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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Ducktales Comics: Spies Like Us and Dime after Dime or Weblena: The Preschool Days (Lena Retrospective) (Comissioned by WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Shadow Into Light, My Lena Retrospective, which fittingly has now come to Women’s History Month! I sadly do not have anything besides this arc prepared for the month. This month is pretty packed for me with two shows a week to cover, as while there’s only two weeks of Ducktales left final space starts up right after to take it’s spot, two arcs to cover, and two time specific movie reviews: animal crossing the movie and the 1990 TMNT film. I will try to get more than the currently planned top 12 superheroines list out there... but this month is very tight as is, so if I do not I deeply apologize.

Now that’s out of the way, it’s appropriate we start Women’s history month on some likely lesser known parts of Lena’s history, with some comics stories focusing on our faviorite emo lesbian duck and her 87 counterpart. Before I get started on that though Kev my patreon pointed out something intresting a few weeks back i’ve been forgetting to get to and since we’re looking into Minima, I felt this was the perfect time to do so: Lena’s Concept art.

There’s quite a few things to gleam from this. For starters as pointed out in the reddit thread I got the image as a whole from this was made in 2015, meaning Lena was one of the first new characters designed for the series and was part of it from the VERY early stages, as evidenced by the fact that despite clearly having their new personalities established, Beakly and Webby still had the old designs.

The other notable change is that her first design was way more like both Magica nad Minima, a bit more modern, but clearly far more obvious who she was related to. She also had all black feathers making the shadow twist a bit more obvious and was likely done away with both to avoid giving that twist away, the same reason for the fake lestrange name, and to avoid accidently black coding her, as while Lena being black would’ve been intersting, it also would’ve invited a firestorm of controversy given that their one black character in season 1.. woul’dve started off as a homeless, manipulative antagonist, and none of that would play well nor was it something the progressive crew of this show couldn’t spot from a mile away. And even this early on they have an almost final design ready, simply changing the shirt to fit her personality more, and her hair to be pink because it honestly looked better She also had green eyes throughout, but for whatever reason they phased them out. That part I don’t quite get as they look nice but probably they were hard to translate to the reboot style once they settled on their own. Her purple eyeshadow and haircut though have stuck since and were good calls.

One last VERY obvious note.. Webby was gay for Lena from minute one. While Dana helped it is now VERY obvious they gay coded this relationship from the design phase, and the crew was entirely aware the whole time and I gave them less credit than I should have. They clearly had this in mind, and it’s very likely ONLY subtext because Disney, while making more and more progress, is very reluctant to have queer characters as Owl House was a struggle and since they have a tighter leash on properites based on the sensational 6, that means Frank knew they had the same odds of making Webby or Della queer in anything but subtext that a pig has of suviving in a slaughterhouse. I bring this up because I fear the series getting accused of queerbaiting somewhere down the road instead of doing what they could with a bad hand and hoping they could make the show as gay as they could. Penny is as out as they posisbly could get her, and Violet and Lena’s dad’s got a full apperance, if no speaking role that made it obvious beyond a shadow of a doubt their gay and did it in a plot important episode. So they did their best and I want them to get credit for that.

But while this is all intresting stuff, join me under the cut for the meat of today’s review as I dig into Lena’s only apperance in the tie-in comic that was never punished here, and the only apperance of her protoype Minima.

Spies Like Us: As I mentioned this comic was never published here which is doubly weird to me because of how I knew this story existed. Since I follow comics weekly and buy trades reguarly, I read the solicits companies put out eveyr month to see what new series are coming, what the ones i’m currently reading are doing, and what trades are coming out. That sort of thing, and it’s something I love. I know their basically adds.. but their well put together adds that really pull you into the books you like. The big two and the indies are all very good at it and sometimes i’ts the only way to know a comic is coming if the company dosen’t make a press release for it ahead of time.

So naturally given there are several comics I follow at idw, paticuarlly the TMNT comics, I read those solicits and found they were going to do an issue with Webby and Lena becoming spies, and was excited about it. I ended up forgetting about it and never really followed the Ducktales comic as it came out, and upon reading an issue or two recently, one for another comission by kev as one story, happy happy valley, was particularly terrible. For those who haven’t read the story or my review, it involved the family getting stranded on an island where their forced to partake in activites and smile..that somehow turned into an aseop about Louie wanting to be rich. It ended with this

Yes.. really. That actually happened. But even with this, I fully planned to cover the issue when I covered Lena, and brought it up to Kev when he commissioned the retrospective. He gave me the discord equilvent of a blank stare and had never heard of it. I soon found out why: the story was replaced as, and fair play to disney, it spoiled Beakly’s past from the agent 23 episode which wasn’t going to air in time. What dosen’t work is they never reprinted the story in The US.. didn’t put it in a future issue and just swap it’s place didn’t put it in the nothing. And the story was fully complete as we’ll see, with a cover and everything so they had no excuse whatsoever to NEVER use it, even with what happened to Lena in the season finale, this clearly took place before that and it was weird to just shelve it because of that. But thankfully when a bunch of the stories were reprinted overseas, this and another one, also webby centric got published overseas. But not in english.

Lucky for me, I was able to find an english translation of an english story which you can read RIGHT HERE. It was translated by @neopuff and I thank them for it as without them this review would not be possible and want to give them all the credit. So was it worth all their hard work translating it? Well let’s take a look.

We begin at the Manor where Lena is skulking around suspiciously.. though it turns out she and Webby are just playing hide and seek. Though Lena accuses cheating. The dialouge here is pretty flat though that’s not Neopuff’s fault at all. As I can attest from reading other stories a lot of the early IDW comics are just this flat in dialoguge no matter the writer as they were likely given character descriptions and basic info about the show they likely had written up for merchandising and Frank and Co were given no involvement and likely weren’t made avaliable to consult on the comics to help them be a bit more fleshed out. It’s very obvious to me Disney just tried to get these pumped out so they’d have a series in stores to tie in without carring about qualities and given Scrooge debuted in comics, their lack of care toward that side of things in general, but especially in the first american published original duck comics in a while, bothers me a lot. It’s inexcusable.

That being said the story isn’t half bad nor is the setup as the two hear a beeping and find it’s Beakly’s phone going off with a mysterious message from Q, Webby thinks she’s been reactivated, and is encouraged by Lena to go look after her while she stays along. While Webby says in response

It just feels grossly out of character for both. Lena is far more subtle about manipulation as shown five minutes ago and Webby blindly trusts her. Because she has a massive crush on her and is naïve about how the world works. It just seems very odd of her to get suspicious as she never does on screen, and again it comes off as Disney having barely given the writers any materials on them when i’m sure Frank or Matt would’ve been happy to write up a thing for them to help outside of the usual press materials they were given.

Though hte last line isn’t all that out of character and has an obvious answer as within a jumpcut Launchpad’s taking them to London and is told to blend in.. which he does with an australian flag and accent.. good gag.

So our heroines do some heroic breaking and entering and look for the package, but soon find while hiding it’s already in transit.. and had obvious bows on int. Whoops. Our heroes trie the old follow tha tcar bit and refreshingly, it dosen’t pan out as the guy stops and tells them to get out. A nice twist. Unable to follow, our heroes instead find launchpad lost, as his map is upside down

So Lena dares him if he can follow that plane, a nice bit of character for both. I will give Joe credit. While the dialouge’s a bit flat and there was that out of character moment.. for the most part he does nail the actual character down and does use it decently enough. He’s just not given enough page room or actual details to work with is all.

So while our heroes follow they end up having to crash as they run out of fuel.. lucky their with the expert but end up near home where the package is delivered to. Turns out this wasn’t a spy thing, this was just a thing with her aunt. That’s fine and a nice gag.. it’s just ruined by just sorta.. ending. Lena leaves disapointed and Beakly scolds webby for “playing spy” and she’s sad. That’s it that’s how it ends. Which dosen’t fit the characters, as while Beakly would defintely scold her, it just dosen’t FIT that she’d be that tearse or not appricate the effort or give her an actual lecture and it feels like Joe had no idea how to end this after the gag and just.. ended it.

Final Thoughts for Spies Likes Us: This was okay. It is a bit of a disappointment as for the only story not available.. i’ts just okay and not really above an average Ducktales comics story, with some nice character bits but feeling a bit weak overall, as do at least the first half of the idw comics. I haven’t read the later stuff to see if it got better. It’s worth a read if you like Webby and Lena as characters and it’s not BAD, it’s just not anything impressive and is a simple hyjinks filled misunderstanding story.

Dime After Dime:

So now we go back a bit to the original. I didn’t do these in chronological order because frankly, Dime after Dime is the better story of the two and the bigger one at that, so I have more to work with here. But the original also had comics and honestly from the few i’ve read much BETTER comics. I chalk this up to two things: The Ducktales 87 comics seem to have come out AFTER the series was already a hit, and since Ducktales is pretty close to the original uncle scrooge comics minus it’s own tweaks here and there, it’s easy enough to just write the stories like you would a regular uncle scrooge story, just with Webby and Launchpad added, whereas the idw writers were staffed with writing for all new versions of the characters with noticable differences without much to go on. It’s why to me with tie in comics you have two options: Wait long enough so you can put your story inbtween the episodes like the Steven Universe and Regular Show comics did or just make your own continuity entirely like the Adventure Time Comics and the Archie TMNT Adventures series did. The ONLY time i’ve seen a comic work like this is the Bravest Warriors comic, which had a talented writer and fit well enough in the margins until it sadly ended.. and honestly is BETTER in some cases than the series. I might get to it someday. The point is this comic shows why you need to have a deft hand adapting something instead of just falling your arms about and hoping it’ll work.

So today’s comic was part of some Disney Series called cartoon tales, which clearly repackaged comic stories from wherever, and put them together. I don’t know much about it and the only other issue avaliable collects the disney adventures adaptation of “Just Us Justice Ducks”, which I might cover at some point. This book does have two other stories which i’d be happy to do on comission or on my own at some point, one involving gladstone the other gizmoduck, but for now, i’m just sticking to the title story and the reason you all came here.

So we open with Magica gazing into her crystal ball from her Mt. Vesuvies base saying that Scrooge will never know what hit him I know exactly what and who wiil hit him thank you very much.

Scrooge is seeing Webby off to her first day of day camp, getting all teary eyed which is touching. Beakly apparently goes with her as the story never SAYS Sshe does but she’s not also not around when the story moves on, as Launchpad says it looks like rain. Scrooge dismisses him, though Launchpad turns out to be right. Scrooge had good reason for once though, instead of just being a dick good on you comic for making me not want to punch him in the face, trust me that is a high bar to clear with the scrooge comics, as the weather was fine just a minute ago. Naturally it was Magica All Along! Nothing scrooge can do now that eveyrthing has gone wrong! Her entrance though is sadly not a catchy earwormy tune, but .. this confusing line

I think your thinking of Gladstone. And he’s still single so.. have at that but no Scrooge is the one who values hard work over anything else and brags about THAT or being rich. I .. I don’t get this line and frankly I don’t want to. Even in stories where the dime is supernaturally lucky and the source of his wealth he dosen’t boast about it because he’s not stupid and dosen’t want everyone knowing how to bankrupt him instantly. This line will baffle me until I die, presumably, given my life’s tragetctory, after reviewing an episode of mighty ducks and slipping on some a jerky wrapper.

Scrooge asks what she wants...

No this isn’t that kind of story sadly. Her plan is to.. zap the bin with lightning and take the dime. Really just went with your first draft didn’t you magica? But as stupid as this plan is Scrooge has prepared for it. He installed a lightning rod on the bin to save on power, and to power his new super soaker traps. So all Magica did was save him money. She flies off and nothing is acomplished.

So we get back to Webby at the Teenie Weenie Day Camp.. and just so you don’t think that was a terrible joke on my part...

My theory for how this name got approved at all is the editor KNEW how that sounded and just wanted to see if Disney would actually print a comic with the phrase Teenie Weenie without getting what it means in slang or how hilariously inapproriate it is to namme a children’s camp after it.

Your probably wondering who that grown woman calling Webby a dweeb is. Well story wise, she’s SUPPOSED to be another kid at the camp around Webby’s age. In practice, she looks like THIS in closeup

So it looks and plays like a 30 year old woman snuck into the day camp and no one’s noticed she’s not actually a children. Or their just humoring her because she had a week to live. I don’t know. I do know she doesn’t get to judge on names.

Snippy Von Glitz, proof rich people really do hate their kids and this this comic is trying personally to give me material. Snippy is your average alpha bitch, taking a chair from Minma and being obnoxious and classist and all that jazz. Minima gets hers back by making the chair bouncy then returning it to normal so Snippy gets in trouble when she makes up things about the chair, with the lady in charge getting ready to call her Dad. You cannot convince me that her “Dad” is just what she calls her husband, this is how they both get off, and that the lady at the preschool only tolerates it because they pay her a lot and so far the kids haven’t noticed Snippy is 30. Webby likes minima finding her name pretty, proving that the ho yay is alive no matter the webby and magica relative, and Minma returns the favor by saving her from a block.

Minma is reluctant to make an actual friend, finding they aren’t worth anything and given most of the kids here apparently pick on her and her aunt is well.. Magica, it’s understandable why she’d be so cold. But Webby presses on and says something from Scrooge about friends. Which given Ducktales scrooge has none goes weird but it gets Minma to find out she knows and lives with Scrooge, so she cons webby into taking the dime for show and tell, showing that she can manipulate them with her powers, and that he won’t notice it’s missing, getting her with “I thought you wanted to be friends”

So let’s pause for a second and compare and contrast the two: Both are the niece, or at least sorta in Lena’s case, of Magica, both manipulate webby, and both are her first real friend: The 87 boys are little monsters and I don’t consider them friends or even brothers, while the 2017 ones are just that: brothers. Their her siblings in all but blood, not friends and have hteir own long complicated history.

