship existed between Moiraine and Siuan at some point in their past, but they could have stopped at that acknowledgment, making it queer enough to check a bullet point in some diversity list. Honestly, as far as I'm concerned, this is what most movies and TV shows still tend to do: have a character canonically LGBTQ+, and then too often it's either never mentioned again, or it becomes their whole personality trait, or their partner is mostly irrelevant to the story.

So far, the show is doing more than that, and this is not even just about episode 6. Despite Siuan Sanche only being present for one episode, her introduction and her relationship with Moiraine were built up during the three episodes that came before.

Ep3 had this very short but very sweet moment of Moiraine whispering her lover's name while being sick and unconscious from the Trolloc poison. In my breakdown for this episode, I called it the "unconscious but gay" moment.

Ep4 gave us Lan asking Stepin for news of the White Tower and of the Amyrlin Seat ("Still seated. Not any fonder of Moiraine, though. I heard her threaten to fetch you two home personally."). With Lan being often careful about his words, asking about the Amyrlin Seat is not innocent: he knows of her relationship with Moiraine and the plans they have made together regarding the Dragon Reborn.

While the discussion between Alanna and Moiraine in ep5 started about the Warder bond, it quickly switched to the Amyrlin Seat. This was the first time non-readers heard her full name, Siuan Sanche. Only those watching with subtitles could have made the connection with the name whispered by Moiraine in ep3. This episode deepened the known tensions between Moiraine and Siuan, with Alanna even commenting on Moiraine taking the Seat from her.

Then ep6's cold open showed us a young Siuan Sanche and her moving relationship with her dad, until their home gets burned down due to Tear's hate of channelers. It is then hard to see young Siuan, who went to the White Tower after losing pretty much everything, as the powerful enemy Alanna mentioned in ep5. In fact, if the Amyrlin Seat had been an opponent similar to Liandrin, I doubt we would have taken the time to learn about her childhood.

It is quite the whiplash when the Flame of Tar Valon finally turns her attention to Moiraine in the Hall. The 2m20s that followed were freaking tense. Moiraine fails to find adequate answers for the Amyrlin, who insults her by mentioning her noble blood. As Siuan's father told her in the cold open, "if any of them bastards tries to shame you, you show them who you are", and the Amyrlin did not take lightly Moiraine's refusal.

Of course, this was just for show. Book readers knew they were at least friends, and non-book readers may have guessed from the importance of that cold open. But still. Later in that episode, after a fun minute of Lan "You masked your bond" Mandragoran and Moiraine "Goodnight Lan" Damodred, Lan departs on a "Give her my love", to which Moiraine reacts with one of the cutest expressions ever.

It takes another minute for Moiraine to open that portal to meet Siuan, and we then get some delicious 6m7s of continuous screentime with only the two of them.

In the context of queer relationships in mainstream medias, 6m7s in continuous is a fuck ton of time, especially for such intimate scene. Considering this was a 57m episode (taking out the recap and credits), this means more than 10% of ep6 was given to develop Moiraine and Siuan’s private relationship. We got to see two middle-aged and powerful women in an interracial relationship, one of which is the lead of the show (so far), who have loved each others for probably around 25 years, despite the 20 years Moiraine has spent on the road. After two years without seeing the one they consider their partner and equal, their reunion was sexy but not sexualized (take that, male gaze!), and both finally got to talk about the secrets, doubts and dreams that have been nagging at their minds. It made those characters beautifully human and vulnerable, a welcomed contrast from what has been shown of them so far.

But the show doesn’t even stop there. When Moiraine brings Egwene and Nynaeve to meet the Amyrlin Seat (”Siuan Sanche waits for only one woman. And it’s not you.”), the focus of those 3m35s is on the Two Rivers girls meeting the most powerful Aes Sedai in the world. But when Siuan talks about deserving something different (”stay home, love the people you love, grow old with them”), it’s a direct reflection of her life with Moiraine and the sacrifices they both had to make because of the pattern. That star-crossed lovers theme comes back and forth during most of the scenes Moiraine and Siuan share.

The last moment they have together is the 5m3s long exile scene. The oath in itself takes about 2m of that time, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen wedding vows shorter than that for queer relationships in mainstream media. And yes, I’m talking about wedding vows: there was a time where women would vow to love, honor and obey their husbands in Christian wedding ceremonies. While the original vows are archaic and misogynistic, the parallel is at least funny if not very interesting, considering Moiraine is directly swearing to Siuan Sanche (”daughter of the river, clever as a pike, strong as the tides”). Moreover, while “By the Light and my hope of salvation and rebirth” is commonly used in the books to swear the Three Oaths (and the rebirth is a direct callback to Siuan’s earlier “In this life or the next”), I don’t recall “or may the Creator’s face turn from me forever and darkness consume my soul” being used in the books except for when Siuan swore to Gareth Bryne in TFoH. Also quite interesting considering Siuan and Gareth later relationship in the books.

Which brings me to my next point: how Siuan was developed in this episode 6 compared to other recurring characters in the show:

In term of screentime, Siuan is about 5min behind Liandrin, who appeared in 5 episodes this season (1, 3, 4, 5, 6). She’s above Alanna and Logain, who appeared in 4 episodes, and above Stepin, who appeared in 3. She has more than twice the screentime than Thom, a significant character in the books that met Moiraine in tEoTW but still hasn’t seen her in the show. Meanwhile, Siuan had a stunning 25m48s of shared screentime with Moiraine in a single episode. This is half of Moiraine’s screentime in ep6, and 45% of the episode.

That ranking would probably change if considering speaking time. @far-dareis-me has been doing some Wheel of (Speaking) Time analysis, and I am looking forward to see how Siuan’s speaking time would compare to Liandrin’s or Thom’s for example.

So, what does this tell us overall?

Siuan is an important character in the books, and will also be one in the show, and not just for her relationship to Moiraine. While her introduction in the cold-open does serve her relationship with Moiraine (see Moiraine quoting Siuan’s father during her oath), it tells a lot about her own poorer background (in contrast with Moiraine’s noble one). She also has an active part in the search for the Dragon, and her discussion with Egwene and Nynaeve tells us we may see them interacting with the Amyrlin again as they move to the Tower to be trained.

The show spent a significant amount of time on building and developing Moiraine and Siuan’s relationship, which they did not have to do to follow the books storyline. We know they cut a Loial scene in this episode, and that the ending had to be changed because of the deal with Mat. They could have reduced Moiraine and Siuan’s time to develop more other characters. Moiraine did not need to be there when Siuan was talking to Egwene and Nynaeve. That exile scene could have been shorter (and those vows didn’t need to be that long). Those 2m25s of Moiraine prepping herself to see her wife girlfriend could have been shorter. But the fact that the show kept all those moments and gave this queer storyline the time it deserved means something, especially in comparison with what other mainstream shows tend to do.

The storyline of Thom, who [book spoilers] is Moiraine’s male love-interest in the books, has been modified enough that he did not meet Moiraine when he was supposed to. They may meet later on, sure. But how could this meeting even compared to the 25+ years of love the show gave us for Siuan and Moiraine?

Maybe the show is just cruel. After all, they’re giving some mostly sweet development to another couple we know is doomed. But, in my opinion, with all the pieces they put on their board, it would be very strange (and disappointing) to devote so much time on Moiraine and Siuan’s relationship if they have no intent to play the star-crossed lovers card as much as they can.

Let’s just hope that this trope ends up as beautifully as Aragorn and Arwen’s relationship did (or Fitzsimmons for the Agents of Shield veterans), and not as a queer remake of Romeo and Juliet.

As always, here’s a link to the data. Sorry for the long rant, but it needed to come out.

#wot screentime #moiraine damodred #siuan sanche #moiraine x siuan #siuraine #wot analysis #wot book spoilers #the wheel of time #wot on prime

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meichenxi · 3 years

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tldr; autistic parents are fantastic and fuck you if you think otherwise, signed, a disaster queer adhd daughter

So on the back of a lot of negative stuff I've been coming across recently I wanted to take a moment and talk about my dad. He is autistic and chronically ill, and has been unable to hold a job down since I was eight or nine. He only ever responds with brutal, crushing honesty when I ask him how he is (and as he's chronically ill, the answers are rarely fun); he doesn't have any close relationships with any other adults and is so afraid of crowds he sprints through them leaving the children to run after him as best they can; he very rarely told me I was doing well and never seemed to understand my point of view, much less my mother's; he would never talk about anything other than bloody knitting, rocks or conservation, he could eat approximately 0.5 foods but also had no job to buy anything better; he frequently goes around naked because 'it feels nice' causing me to SCREAM -

He's my favourite person in the entire world.