But otherwise the two are vastly different. Lena is a far more complex character as she’s been abused her whole life, is a rebel because Magica hardly gave her agency, and while she starts wooing webby out of self interest it’s clear even as far as the first episode she cares. Lena would gladly be part of the world if she could and this whole scheme is to gain that choice.

Minma is still sympathetic but very different: She walls herself off because the other kids laugh and mock her for being herself and lashes out at them.. not unreasonably mind , but still feeling she needs no one else.. but as we’ll learn later she’s only helping Magica to finally feel accepted, to get all the fancy clothes and stuff that will make her popular instead of that grown woman masquerading as a kid for disturbing reasons. Minma is at her heart just a hurt kid desperate to fit in. And while Lena shares the desire for a place to belong.. it’s at it’s core much sadder. Lena.. wants a family. Someone to love her and to care about her and actually look after her. Minma has that she just wants to be loved. it’s similar but very diffrent and I can see why Lena evolved into what she did, as Frank and Matt ended up going in a far darker but ultimately more interesting direction. Minima is not a bad character at all though and without her I don’t think we would’ve had Lena, but at the end of the day the 87verse is just not that complicated, so the reboot needed something more and that more evolved into who we have now.

Both kids excitedly talk about their new friends, with their respective guardians being distracted. Scrooge is distracted by the fact his car is a bit bumpy and Launchpad offers to fix it up for free with some parts from a buddy, which given the sentence “This won’t cost you anything” makes him erect, Scrooge agrees. Magica meanwhile, whose watching Minima while her mom is away which raises a LOT of questions we don’t have time for like who she is, is she’s poes wife or does Magica have other siblings... it’s a lot of questions we’re never going to get answers to.

The next day Webby got the dime easy as Scrooge was distracted. so Minima swaps them while she’s distracted. But while swiping it was easy, which to be fair Webby is likely approved in his security so it woudln’t match her.. or the story just needed to progress. You make the call.

Magica does the logical thing and goes and get sthe dime and the story ends there.. and i’m shitting you, she of course brags to scrooge, reveals minima as her spy, and offers to RACE him for it shortly after he realizes he has a fake.

The only major flaw in this story is Magica’s overconfdience, which isn’t BAD persay, but here has gotten to dumbass proportions. She just can’t plan for anything and a CHILD has a better plan than her that only dosen’t work for reasons we’ll get to. And that plan is almost ruined by Magica taunting scrooge!

So a race is on but Launchpad has transformed Scrooge’s old Model T into this

Damn that’s cool. Scrooge of course dosen’t like it, but honestly you get what you paid for. Oh that’s right you paid nothing for something you NEED to use every day for transportation.

At the rickity thickity bridge, Steve Buschemi’s worst roll and her minion ask Webby to roll with them and Minima mistakes this for betrayal planning to soak them all.. only for Webby to DEFEND HER, pointing out minma’s her friend, how she dresses is fine and she loves her no matter what.. the last part’s implied. The 30-year old asshole and her minon leave Webby and Minma is genuinely touched, as no one’s done that for her before. She put up so many walls... she didn’t realize someone could ACTUALLY care about her, so obessed with thinking she had to be like that soccer mom in preschoolers clothing, she just had to be herself: kinda werid but in that fun adams family way. Webby says she knows Minma would do the same.. so while she prepares to let’s get back to the race. Magica realizes Launchpad’s roadster is actually gaining and spreads some tacks, but Scrooge counters with some money.. because of course he has a lot of money in the trunk. But Magica takes out the bridge and while scrooge awesomely JUMPS IT... he’s still too late.

As you probably guess though, Minima had a change of heart, and gave Webby the real dime back, and Scrooge confirms it. Minima TRIES to tell Magica, and Magica is horrified her niece is a goody goody “I”ll never hear the end of it at my astral aerobics class”.. I.. I want to see that. Let’s raise those spirit ladies and kick kick that soul, doge that shadow king punch them in the soul. Yes! Now eat it eat it and absorb it’s power!

We end on a button joke as Webby apologizes for taking the dime., Scrooge accepts it and Webby tells them magica learned to carpet and they gulp for some reason.

Final Thoughts on Dime after Dime: This story was decent. It has problems, some jokes don’t land and Magica is made horribly incompetent, but minima’s character arc is endearing, and Webby herself is precious as always and her winning Minima over feels genuine. And Scrooge is in prime adoring uncle mode with her and i’ts just so cute. And the roadster race is pretty awesome to watch honestly. It’s an exceptional and enjoyable tie in story.. and not the last ducktales 87 story we’ll be covering here. Wink wonk.

Next Time: Things get DARK as Lena and Webby head into the depths of Scrooge’s hidden bin and Lena heads into the depths of her own soul.

Tommorow: Woo-Ooo mofos as we go back to the very beginning of the reboot! A family restored, a lost city to explore, and a glomgold rises! Be here or be square.

#ducktales #ducktales 1987 #webbigail vanderquack #lena saberwing #weblena #minima de spell #magica de spell #bentina beakly #launchpad mcquack #scrooge mcduck #dime after dime #spies like us #idw #comics #animation #shadow into light

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dickwheelie · 3 years

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heyyyy coming in a few days early with the “expression” prompt for @aspecarchivesweek! just a lil something about jon wearing a shirt he doesn’t like. enjoy!

(also on ao3)

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All of Jon’s clothes are in greyscale.

Well, this isn’t entirely true—some are a very light tan, or a dingy brown. One mothbitten vest is a glaring 70’s orange that Jon deeply dislikes, so it stays at the back of his closet. These are the clothes he inherited from his parents and possibly also his grandparents, which he can’t bring himself to throw away. The rest, however, strictly range from white to black, practical to a fault.

Jon has a working theory that he may be the first person in history with an allergy to clothing stores. Entering one instantly stresses him out, and all he wants is to get what he came for and get out as quickly as possible. Figuring out how to match colors, as he eventually learns by the time he’s in uni, is a waste of time and consideration. Much easier and simpler to only buy clothes in shades that match no matter how you swap them out.

Of course, there are exceptions, and as life goes on in its chaotic and unaccountable way, he acquires items of clothing he wouldn’t otherwise have picked for himself. A colorful sweater from Georgie as a birthday gift. A free T-shirt from a uni event. He keeps these things for their sentimental value, but rarely wears them out of the house.

However, sometimes life is not only chaotic but also utterly unmanageable. And sometimes Jon finds himself with a promotion he doesn’t really know what to do with, an entire archive to organize, and less time than he’s ever had to do laundry.

And, well. One has to wear something to work, doesn’t one.

This is what Jon keeps telling himself as he miserably pulls on the last clean shirt left in his flat. He should know; he’s checked four times, and if he checks a fifth he’ll be late for work. He gives himself a glance in the small, dirty mirror stuck to the inside of his closet door, and looks away almost immediately, strangely embarrassed.

It’s just a long-sleeved, striped T-shirt, which is maybe a bit unprofessional for the workplace, but it’s not as though anybody minds how the people who work in the basement dress. The problem comes from its colors. Well, one of its colors. Three of them—black, grey, white—are perfectly suitable for Jon. But following those, at the bottom of the shirt, is a glaring, bright violet.

The shirt is a casualty of the aforementioned chaos of life. A friend of an acquaintance had given it to Jon to wear to a pride parade several years back, which he had ended up skipping out on anyway. Since then the shirt had been kept out of sight and mind, packed into the back of Jon’s closet for a rainy day that he’d never really expected to arrive.

There’s a first time for everything, Jon thinks, almost reflexively. The words don’t mean much to him, philosophically speaking, but they are a steadying mantra nonetheless. He goes to pull on his coat; by some measure of luck, it’s a cold day out. He plans not to take it off again until he’s safely back in his flat that night.

The trouble is, of course, that wearing one’s coat while making tea in the break room in an adequately-heated basement looks rather conspicuous to one’s coworkers, and leads to questions.

“You feeling alright, boss?” Tim asks, as he retrieves his bagged lunch from the fridge.

“Yes,” Jon says, stiffly. “Perfectly fine. I’m just cold.”

Sasha, who has followed Tim in, says, “Not sick, I hope.”

“I’m fine, don’t worry,” Jon says again, though he is beginning to feel a bit overheated. “It’s just cold in here. You don’t feel cold?”

Tim and Sasha shake their heads, looking concerned.

“I’m fine,” Jon says for the third time in thirty seconds, and promptly flees the break room.

By late afternoon, Jon is sweltering, and has no choice but to take off the coat. He’s careful to close his office door before he does so, resolving to put it back on if he needs to be seen by anyone for the rest of the day.

Though the garish violet stripe in his periphery is distracting at first, he loses himself in his work soon enough, spending an hour or two tearing through a stack of statements that are, by and large, utter nonsense.

He loses himself in his work so much, in fact, that when there’s a knock at his office door, he says “Come in,” without thinking.

“Hey, Jon,” says Tim as he enters, “d’you have a copy of statement zero-one-three-two . . .”

Tim’s voice drifts off, and Jon looks up, irritated. “Zero-one-three-two-what?”

Tim’s staring at him, an eager expression on his face, and Jon’s stomach goes cold. He looks down at the shirt, remembering, and stops himself from groaning. If he doesn’t react, maybe Tim will leave it alone. “What number were you looking for, Tim?” he says instead, very calmly and professionally.

But of course it doesn’t work. Tim’s face breaks into a smile, and he gives Jon a big, showy once-over. Jon rolls his eyes even before the words are out of Tim’s mouth. “Looking good, boss.”

“Tim, I have even less patience for sarcasm than usual, so if you could please—”

“Who said anything about sarcasm? You look good! Casual, ah, Tuesday suits you, Jon.”

Jon puts his elbows up on his desk and massages his temples. “I ran out of laundry.”

“Ah, been there.” Tim seems to have taken Jon’s resignation as an invitation, because he helps himself to the chair opposite Jon’s desk. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for the pride flag type, though. Don’t even think I’ve seen you with laptop stickers.”

“No,” Jon says, “I’m not. Not usually. This is just the only thing I had lying around. It’s from years ago, I never wear it.”

“Aw.” Tim genuinely looks disappointed. Jon wonders if perhaps he’s losing what remains of his tenuous ability to read people. “That’s a shame. You look good in purple.”

Jon has reached a point in his life, he’s fairly certain, where he ought to have heard such a comment before, or at least know the proper response. In actuality, he cannot recall a single instance of someone in his adult life complimenting his choice of fashion. He looks down at the shirt again. It’s the same as it was before: too-bright and obvious. He highly doubts it could look good on him in any shape or form. “Um. Thank you?” he says, sounding more bewildered than grateful.

“Really! It, like, brings out your eyes, or something. I dunno, but I think it’s nice on you. Not sure why you went through all the trouble to hide it all day.”

Jon shifts in his chair. “It’s . . . I mean, it’s very loud, isn’t it. And obvious. It’ll just attract attention.”

Tim looks at him for a moment or two. “Jon,” he says, “is this just about the shirt? Or is it also about the shirt?”

“That makes no sense, Tim.”

“You know what I mean.”

Jon, admittedly, does. One of the things he appreciates most about Tim is that they can be honest with one another, if only after some customary back-and-forth. He sighs deeply. “It’s—it’s just . . . a lot. I know it isn’t, really, in the grand scheme, it’s just you and Sasha, a-and Martin, too, I suppose. And it’s London, no one’s going to—it’s safe. I know that. B-But it’s a lot, being seen with everything—out in the open. By strangers. To know that they know. And even if they don’t know, they’ll . . . they’ll probably be able to guess.” He stares down at the scratched, cheap wood of his desk. Long ago, someone had carved a tiny pentagram on the lip of it. If Jon’s sense of humor weren’t buried under three layers of anxiety at the moment, he’d probably find it funny. “And I know it’s childish, to care what a bunch of strangers would think. But I can’t . . . I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t just let it go.”

There’s a painfully long pause before Tim speaks up again.

“Well, I’ve got good news for you, Jon.”

Jon looks up at him warily, and finds that Tim is smiling at him. “What?”

He points at Jon’s coat where it hangs off the back of his chair. “You can put that back on.”

Jon blinks at him.

“At five,” Tim goes on, “you can put your coat back on, button it up, and walk out of here, and when you get back to your flat, Jon, you can do your bloody laundry. And you never have to wear that shirt ever again. Problem solved.”

“But . . .” Jon’s voice peters out before he can come up with a real protest.

“If wearing pride colors makes you feel like that,” Tim says, his voice gentler, “then don’t wear them. Simple as that. Not everybody’s got to carry a flag twenty-four-seven. Or ever. Doesn’t make you any less queer. Hell, even I take the pins off my bag sometimes.” Tim squints into the middle distance, muttering, “I can never seem to get the laptop stickers off, though.”

“But—what about what you said about me wearing purple?” He’s grasping at straws, he knows, but Tim’s argument is quite good. And the thought of never wearing this particular shirt again does sound rather appealing.

“So wear an aubergine button-down every once in a while!” Tim shrugs. “Or don’t! It’s none of my business.” He tilts his head to the side. “Actually, please do wear an aubergine button-down sometime. You’d turn some heads down here.” He pauses. “Figuratively, I mean. I’m sure everyone would be very respectful.”

Jon lets out a startled laugh. “Alright,” he says, feeling lighter. He runs a hand through his hair. “Maybe, sometime, I’ll . . . I’ll try it.”

“I know you like your blacks and whites, Jon,” Tim says, “and I’m not here to tell you how to dress. But if you ever need advice, or want to borrow a colorful, strictly nondenominational shirt . . .” He points both thumbs at himself. “I’m your guy.”

“Okay,” Jon says, and is surprised to find that, in this one, specific case, he is.

“And,” Tim adds, pointing a professorial finger in the air, “it’s not childish to care about what other people think of you. Pretty sure it’s the most universal thing there is. Welcome to the human race, Jon. You’re among us peons, now.”

Jon raises an eyebrow. “How unfortunate,” he says, drily, and Tim cackles.