Growing up, there were so many things he taught me. His special interests were geology, nature conservation, wildlife gardening, taiji, mythology and knitting. When we were kids, we went out for long walks for miles and miles in the drizzling British countryside - when I was young, my brother and mum would lag behind and me and my dad would skip ahead, jumping over the rocks, and he'd tell with great excitement why THAT twisty line of quartz was actually less exciting that this outcrop here; he'd teach me about the Salmon of Wisdom and the folk that live over the sea and never grow old, and impress on me with utter seriousness how I must never tell a stranger my name unless they tell me theirs first; he'd sit down with me and draw patterns for a jumper he was thinking of in the mud with a stick, and then we'd have a sword fight. I never understood half of the things he told me, but listened with wonder, because he was my dad, and he knew everything.

When I was a little older, we made up stories that lasted for hours, and memorised poetry together from Lord of the Rings (because THERE our interests collided with galactic force) and he'd do all of the voices just perfectly. We went one whole summer just quoting LOTR to each other, and it was our little secret: Mum might hear 'Yes,' but only I would hear what came after: 'Yes,' said Frodo, or 'Yes!' cried Boromir. And when I told him my story about a woman who lived in a volcano he listened quietly and told me that that wasn't how volcanoes worked, but that he could help me write it better.

Everybody's autism is different. For my dad, it rendered him completely incapable to work and was paralysing in social situations, but when it was just me and him, he told the most wonderful stories. I wanted to be a geologist just listening to his voice, and then a writer, and then finally someone who understood the land like he did and the sea.

And he made me feel normal. He made me feel heard. With my mum, as much as I loved her, I would get vague noises of assent as she struggled to look after everybody in this damn house, or irritable 'Would you just be quiet for ONE second?' I was a talented kid, and everybody praised me at pretty much everything: but the only person who would consider anything I wrote like it was an adult's writing, with seriousness and criticism, was my dad. He didn't tell me I did well often. Instead he would take my picture, or my writing, and look at it with great seriousness, and ask me WHY the Queen was so intent on kidnapping beautiful princesses in the first place. I could trust him to tell me whether I did something well or not, because he never, never lied. Not to please me, and not to please anyone. It cost him his marriage and his job, but it was a rock of stability in my life : my mother was volatile, frequently furious enough to resort to violence, and she lied and laughed and told us what we wanted to hear, but he was always reliable. If he was angry, we knew.

When I spoke for hours about my languages, he listened, nodded, and then spoke about his plants. It was a perfect give and take because I didn't expect him to care about my languages, and he never expected me to care about his plants. We just cared about the other.

And when I didn't make any friends and couldn't interact with the other children without despair he was always there with a silent offer of a bike ride, or catch in the park. He was always the fittest person I knew, despite his illness. He had lots of grand ideas - once he climbed the tree outside our house and tried to rig up a platform fifteen metres above the ground. After three days he was inconsolable. He wouldn't speak, he just sat there. But a few days later he started drawing up plans and attacked it again, and this time it worked.

My dad is great for a lot of reasons, and difficult for a lot of reasons too. Some of these are just him - but some are specifically related to his autism, and I think it's important that we talk about that too, especially in the context of parenthood. Because we see a lot of positivity about young autistic adults and kids, but older adults are just as valuable and just as in need of support and recognition, particularly because they may have gone through so much. My dad was made to stand in a bucket of urine for three days as a kid to 'pull himself together'. Spoilers: it didn't work.

And I'm not autistic myself, but many of my ADHD behaviours are so much easier around him because he just. gets it. If I don't like a certain food because of the texture, he never buys it again - I don't need to explain myself. We leave all social events early, which is wonderful because he is very stressed and I am either so high on adrenaline I'm in danger of injuring myself or exhausted to the point of not being able to talk. We run through crowds together because he hates crowds and I like the chance to stretch my legs. We don't touch or keep in contact very much, because neither of us see the point or like small talk, and I'm terrible at messaging anyone, but I know (and he knows) as soon as we need each other we're there. We do handstands on the beach together and he points out plants on the way back along with their Latin names. He never bothers me about talking to my friends or stopping clowning and watching my stupid shows or spending ten hours a day on Chinese or Tolkien. He never mocks me for needing space and time after anything. We lie on the concrete together because it's so damned warm and nice and adgshhhhh. We spend hours playing taiji and doing push hands in the kitchen, and our 'love language', if you will, is him trying to throw me to the ground. We both get 100% of our emotional intelligence from books, and in any arguments can use this to great effect. I talk at him for an hour, and then he talks at me for an hour. I know so much about fucking willow trees.

So people who say that autistic parents are cold and incapable of care? My dad was the most sincere, honest and helpful parent a child could have ever asked for. Things were difficult, but it helped me understand that parents too have needs, and that adults are all just grown up kids trying their best. I didn't know why he was different as a kid, and I didn't much care - I just wanted to be a geologist like my daddy.

#actuallyautistic #autistic #adhd #actually adhd #autism positivity #non langblr #neurodivergent

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wolfstar-in-color · 3 years

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July Colorful Column: Remus is a Crip, and We Can Write Him Better.

There is one thing that can get me to close a fic so voraciously I don’t even make sure I’m not closing other essential tabs in the process. It doesn’t matter how much I’m loving the fic, how well written I think it is, or how desperately I want to know how it ends. Once I read this sentence, I am done.

It’s written in a variety of different ways, but it always goes something like this: “You don’t want me,” Remus said, “I am too sick/broken/poor/old/[insert chosen self-demeaning adjective here].”

You’re familiar with the trope. The trope is canonical. And if you’ve been around the wolfstar fandom for longer than a few minutes, you’ve read the trope. Maybe you love the trope! Maybe you’ve written the trope! Maybe you’re about to stop reading this column, because the trope rings true to you and you feel a little attacked!

Now, let’s get one thing out of the way right now: I am not saying the trope is wrong. I am not saying it’s bad. I am not saying we should stop writing it. We all have things we don’t like to see in our chosen fics. Maybe you can’t stand Leather Jacket Motorbike Sirius? Maybe you think Elbow Patch Remus is overdone? Or maybe your pet peeves are based in something a little deeper - maybe you think Poor Latino Remus is an irresponsible depiction, or that PWPs are too reductive? Whatever it is, we all have our things.

Let me tell you about my thing. When I first became very ill several years ago, there were various low points in which I felt I had become inherently unlovable. This is, more or less, a normal reaction. When your body stops doing things it used to be able to do - or starts doing things you were quite alright without, thank you very much - it changes the way you relate to your body. You don’t want to hear my whole disability history, so yada yada yada, most people eventually come to accept their limitations. It’s a very painful existence, one in which you constantly tell yourself your disability has transformed you into a burdensome, unworthy member of society, and if nothing else, it’s not terribly sustainable. Being disabled takes grit! It takes power! It takes a truly absurd amount of medical self-advocacy! Hating yourself? Thinking yourself unworthy of love? No one has time for that.

Of course, I’m being hyperbolic. Plenty of disabled people struggle with these feelings many years into their disabilities, and never really get over them. But here’s the thing. We experience those stories ALL THE TIME. Remember Rain Man? Or Million Dollar Baby? Or that one with the actress from Game of Thrones and that British actor who seemed like he was going to have a promising career but then didn't? Those are all stories about sad, bitter disabled people and their sad, bitter lives, two out of three of which end in the character completing suicide because they simply couldn’t imagine having to live as a disabled person. (I mean, come on media, I get that we're less likely to enjoy a leisurely Saturday hike, but our parking is SUBLIME.) When was the last time you engaged with media that depicted a happy disabled person? A complex disabled person? A disabled person who has sex? No really, these aren’t hypothetical questions, can you please drop a rec in the notes?? Because I am desperate.

There are lots of problems with this trope, and they’ve been discussed ad nauseam by people with PhDs. I’m not actually interested in talking about how this trope leads to a more prevalent societal idea that disabled people are unworthy of love, or contributes to the kind of political thought processes that keep disabled people purposefully disenfranchised. I’m just a bitch on Tumblr, and I have a bone to pick: the thing I really hate about the trope? It’s boring. I’m bored. You know how, like, halfway through Grey’s Anatomy you realized they were just recycling the same plot points over and over again and there was just no WAY anyone working at a hospital prone to THAT MANY disasters would stay on staff? It's like that. I love a recycled trope as much as the next person (There Was Only One Bed, anyone?). But I need. Something. Else.