Jon wears his coat home, keeping it carefully buttoned, and when he gets back to his flat he tosses the shirt into the back of his closet from whence it came. He’s not going to throw it away altogether, of course. It has sentimental value. Someday, maybe, he’ll dig it back up, if only just to look at.

For now, Jon does his bloody laundry.

#tma #the magnus archives #AspecArchives #aspecarchivesweek #gwyneth writes #it's ok jon i'm allergic to clothing stores too

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elduwrites · 3 years

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Reminders That I Love You - Chapter 3

“Don’t be a brat.” Cas tugged his hair again. It was harder this time and lasted until a small moan escaped Dean’s lips. Then the contact was gone. Damn. He usually had more control than that. But they had been very busy, and angry with each other, lately. This was a welcome change of pace.

“Anyway, I believe in you.” Cas grinned. “Now be quiet, I need to concentrate on my work.”

Also available on AO3

Word count: 4916 (story total: 7603)

Chapter 3/3

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

When Cas returned, Dean laid naked in the middle of the bed, legs spread and hands beneath his head. He grinned up at his boyfriend who stopped in the doorway for a while, just starring at him.

“See something you like?” Dean asked, letting his tongue dart over his bottom lip for good measure.

“Yes, you’re very beautiful Dean,” Cas replied matter-of-factly. Then he walked closer, keeping his eyes plastered to the man on the bed the entire time. “And you’re being very good for me.”

“Not like you asked me to do anything complicated.” Dean looked away, lightly biting his lip. He wanted to be good, especially after the evening they had, but he had to earn it.

“The complexity of the task does not dictate how pleased I am when you succeed,” Cas said sternly as he sat down on the bed, leaning over the other man. “Some days I want you to prove just how good you can be for me. Today is not about that. For now, I want to remind you how wonderful you always are to me Dean. Even when you don’t see your own worth.”

“What if I want, or need, to prove that I can be good for you?” His voice was small even to his own ears, but it needed to be said.

“Then that’s for another day.”

“But-”

“No,” Cas said firmly. “On Saturday I will have you collared on your knees with my cock in your mouth while I research my next paper, but I have a different plan for tonight. Are you going to be a brat and question my decisions, or will you be still and obedient like my good boy ought to?”

Dean swallowed hard, but kept his lips closed. Saturday could not come soon enough. But Cas knew what he needed, and what he could take. If he said that this wasn’t the day for proper play, then he was right. Of course he was. Dean looked up, meeting the others gaze and held it until his boyfriend smiled.

“Good,” Cas said. He ran one hand through Dean’s hair, tugging slightly before letting go. Dean leaned into the touch, whimpering slightly as it disappeared. “Remember these?” Cas pulled a bunch of pens out of his pocket. Except, these weren’t normal pens. They were the temporary tattoo markers they had bought for when Claire was desperate to draw on them. Cas had insisted that they were better for their skin than regular pens, and their niece was overjoyed with the vibrant colors that were much easier to cover their arms with.

“I remember,” Dean replied. How could he not? The guys at work always commented on his wonderful new tattoos whenever Claire had spent an artistic weekend at their place. They were rather hard to wash off too. Not that he really minded that part, it was usually a nice reminder of a good family weekend.

“I presumed you would. Now you’re going to lay back, relax, and stay as still as possible, while I cover your skin in all the reasons I love you.”

“Kinda hard both to relax and stay still,” Dean said. Mostly just to say something back to that declaration.

“Anyway, I believe in you.” Cas grinned. “Now be quiet, I need to concentrate on my work.”

Dean took a few deep breaths, relaxing into the mattress as well as he could. Meanwhile, his boyfriend’s big hands ran down his chest, barely grazing his nipples, down his stomach and up his sides. He whimpered again, pushing up into the touch. Why had he denied himself this closeness for so long? Those hands on him were better than almost any sensations. Perhaps except for those fingers in him.

“So beautiful,” Cas said, leaving a small kiss slightly under his left nipple. It was followed by the familiar sensation of the marker on Dean’s skin. Familiar, but still different than when their niece was ‘making him pretty’ as she liked to call it. Cas’ hand seemed surer and less hesitant than Claire often was. And the skin of his sides and stomach was more sensitive than his arms and calves, which were usually the body parts decorated. As the pen stopped its motion, Dean looked down his body. Sure enough, the word beautiful was written in red over one of his ribs.

“Incredibly kind.” Cas left a kiss under the first word, then wrote with a new pen over that same spot. Soon the word kind shone out in orange letters.

“You’re so good with Claire, Madison and little Bobby. The best uncle and godfather anyone could wish for.” Another scribble over his skin. Dean focused on keeping his breathing even so as not to disrupt the others work. When he looked down again, amazing uncle, was written in bright yellow.

Another kiss, halfway down his side, then. “You’re so open and accepting of everyone who need it. I’ve never seen you judge anyone for anything other than being hateful assholes. And those people always deserve it.” The pen moved over his skin once more. As it stopped, Cas moved his hand to squeeze his hip lightly. Dean squinted at the newest word. It looked like it said accepting in deep green letters.

“Dude, are you making my stomach into a fucking rainbow?” Dean asked incredulously, while his boyfriend put down the green marker in favor of a blue one.

“Why are you surprised by this? I make everything into rainbows.” That much was true. After years of hiding his sexuality from overly religious parents, Cas had put all that repressed energy into buying and creating rainbow colored-everything. There were at least seven different flags, and far too many t-shirts. They had rainbow-colored throw pillows in many different designs, and a shower curtain decorated with a tree with rainbow leaves. There were rainbow coasters, cups, water bottles, and at least fifty different buttons and stickers. Everything Cas painted these days were either rainbow inspired, bees, flowers, or, somehow, all of the above. Dean had barely kept him from hanging up rainbow curtains in their living room. That shit was just tacky, and therefore banished to Cas’ office. The office that contained a stuffed rainbow unicorn next to the stuffed bee on top of the bookshelf. Not to mention the queer section of that bookshelf that had the books sorted by rainbow colors. So okay, this was not actually surprising. Still though…

“Don’t mean you have to make me into one.”

“Why does it bother you more that I’m writing in color that that I’m doing it in the first place? You seem to have your priorities mixed up sweetheart.”

“I dunno… It’s just real obvious is all.” That was a bad excuse. He was aware of that. It just felt different in all these colors than it would have otherwise. Even so, his boyfriend was right. It didn’t actually matter. So why’d it feel like a big deal?

“It’s not like anyone else is going to see you this way. Right Dean?”

“Of course not.” It was far too cold for him to go shirtless anywhere other than inside their house. And even during summer, he preferred to wear at least a t-shirt. Only Cas got to see him shirtless for long periods of time.

“Then why does it matter? I like you like this.”

“I dunno.” Dean looked away, biting lightly at his lip. It was hard to argue his point when he didn’t actually have any reasoning, and Cas was all cold logic. The rainbow thing wasn’t a problem either. Not really. He was just caught off guard was all. But there was no way he could admit that now.

“Do you know what I think?” Cas moved so his knees where on the other side of the other’s hips, rested his hands next to Dean’s head, and leant down so their faces were mere inches apart. “I think you’re trying to rile me up. I think you’re being difficult on purpose. This,” he ran his right hand down Dean’s side, stroking over the words, “doesn’t actually bother you. You’re just clinging to the only argument you could find because affectionate words make you uncomfortable. Perhaps you’re even angling for a punishment?”

Dean whimpered lightly at that. Trust his boyfriend to psychoanalyze him in a situation like this. As if they didn’t have better things to do than trying to get to the bottom of his issues. His fear of intimacy as both Cas and Charlie was so fond of calling it. This was not the time.

“Is that it Dean? Are you trying to make me be rough with you because that’s easier to deal with? Would you rather have me spank you till you’re a writhing mess or perhaps slap you hard enough that you’ll feel it for days?”

“Please.” He wasn’t sure what he was asking for, but his boyfriend seemed to have enough ideas of his own. As long as Cas gave him something.

“Too bad really, that I already told you we’re not doing that tonight.”

“Cas. Please.”

“I’m not changing my plans just because you’re being a brat,” Cas almost growled. “However, I can’t let that kind of behavior go completely unchecked either.”

“Please.” Dean repeated. By now it could be called pleading, almost begging. His boyfriend usually liked that, was more likely to fulfill his wishes when he asked nicely. But it didn’t seem like he was budging this time. His expression was blank, not betraying any of his thoughts. Would whatever he was planning be good or bad? Well, it was always good with Cas, but sometimes that also meant torturous. Then again, that was often the best of all.

Cas suddenly sat up until he was kneeling over him. Then he ran his hands slowly down the other’s shoulders and chest, stopping to pay extra attention to his nipples. Dean swallowed the groan that wanted to erupt as both his nipples were pinched hard.

“Don’t be quiet on my account,” Cas said, pinching even harder. Then he let go off the left one, only to bend down and bite it. Dean moaned, arching his back into the pleasure-pain sensation.

“There you go. Keep making those pretty sounds for me,” Cas grinned down at him before leaning in to capture his lips in a rough kiss. Dean quickly opened up for him, allowing his boyfriend to dominate his mouth completely. As the kiss broke off, Cas moved so sit next to him on the bed again, one hand resting comfortingly on his stomach. Dean put weight on his elbows, wanting to follow, but one sharp look from the other man made him rest back onto the bed. That earned him a soft smile and a gentle hand playing with his hair.

“Touch yourself for me,” Cas said, giving a significant gaze down to the others cock, then back up to his eyes. Dean starred at him for a moment before he followed the order, slowly jacking himself off. This seemed too simple. Was this evening really all about pleasure? And affection or whatever?

“Faster. Put some effort into it.”

Dean fastened his grip and speed his movement to a pace that would have him desperate in no time.

“Good boy,” Cas murmured into his ear. “Tell me when you’re close.”

Oh. Of course. Dean closed his eyes, jerking himself in all the ways he enjoyed the most. Firm grip. Fast movements. A twist of his wrist on every third or fourth upstroke. Pausing for a moment to run his thumb over the slit, coaxing more pre-cum to ease his movements. He was hurdling steadily towards an orgasm, feeling his boyfriend’s heavy gaze on him the entire time.

“’M close,” he moaned out.

“Stop. Hands on the bed.”

Dean quickly followed the order, breathing hard as he tried to calm down. He whimpered sightly at the receding orgasm. It was so close, but far out of his grasp.

“So good for me,” Cas murmured, then leaned down to kiss his stomach. “I love seeing you like this. So desperate to please.”

Dean smiled, relaxing further into the bed. He was still on edge, desperate for release, but it seemed somehow less important. He was pleasing Cas, and his boyfriend would surely take care of him.

A sudden feeling of a marker over his skin almost made him flinch, but he managed to stay still as not to mess up the other man’s work. Peering down, he saw his boyfriend with a blue marker in hand, obviously continuing where he had left off earlier.

“Cas? What?”

“You didn’t think I was done, did you? I already told you I wasn’t changing my plans. I don’t like leaving my projects half-finished.”

“I guess not.” It certainly had seemed like he’d changed his plans. Dean really should have known better. When Cas first made up his mind, he stuck to it. He peered down at his stomach, seeing desperate to please written under the green accepting.

“Dean. Look at me.” Cas laid a hand on his cheek and starred intently at him as their eyes met. “Indulge me in this. Let me show you affection. You deserve to be loved.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dean tried to look away, but the other’s eyes were captivating, holding his gaze steady. “Indulge yourself or whatever.”

“Imprudent boy,” Cas smacked his hip lightly. “I want to worship you, just let yourself enjoy it.” With that he picked up a purple marker, putting the tip of it against the skin right above Dean’s hipbone.

“You deserve to be loved,” Cas repeated while writing what was probably the same words into the other’s skin. Dean barely suppressed a shiver as those words finally washed over him. How many times had Cas told him that by now? And how many more times had he found himself doubting it?

“Now continue touching yourself.”

Dean’s hand moved almost on autopilot, wrapping around his cock and jacking it with sure movements. He kept his eyes open this time, taking in all the emotion in his boyfriend’s eyes. No one could convey emotion through a look quite like Cas. And he was using that ability now to express all the love he insisted that Dean deserved. It was enough to make a guy believe him.

Pleasure built up within him even faster this time around. He jerked off until he was moments away from orgasm before he moaned out that he was close.

“Stop.”

His movement stilled immediately, but he clutched the base of his cock for a few deep breaths before he was calm enough to place his hand back on the bed. Perhaps even closer than Cas would have taken him if the former had been doing the touching.

“You’re doing remarkably well.” Cas left a kiss to each of his cheeks and the tip of his nose. Dean whimpered in return, struggling to keep himself from pleading for release. He really needed to come. Preferable five minutes ago. Instead, his boyfriend took up the red marker again, and started writing on the right side of his stomach. Dean couldn’t find the energy to read the words anymore, but it was impossible to ignore the several times Cas murmured “good boy” into his skin while he kissed around the new words. In return, Dean let out an undignified sound somewhere between a whimper and a moan. He was being good.

“Yes. Good boy with his pleasing sounds.” Cas smiled down at him, while stroking over his stomach in small circles. “And you are so good to everyone Dean. You care so much. I’m in awe of the love you show to all the people around you. Such a wonderful, caring man.” There were more pen scratches and kisses against Dean’s stomach. This time he simply breathed through it, letting the words and affectionate touches wash over him.

“Not to mention the love you put into your food. Before you, I mostly ate just to sustain myself. Now I do it for pleasure as well. You taught me that through your food, you’re such an amazing cook Dean.” More writing on his skin. More fingers tracing patterns on his stomach. More kisses to his side and chest, followed by a sharp bite to one nipple. He arched into it, chasing the mouth as it moved away. His boyfriend chuckled and pushed him back down with a flat hand on the middle of his stomach.

“Touch yourself again.”

He did. With fast strokes, spurred on by the hands exploring his body. Every time Cas pinched his skin or twisted a nipple, he moaned loudly. All the touches went straight to his dick, and within a couple of minutes he was writhing on the bed, barely able to contain the orgasm.

“’M so close. Please Cas.”