Remus is disabled. BOLD claim. WILD speculation. Except, not really. You simply - no matter how you flip it, slice it, puree it, or deconstruct it - cannot tell me Remus Lupin is not disabled. Most of us, by this point, are probably familiar with the way that One Canonical Author intended One Dashing Werewolf to be “a metaphor for those illnesses that carry stigma, like HIV and AIDS” [I’m sorry to link you to an outside source quoting She Who Must Not Be Named, but we’re professionals here]. Which is... a thing. It’s been discussed. And, listen, there’s no denying that this parallel is a problematic interpretation of people who have HIV/AIDS and all such similar “those illnesses” (though I’ll admit that I, too, am perennially apt to turn into a raging beast liable to harm anything that crosses my path, but that’s more linked to the at-least-once-monthly recollection that One Day At A Time got cancelled). Critiques aside, Remus Lupin is a character who - due to a condition that affects him physically, mentally, emotionally, and intellectually - is repeatedly marginalized, oppressed, denied political and social power, and ostracized due to unfounded fear that he is infectious to others. Does that sound familiar?

We’re not going to argue about whether or not “Remus is canonically disabled as fuck” is a fair reading. And the reason we’re not going to argue about whether or not it’s a fair reading is because I haven’t read canon in 10-plus years and you will win the argument. Canon is only marginally relevant here. The icon of this blog is brown, curly haired Remus Lupin kissing his trans boyfriend, Sirius Black. We are obviously not too terribly invested in canon. The wolfstar fandom is now a community with over 25,000 AO3 fics, entire careers launched from drawing or writing or cosplaying this non-canonical pairing. We love to play around here with storylines and universes and races and genders and sexualities and all kinds of things, but most of the time? Remus is still disabled. He’s disabled as a werewolf in canon-compliant works, he’s disabled in the AUs where he was injured or abused or kidnapped or harmed as a child, he’s disabled in the stories that read him as chronically ill or bipolar or traumatized or blind or Deaf. I’d go so far as to say that he is one of very few characters in the Wide Wonderful World of media who is, in as close to his essence as one can be, always disabled. And that means? Don’t shoot the messenger... but we could stand to be a tiny bit more responsible with how we portray him.

Disabled people are complicated. As much as I’d like to pretend we are always level-headed, confident, and ready to assert our inherent worth, we are still just humans. We have bad days. We doubt our worth. We sometimes go out with guys who complain about our steroid-induced weight gain (it was a long time ago, Tumblr, okay??). But, we also have joy and fun and good days and sex and happiness and families and so many other things.

Remus is a disabled character, and as such, it’s only fair that he’d have those unworthy moments. But - I propose - Remus is also a crip. What is a crip? A crip - like a queer - is someone who eschews the limited boundaries placed on their bodies, who rejects a hierarchy of oppression in favor of an intersectional analysis of lived experience, who isn’t interested in being the tragic figure responsible for helping people with dominant identities realize how good they have it. Crips interpret their disabilities however they want, rethinking bodies and medicine and pleasure and pain and even time itself. Crips are political, community-minded, and in search of liberation.

Remus is a character who struggles with his disability, sure. But he’s also a character who leverages his physical condition to attempt to shift communities towards his political leanings, advocates for the rights of those who share his physical condition, and has super hot sex with his wrongfully convicted boyfriend ultimately goes on to build community and family. Having a condition that quite literally cripples you, over which you have no control, and through which you are often read as a social pariah? That’s disability. But using said condition as a means through which to build advocacy and community? Now that’s some crip shit.

Personally, I love disabled!Remus Lupin. But I love crip!Remus Lupin even more. I’d love to see more of a Remus who owns his disability, who covets what makes him unique, and who never ever again tells a potential romantic partner they are too good for him because of his disability. This trope - unlike There Was Only One Bed! - sometimes actually hurts to read. Where’s Remus who thinks a potential romantic partner isn’t good enough for him? Where’s Remus who insists his partners learn more about his condition in order to treat him properly? Where’s sexy wheelchair user Remus? Where’s Remus who uses his werewolf transformations as an excuse to travel the world? Where’s crip Remus??

We don’t have to put “you don’t want me” Remus entirely to bed. It is but one of many repeated tropes that are - in the words of The Hot Priest from Fleabag - morally a bit dubious. And let’s face it - we don’t always come to fandom for its moral superiority (as much as we sometimes like to think we do).

This is not a condemnation - it is an invitation. Able-bodied folks are all but an injury, illness, or couple decades away from being disabled. And when you get here, I sincerely hope you don’t waste your time on “you don’t want me”ing back and forth with the people you love. I’m inviting you to come to the crip side now. We have snacks, and without all the “you don’t want me” talk, we get to the juicy parts much faster.

Colorfully,

Mod Theo

#wolfstar #disability in fandom #disabled remus #crip remus #please write me some crip remus #I beg of you #fandom meta

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jockpoetry · 3 years

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supernatural sees women as a tool for development and strengthening of narratives/motivation and dean sees his body as a tool. is that anything?

When I saw this ask I really made the 🥴in real life. So, yeah anon, I do think there’s something to this.

Quick Disclaimer before I actually launch into my thoughts™: A lot of my read of Dean stems from my experience as both an oldest daughter and a transman. Being the oldest daughter was an experience I lived for many years, but I am also a man. I wasn’t raised as a man, I wasn’t socialized as a man, and even though once I came out upon reflection my masculinity was obviously there. Like I was a man™ before I knew I was a man. Even when I actively tied my identity to femininity for a long time! A lot of my prideful moments were based around statements like: “I was the only girl who (fill in the blank).”

So I am just putting that out there before I launch into my spiel about Dean/Gender/Tool because they all interlock for me.

I am also going to apologize in advance because I know this has fully gone off the rails and I’m not even done writing it yet. If this is incomprehensible ! Well, happens to the best of us.

First off, most importantly I guess before we discuss womanhood and Dean and the way both are utilized on the show I need to say that I personally don’t subscribe the whole Dean is female coded thing.

It’s a read I can absolutely understand. But for me..he’s not.

He’s a hypermasculine man to the point that when (and because he is written as a punchline, as the stupid™ brother, as the whore™, as the mother/father™, as daddy’s blunt instrument™, etc) Dean deviates from the pre-accepted definition of hypermasculine it’s Wrong.

It’s Instantly Feminine.

I think the internet has made the world very black and white, or blue and pink maybe. This point, I think, colors a lot of these discussions. Dean cooks, he cleans and so therefor he’s female coded. When that really just feeds back into the whole toxic masculinity loop. You can’t be masculine and cook and clean and cry. That’s for feminine people only.

I get the argument! I do, I just think that Dean’s actions are not inherently feminine, it’s just in the vacuum of Female and in the Absence of Traditional Masculinity it makes sense to assign him female coded and move on.

IN FACT the way that Dean is the action hero of the show, the Masculine™ one on the show - but he cries, and he rages, and he cooks (Again and Again) and cleans (Again and Again). The fact he’s macho and confident but he has so little self esteem. Is frankly insane to me. You have this blaze of glory character who is so depressed that they have him kill himself. Twice. In explicitly “I hate myself, I hate hearing all the things I hate about myself, I want to destroy myself” ways.

On just a regular ol’ network show that is just ungodly bad at times. They let their Male Hero cry - all the time (if I linked every example of this the essay would be...longer than it already is, but just take my word for it). Dean tears up and grieves and shows more than just Angry Horny Violent™ (he shows plenty of that, don’t get me wrong) but he’s Emotional (Again and Again and Again). In many different ways!

I mean, beyond even just tearing up, they make their Male Hero™ face sexual violence in pretty, uniquely horrifying - and queer! - ways.

Let’s make it clear, they did a lot of this unintentionally.

Or they do it as a joke.

Off of dean for a moment to say women are plot devices in this show. I could probably count on one hand female characters who have sincere depth to them that have roles outside of progressing plot, filling a filler episode, and who are still alive. Like even characters such as Charlie who are wholly developed, and interesting, are only remembered/mentioned/utilized to progress plots or fill an episode out - and then she dies. For pain™ for plot™ for no other reason than to traumatize a character.

Which let’s also make it clear Dean’s trauma is also only used as a plot device (as is Sam’s but in a different way, and Cas’ trauma is a whole other barrel of fish we’re not gonna dive into right now). Like wholesale full stop they don’t actually care about what happened to him. Unless it’s relevant in an episode.

Oh that boys home he was left at when he was 16 for months? Sure we’ll sprinkle that in in the back half of the series. Oh he was covered in bruises and said it was from a hunt (when it’s clear contextually they were from his father but saying the fantastical but true is easier than saying the uncomfortable but true). As Dean says though the story became the story, he was sixteen. He just went along with what John said.