“Stop. Now.”

His movements stopped, but he looked pleadingly up at the other man. “Please Cas. I can’t… I need to come.”

“Patience sweetheart. You can wait. And you will.”

Dean whimpered again, but kept his mouth shut. There was no use arguing with Cas’ decisions. He had made that mistake in a similar position once before. That night he was not allowed to come at all. Taking several deep breaths calmed him enough to remove his hand, and finally look up at his boyfriend once more.

“Good boy. Now, where were we?” Cas looked down at his writing, tracing the words with a gentle finger. At that point, even the small gesture was enough to push Dean towards the edge. He shook with self-restraint, clutching the sheets hard and focusing on his breathing.

“Oh yes,” Cas continued in an even voice. “You, Dean Winchester, is one of the most selfless people I have ever met. You give so much of yourself to others. You say yes to helping out whenever the chance occurs, with no regard for how it will affect you. Every fiber of your being seems determined to change the world for the better. Your selflessness was one of the first things I noticed about you.”

“You’re way too articulate,” Dean half-moaned, earning him another chuckle. Then the pen was back, tracing over his skin. Followed by warm lips, copying the pattern of the letters. Every point of contact sent tingles through his already over-sensitive body, forcing small sounds of out him.

“You keep me grounded and sane. I’ve spent so much of my life with my head in the clouds, not really wanting to partake in the world around me. You changed that by showing me how good reality can be. I want to experience real life with you Dean.”

The statement was followed by more pen scratches, then kisses to his stomach, up his chest, and then peppering his face. Dean whimpered, lifting one hand to clutch at the others arm. A tear found his its way down his cheek, but was soon kissed away. It was all too much.

“Shhhh, just one more thing now,” Cas murmured into his skin. “You are doing so well for me.” Their lips met in a long, soft kiss that swallowed all the sounds coming out of Dean’s throat. Then Cas moved to write a last word on his stomach with slow, steady movement. As the pen disappeared, one hand traced all the words on his torso while his boyfriend left three small kisses to his stomach, chest, and forehead.

“Do you want to know what it says?” Cas asked, his lips curling into a smirk. Dean inclined his head in a way that was meant to be a nod. Apparently it was enough, as his boyfriend continued. “It says excellent cocksucker. The things you do with your mouth are downright sinful.” Dean almost chocked on air at those words, and his lips fell open of their own accord. Cas took the opportunity to push two long fingers into his mouth.

“Suck.” That was a command he didn’t really need. Closing his lips around anything Cas put between them was second nature by now. His boyfriend had a borderline obsession with that part of his body. Not that Dean would ever complain. It fit perfectly with his own love of having his mouth filled. Oral fixation Cas sometimes called it, his voice always filled with awe or deep pleasure. “Now touch yourself.”

He was slower to follow the command this time, more focused on the fingers pushing slowly in and out of his mouth. Even so, his entire body lit up with pleasure as his hand wrapped around his dick. It only took a few pumps before he was back on edge again. Cas was tugging at his hair and moving his fingers steadily faster and harder into his mouth. Dean almost gagged a few times, but forced himself to relax. The pleased expression on his boyfriend’s face was more than worth it. Pleasure built with every jerk of his hand, and every movement of Cas’ fingers. He was hurdling towards an orgasm, and this time it didn’t feel like he could stop. Moaning around the fingers, he tried to say that he was close, but it came out as a garbled mess. Fuck. He was so close, but he didn’t have permission to come. And he didn’t have permission to stop jerking off. Starring up, he tried to convey his desperation, tried to plead with his eyes. It was hard to focus on anything else than delaying his orgasm, the world seeming hazy around him. As such, he didn’t notice Cas’ face coming closer until a dark voice whispered into his ear.

“Come for me Dean.”

Two more jerks of his hand and he did just that. The orgasm tore through him, almost making him black out. His whole body convulsed in pleasure as cum coated his stomach. It was so good. Cas always made it better than he managed by himself. Even when he technically was doing all the work himself. He kept jerking in slow movements, drawing out the orgasm while he slowly came back to himself. Soon he grew oversensitive, but kept up the movement until strong fingers wrapped around his own and dragged his hand away. He sighed in relief and pure exhaustion, blinking up at the man above him.

“Hello Dean,” Cas murmured with a pleased smile. “You did perfectly for me.” Dean blushed at that, looking away. That only earned him slightly annoyed sound from the man above him before his face was peppered with kisses. “One day you will believe my praise.”

“One day yeah. Maybe.”

“You will. I intend to remind you of it as often as necessary until you do.” The statement was followed up with more soft kisses to Dean’s face, and a hand carting through his hair. Sighing contently, he leaned into that touch. This was, possibly, his favorite part. Cas was always so affectionate after sex. All soft touches and endless skin-to-skin contact. And like this, during the afterglow, Dean allowed himself to drown in it. Except, they weren’t both basking in the afterglow. With more effort than he was ready to admit, he lifted a hand up to Cas’ hip, squeezing lightly.

“Want me to get you off too?” He asked with a grin, eyes slowly drifting down the others body.

“Not tonight. I already got all I wanted.” He did this every once in a while. Actually, he did it rather often. As if he got more pleasure from getting Dean off than actually having an orgasm of his own. It wasn’t anything Dean could pretend like he understood, but Cas surely knew his own wants best. He was certainly direct enough about shoving his cock down the others throat when he felt like it.

“You’re sure?” Dean met the other’s gaze again, searching for any shred of indecision there.

“Yes Dean. I just wanted to watch you come apart. I might, however, fuck you in the morning.”

“Yeah. Okay. Awesome.” He grinned again, probably looking dopey as hell, as he relaxed back into the bed again. This time determined to stay put. Everything was right with the world again. Well, except for the rapidly drying pool of cum on his stomach, but that was a problem for future-Dean. That guy had energy for all sorts of things.

“I’ll get a washcloth,” Cas said as he stood up from the bed. Because he was freaking perfect. Dean told him as much, causing a fond smile to appear on his boyfriend’s face. Cas’ hand found his, giving one last squeeze as he started to turn away. Pain flared from Dean’s knuckles at the contact, making him flinch. His boyfriend froze at that, starring down at him.

“Dean? What?” Cas dragged his hand close, inspecting the tender area closely. His face turned from confused to worried, eyes scrunching up in familiar fashion. Dean looked at the hand as well. Now that they gave it attention, it was obvious that it was red and slightly swollen. A miracle that it hadn’t been noticed before. “Dean what happened?”

“Umm… I got into a fight with the shower wall.” The last thing he needed was for his boyfriend to blame this on himself. Sure, it happened because Dean was angry about their fight, but that was on him. Neither of them needed Cas to deal with any misplaced guilt over that.

“You got into a fight with the shower wall,” Cas repeated slowly.

“Not my finest moment.”

“Dean,” Cas sighed. “You need to take better care of yourself.”

“I know.”

“You can’t hurt yourself just because we fight.”

“I know.”

“Next time you decided to fight an inanimate object, please make it a verbal match. That one you at least have a chance to win.”

“That’s uncalled for.” Dean tried to scold his face into annoyed, but couldn’t keep a smile from breaking out. Apparently Cas was not in a lecturing, or self-hating, mood. This was going much better than expected.

“You know I’m right.” Cas smiled lightly, then looked more serious again. “Does it hurt?”

“Nothing I can’t handle man.”

“Dean.”

“Yeah. A bit.”

“Okay.” Cas nodded solemnly, then put his hand down and turned towards the door. “Wait here.” With that, he left the room, leaving Dean to study his knuckles. They didn’t look that bad really. He’d damaged them much worse on several occasions, but he’d mostly outgrown that part of his life. That was a teenage and early-to-mid-twenties thing. Which was probably why they looked more painful than they really should, they were no longer hardened by abuse. Or maybe he’d just hit that wall harder than intended. He shook his head lightly and laid the hands back on the bed. It didn’t matter now anyway. With a yawn, he closed his eyes, making himself more comfortable.

He was almost asleep when Cas returned, so he just grunted noncommittedly as a greeting. Sleep seemed more important than anything. Until a bag of freaking ice was dropped on his knuckle. His eyes flew open, and he starred down at the offending item. His boyfriend gave him an amused glance as he placed an ice bag on his other knuckle as well. Okay, they weren’t actually ice bags. When Dean looked closer, he saw they it was frozen peas partly packed into a dish towel. That didn’t change the fact that they felt like big bags of ice.

“Why?” He grunted, giving the pea bags a dirty look.

“Because you refuse to take care of yourself, so someone has to.” He couldn’t exactly argue with that. Instead he sighed, watching as Cas took a warm washcloth to his stomach, wiping off all the dried cum.

“You’re really confusing my senses here.”

“Sorry sweetheart.” Cas gave him a quick kiss to his forehead, before throwing the washcloth towards a corner, turning off the light, and getting into bed. Moving around with the freaking pea bags was complicated, but his boyfriend was efficient as always when cuddling was involved. Soon their legs were tangled, a comforter pulled over them, and Cas had an arm around his waist and head resting between his chest and shoulder.

“I’m glad you came back,” Dean murmured into the darkness, half-hoping the other wouldn’t hear him. Of course, he had no such luck.

“Me too. And Dean?”

He hummed lightly in response.

“I promise to be better at reminding you how much I love you. Maybe even stop walking out every time our fights get too intense. But you have to stop pushing me away.”

“Yeah I…. Fuck, I’m sorry Cas. I’ll do my best.” He took a deep breath, starring into the darkness of the room. “And I love you too. You know that, right?”

“I do. Most of the time.”

“Well I love you all the time,” Dean insisted, then gave his boyfriend an awkwardly placed kiss on his forehead. It seemed like he had to get better at those reminders too. He looked into nothing for several long minutes while Cas’ breathing turned heavy, soon making way for soft snores. Shaking off one of the pea bags, Dean circled an arm around his boyfriend, holding him close as sleep finally took him as well.

#destiel #destiel fic #eldu writes #finally finished this thing #minors dni

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redbeardace · 4 years

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August TAAAP Chat Notes: Sex Ed

This is a scattered bunch of thoughts and notes on some of the things that were discussed about sex ed in the August TAAAP Pride Chats. There’s no solid thesis here, but maybe a few conversation starters. Some of what’s here is a post-chat thought and wasn’t even discussed at all. This should also be taken as incomplete and not a full overview of what was discussed. (Notably, it doesn’t include much of what went on in the voice chats.)

[Cross-posted from Pillowfort.]

Include aces and aros. Unsurprisingly, one of the main things was that aces and aros should be included in sex ed courses.

Sex ed has gone backwards since the early 90s? Either I had a wildly advanced program in my schools (in a deeply conservative rural area), or the fallout of Jocelyn Elders and the “abstinence-only” nonsense of the Bush years completely obliterated the usefulness of sex ed. We had a program that spanned multiple years, starting with a single day vocabulary lesson and “puberty is coming!” warnings in the 5th or 6th grade, through a two week lesson about all sorts of things in 9th or 10th grade health class. We were told that masturbation and gay people and condoms and oral sex existed, although there were no details about how any of those things worked. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start. But a lot of the people in the chats were talking about their sex ed, and it sounded woefully, frighteningly inadequate.

What is “sex ed”, anyway? School, teaching the basics? Information for adults? Training courses for professionals?

Cover the basics. The basics are important. Anatomy, menstruation, common medical issues down there. Cover what’s “normal” and what should be taken to a doctor.

What about other classes? How can a math teacher express support? Hang a flag. Tackle amatonormativity in story problems. Discuss it in the staff room. Point the sex ed teachers at aro/ace resources. Be out. Stories about aromantic people read in English class. Asexual people talked about in history. GSAs/Pride groups in school that are aro and ace inclusive.

Desire for sex or romance are not universals. Stop with the “Everyone wants it eventually”, and switch to something more like “a lot of people do, but not everyone, and it’s okay if you don’t.”

Reframe the discussion of “No”. Too often, in sex ed, it’s all about when you’re “ready”, with the implication that you will be “ready” one day. And when you’re “ready”, there’s the implication that you’re ready and willing for everything from that point forward. Like if you say “yes” to a date and you’ve opted in to all the romancey things, say “yes” to sex and you’ve opted in to all the sexy things. That’s not right. It should be more focused on what you want to do, and empower people to say “no” to things they don’t want. Discuss reasons for saying no, include “I just don’t wanna”. Normalize the permanent “no”.

Look for backdoor opportunities for inclusion. For example, the new Washington State Comprehensive Sex Ed law requires teaching of sexual orientations and gender identities as listed in the definition used by another section of state law. So if that other section gets updated to include aros and aces, the sex ed curriculum will also have to be updated.

Connect with the people doing the work. There are groups who build sex ed programs and lobby for them. Work with them to include ace and aro topics.

Beware the head-in-the-sand crowd. There is a very loud, very active anti-sex-ed lobby out there. In WA, they got the sex ed law put up for a vote. Some of their objections are that affirmative consent goes against their religious teachings, and that although they can opt out their kids from the lesson, they can’t opt out their kids from schoolyard talk, so your kids have to remain ignorant, too.

Fuck you, Kemper Freeman. Seriously. Fuck that guy.

How do you accommodate varying levels of interest and aversion, while still providing necessary levels of detail? The topic of sex ed is a bit of a minefield. Some people want to know all the things, some people want to know very very little. Some topics are dysphoria triggers, some topics are aversion triggers, some topics are just not interesting or of any practical use. There’s a baseline of information that everyone should know, and there’s a level of detail that the interested people should get. But how do you do that in a classroom setting? One suggestion was to allow people to freely step outside for certain topics. Another was to have an interactive lesson, where the student is able to adjust the detail based on their comfort level and interest. It would start out with a “default” level of detail, but would allow the student to request less detail or more detail for each topic. The less detail level would still have all of the baseline level information that everyone should know, while the more detail would go beyond a surface level summary. Likewise, images could be switched between text description, line art diagrams, and actual photos.

Resources! Scarleteen, Sexplanations, etc.