We only see Dean ever truly rage at John, by the way, when either Dean is dead (when he’s between life and death and he rages at John, right before John “apologizes” for traumatizing him, for putting too much on Dean’s shoulders, and fucking dying) or John is dead (the Djinn episode where Dean is straight™ and John is dead™ and he goes to his grave and just yells and rages like he should have to his father in the real world).

Dean’s trauma from being both tortured and torturer in hell? Yeah, we don’t talk about that after it’s Relevant™. Even though it’s clear - especially in the demon!dean, mark of cain era, all those years later - Alastair still has his hooks inside of Dean. I stopped watching originally after s8 ended. I was fed up with the show, and with this whole renaissance I’ve been doing a rewatch and I’m into season twelve now and it really has never come up again.

Even when he had the mark of cain and he was tasked with questioning and accused of torturing it was “the mark has changed you” and not “you were victim and victimizer in hell for forty years, which is longer than you’ve been alive on earth” (and, was about as long as he wound up living. Which is desperately sad.

Because we talk about Sam’s desire for a “normal” life but, Dean wanted out too. He was tired in the first few seasons of this show, he never had a chance to taste freedom (we don’t count the boys home, because that was a different kind of regimented life, and it was a false freedom) the way that Sam did in Flagstaff with Bones or at Stanford with Jessica. Love for Dean is sacrificing, it’s putting himself/his happiness/his well-being last.

Because Dean only knows love in the context of violence (like all of these fun examples, for starters) is a phrase that I’ve said a lot both in private chats and on here, and I absolutely think it goes to him being a tool (a blunt instrument, a plot device, so both textually and metatextually) instead of a person. Which Cas sees Dean’s shame/guilt and sees that side of Dean because he touched his soul, and saw more than just the Righteous™ man, more than just the tool, he saw A good man, not a machine.

On the other side though you have how “bad guys” view Dean: Desperate, Sloppy, Needy, Dean’s hole (Again), which is again so wildly counterintuitive to the story of a Macho Man Hero™. You’re using vocabulary that is both queering him and feminizing (and I know this a meme format, but sincerely it is done in a derogatory way it is feminizing. It’s breaking him down to bare parts, to a sloppy hole).

My whole rewatch I have been absolutely fascinated by how identity and free will is utilized/conceptualized on this show. Castiel has been my main focus, but Dean and how he is framed by himself and others is...fascinating - and frustrating. The writers inconsistency lends itself not only to this unintentionally queer character, but also one that again is incredibly easily read as a non-traditionally masculine character.

As a feminine character.

This show has so few female characters that of course it had to foist the roles/behaviors/plots that a female character might have onto a male character. Which I think is part of why reading Dean as trans (either transmasc, or transfemme) is so easily done like.

Half of these are shit posts, but you can find trans allegories/textual evidence in this show again, again, again, again, and again. And this is unintentional, they don’t want you to look at Dean and see woman, former future or present. Like a lot of these I’m sure are punchlines for them, because women/queer folk are punchlines to them.

Sometimes the only women in an episode are random witnesses who get two sentences of dialogue, and then the main guest character is a man. Who flirts with Dean, and Dean is receptive to it.

They paint themselves into a corner, there are female Rabbi. So easily could Aaron have been a woman instead of a man, but they made the choice to play up the HaHa Dean & Men card.

Because, again, Dean has filled the slot of Woman™ of Female Lead™ and the flirting would’ve been straight if Dean was a woman. It’s a plot device, they needed to have the guest character be disarming, be cute, make the main character flustered.

It’s just the main character is a man, because they’re allergic to women. But they still need those female plots, tools of femininity, to move their show forward. I mean I am a big subscriber to transmasc Jo (no idea if anyone else is with me on this one, but let me explain). Jo is in love with Dean (concept) not Dean (actuality). Which, we’ve all had our eggs cracked by someone like that. We were in love with them until we realized we just wanted to be them.

He loved her like a little sister, she loved him like a lost idol. He’s a golden calf and she dies for him, because she believed in him, she was the original character dashed at the altar of the Winchesters.

I fully believe if she had lived and if this show had a crumb of actual good writing Jo could have been a deeply compelling transmasc character. But I also think she’s a fascinating inversion of Dean. Dean is a Masculine Character who subverts Toxic Masculinity, Jo is a Tomboy™ she’s not your (if you take it straight, literally and metaphorically) average female love interest. She’s angry, she’s not soft at all, all edges and corners and thorns. She isn’t helpless, she’s stubborn but not in a “you’re going to get punished for this” way. She’s right when she’s stubborn. She’s helpful, she’s a martyr.

I could do a whole other essay just on Jo (and Ellen, and Ash, what a fucking trio!) but needless to say Jo was one of the first...plot device feminine tools sacrificed to this show. She was a regular, she was unique, she was an engaging character, and she still died (to progress the plot? no. for man pain? yeah, for like three episodes maybe, and then it’s forgotten just like the rest of Dean’s trauma, as we mentioned above).

Dean and Women and Love is a very interesting tool used too because. Boy they sure try to make Dean love women and it fails in small ways, and in big, meaningless, failed het domesticity (again) ways. Not to mention whatever Lust (in the form of a woman) having no effect upon him, when they could have used that moment to assert his Masculinity and Heterosexuality. He behaved normally? And...also...whatever the fuck the Adios thing was!

Like they have these opportunities to make him Traditionally (toxically) Masculine, but make the choice to...not? To soften him. Because it’s a tool. He’s their female lead, textually he had to take on the role of mother(/father) to Sam, but...I mean this is a million miles long already. I know, but we absolutely can’t not talk about his Paternal/Maternal behaviors. (Which appear again and again again and again, outside of his relationship with Sam even/especially). He’s the mother hen, sage, safety net, beacon, home to so many side characters they meet.

I mean in many ways Jody is also a Dean comparison. Lost her family. Found a new family. She is non-traditionally feminine, but easily flustered and Silly™ (let’s just drop the entire sex talk over family dinner scene with Alex and the boys and looking to them for help, even though she was already a mother, and she’s a cop, and a hunter and this confident no nonsense individual.... She’s not). We are meant to see her as this hard ass, but she makes extra food for the boys to take back to the bunker. She’s deadly in a fight, but also still easily overwhelmed and put into damsel mode, and she cares so much even in the face of adversity.

It’s also fun to see how Jo | Jody are reflections of Dean at different points of his life. Younger, cocky | Older, settled.

Even when the text tries to tell us that he’s not.

When it reminds us that he’s violent. That he is his father, even if he says that Sam is more like John (which was reflexive, which was angry because of Adam and how Sam was behaving like Dean in that episode, and yes there are parallels to be drawn between Sam and John, the show barely dives into them). Instead we’re told that Dean is John (Again and Again and Again and Again).

So intensely that a fanfictionalized version of the Winchester Gospels makes it an entire fucking musical number.

And yet, despite the texts insistence to make Dean Macho Man Father Reborn™ We get this Dean who is silly (and directly compared/contrasted to the female character in this scene), soft, in heels, nagging, and... Sully (you know Sam’s imaginary friend who has the same Haircut Dean has, who is a softer, shorter, friendlier, campier, version of Dean who was a replacement For Dean until the real one let Sam back in? That? Sully?) it’s hard to take them seriously.

Hell, even when he was A DEMON? What did they do? They had him sing off-key drunken karaoke, they had him doing this ! Like that’s your hero, unhinged, free to be as bad as he could be, and you put him in a cowboy hat in a romance with the king of hell.

The Female Lead, everyone. Who’s biggest betrayal(s) comes at the hands of his love interest (again, a man even though it was an angel who could’ve taken any vessel! who could’ve been recast, who canonically dies admitting his love to Dean - that one), who he tries so hard to be loyal to.

The contradictions of his character are laughable. He is so emotional, but if he is engaged about his emotions? He shuts down, or he’s exasperated about being asked about them. It really is Female Lead/Only Here For The Plot disease, because everything is more important than him. How’s he doing? Doesn’t matter outside of the context of how x character is doing or that y character is dead. Or his emotions only matter if they’re done in penance.

They also really do frame him as Pretty Boy™ in a violent way, or in a derogatory manner. They’ll give us homoerotic shots like this or these and never really acknowledge how these are gay shots. Sorry the gun scene is a a straight up sex scene, the beer sip spilling out over his mouth is oral, the scene where Cas fills up Dean’s glass with whisky is also a sex scene, they do this shit on purpose but accidentally queer it up. If Dean was a woman these scenes wouldn’t even matter. They’d be passing moments, but because he is not just a man but A Man™ they’re insane to see.

Not to mention all of these scenes and all the ones I haven’t linked where Dean dresses up. He performs masculinity, but he performs femininity too. He’s a plot device that is slotted in to whatever role they need. He’s Super Straight Butch Man™ but coaches the lesbian on how to successfully flirt with a man. He’s Action Hero™ who sits through a montage with the same lesbian and yays and nays her outfits, and enjoys himself.

Fuck he loves dressing up, he feels better in these costumes because performing a character is easier than being himself. Because who is Dean? He’s a tool, both textually and metatextually. It is exactly how the women and because of the women on the show that Dean is the way that he is. If there was a more steady female presence Dean would not be half as much of a plot device or half as camp/gay/feminine/non-traditionally masculine/queer coded as he is.

In conclusion....

#dean winchester #supernatural #spn meta #spn #gender #anon #replies #messages #my writing #ANYWAYS PHEW okay anon i don't know if i even fully got to your point but i woke up at like 3:30 to this ask and i've been fixated on it #HOPE THIS IS EVEN JUST a little bit coherent #the way i meant for this to talk so much more about transness and eldest daughter syndrome and just FORGOT #oops #oh well

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gayfrenchtoast · 3 years

Text

Okay fine we're doing this. I havent read the books and I'm probably not going to I've only seen the movies so I'm sorry if anything I say is contradictory or has already been stated.

So! Descendants 3 was kinda shit and I dont like it but especially because of the ending because everybody was like "oh yeah island is open and we're all happy with no worries or implications about free villains or people being spiteful about being imprisoned for years!" In fact if anything they joked about those things.

The island is basically its own culture, I can't say how long it's been around, long enough for some almost adult kids to be about and to develop a kind of community.

The Isle is a place of poverty, people are dirty and on the street, eveyone steals from each other and most people don't put much effort into appearance upkeep (personal or of the sourounding area) not because of laziness or being "evil" but because they clearly don't have time or luxury to do such things or possibly even the clean water. Does the Isle have clean water?? How to they get electricity??? Someone tell me!

Another thing that I've noticed is easy to see but is not much explicitly said is the unique style of those on the Isle. As previously stated they don't have much but those who have the most "power" and such on the Isle are the best example of this As they have the most colourful outfits. However these outfits are often made out of patches and ripped things put together, even salvaged things like nets and chains as we can see on thing like Uma and Harry's outfits in D3 they make the best of what they've got and they do fantastic because their outfits are intricate and detailed and just tell you everything you need to know about them. Which is why it's a damn s h a m e when the original VK's ajust their style to be more like Auradon's. That's not an improvement! Be proud of where you came from!! It's like they forgot what it was like being on the Isle in D3!

Moving on, here's something that was touched on in D2 but not enough. Equality. On the Isle there is basically equal opportunity as in saying everything is shit and nome cares what gender and presumably what sexuality you are as long as you can work. Sexism is shown to be almost casual in aurodon from the looks of it, Chad makes sexist comments and litterally none else says anything or seems to see anything wrong with it except Jay who caves to pressure from peers and expectations. He does redeem himself because he's from the isle and he knows you shouldn't give a shit about anyone's gender or anything. If they can do something and ask to be included you give them that opportunity. The sexism is also implied in the way that the rule book has men written specifically in the first place and that it has taken until then for anyone but boys to be allowed on any kind of sports team. We never see it! It seems to be the hetronormative veiw where the boys do sport and girls do cheerleeding and other genders? What other genders? Never heard of that? BAD AURADON!! I bet there's so many trans folk on the island just living their lives, thinking Aurodon is the better place and not knowing that it's a cis het filled nightmare.

Okay no I'm headcannoning now, if their are now a bunch of Isle kids at auradon prep they find it fucking aweful the way all these preppy royals are treating them and make the first LGBT club in Auradon. There is lots of pushback and they get bullied a fuck ton for making themselves the most prominent queer folk in the school until a fight breaks out and the club demand that they should be treated better, taking all the evidence to fairy godmother who is very hesitant because COME ON she's never been that great she is biased to Auradon kids and if putting away those in the Isle is brought up she is all on it, she is jelly spined about doing anything against the royal kids. So the kids are like "Fine, if you won't help us we'll take this to the King himself!" Well mainly the queer mom's of the group (you know the ones I'm talking about) who lead the others and protect the anxious queers as they storm to Ben at his fucking locker and demand an audience because they are being harassed and bullied and none is doing anything. Ben had no idea there was even a LGBT club (too busy ig) and is gassed there is one for a moment before he's like "wait people are harassing you?" So Bisexual King Ben gets his lovely Bi wife and they start coming to club meetings and investing in the pins and stuff the club makes. Most club members are pleased but the queer mom's are apprehensive that this will help until some assholes come to the club to do their usual bullying only to find King and Queen Beast themselves siting there with rainbow bracelets and bi pins and all trying to have a nice old time eating their fucking cupcakes what the fuck are yall doing? The bullying dies down quick once they realise it ain't gonna fly, the other OG VK's that hear about this become members and very protective over their queer children. Did I mention Dizzy and Ceila are a part of the club? They're girlfriend's. Celia is one of the queer moms. Harry becomes one of the biggest protectors over the group as the pan dad. He's been going around snogging everyone and anyone wholl snog him everyone already knew he was queer they just didn't have the balls to try and bully him over it as much as they bullied the lil club members. But now Harry can often be seen in jackets and shit with pan and general queer patches and pins and running around with his gay children yelling "MOVE WE'RE GAY!!" He totally calls them his queer crew. Anyway as a result lots of queer royals start coming out of the woodwork, obvs Lonnie is one of them, and the club eventually serves to bring members of Auradon and the Isle close together.

Where was I? Yada yada auradon expects girls to be pretty princesses and boys to be brave knights or dashing princes. It's shit and should stop being portrayed as good. Moving on!

Food! One of the things we'll established in all movies is that the food of the Isle is shit compared to food of Auradon. The Isle has no fresh fruit which likely means its almost impossible for things to grow there which is fair because again there doesn't seem to be much fresh water and there are always clouds overhead so no sun. Maybe there is some people trying really hard to grow stuff but the general attitude of the Isle seems to be "there is no time for that" and fruits are forgotten so much that the VK's litterally don't knownwhat they are when they come across them. That and anything containing sugar. Actually it's mention by Dizzy and Celia that they enjoy the fact that the cake dosent have dirt or flies so basically food there is terrible. We don't see much food on the Isle but what we do see seems to be beans, eggs, chips and shellfish. Basically protine and carbs that can be easily stored and produced. To be fair beans are kidna good for you but they're likely a sign that if they get any imports from the mainland it is canned stuff. Prison food. There's probably some chef villain that is trying their best to make good food out of the shit but honestly the Isle dwellers should be angry that they've been deprived of good food for so long not happy they're finally been given decency.

Moving on, music! Auradon dosent have nearly as many musical numbers it seems, the Isle songs have a distinct style, to them, the villains that basically "founded" the place were masters of the dramatic songs (with backup or solo) so banging music is basically ingrained in the music's culture, even for battle as we see with the fight between Mal and Uma in D3. Meanwhile Auradon seems to have mainly romance and "I want" songs. Even Audrey's villain song is basically an I want song.

Okay let's talk about the Villains. We've established that the VK's are not inherently bad. However not all of them can be totally good and there are legit OG Villains just kinda chillin on the Isle. They've obviously lost quite a bit of their power, motivation and sanity (isolation will do that to ya as they lost everything and the VKs know no different) but deadass? They were bad guys. You can try to rehabilitate them sure but you've basically just let them free roam, they could make a runner and you wouldn't get the chance. They were also shitty patents which is brushed over/joked about in the interaction between Carlos and...man I feel bad I forgot her name deadass their relationship seemed to come out of nowhere in the second film she didn't seem interested in them at all and friendzoned them multiple times I'm pretty sure Disney did that becaue queer kids were relating to Carlos and headcanoning them as queer (which they deffinatly are) but deadass their mom is an attempted animal murderer and has hurt her child as we can see from how they're afraid of her and her rhetoric and yet it's "haha I'm afraid to meet your ma!" "Me too cus im a dog! Lol!" Fuuuuck offfffff

I think I'm running out of thoughts so here's a last one for now; with the magical barrier down a bunch of magical Villains kids should be coming out for the woodwork. We know Mal has magic basically stored in her so it's is possible, she technically doesn't need the spellbook to do magic it is just inherent to her. So with the diverse range of people from the isle there are deffinatly magic folk in there. Actually if we're following Disney movie law I saw something mentioning Jay being half Genie and yeah! He should be half Genie! Jafar got turned into a Genie he's probably only human because of the barrier! Oh also Ben should be able to go beast on command as long as he had a better beast form than he did in the movies. And give him back the beard and fangs like fuck you he looked so much better

Okay I'm done for now

#decendants #decendants 3 #mal #carlos de vil #jay #harry hook #uma

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rosemarydisaster · 3 years

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So, about Bi Caleb

Warning: very long post, discussing bi representation and biphobia.