Discuss healthy relationships and consent. Provide practical examples. Not just how/when to say yes or no, but how to bring up things you want to do or are curious about. Include queer relationships. How to ask for what you want. How to know what you want. How to say no to what you don’t want. All relationships, not just sexual or romantic.

Reconsider segregation by gender. A lot of sex ed is done with a gender split, but does it need to be? If there is a value to such a split, how can it be made trans and intersex supportive?

Bring up body variations. There’s a wide variety of genital configurations, so mention them. Discuss intersex bodies. Discuss small parts, large parts, asymmetrical parts. This would likely be an appropriate place to include actual photos, because so many people said that actual photos were only used in the STD scare tactics.

Elaborate on “sex”. Too often, it’s discussed as just PIV to orgasm and that’s that. But what about things that don’t involve Ps or Vs or do involve Ps and Vs, but not the I? What about stuff before and after? What alternatives are there if you don’t like certain aspects but are fine with others?

Cover everyone. If there is a separation, each group should cover the same things, at least at some level. Everyone should come out of sex ed knowing about their own body and its processes, as well as about bodies they don’t have, and their processes.

Don’t “teach” through fear. STDs are bad, but they’re preventable with caution and mostly treatable in some form or another. Pregnancy typically isn’t desirable for high schoolers, but here’s a dozen ways to avoid it. Give direct information, don’t try to terrify people.

Mention pleasure. Mention the basics of obtaining pleasure, whether alone or with others. If anyone walks out of a sex ed course of any kind without knowing about the clitoris, it’s a failure. People should know that most clitoris owners can masturbate, and can experience pleasure from sexual acts, if done the right way..

Dispel myths and lies. Not everybody wants it. Vaginal penetration isn’t necessarily going to lead to orgasm. It’s not supposed to hurt the first time. You don’t have to have an orgasm. It’s okay not to know what to do. “Girls don’t want it.” “Boys will be boys.”

Toys. AFAB people don’t have to only use vibrators to masturbate. AMAB people can use toys.

What is “Attraction”? And along those lines, what is “Libido”? What do these things feel like? How do you know what you’re feeling? What are these experiences like for different people?

Hygiene. Give information about keeping various zones clean. Talk about the results of various activities, partnered or not, and what steps might need to be taken.

Porn is fake. Watching porn to pick up information about how to do sex is roughly equivalent to watching a crime procedural to learn how to become a cop. You’ll get a very skewed view of things. Pleasure isn’t always visible or audible.

Destigmatize it all. Sex is seen as taboo and secret, and not to be spoken of, and that attitude harms people. It prevents them from feeling comfortable to bring up important things or ask important questions. It prevents them from learning things they need to learn. It forces people into bad situations and mediocre encounters because they don’t know it doesn’t have to be like that.

Teach people how to learn. Sex is currently a subject fraught with misinformation. Porn or Cosmo are main sources of information, yet aren’t super accurate. People should be given tools to know how to find and evaluate the information.

Consent is bigger than the bedroom. Consent includes touch, jokes, conversations, etc. It’s anywhere boundaries exist.

More than just cis white male voices. So much of sex ed is heteronormative, amatonormative, tailored for specific cases, and mired in the ignorance of the past. Sex ed needs more perspectives.

#asexual #aromantic #sex ed

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hearttstopper · 4 years

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“i have a lot of thoughts about this too especially with the whole watermelon sugar/nameless thing” pls miss britt share ur thoughts id love to hear them

This got so long. I’m really sorry. My thoughts about HS2/In Watermelon Sugar/a bunch of other random stuff under the cut.

These are all thoughts that are only vaguely connected, and stuff that I’m sure has been said a hundred times before mixed with a ton of my own personal conjecture, so please bear that in mind… This is just like total rambling from me.

But I have been fascinated with Harry’s connections to In Watermelon Sugar since we first heard the stupid rumors about the song. Especially the quote from the book about the narrator’s name. That quote got me thinking about how when it comes to Harry, tons of people only see what they want to see based on whatever ‘version’ of Harry is most appealing to them.

Read these quotes from the book with that in mind:

My Name

“I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.

If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.

That is my name.

Perhaps it was raining very hard.

That is my name.

Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,”—and you had to do something else.

That is my name.

Perhaps it was a game you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window.

That is my name.

Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.

That is my name.

Perhaps you stared into a river. There was something near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened.

That is my name.”

and:

“My Name. I do not have a regular name. I am a mystery to you. I wished Margaret would leave me alone…”

— Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

The narrator of In Watermelon Sugar isn’t just a nameless figure, he actually invites the reader to give him whatever name they find most fitting for him. A positive connotation, a negative one, a nonsensical one… whatever you, the reader, decides. And that feels like a very apt description of Harry and the various ways fans have perceived him from the very beginning… by now, so many people have projected so many different images onto Harry that over time it has completely blurred all lines as to who Harry actually is.

Here’s a review I found of the book that summarizes the world within In Watermelon Sugar better than I can (as well as somehow still aligning perfectly with the concept of struggling with fame and identity, etc): “Much of the sense of disparity in [in Watermelon Sugar] results from the incongruity inherent in the person of the narrator, who insists that everything in iDEATH is exactly as it should be—the people gentle, pleasant, and tolerant. Despite the narrator’s insistence that iDEATH is a stable Utopia, however, many of the things that happen are fraught with pain and violence. Balancing the easygoing and vegetarian people with their light chores and flower-filled parades are the man-eating tigers, the burning of the mutilated corpses of inBOIL and his gang, Margaret’s suicide, and the emptiness felt by the narrator but never named.”

So essentially within In Watermelon Sugar, we’re shown that in the surrealist, post-apocalyptic setting of iDeath, things are only perfect on a surface level. Everyone in this world appears to be happy (or at least, they should be), but a closer look reveals the true nature of iDeath: it’s beyond grim. And so despite the happy, shiny surface, being a part of that happy, peaceful commune is unable to cure the narrator of the inexplicable emptiness he feels inside of him. (‘All the lights couldn’t put out the dark running through my heart.’ ‘Having sex and being sad.’)

The sadness that Harry has already admitted is very prevalent in HS2 has already been implied to be about a ‘breakup,’ but it’s clear to me that Lights Up is anything but a breakup song… (“[Lights Up is about] freedom, self-reflection, self-discovery, things that I had thought about and wrestled with…” + “For me, it’s a very uplifting song. In some places, it’s kind of dark, but to me, it’s like, very liberating. I think, you know, over the past couple of years… It’s about self-reflection, and freedom. It feels very free to me, which is I guess things that I’ve been trying to process… I guess, kinda wrestled with a little over the last couple of years. It’s kinda like, about accepting all of those things.”)

His sadness/whatever emotions and problems he’s been wrestling with have seemingly spanned the course of a few years, and are very personal to him… which is why I feel that releasing Lights Up as the first single sets the tone for the rest of his album centering around his own identity. The line “Lights up and they know who you are, know who you are… Do you know who you are?” poses the question - who is Harry? - and then, “Shine! Step into the light… Shine! So bright sometimes. Shine! I’m not ever going back.” shows us Harry having the strength and bravery to overcome his fears (stepping into the light, although it’s ‘so bright sometimes’ - overwhelming) and reclaim/express his own misunderstood identity.

A lot of people have been trying to tie the In Watermelon Sugar thing back to someone else, but at this point I completely disagree. Not only have we seen him make literary references in the past (the Charles Bukowski reference in Woman), but… given everything that he’s said about Lights Up so far – which was surprisingly a lot – I think that Harry genuinely just took a lot of inspiration from the book because it seemed to hit close to home with his own feelings about self-acceptance and living an authentic life within the public eye.

I think a lot about the scene we’ve yet to see from the directors cut - a room full of many different iterations of Harry.

“My name depends on you… Just call me whatever is in your mind.”

Which leads me back to more total conjecture on my end, but I think that when Harry initially set out on tour / kicked off his solo career, he seemed determined to continue performing within the safety of the walls that had been built around him, so to speak. In one of the interviews he did earlier, he talked about tackling his first album from the perspective of ‘bowling with the bumpers up’ - he wanted to play it safe. He didn’t want to veer too far out of his own comfort zone and fuck it all up… and in doing so, he seemed to hold himself back quite a lot. “I wanted to see if people would enjoy an album without knowing everything about me.”

I think that heading into writing with that mindset explains songs like ‘Complicated Freak’ and ‘Medicine’ being scrapped and excluded from being released on HS1. In retrospect, all of his tour - and especially Medicine - seem a lot like Harry dipping his toes in the water. Being totally presumptuous again, but I find it likely that Harry has had it ingrained in his mind for a long time that he needs to fit certain molds and keep certain narratives alive in order to continue to be successful. And I imagine that this idea is not his own, but instead something that has been hammered into his head over and over from a young age. And I would guess that a lot of anxiety and doubt has stemmed from that - go back and watch that shaky first performance of Medicine and tell me what you think he was likely feeling in that moment. But again, it circles right back to the strength and bravery of doing what he knows needs to be done to expel all of the darkness inside of him - stepping into the light. (“Never going back now / Be so sweet if things just stayed the same.” It’d be so sweet if he could live in that fantasyland forever.)

Anyway. I really don’t think Harry was at all prepared for just how many people would show up to support him in that sense… but his own community just rolled up in droves, bringing a total outpouring of love for him every single night. He had entire arenas lit up in rainbows, people bringing hilarious and heartfelt signs, flags after flags after flags after flags… all in celebration of him and the feelings of safety, strength, and bravery that he has continuously imparted back onto his fans. It was such a queer lovefest that even other artists likened his tour to “pride parades every night.” That’s so unbelievably powerful? I can’t think of any other artist who’s crowds do that for them… not even gay icons like Elton John? I still maintain that one of the most incredible things to have come out of HSLOT was the safe spaces he + his fans created for one another. It meant a lot to us, and it clearly meant a lot to him:

“The tour, that affected me deeply. It really changed me emotionally. Having people come to sing the songs… For me, the tour was the biggest thing in terms of being more accepting of myself, I think. I kept thinking, “Oh, wow. They really want me to be myself. And be out and do it.” That’s the thing I’m most thankful for, of touring. I feel like the fans in the room — it’s this environment where people come to feel like they can be themselves. There’s nothing that makes me feel more myself than to be in this whole room of people. It made me realize people want to see me experiment and have fun. Nobody wants to see you fake it.”

I think that going on tour, and seeing the reaction and the acceptance of his audience, definitely made him want to take the bumpers down… to ‘be out and do it’ because ‘nobody wants to see him fake it.’ It seemed to help him massively in terms of his own ‘self acceptance and the things he’s been wrestling with’ and to make an incredibly, incredibly long winded answer short, it’s why I STILL do not think that releasing Lights Up on National Coming Out Day was in any way incidental. I think that was a big part of what Harry meant when he said that no one wanted to see him ‘faking’ things.

And… that’s basically it, I think, for now. I’ve just been sitting here nodding along at everything he’s been showing us the last few weeks… Impressed by the direction that he seems to be heading. And taking notes. I’ll go ahead and shut up now because I KNOW it’s still too early to draw definite conclusions on his intent for this new ‘era’ (and this new song could be about choking on literal fucking watermelon seeds for all I know, nothing Harry does ever makes any kind of sense does it), but I can’t help but come to my own conclusions based on what I feel he is sharing with us.

#like if anyone actually thinks that it makes more sense for harry to be crying over borrowed slippers from an ex #and writing entire songs based off of his ex's supposed favorite book... be my guest or whatever #but it totally undermines how smart harry actually is. he used the word 'regalia' in a fucking interview the other day #like c'mon lmao #anyway #this is just me rambling for like... a solid 2k #sorry #when he makes me look like booboo i'll at least be a more educated booboo or whatever #:')#*

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incarnateirony · 4 years

Text

I get blends of innocent beans confused with what queer coding is or isn’t, and malignant beans misappropriating points, so we’re gonna do a quick run through.

Queer coding started as a malignant thing. The truest use of the phrase “queer coding” came from stereotypes and villainizations that straight people found sCaRy. This is like, why Scar seemed classically flamboiyant, or a variety of Disney villains were long, lanky, gestured exaggeratedly, wore eyeliner, etc. There’s a million examples but I’m not going to cover them all because I think you get what I mean. At the time, straight culture was painting gays as bad so painting villains as how straights perceived gays was like, super useful, cuz it creeped the straights out oOOoooOOo.

When people talk about queer coding enforcing stereotypes, if you’re talking about the original form of queer coding, this is inherently true. However, coding reached other levels, and has adaptive forms.

For example, watching (as I’ve been mocked for saying 10,000 times, but because it’s needed) The Celluloid Closet will clear up a lot for you. Subversive queer coding is when queer creators use a great deal of things to communicate with a queer audience past censorship. The film documentary (if you can’t read the book -- which I understand, it’s difficult to find) clears a whole fuckton of this up.

There’s some things that, quite frankly, we as gays know as part of our language. It is what it is. While it’s not a stereotype, it’s quite literally a language I highly warn straights against stepping into, because then they flounder around confused on what’s our actual language and what’s a stereotype

A truly innocent bean asked of me yesterday, well why then is menthols fair subversive queer coding? How is that not a stereotype?

Well like, because it’s facts. And that’s really, really hard to wrap ones’ head around from an outsider straighty perspective or even someone who’s queer but trapped heavily in a hetnorm world outside of where this is visible and/or in the wrong demographic otherwise. A black person who hangs out with black people of all orientations is not going to blink at a media dude getting menthols generally, because it’s one of the cultures that statistically engages in it to the point of memes about Kools or whatever. That’s not my culture, I can’t comment on much beyond that, but it’s just something to take note of.

But even if you don’t want to take someone’s word on “no, seriously, white dudes smoking menthols is queer culture and literally like a great sign for a hookup to another queer white dude”, google the various intersections of gender and menthol, race and menthol, and sexuality and menthol.