*Sorry for spelling errors, English ain’t my firts language.

I can’t believe I have to tell you guys, but anyways: Caleb is bi whether he ends with a male character, a female character on a non binary character. That’s what bi people do, you know? they experience atraction for all genders. Saying that a bi character that ends with someone of the opposite gender is straight and queerbaiting is incredibly biphobic.

Yes, Vax was bisexual. Yes, he ended up with Kiki. Get fucking over it.

Now, I can understand why LGBT+ fans may feel disappointed when they tease a “gay couple” but the “straigth” couple ends up being endgame. Notice the quotation marks because there’s not such thing as a straight or gay couple for a bi person. They are bisexual in both situations, but I can see where the problem comes from. I’ve been queerbaited to hell and back by a lot of shows and it really hurts. It feels like they are laughting at you for caring. But I want those fans (whose feelings are totally valid, don’t get me wrong) to consider a few things when it comes to Critical Role, the first one being: it’s a D&D game.

Let me explain, because I know a lot of CR fans haven’t experienced what D&D is like in real life (and that’s absolutely valid, you don’t need to play D&D to enjoy CR). This is an improvisation game, not an scripted TV show. In a Tv show you can plan ahead of time what ship is going to be endgame, what themes are gonna come up for each character and it’s easier to deeply explore sexuality and gender as different planned arcs. In D&D you character’s sexuality may or may not come up depending on how you play it. Take for instance how other CR character’s have stated their sexuality:

Beau: overtly. Very *In your face* kind of lesbian. Marisha said “fuck it, I really just want to romance girls and be bad ass”

Yasha: openly, but not as in your face. Ashley Jhonson wanted to drink from that WLW cup while also being a shy disaster. Seafood market is her favored terrain.

Caduceus: Our Ace king has never hidden his sexuality, and yet he didn’t mention anything about it until chapter 114. He didn’t had the need to either hide it or state it. He was simply vibing.

I think Liam is going that route with Caleb. He’s flustered by Essek and Edwulf (Come on you guys, he always asks Matthew if he’s still hot). He also had/has a thing for Astrid and a think he might have feels for our favorite Tiefling gal. I know we are all too used to characters being teased as gay/bi only to have execs pull a “haha jk they be straight”. But this is not Sherlock or Supernatural. This is a show that not only has queer rep, but also supports queer organizations and creators. Hell, I’m sure some of the cast members are LGBT (but I’m not here to speculate on real people’s sexuality). If Caleb shows attraction to men he is not just queerbaiting, doing it for fanservicing or tricking the fans in any way shape or form: he’s just portraying a bi character. The thing is, since this is not a TV show, he is not doing it por woke points or to send a message. He’s doing it because he wants to play a bi wizard with depression.

So maybe there will be a point in which he can explores his sexuality more deeply, but remember he is playing a game. And his character is one that has a lot of trouble opening up to his feelings. Caleb is not someone that makes sexual jokes or flirty remarks. He is shy, awkward and has developed a really fucked up sense of love that he is now slowly fixing. Hell, in the same Talks episode Liam explained that Caleb was trained on Honey-pot tactics. Which, for those of you who can’t stand Bond films, means seducing your enemy/target to get information, manipulate them or assassinate them. WHICH IS A REALLY FUCKED UP THING! Let’s remember how he was the one to push Fjord to sleep with Advantica so they could spy on her. That boy has Issues when it comes to relationships. So if we don’t see him being as overtly gay as Beau, Molly or Yasha, well maybe it’s because that’s the way Caleb is. Bi people don’t owe you flamboyance, or dating both guys and gals for your approval. I wouldn’t make a post if it was only that, because I do feel the people who are aching for good bi rep and would love some more explicit confirmation. But Vax exists, so I know we can’t have good things down here.

VAX EXPLICITELY SHOWED ATTRACTION TO GILMORE. AS EXPLICIT AS IT GETS. HE FUCKING KISSED HIM. THEY WERE PRACTICALLY DATING. AND YET SOME OF YOU FUCKERS CALL HIM QUEERBAITING. AND I SAY: NOT ON MY WATCH! NOT ON MY FUCKING WATCH!!

How come a character can have canonically kissed another character in a romantic/sensual context and still be called straight? I know fucking Sherlock traumaticed y’all into having trust issues but believe me when I tell you: I’ts not that deep. This is not a “Haha I love u but in a no homo way bro”. It’s a “full homo darling, but also we’re gonna break up because I like someone else”. This is the opposite of queerbaiting. Instead of keeping a charade he was honest with Gilmore because he valued his feelings and realized that he couldn’t reciprocate them at that moment. And if you try to tell me that Vaxleth was forced and didn’t have a reason to exist except queerbaiting, let me tell you: you are wrong.

Vax saw Gilmore once or twice monthly while he spent a heck ton of time with Kiki. Sure, they didn’t had the kind of camera chemistry Gilmore and Vax had because Keyleth is not charismatic. She’s really awkward, and her relationship with Vax was more on the adorable and dorky side of things. I bring this up because I’m predicting something similar may happen to Shadowgast.

Trust me, I ship the hot wizards as much as any other critter (even though I’m a multishipper). But they haven’t talked to Essek in centuries. I think it may have been almost a month in rol and quite a few outside. And you have to take into account out-rol time to because they are humans (except Tal) playing a game and they forget about stuff (except Marisha and Matt). So Shadowgast may not happen because sure, they had really good chemistry for a month a month ago. People have crushes that die down over time All The Time. So maybe don’t be so butthurt about your ship not being canon that you accuse an ally of homophobia.

The cast of CR put forward such an amazing representation for the LGBT+ community and it really hurts me that you gets stuck on the one thing that isn’t canon. Matt has created a world in which coming out is not necessary because no one assumes your sexuality. A world in which people respect pronouns and orientations (except Tary’s father, who is a villain). A world in which Cad or Caleb don’t need to explicitly say “I’m ace/bi” unless it comes up in conversation. A world in which his friends can be whatever they want to be without pressure or reprecusions. A world in which they get to explore different gender identities and sexual orientations with full freedom. Let’s not interfere with that (unless there’s missrepresentation), and let them play their game. If you really need mlm or wlw canon couples or more outwardly LGBT+ people you have plenty examples among NPCs and other cast members (Allura and kima, Yasha, Beau, Dairon, Keg, Reani, Tary, Molly and Vax among others).

There’s way worst shows taking LGBT+ cred for barely doing nothing. Fucking Supernatural is the most recent example! Critical Role works towards showing an honest portrayal of LGBT+ folk and accepts valid criticism from their fans on the subject (when they changed J’Mon Sa Ord pronouns from it to they/them). They don’t owe you making your ship canon or portraying their characters the way you want them to (again, unless when it’s constructive criticism). Stop being so Fucking entitled and enjoy the show for what it is

,Respectfully~

*Edit: I´m tagging Caleb’s ships into the post because most hate comes from shipping wars. Most Shadowgast fans are respectful of the cast’s decisions, even if it disappoints them. But since I’ve already seen people accusing Liam of biphobia in that tag and since I’ve already seen this shit with Vaxmore I’m tagging the ship. If you want to read my long ass post do it, if not, ignore it. I’m not forcing you to read it. I’ve also tagged it with biphobia so people can avoid it if it’s triggering. I’m sorry if it makes you mad that your ship is not canon, but that’s not an excuse to be toxic to the cast. Those of you getting mad are the ones that need to read this the most. Like I’ve said in the post: you’re allowed to be disappointed, you are allowed to want more, but you can’t force the cast to give you exactly what you want. And most certainly, you can’t accuse them of some very serious stuff like biphobia and queerbaiting when it’s not the case..

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dreamofmysoul-tsc · 3 years

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Elias Carstairs, Matthew Fairchild, and the Disease of Alcoholism

I’m very nervous about posting this but I think it’s important.

Now before you guys scroll past this post, I’m gonna ask that whoever may read this take some time to hear from my perspective. I would like to preface this by saying that I do not know, nor am I claiming to know, what it’s like to face racism and prejudice everyday, nor do I know what it was like to be queer in a time that was less than accepting and terribly cruel to LGBTQIA+ folks. I will not be speaking about either of those things here, as it is not my place to. However, I do know what it’s like to live with an alcoholic. I do know what it’s like to have an alcoholic parent and I have seen what addiction does to a person and their family firsthand.