This isn’t pulled out of thin air. These were populations quite literally heavily targeted by Big Tobacco and, by nature, are the ones that smoke it, whereas Big Tobacco put(s) on airs of masculinity and chick-magnetness to smoke good ol non-menthol shit. It’s literally marketing. Yes, it does literally impact who buys product and yes, it does after generations have a noticeable affect. Track the numbers I told you to google down and you’ll realize less than 3% of menthol smokers identify as straight white men (depending on the way the numbers sort out and the year of polling, often 1.x%, 3% is the liberal number).. Lemme tell you, on the street, that’s an “okay, honey :)” when you do find it. Maybe a little pat on the head. An invisible brochure for Welcome To The Gays. Like, White Men make up more than 31% of America and they still refuse to tally more than 25% of the US as queer [some censuses as low as 6% and LOL] so like-- that should be like minimum 25% of dudes available and nope, 1-3%)

(that’s not to say all gays or even all white gays smoke menthol, but this is that rule of “not all fingers are thumbs, but all thumbs are fingers” in loose application.)

But understanding these things, these signals, from the outside is utterly flabbergasting to people.

No, someone making an immasculating joke is not subversive queer coding. No, a dude wearing a certain kind of shirt or eating a certain kind of food generally isn’t queer coding (Unless it’s a rainbow flag BITCH IM GAY shirt, or uh, maybe for food quiche or hummus? I mostly joke for the latter two, but that’s the kind of self ball punching queer community sometimes does to itself in awareness that yes, there ARE elements. No, eating hot dogs and burritos isn’t gay. Yes, we make make penis jokes. No, that isn’t itself queer coding.)

When a queer author codes a piece, it’s designed to communicate to the resonant audience. It also may not communicate to /all/ gays. The language of a middle aged cis gay man that lived through the AIDS crisis is a whole other fuckin adventure from the language of 17 year old trans gays squatting behind their Xbox, it’s just fact, it’s just what is. Completely different cultures and lives being lived, completely different experiences resulting. A few things here or there may connect across generations but some shit that’s written by a gen Z gay is gonna whiff by a boomer gay, sorry. Also just facts.

Explaining exactly what is and isn’t queer coding is almost impossible beyond the fact that “if you don’t get it, it’s probably not for you.” -- At the same time, that leaves the problematic room of people taking that grey area and packing in a bunch of shit and we’re back to ground zero on the original problematic queer coding.

I once read a meta of uh-- I’ll just say, [Fantasy Character]. The fantasy character had an addiction problem that gave them villain-like attributes. Someone implied the “villain coding” made it queer coding. Okay like. Fucking absolutely not. Because if the show in question WAS doing that, first off, that’s literally the kind to make mockeries of gay people so you literally shouldn’t be reaching for that and second off they’d be doing that lanky sassy bitch with eyeliner bullshit like Disney villains with it, give or take. You don’t apply this shit in reverse, “he has villain attributes and so he’s gay” is literally the worst possible angle to take a discussion while trying to slap fight in a representation arena. Like I can’t say enough DO NOT DO THIS SHIT.

If you wanna write fic or headcanon whoever as gay or whatever have fun but like once people keep trying to talk about “coding” you’re talking about conscious elements inset by the authors. Does a character have a bunch of on the record sexual encounters that just happen to include dudes persistently even if we don’t exactly get the exact angle or Proof Of Dicking? That’s gay (also depending on the phrasing, as settled in older stuff, that’s just deadass queer text and settled long before this fandom ever had pissing matches about this shit in older cinema.) Does the character happen to be respectful and use like gender neutral pronouns on people? Sorry folks that unto itself isn’t gay, that’s gays writing allies at best, unless you can give specific and directly applicable situations relevant to the character rather than eternally vague blogging through and swearing up and down it’s just about their partners or some shit. Yelling it in general though, sorry, no.

Does the character engage in things or events with non-het gendered partners that in the very least are heavily coded into the areas of relationships even if they’re unclear (eg, do they routinely go out with non-family people and hold deep or meaningful conversations in things that LOOK like a date, even if nobody SAYS it’s a date) -- congrats, you have coded text. Alone it could even be queerplat stuff, depending on the suprastructure of the plot, text, subtext and everything else around it (same way, gasp, a man and a woman can sit at a table and not necessarily be in a relationship, but if they’re trading courting gifts and having unique and powerful exchanges or have big like, “the heart is the thing that binds us together uwu” shit, we all figure out what the fuck is going on like grown assed adults.)

It’s easier to list things that are NOT subversive queer coding:

Insults against gay people

Immasculating commentary

Random foods short of it deadass being a gay author making fun of some gay meme shit in some gay equivalent of ‘right in front of my salad’

Favorite colors or clothing

---

We got it? Good. Rule of thumb though. Deadass unless you are involved in some thick-ass queer culture don’t try to queer code shit. I don’t even care if you’re queer yourself because that doesn’t mean you’ve actually been subject to the culture in a meaningful way. There’s 30 year old bis that grew up in white picket fence suburbias on top of trust funds with hovercraft parents guiding them through 17 degrees and keeping them out of party culture that married a het-passing relationship and settled down and started having babies and their grasp of queer culture ends at what they perceive out of memes online, if they even hover in actual queer crowds online at all as much as general ones. That person literally is not going to speak much of the language. They aren’t. At best they’ll speak the language of 30 year old trust fund het-married bisexual mothers which, I mean yeah, technically some queer language but that’s a very, very fucking niche experience path right there compared to street-dwelling club-goers that attend pride, hold D&D parties with all their coworkers they figured out are gay on the weekend, occasionally brick a window in a riot. The latter is gonna have a far more diverse queer experience. And by such, a far more diverse queer language.

That’s not even to gatekeep. 30 year old trust fund het-passing-marriage bi-mom is in fact bi. So yeah, they’re queer. But we’re talking about language and culture, which is related to but not something you inherit. It comes by lives and experiences.

And I think this is where a LOT of the fucked up early Queer Coding fuckery comes from in discourse. Yes we have a language. Hell, to some extent a few things might even kinda BE stereotypes but there’s a certain amount of living and being where you know the difference between “this is a stereotype made by straight people villainizing us that has no idea what we’re fucking like” or “this is a stereotype born out of mass marketing that targeted and victimized then imprinted on an entire population that we’ve come to recognize among ourselves.” Or even “this is a stereotype but FUCK YES it’s one we embrace, go get fucked, straights.” And it’s not NEARLY as ambiguous as fandom circle jerks try to make these things out to be in the interest of wanting every interpretation to be valid or every character to be gay or not wanting to admit some person may know what the fuck they’re talking about more than they do.

Huge point on that last one though, because like. I’ve seen some angry straights that are pissy about the show try to throw wrenches in the gears by concern trolling as if in defense of the gays about “offensive queer coding” and most of the time they’re basically that “how do you do fellow kids gays” meme. “How do you do gays I am very concerned about *checks notes* the twitters talking about gay men walking fast” and half the time turn around like two tweets later like “besides the character doesn’t even have a lisp anyway” or some bullshit that is outright offensive ass stereotyping while they’re out here trolling over the fact that a gay man admits to diva worship as a cultural trait.

General rule of thumb: ask a queer culture immersed gay about queer coding.

Shipping culture in the blue hellsite is not queer culture, for the record. Even if a bunch of queerfolk are in it.

Thanks.

Sincerely,

A very tired gay

#supernatural #spn #fandom #queer coding

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fangirlingtodeath513 · 5 years

Text

moments | a destiel fic

read here on ao3

Every once in a while, usually in inopportune moments, his love for Cas nearly stops his heart and has him choked up.

He’d fooled himself for about three days when Cas had moved in. He’d mentally noted the man’s stellar looks while helping him bring boxes in, but he’d promised himself that was as far as it would go, especially with Cas being his roommate.

Did a promise to yourself really count if you were crossing your fingers against it to begin with? One such inopportune moment: a rainy Friday night about three weeks after Cas moves in. They’re on their couch; neither of them want to leave the apartment, and they can’t agree on a movie, so Cas flips to Lifetime and declares that they’ll watch charmingly shitty romcoms instead. Dean huffs and grumbles about it but some Lifetime movies are good, okay? Not that he’d admit that to anyone, much less Cas. He looks over and sees Cas sipping his wine. He’s in a ratty old t-shirt and baggy sweats; the mundane scene makes Dean forget how to breathe. It’s not like he hasn’t noticed how adorable Cas is before—every scrunch of his nose when he’s woken too early in the morning or laughs really hard, every satisfied smile when he finally gets his morning coffee—but something about this particular scene just makes his heart thump harder in his chest.

♥

It happens again a week later.

Dean drags Cas to karaoke at the nearby bar, promising Cas that he’ll have fun. They meet up with Dean’s group of friends at the bar—Charlie and her girlfriend Jo, Benny, Garth, Kevin, and Alfie—and, though he can tell Cas is nervous, he fits in with Dean’s group of friends effortlessly. It’s reassuring and, at the same time, only makes Dean fall for him that much harder.

By the time they leave that night, Cas and Charlie have already made plans to start a D&D campaign and Benny’s coming over Friday for dinner with his girlfriend. It’s so domestic and Dean should hate it—they’re not even dating—but it just puts a huge grin on his face.

♥

Two weeks after that, he finally caves and calls his mom. He’s been working toward this call for a while and he’s not entirely sure he’ll get through it this time, but it’s worth a shot. Cas is out with his own friends for the next few hours, so he sprawls on the couch as he catches up with her.

“So what’s the real reason you called?” she finally asks. He can almost see the smirk on her face.

“What, I can’t just want to talk to my own mother?” Dean replies, feigning annoyance.

Mary snorts. “When have you ever called me just because? I know you better than you’d like to admit. Who is she?”

Dean clears his throat quietly. He’d dreaded this part of the conversation, honestly. He’d come out to his parents senior year of high school, nearly eight years ago now, but he’s still not quite sure they really get it. “It’s, uh… it’s a he, actually.” Mary hums but doesn’t reply, which only makes him more nervous. “Shit, sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have-”

“Dean,” she cuts him off sharply, and he’s not entirely sure if he should be relieved or terrified. “I was just waiting for you to continue. You know I don’t care who you end up with, as long as you’re happy, right?”

He can feel a blush creep onto his cheeks. Thank god he’s alone. “You don’t?”

Mary sighs. “No, Dean, of course not. I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear before now.”

He smiles to himself, picking at a loose thread on his t-shirt. “Thanks.”

“So,” Mary prompts. “Who is he?”

“It’s, um…” If he says it out loud, he’ll only be confirming his feelings, which won’t make them go away any easier… “It’s Cas.”

“Your roommate Cas?”

“Yeah, he’s…” Dean whines softly in the back of his throat, flinging his arm over his face. “I didn’t mean to, it just kinda happened. Sometimes I just look at him—god, this sounds so cheesy—and everything just feels right.”

Mary doesn’t say anything. He waits for another minute, both still nothing.

“Are… did I freak you out?”

Mary laughs. “No, sweetheart. I’m just not sure what you want me to say.”

Dean whines. “I want you to tell me how to stop crushing on my roommate.”

“Are you sure that’s what you want? It certainly doesn’t sound like it is.”

“But he’s my roommate, and a really good friend. What if I say something and he doesn’t feel the same way? Then I lose him completely.”

She hums and Dean can practically feel her shrug through the phone. “Dean, hon, I don’t know what you want me to say. It seems like you really like him.”

“I do.” he whines, running a hand through his hair.

She chuckles softly before continuing, “then you have to decide if it’s worth the risk. Sure, maybe he doesn’t like you back—though I find that hard to imagine, if I’m being honest—”

“Mom, you’re a bit biased there, aren’t ya?”

He hears a quiet laugh before she resumes her train of thought, “but maybe he does like you back, and you’ll be happier than you are now.”

Dean pouts. “Aren’t you supposed to have some romantic wisdom for me or something? Like, ‘if he does this he likes you’ or something like that?”

“Can’t you just use Google for that?” she snarks. “Besides, you don’t want advice, you just want someone to tell you to pull your head out of your ass. So, Dean, pull your head out of your ass and ask your cute roommate out.”

Dean huffs, but he does feel better now than he had before. “I will, I will, jeez.” He pauses, smiling to himself. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Of course, sweetheart. Let me know how it goes!”

He doesn’t have a chance to respond before she says her goodbyes and hangs up. He drops his phone on his chest, scrubbing his hands over his face as he heaves a sigh.

♥

The third time it happens is two days later. It’s a Saturday morning and both he and Cas slept in. Dean finally gets out of bed a little after ten, starting the coffee machine before deciding on breakfast. He’s halfway through a batch of chocolate chip pancakes when Cas finally shuffles into the kitchen. Dean knows better than to have a conversation with him this early, so he ignores him until he hears the happy sigh that signals he’s gotten his coffee.

“Mornin, Cas.”

“Good morning, Dean. Are those chocolate chip?”

Dean grins. “Course they are. There’s a bunch ready if you wanna eat.”

Cas hums, sipping his coffee before setting the mug on the counter and grabbing plates and silverware for both of them. “I’ll wait until you’re finished cooking.”

Dean nods, pouring the remaining batter on the skillet. The plate of pancakes winds up on the table once the last few are flipped onto the plate and Dean takes his seat across the table from Cas. It’s the first time he’s gotten a good look at the man this morning and Dean nearly chokes on his coffee.

He’s in nothing but an old t-shirt and boxers and his hair is ridiculously messy, like someone had spent the night running their fingers through it. It has Dean’s stomach growling for something other than food, so he quickly tears his eyes away from his roommate and digs into his breakfast. His mother’s words keep creeping into the forefront of his mind, though. What if Cas does like him back, and morning could be even better than this? He doesn’t even know if Cas is into guys to begin with… but there’s a quick fix for that.

“Charlie and I are going shopping tomorrow to pick up some stuff for Pride. Do you need anything?” It’s a subtle enough question, he hopes.

Cas quirks an eyebrow at him, finishing his sip of coffee before answering. “You’re going to Pride?”

Uh oh. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought it up… “Yeah, me, Charlie, Jo, Benny, and a couple other friends you haven’t met yet. We go every year.”

Cas hums. “I’ve never been. Were you inviting me or just asking me if I needed something from the store?”

Dean chuckles. “Both? You’re welcome to join us. Charlie wants to get a few more flags for her and Jo and I should probably get one to carry around, the one in my room’s a bit big.”

“Can I come with you? Would Charlie mind?”

He shrugs but texts Charlie just in case. “I doubt it. She’d probably be thrilled, honestly.”

Sure enough, Charlie texts back an emphatic yes, so an hour later, the two of them are in Dean’s car, heading to Charlie and Jo’s apartment.

“What’s it like?” Cas asks softly, startling Dean out of his thoughts.

“Pride?” Dean asks. Cas nods, though his eyes don’t meet Dean’s. “It’s… pretty fuckin’ awesome, actually. The first year I went I thought I’d hate it but there’s something so cool about seeing so many queer people celebrating who they are.”

Charlie and Jo climb in before Cas can respond, so their conversation ends there.

“Cas! I’m so happy you came. What’re you looking for?”

Cas smiles at her shyly and it’s one of the cutest smile Dean’s ever seen. “I’m not sure yet. I’m curious to see what there is.”

Charlie grins. “You won’t be disappointed.”

Their first stop at the nearby mall is H&M. Jo ends up finding her outfit there, so the three of them linger outside the shop while she checks out.

“Pride shop?” Dean asks when Jo finally emerges, chuckling when both girls grin at him.

“Pride shop?” Cas repeats, obviously confused.

Dean chuckles, motioning for Cas to follow them. “Every year around Pride, this shop pops up in the mall that sells all sorts of Pride gear. Pins, flags, all sorts of t-shirts and tank tops and crop tops with Pride-related things on them. It’s awesome, makes it super easy to get everything you need.”

Charlie and Jo wander off into the depths of the shop almost immediately, leaving Dean alone with Cas.

“What’re you getting?” Cas asks quietly, eyes wide as he looks around the shop.

“Hopefully a tank top and a smaller flag. Maybe some pins…” he trails off as he steps into the store, heading for the section of the store with all the bisexual pride stuff.

He hears Cas’s footsteps behind him, so he pauses to glance at his roommate. “You can go look around if you want. Charlie’s probably gonna be looking for a while.”

“You’re bisexual?” Cas asks with a frown, which is definitely not a good sign.

“Yeah. That a problem?” His reply is a bit more acidic than he’d intended.

Cas’s eyes widen as he meets Dean’s gaze. “No! Not at all. I just… didn’t know. I’ve never seen you with anyone and when you mentioned Pride, I guess I’d assumed you were asexual or aromantic. My apologies.”

His entire body relaxes at Cas’s explanation and he waves him off. “Don’t worry about it, man. There’s…” Now or never, he thinks to himself. “There’s someone I’m interested in. Not sure if they’re interested back so I’m kinda… stuck for now.”

Cas hums his understanding, flipping through the racks of clothes. Dean joins him and, after a while, settles on a white tank top with the bi flag on it, as well as a flag and a pin that reads, “how dare you assume I’m heterosexual”. Cas chuckles at the pin when Dean shows it to him and Dean falls for him just a little more.

“Anything you wanna look for?” Dean prompts, draping the tank top and flag over his arm.

Cas shrugs, glancing around the store. “Not really. I kind of just want to… wander.” He glances at Dean, smiling softly. “If that’s alright?”

“Yeah, sure. Like I said, Charlie’s gonna be a while, so we should probably entertain ourselves anyway.”

Cas nods, slipping through the displays as he wanders the room. He mostly just looks, though he examines a few things closer. Mostly pins, but he picks up a few rainbow t-shirts, running his fingers over the flag before setting them back down. He hands Dean a ring he finds that has three hearts, each one colored as one of the bisexual pride colors. Dean smiles to himself, holding it in his other hand with the pin.

Dean nearly knocks Cas over when he suddenly stops in his tracks with a gasp. “Cas? You okay?”

Cas nods slowly, his gaze fixed on something to his left. Dean frowns, following his gaze to the pansexual flag nearby. “I didn’t think they’d have one.” Cas murmurs, brushing his fingers over the fabric reverently.

“You’re pan?”

Cas nods, the corners of his mouth ticking up in a smile.

“They have a whole section of stuff for pansexual pride.” Cas stares at him, dumbstruck. Dean chuckles, grabbing Cas’s hand and pulling him to the back of the store, right into the middle of the pansexual section.

Cas’s eyes grow wide as he looks around, gasping. “This is… so much…” he whispers, fingers brushing over the t-shirts nearby, other hand still clasped in Dean’s. He’s so distracted by Cas’s face right now that he can’t even be excited that he’s basically holding hand with the guy he’s in love with. Cas is so enraptured with the different designs and accessories and he’s so genuinely excited. Cas squeezes Dean’s hand, grinning over at him. “This is amazing.”

Dean grins back. “You should get something, ‘specially if you’re going to Pride with us. A t-shirt or something?”

“Oh, I’m buying more than just one thing. I’ve never seen this much pansexual pride in one place.” He drops Dean’s hand—disappointing, but not unexpected—and flips through the t-shirts on the rack. He giggles softly as he pulls one from the rack, turning it around to show Dean. It’s a yellow panda with blue circles around its eyes and pink ears, surrounded by, “I’m Pan Duh”.

Dean snorts, actually snorts, and he kind of wants to die. Cas must find if funny though; his nose scrunches up and he grins at Dean, nodding to himself as he drapes the shirt over his arm. He also grabs a few pins and a pansexual flag, his grin growing with each addition.

Charlie finds them a few minutes later and all four of them pay for their things. Charlie and Jo are dropped off a little while later at their apartment and Dean and Cas are finally alone.

“So you mentioned you were interested in someone?” Cas asks, fiddling with his shirt.

Dean glances at him quickly, clearing his throat. “Yeah. Why?”

Cas shrugs. “I’m just surprised you don’t go for it. You always seem so confidant.”

Dean chuckles. “Yeah, I usually am. Until feelings get involved, anyway.”

Cas hums and the car falls silent for a minute until he pipes up, voice quiet, “Do I know them?”

“You could say that.” Dean replies with a chuckle, tightening his grip on the wheel momentarily.

Cas frowns but doesn’t continue the conversation.

So in all, he knows Cas is pan, but he’s no closer to figuring out if Cas is interested in him or not.

♥

The next moment he has is that night. They’ve put their purchases away and had dinner. Now they’re both curled up on opposite ends of the couch, arguing over what they’re going to watch. Eventually, they agree on the latest episode of Dr. Sexy, settling in to watch.

About halfway through, Dean looks over to find Cas sound asleep, curled up against the arm of the couch. He looks so peaceful and relaxed and Dean doesn’t have the heart to wake him, so he tucks a blanket around him and lets him sleep while he finishes the episode.

Cas is still sound asleep when Dean turns off the TV, so he shifts over and shakes him gently. “Cas? Hey, wake up.” He hears a sleepy grumble, laughing softly when Cas only burrows farther under the blanket. “C’mon, man, wouldn’t you rather be in your own bed?”

“I’d rather be in your bed.” Cas mutters, but Dean hears it clear as day.

He sucks in a breath, eyes widening. “You… what?”

Cas pulls the blanket tighter around him and Dean can see the exact moment he realizes what he said; he freezes, glancing up at Dean in horror. “Oh my god, I didn’t—I’m so sorry, Dean, I didn’t mean to say that, it just—”

“Did you mean it?” Dean cuts him off, hopeful it wasn’t just some thing the tired part of Cas’s brain made up.

Cas glances up at him, nodding after a second. “I’m sorry, Dean, I didn’t—”

“Whoa, hey, you don’t have to apologize.” He holds out a hand to Cas, smiling reassuringly. “C’mon, stand up.” Cas looks up at him, obviously concerned, but he takes Dean’s hand and stands anyway. Dean grins, resting a hand on Cas’s cheek. “Can I kiss you?”

Cas’s eyes widen but instead of answering, he cups Dean’s face and crushes their lips together. It’s a bit too much teeth and it takes them a minute to get it right but when they do, it’s perfect. He hates to admit it—it’s super cliché—but it’s honestly the best first kiss he’s ever had.

They pull away after a moment and he hears Cas chuckles quietly. “That is… not how I expected today to go.”

Dean hums his agreement, thumb brushing idly over Cas’s cheek. “Me either. I’m glad this is how it went, though.”

Cas closes his eyes for a moment, leaning into the touch with a happy sigh. It’s adorable, frankly, and Dean would be more than content to stay just like this for the rest of… well, eternity. Cas yawns after a moment, smiling up at Dean as he opens his eyes. “I think I’ll head to bed. We should… talk about this in the morning?”

Dean nods, smiling softly as he presses a kiss to Cas’s cheek. “Definitely. G’night.”

Cas waves at him as he turns, heading down the hallway to his room.

♥

The one time that really gets him is during Pride. He knew with it being Cas’s first time there that it’d be special, but he hadn’t prepared himself for this. Cas is bright-eyed and grinning, utterly enraptured by everything going on around him. His hand is clasped in Dean’s—something he’s still not really used to but is so okay with—and every few minutes, he’ll turn to Dean and point something out with a quiet laugh, like he can’t really believe it.

It’s the cutest thing Dean’s ever seen.

This time, there’s nothing stopping him from tugging Cas close and planting a kiss on him, so he does.

#destiel #destiel fanfic #destiel fic #profoundnet #deancasfanficnet #dean winchester #castiel #accidental confessions #first kiss #first pride #minor charlie bradbury/jo harvelle #mary winchester #charlie bradbury #jo harvelle #my writing

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wakraya · 6 years

Text

Alright, let me put a few points of stuff I’ve seen on the tags to rest here.

1) Jades Are A Rare Caste.

They are implied to be less plentiful than other castes, yeah, I believe Seadwellers are also rare? But here’s the thing- We have six Jades. When someone says “There’s twice as many Jades as we have Rusts or Bronzes”, it sounds like, shit, yeah weren’t they supposed to be less abundant? Except. They’re still, in total, just Six. Alternia is a planet. Lore-wise, they may be a less plentiful Caste, but they’re not even... In the double digits. This is not even the population of a neighborhood, Xefros’ suburban area likely had more Trolls in total than there are Trolls in this Troll Call, and besides it’s likely all Jades are in the same place for some reason- Jadeblood School is the biggest headcanon right now, for example, so... Why wouldn’t you have a bunch of Jades there?

2) Jades Are All Female.

This is a straight-up misconception, yeah they’re mostly girls, but canon still leaves room for Jadeblood boys. So Male Jadeblood? Yeah, can happen, and there’s nothing going against the canon here.

3) Trolls Have No Concept Of Gender.

This one is honestly baffling to me because I haven’t heard about this until the discourse today. I am assuming this comes from the fact Troll Reproduction doesn’t care who provides the genetic material? Their reproduction is not tied to gender, which has made people assume Troll junk is the same for both guys and gals. Except... That’s about it. Even though it’s silly because they’re bugs and implied to be hermaphroditic, they still show sexual dimorphism. And even if they didn’t, they still have a concept of Gender, merely based on the fact there’s Troll Boys and Troll Girls? He/She divide? With Hiveswap expanding on it and showing us there are, indeed, NB Trolls that prefer They/Them. This Gender Divide is actually talked about by Porrim, who also implies that while Fuchsia-down Alternia seemed a Matriarchy, Purple-down it was actually a Patriarchy, informing us that not ONLY is there sexual dimorphism, but also, a cultural divide. By saying that Lanque can’t be Trans because Trolls have no concept of Gender, you’re either mistaking headcanons for actual canon... Or being transphobic by equating genitalia to gender. In which case, fuck off.

4) Trolls Don’t Care About Fashion.

This is something Karkat says, and I believe Kanaya also implies she cares about it more than it’s usual? But Fashion in Troll Culture, seems to be exactly like Mail. Karkat mentions there’s no Mail they do not get a Mailbox with a Flag, yet we see Xefros get mail! Except it’s not Mail. It’s parachuted delivery straight from a website. There’s no standarized Mail system on Alternia, but that doesn’t mean companies can’t deliver things themselves, directly to their Hives. Similarly, Trolls have no concept of Fashion- They don’t care about things such as trends, variety, being dressed properly. And... Hiveswap doesn’t break this. They have more colorful clothes, and some look pretty good! But. Look at Cirava. They’re an absolute fashion disaster. Diemen is just dressed like a hot dog. The Jades all seem to wear uniforms of some sort. Fozzer and Marsti, Skylla, they are more akin to work clothes. The Soleil Twins and Marvus are more flashy, because they’re likely part of a spectacle. Most of them are either a sort of uniform or outfit that’ll fit whatever they’re doing, or a basic color with their symbol somewhere. And you can go from Bright Pink Bathrobe Stelsa, to Pirate-Clad Remele, and back to Punk Denim Elwurd. Not being Fashionable can be about trends, they may simply dress however they want, because of their interests, or their jobs.

But let’s think about this another way. Let’s say that, yeah, they did retcon Troll Fashion- Would... Would you really be mad if they retconned Troll Fashion. Like... Would you be happier if every Troll shown was wearing a plain black shirt with their Symbol, and pants or a skirt, with slight variations of a jacket or a tank top. I don’t think there’s a single Hiveswap design I dislike, and they’re all visibly varied and easily recognizable, and tell a lot about the character, which is like. Character Design 101? So I honestly don’t know what the complaint here is exactly, except Canon Purity.