Final disclaimer, I am in no way trying to attack or target anybody. All I am doing is providing my own perspective when it comes to the discourse surrounding Elias Carstairs and the differing opinions I have seen in regards to Matthew. I would also like to state that my experiences are my own, and are in no way reflective of every addicts’ experience or the experiences of their children/loved ones. Addiction affects everybody differently.

I am also not a psychologist or a doctor; everything stated below are my personal experiences as a child of an alcoholic.

Now let’s get started.

CW for alcoholism, substance abuse, abuse in general, and death

Elias

When I first started Chain of Gold I didn’t anticipate how much I was going to relate to Alastair. Honestly, I didn’t have strong opinions about him either way; I didn’t hate him, but I didn’t love him either. That was until it was revealed why Elias was sick all the time, and what really happened during his mission. I have never seen alcoholism portrayed in a novel ever. I’m sure there are novels which talk about it out there, but I have never come across one. And for the first time in my life, I felt like somebody understood. There are countless characters in The Shadowhunter Chronicles who have touched my heart, but I will forever be grateful to Alastair and Cassandra Clare for making me feel like I didn’t have to hide anymore, that I was allowed to talk about my father’s alcoholism. Because for 18 years, it had been my secret. For my mother, it had been even longer.

My father has been an alcoholic for my entire life. I’m sure this is common sense for most people, but an alcoholic cannot be a 100% good and supportive parent. Those two things do not mix. Most alcoholics are alcoholics because of shame, pain, or other mental health problems that they have not sought therapy for. I would also like to say that alcoholism is a disease. It physically alters the brain to make the addict believe that they need to drink just as much as they need to eat or sleep. When you are constantly drunk, it can increase stress or anxiety in everyday life and leaves the addict at risk of developing depression if it was not already there. Many alcoholics suffer with depression, general low self esteem, or various other mental health problems before abusing alcohol; these problems are then exacerbated with daily alcohol consumption.

My father never abused us, mentally, physically, etc, and he never has. He carries a lot of mental pain and shame with him, which he has continually refused to seek help for. He drinks because he does not like himself; he feels that he isn’t deserving of help. He feels like he messes everything up. And as a child, I used to make excuses for him. “Well, he never hurts us, so what’s the problem?” “It doesn’t affect his work, so what’s the problem?” I was naive then. No matter how “functioning” they may seem, an alcoholic cannot live a completely healthy, happy, and fulfilling life if they drink everyday, even if it seemingly doesn’t affect their work lives. Alcoholics are very good at hiding their addiction. I cried when Cordelia described finding bottles in odd places, or when Alastair described how he tried everything in his power to hide it from his sister and their community. I used to find beer cans stashed under the kitchen sink. Sometimes I’d find them in the spice cabinet. I don’t like inviting friends to my house because I can never be sure if my dad will be 100% sober. I didn’t want people to see him that way. I don’t want to see him that way.

I have seen a decent amount of posts on various platforms of people wishing Elias dead or wanting him to be completely x-ed out of Alastair and Cordelia’s lives. And while I totally understand the protectiveness many people feel toward Alastair and Cordelia whenever their father is involved (I love them to pieces, too), as somebody who is a child of an alcoholic, I do not and would never wish my father dead. The thought of it makes me sick. Thus far, we know very little about Elias and his personality. We don’t know if he has ever physically harmed Alastair or Sona. This is not to invalidate mental or emotional abuse either, which are just as terrible. And while he does seem to be biased towards Cordelia, which in and of itself isn’t fair, there has been little evidence to show that Elias is violent or abusive. Of course Chain of Iron could prove me wrong, but as of now, I don’t want to immediately assume that Elias is abusive. Alcoholism does not equal abuse, although alcohol can be an expedient to violence. I do not want to invalidate the Carstairs’ experience if that is the case, but I do not want to jump to conclusions either. Of course you can call me lucky because my father has never harmed us in any way. But personally, I find that insulting. When a parent is an addict, regardless of whether or not they harm their children or how involved they are in their child’s life, they will end up leaving their child with mental scars whether it was intentional or not. My father’s addiction and the addictions of countless others cannot be measured on a scale. Addiction hurts everybody it touches, no matter how normal the addict may seem to the rest of the world.

I know this Elias section is already so long, but I have a bit more to say before I move on to Matthew. Alcoholics make choices, many of them poor choices. They decide whether or not to seek help. They decide to drink another beer. They decide to drive drunk, even if their child is in the car with them. It is a disease which completely takes over every single part of their life. And while it negatively affects their lives and the lives of their loved ones, that does not mean that they are undeserving of help. Any addict, whether they’re addicted to alcohol or heroin or cigarettes, anything at all, needs help. And they most definitely should not be mocked or attacked for their addiction or their attempts to get help for it. Regardless of whether or not they are in recovery or in the thick of their addiction, there is absolutely no reason to mock them. There is no reason to tell them to “just quit drinking.” There is no reason to call them a “junkie” or a “drunk,” no matter what stage of their addiction or recovery process they are in.

I am in no way excusing Elias’ behavior just as I in no way excuse my father’s behavior. He [Elias] needs to be punished for showing up to a mission drunk and consequently being unable to keep those four Shadowhunters from dying. He needs to apologize to his children. He needs to apologize to his wife. And he needs to recover. Addiction is an ugly, ugly thing. It never just affects the addict. It leaves their loved ones with scars, whether they’re mental of physical. Personally, I can’t stand the sound of metal beer or soda cans being cracked open anymore. I’m terrified of getting married. I can never feel 100% comfortable or safe around drunk people. I refuse to drink. I don’t like thinking about how the only time my dad has been 100% sober was when we visited my grandparents for a week and he had no opportunity to slip away to buy alcohol. I don’t like thinking about how my mother has had to deal with this for decades. I want my mother to be happier. But I also want my dad to recover. Living with an alcoholic isn’t black and white; I don’t hate my dad. I hate his addiction. I love him. He’s my dad. I don’t like seeing him that way. I know Alastair doesn’t like seeing his father that way either. But no matter how much you scream or cry or fight with somebody, people will not change unless they themselves want to.

Matthew

This section will be much more brief because many of my thoughts surrounding Matthew are similar to my thoughts surrounding Elias. I would like to touch on two things, however.

I have seen people talking about Matthew, or more specifically Matthew’s friends, saying that they don’t understand why they [The Merry Thieves and Co] seem to be ignoring Matthew’s alcoholism or aren’t doing anything about it even if they do realize he has problems with alcohol. Part of it is because of historical context; alcoholism wasn’t considered a disease until very recently, and the beliefs that alcoholics can either a) stop drinking whenever they want or b) are abusive, useless members of society still persist to this day. But the other, bigger part of it is relatively simple: people won’t change unless they believe they can change. Addicts need to want to change in order to begin the recovery process. You can’t force them to. If their heart isn’t in it, they’ll attend therapy or AA meetings a couple times to appease you, and then they will start drinking/using again. Or they’ll lie to you even more, telling you that they did attend a meeting or a therapy session when in reality they bought another pack of beer. Matthew will not seek help unless he believes wholeheartedly that he can change. He needs to believe that he is worthy of change and he needs to truly want to get better in order to begin to make significant improvements in his life. Of course relapses will happen, but the point is that he wants to improve his life. He wants to recover. No matter how much James or Thomas or Cordelia or Lucie tell him to change, no matter how much they want him to get better, he simply will not unless he wants to. It hurts. It really does. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. You can love somebody so, so much, but your love is not going to make them better. Your love will not magically make their addiction go away. To reiterate what I said about Elias earlier, you can scream and cry and fight and give them all of the love until you’re blue in the face, but if they don’t want help, they will not seek it out. Matthew needs help, but more importantly, he needs to come to the realization that he is deserving of that help. He is deserving of a successful recovery. Every addict is.

Lastly, there is something about Matthew and Cordelia’s relationship that has never sat right with me. Children of alcoholics are statistically more likely to get into a relationship or marry an alcoholic because it’s what feels “normal” to us. And while I have always wanted Matthew and Cordelia to become friends, part of this is the reason why I don’t want them to have a romantic relationship. I don’t want Cordelia to have to continue that cycle, never able to escape the effects of addiction. I want Matthew to focus on himself. I want him to recover. I want his friends to support him. I want both Matthew and Elias to have a successful recovery, because the amount of addicts who die from their disease every year is staggering and upsetting. Of course Matthew is deserving of love, but he needs to focus on recovering, both from his addiction and his trauma, before he puts all of his energy into a romantic relationship.

----------

Overall, I want Alastair to have time to be himself, to not have to carry the weight of his father’s addiction on his shoulders. I want Elias to recover and to apologize for how he has hurt his family, whether it was intentional or not. I want Matthew to forgive himself and to realize that he deserves to take up space in this world just as we all do. And I ask that you, whoever may be reading this, to try to feel a little more compassion for these characters and addicts you may know or meet in your life. Or to put yourself in their shoes and the shoes of their loved ones. We should not be mocking them, or hurting them, and we certainly should not be wishing death upon them. There are far, far too many addicts who have died because of their disease and their mental pain. When dealing with addicts or the loved ones of addicts, I ask that you try to support them and encourage them to seek help, whether it’s therapy or AA or any number of support groups. The effects of alcoholism and drug addiction will stick with the addict in recovery and their loved ones for the rest of their lives. Some days will be harder than others. But the important part is that, when those hard days come, they have a support system of therapists, family, friends, even people online to remind them why they are in recovery and to encourage them and their progress, no matter how small. An addict in recovery, no matter how slow or fast their progress may seem, is better than an addict who has died because they never sought out the help they desperately needed.

If you read through this entire thing, thank you! I really appreciate you taking the time to read through my personal experience. This topic is very important to me, and while I’m relatively new to tumblr, I still felt the need and the obligation to share my perspective. I’m not trying to sway your opinion of Matthew or Elias, just to maybe make some people think about this complex issue. If you aren’t a fan of either of them, that’s totally fine. If anything, what I would like you to take away from this is to be more aware of alcoholism and its effects. If something doesn’t seem right, speak up. I will be providing resources below if you or a loved one needs addiction counseling or help, or if you simply would like to learn more about this. If you have anything to add to this, would like to share your opinion, or have a question for me, feel free to reblog or message me in my ask box. Please be respectful, y’all! This is a sensitive topic and it affects everybody differently; I want this to be a civil discussion, not a witch hunt.

Thank you very much for reading and considering my point of view.

Resources:

What is Alcohol Use Disorder?

SAMHSA (a helpline)

Alcohol Rehab Guide (this website also includes educational resources and a helpline)

Substance Abuse Helplines and Treatment Programs

How Parental Alcoholism Affects Children

#tsc #tlh #matthew fairchild #elias carstairs #personal #just wanted to get my opinion out there #this has been nagging at me for a while #thanks for reading #this is as personal as im ever gonna get with yall i promise

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rantsintechnicolor · 2 years

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I told him a story once...

It was the third time I’d seen him in person. We were eating burgers from the place he would go when he cut school. How amazing is that? It’s still there, twenty-six years later. Yet the beloved coffee shop I used to visit with friends on Piedmont Avenue had just closed, because pandemic. The article quoted a resident: it was an institution, and is a huge loss for the neighborhood.

He insisted on paying. I thanked him. And while I wanted a disgustingly greasy blue cheese mushroom monstrosity, I decided not to overly tax his wallet, and went with something simple and classic, regular cheeseburger, which would also be a good gauge of the rest of their food. He was surprised to hear I’d never eaten there. He got a double cheeseburger and curly fries to share.

While we waited for our burgers, we talked about the holidays, vaccine hesitancy-- this was pre-vaccine roll-out. Everyone was standing distantly in the line and around the walk-up window after placing their orders. It had been a warm day that was quickly cooling down, so I was wearing secondhand Levi’s and a muscle tee with my work logo. Nothing I thought was too sexy, though my sports bra was visible through the arm hole. At one point I did catch Hal looking at my torso. He looked up rather quickly to my face, perhaps a little guilty. I’m not sure if he was looking at the scratch on my arm from the near disastrous art hanging incident I would tell him about later, or my boobs. It would make sense that he was checking me out, we hadn’t seen each other in years and were getting used to each other in new skins. I thought about asking him if he was looking at the scratch, so I could tell him that story, but I also didn’t want to derail the conversation we were having, so I let it go.

We could have eaten there, but we didn’t really want to be near a ton of people so he drove us to a sports park further up the hill closer to our old high school. There were a few other folks using the park; a woman and her personal trainer, a white haired man taking a walk and picking up trash, a sporty woman with her dog. We settled in on the bleachers near the baseball diamond. I sat facing the sun.

“How is the burger?” he asked me.

“Perfect,” I said. I wonder if he took note of the way I said it, because it was the word I used to describe the kiss we shared and I had told him so when we reconnected.

I talked about my sick friend Mo and her assigning me homework to take it easy and have some fun (which is why I was out eating burgers with Hal), because I was really pushing it at work, which was causing some friction with W, who was extra stressed about our cash flow, the state of the country, and what it all means for a bunch of queer ladies in the current and developing political climate. I was getting extra pressure from W to bring home more money, and I was really doing my best, but that didn’t seem good enough for her. No amount of me describing the seasonality of the hospitality industry or the effects of the dry January movement on an alcohol business was helping my case. That’s how stressed she was.

I’m not sure I exactly meant to tell Hal this story about MK, but it was fresh in my mind. It had just happened. MK reached out to me on Facebook again after he had done so a few years earlier. Said we went to elementary school together and how my mom was his favorite teacher and he was her favorite student (for two years I went to the same school where my mom taught science prep and was everyone’s favorite teacher). I don’t remember this kid. He said he was still friends with my bestie from that time, MR. All the information tracked. We had plans to meet up, but he canceled at the last minute. Then I stopped hearing from MK. Until December 2020.

The pandemic had changed my Facebook policy, of which Hal was a beneficiary. Originally, I didn’t friend anybody I didn’t have a real relationship with in person. But, people needed extra connection during this time, and I figured if we didn’t meet up then I could just remove them from my list in a year and they probably wouldn’t notice because they didn’t really care. Which was fine. MK would make my Facebook policy change yet again.

I still have no memory of this kid when we start chatting again on FB messenger. And neither did my mom. And things are going fine. He mentions his son, his dad has been dead for a long time, his mom is still around, he’s getting a psychology degree at Berkeley and working full time, he has health problems with his sickle cell anemia (which is odd for a white person, but not impossible). I sign off for the night and when I open the app again he says he loves old fashioned mail and will I send him a letter at his new apartment because he moved in September and a letter would make him feel more at home.

I love writing. I love writing letters. I would like to write more. But I usually don’t write letters to strangers or people I don’t know, people I don’t remember. (Hal says, “lots of people do, though. There is this service where you can tell someone a secret anonymously in a letter.) So, I want to write to him, but some red flags are waving a little in my brain. Privately I think to myself, I could be sending writing samples to a con man (I had just read The Confidence Game). I type to him that letter writing seems like a pretty intimate request and the last guy who wanted me to write letters to him also wanted to get in my pants. (“It’s all men” Hal told me. “They can’t help it. They think of everyone as a potential sex partner.” I should have asked him, “and what about you?” but I conveniently didn’t count him in the same group as “men” because he was my friend.) I tell MK that he shouldn’t expect anything romantic, because I’m married… to a woman. Then he sends me three addresses where he would like to receive a letter. Weird. I’m like, pick one, forgetting he has said he wants it sent to his new apartment in Berkeley. He replies, no, surprise me. I ask him what makes a good letter between strangers that haven’t seen each other in years. He says I could never be a stranger to him. He says paper with perfume or cologne right off the cuff and follows with stream of consciousness, dreams, travel plans… followed by:

MK: I’m TUT, by the way.

ME: ??

MK: I mean Tutankamun.

ME: Um, how so?

And it gets weird. Makes no sense. He sends me a playlist of Bob Marley songs and says, “this is my dad. He died in 2003.” A quick google search will tell you this white man is not one of Bob Marley’s children and that Bob died in 1981. No, really. I asked him if he was high or drunk. I thought he might be talking in metaphor. Nope. He was serious. I asked him if he was crazy, because I’m not meeting him or letting him get in touch with my mom if he’s a crazy person. He insists what he’s saying is true. So I stop responding.

Just before this incident, I had another conversation with someone from my high school days that went terribly off the rails into crazy town and I started to wonder if I was just attracting crazy people. “No,” Hal tells me. “You are just too nice.” Yet another lovely thing he feels the need to tell me. Hal also makes some suggestions: make my friends list private to isolate this guy from my friend list, especially my mom, and then unfriend him.

I meant to say to Hal, of all the people I was connecting with from 20 years ago, he was the only one that wasn't fucking crazy and thank god. I would have meant it as a compliment. Maybe he got the idea…

In the months to follow, MK opens a new account on FB and sends me a request. I ignored it. And I haven’t seen or looked for him since.

#writing #creative writing #i wish this were fiction #crazy #letters #burgers #cutting school #perfect

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