5) Hiveswap Ruined Fantroll Variety

How. First of all, the entire previous point. Just, expanding upon basic Troll Clothes, showing us the extent of how Trolls dress. But also like... What did they limit exactly? We’re going to learn more about Trolls and Troll Culture and Biology, of course headcanons are going to clash with canon, but so far, what have they limited? I’ve heard about Horns, but like... These horns have all been so varied, and sure there’s stuff like hooks with Ceruleans and Jades, and Four Horns with Golds but... This pattern is also broken, with Azdaja having three, for example. We’ve seen new Psionic colors, we’ve seen stuff like Horn Piercing, we’ve seen Troll Twins, we have seen horns where the orange part starts at different heights than you’d expect and even some of the parts jutting out having their own red-orange-yellow coloration separate of the main shaft of the horn. If anything, until now, there’s always been headcanons for Horns, like, “Oh this is their symbol so it’ll be like this”, or “this is their caste, so, they’ll have big horns”, but no, we have Purples with small horns, we have Bronzes with curly horns downwards, we have a cerulean with super uneven horns, we have a gold with three horns, we have a teal with flat horns, we have rounded horns, we have hotdog horns. I’ve heard people wonder about some Horn Shapes in the prior weeks, about how they didn’t match their restrictive headcanons, and NOW you tell me they’re restrictive? There’s also been complaints about caste roles and stereotypes, and I feel people really forget that Alternia is a Tyranny that forces the inhabitants in roles they are most likely not happy with, specially for the lower castes. Like... Rusts are disposable, and likely to be bound to a life of servitude. Because they’re the lowest of the low, society treats them as such, and there’s stereotypes like Indigos being strong, but that’s not any more restrictive than Psionics being a Gold-only thing, and much like we see Zebede not having Psionics or Elwurd and Mallek having normal eyes to every other cerulean’s messed-up ones... There’s exceptions to the rule everywhere. There have always been.

I’ve also seen complaints about no mutant bloods or things like Albinism and such? And like... The fact they didn’t include it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We actually got Freckles with Zebede, so it already implies skin conditions are a thing, so Albinism could happen, if anything we have more PROOF that it may be a thing! Complaining about a lack of Limebloods and Violets, too, is just nitpicking, we know there will be Violets eventually, but either we haven’t been shown right now, or they’re just. In the sea. And we’re in the land. And Limes are likely to be a plot point, I’m expecting at least ONE Lime (Fiamet), if not more to show up at some point, and if there’s NO Limebloods I’m sure there will be at least talk OF Limebloods and their whole, you know, extermination, which is a canon thing that happened.

6) The Game’s Representation Is Bad Representation

Listen... Listen. I have friends ecstatic that there’s at LEAST three non-cis characters in Hiveswap (One trans boy, two NBs), without counting the possibility of other characters being Trans (Pretty much anyone could be), or NB (Like, I think about half of the characters don’t have pronouns on their bullet points?), not to mention, further acts with new characters. Hell, even Xefros or Dammek or Joey could be Trans. We. Literally know nothing about these characters, our information is so limited, and yet there’s already people cheering about it and super happy to see representation and I’ve seen one person in the tag encouraged to come out because Lanque is Trans. There’s also at least two Jewish Trolls, plus the possibility of Kanaya being Jewish as well, either her, Rose, or both. And yet, even though they have simply said this, in good faith, respectfully, and trying to add diversity to their roster, and even though we literally know NOTHING of how it’ll be handled yet, you... Bash them for it?

Like, okay. Lanque. The big topic today. He’s not particularly masculine, but as has surely been repeated over and over and over again, not all trans men are masculine, and not all trans people suffer dysphoria. And yeah, it’s true! It would be nice if there was a more masculine trans man! It would be great if there were trans girls! It would be great if there were more diversely coded NB characters! And there may be?? There’s going to be more characters, if not in this Act, in future Acts, and of the ones we’ve seen, many of them could still be NB or Trans. Like... Again. We’ve got three bullet points from each character. Like, I’m sorry you didn’t get a trans character that you could identify better with yet? But that doesn’t mean you have to bash the one we got? When there are people genuinely happy and encouraged about it? You’re not being progressive. You’re being an elitist asshole, if you only accept 100% perfect representation suited to your tastes, and everything else is garbage, or god help me, ‘fetishization’ or ‘disgusting’ (I have heard both on the Tags), like seriously. You’re being the oppressive one. You’re the one making representation harder than it should be.

Oh and if you’re on the OPPOSITE side of the spectrum and simply being Transphobic or saying how all of this is ‘pandering’ to the audience, really I have nothing to say, if you cannot have basic empathy for a group of people finding representation in a game which source material is extremely queer, and have to resort to bashing it down, screw you.

7) WhatPumpkin Are Doing A Bad Job

This is your subjective opinion, and I’d dare to say, a wrong opinion, but let’s not go there for now. WP has suffered a lot of hate for some reason? There have been lies and slander and bashing for absolutely no reason. People hate Cohen for some reason, and have demonized him, when so far what I’ve seen about him is that he’s a pretty chill dude. The writing of Hiveswap wasn’t like, a masterpiece? But it was fun and it got a good bunch of chuckles out of me and made me care for the characters, and even got me a bit scared and sad at some points during the game! It has that Homestuck Spark, and if you say ‘it’s not like Homestuck’, you’re... I’m sorry, you’re just an elitist, or simply don’t like the style anymore? But it carries a very similar charm.

I’ve heard complaints about Hussie not being involved in the project- Which is false, he did write the entire story FIRST THING, and is overseeing the whole project with the rest of the team. There’s also been criticism towards WP ‘failing’ at representation (Before actually seeing the representation apparently, again, we know NOTHING about the game and how it’ll handle stuff so far), and also accusing WP and Cohen specifically of adding representation because of Woke Points and like... WP are Queer as Heck? I don’t know all of them, I don’t even know how many people are working at WP. But they’re not all straight 100% for sure, and I believe they’re not all cis- And even if they ARE all cis, I also doubt a group working on such a Queer game would NOT hear out from Trans friends. What I’m trying to say, is that they haven’t shown at any point disrespect of ignorance regarding the diversity they want to tackle, they’re not doing things out of bad faith, and we haven’t seen how they handle it yet. Even if they didn’t handle it ideally! Does it need to be absolutely perfect, there can be missteps on the way there, god dammit if someone’s trying to better themselves but not quite getting it right you don’t insult them and tear them down! You show them what to do better next time or where they are mistaken, by pessimistically ignoring what they’re trying to do out of spite you’re discouraging good will and being an asshole! Which leads me to my last point for now.

8) They Could Have Told Us We Were Misgendering Lanque

This one is... Really, a bit ridiculous. Okay, let me explain. If someone is Trans and you misgender them accidentally, they’ll tell you quickly and you’ll, hopefully, correct yourself. Obviously. When the Trolls leaked, everyone latched onto Lanque as ‘Butch Lesbian’, and clung to that hope, and now that they were proven wrong, there was salt, at first, and THEN came the talk about Misgendering Lanque. And let me tell you, I think this is very selfish of everyone saying it.

What WP likely thought would happen is that they’d reveal Lanque to be a Trans boy, and people would be like “Oh! Nice, Trans Rep!”. Sure they could’ve told us back then but... Why? Lanque is not. A real person. He’s a fictional character, he’s not going to be offended because you thought he was a butch woman for a few months, in fact the SILHOUETTE alone ALREADY had people clinging to him as a butch woman. If he were a real person? Of course there’d be a quick correction. But he’s. A character. He’s just a god damn character. Who is Trans, out of good faith by a very Queer company, showing us a Trans man, who is a character, and expecting that, like NORMAL PEOPLE, we would not do something like THIS.

When you criticize WP for not telling us Lanque was a Trans Man, all I’m seeing is a shift of blame, not wanting to simply admit you were wrong and jumped to conclusions, and like- Even if there was Fanart or Fanfic of Lanque calling him a woman briefly, shipping him around mistakenly, who cares? You just. Go. “Okay, I’ll change it” or “Whoops haha this was from when we didn’t know he was a Trans boy!” Why the militant hatred? Why the absolute disgust shown today? I can’t understand, I simply cannot understand why your first reaction to “Trans boy Jadeblood” is “WELL I THOUGHT HE WAS A BUTCH LESBIAN!! I WASN’T WRONG BY ASSUMING THIS, WHATPUMPKIN WERE FOR TRYING TO MAKE THEIR GAME MORE DIVERSE”. It’s like... You just. Correct it? You just correct yourself? And yeah you can want more masculine Trans boys, that’s fair! But dismissing what we got, entirely, and insulting it, and getting like THIS, and blaming the team, it just seems.

Narcissistic. It seems narcissistic and extremely self-centered, and perfectionist to the extreme of not wanting anything other than a complete and absolute ideal, that may fit you but may also not fit others.

In conclusion?

People are happy about representation. This isn’t destroying diversity or representation, this is not reducing customization of Fantrolls, this is only building MORE on the already expansive system, and giving us representation and hope for MORE representation in the future, and if you cannot be happy for a genuine, good natured, and honestly, perfectly fine attempt, if you cannot feel empathy for the people who did feel for this representation, if you can only want to find reasons to bash something down and demonize something good and point out how BAD and NOT GOOD things are and how MUCH BETTER they could be, then honestly, you’re a deeply unpleasant person.

Give things time. Give people with good intentions chances. Learn to backpedal and learn from mistakes and simply correct yourself when you’re wrong instead of going down a hateful spiral. Learn to separate fiction and reality. Just like... Think, for a moment, when you’re writing something down- Is it a jaded opinion, or an objective fact? Will it hurt and discourage people who’re genuinely happy or trying to make others happy? Why do more harm than good when there are good intentions paving the way?

I just simply cannot understand the basic lack of critical thought and empathy of some people I have seen today, and hopefully with this I can make my opinion on the whole absurd Discourse that transpired today clear.

#Hiveswap #Homestuck #Lanque #WhatPumpkin #Discourse #Long Post #Longpost

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actuallylorelaigilmore · 6 years

Note

Hey, I saw you were doing headcanon stuff! So, I have this like burgeoning headcanon that Josh x Donna's first daughter is wlw. I don't know if you build off of other people's headcanons, but this one has been with me for a long time, and you are such a talented writer and storyteller in general that I thought maybe you'd be interested in taking a crack out of this very specific headcanon?!? I've just been projecting a lot of brainpower towards it and I want to talk to someone else about it!

Okay, so first, all my future headcanons for TWW spring from this original post that’s gotten around a bit. I’ve written a tiny bit of kidfic using them as well so I decided to connect yours to mine because tbh I love this idea and heck yeah, at least one of their daughters should be queer :D that’s just way more fun than if they’re both straight.

So, given what I’d already sorted out for the future, here are my thoughts. There are oh so many ideas behind the cut because apparently I can’t sleep but I can create a bunch of people out of thin air.

Their eldest daughter, Brianna Joan, started insisting everyone call her ‘Jo’ when she was five. They were both surprised by her stubbornness on the matter, but Josh was secretly pleased since her middle name was a tribute to his sister. Donna assumed it was a phase she would grow out of, like a lot of kids when they’re young and establishing their independence. She didn’t–and Jo later believed it was the first hint that she was never meant to be the girly daughter they might have expected.

Charlotte inherited her mother’s grace under pressure, along with her dancer’s form and creative flexibility. While Jo had Donna’s sass and sense of humor, she shared her dad’s brown hair and eyes, constant need to be in motion, and impulsive streak. Josh liked to say Jo got his athletic prowess, too, but Donna always countered with ‘your what now?’ and made the girls laugh. Jo surpassed him in sports talent by junior high, thanks in no small part to coaching by Charlie’s not-so-little-anymore sister Deena.

Junior high and high school were rough, especially girl’s softball and basketball. The rumors and slurs about which girls were probably gay because they were a little too good on the court or the mound bothered her, especially when she got sick of her unruly hair and cut it off at fourteen and the kids started aiming them at her…but it was hard to do the right thing and stand up to them when she was starting to wonder if maybe they were right.

The first crush she developed on an older, female student that she actually admitted to herself was a crush happened a year later, when she was trying to survive her entrance into high school. She came out to her best friend at sixteen and felt bad that she didn’t tell her parents first, but her dad was still working with the White House occasionally during his “retirement,” and her mom was starting her campaign for Congress, and the last thing Jo wanted to do was make that harder.

It wasn’t like she thought they’d be upset, or disappointed in her, exactly. But a tiny part of her did have doubts, after a couple of her friends had come out to their liberal parents and hit a cruel wall of family double-standards. Surely Josh Lyman and Donna Moss, champions of progressive causes, wouldn’t be that way…she hoped.

Just to be safe, Jo told them the week after her mom won her Congressional campaign, when it would cause the least trouble if they did freak out. Donna wasn’t surprised, not even a little, and only shared her worries at night with Josh. She knew how hard it was to be a woman in the world, and it could only be more painful for their eldest facing additional discrimination on top of that. “We just have to love her even harder,” Donna whispered, “and hope it’ll be enough.”

Unlike his wife, Josh was–as always–oblivious. Jo coming out was big surprise, but one he was happy about. She trusted them enough to tell them, and include them in her confusing teenage life. Surely that meant they were on the right track. “And hey,” he offered up in the initial shock of her disclosure, “I can’t exactly blame her. Women…are great. I’m a big fan. Of them.”

Just like he did with all the girl’s activities over the years, from dance to soccer, Josh threw himself into being a parental ally until he annoyed Jo with his enthusiasm. PFLAG, marches, fundraisers, sponsoring local clubs…"which one of us is gay again?” she would mutter to her sister with an eyeroll sometimes, out of earshot of the DC dad with the rainbow t-shirt passing out mini flags.

She was grateful though, especially after she survived college, and law school, and volunteered at a nonprofit that exposed her to so many kids whose parents didn’t care if they lived or died, simply because of who they turned out to be. Josh started getting handmade cards for his birthday and Father’s Day every year, filled with Jo’s illegible handwriting–that, he knew, she definitely didn’t get from him–telling him how much she loved and appreciated him. He put them on the fridge next to the sketches her little sister sent, like they were both still in grade school. Donna teased him about that, but whenever their friends visited she was the first one to casually point them out.

In the family, Charlotte was the only one that ever gave Jo any grief about her sexuality. It was mostly sibling sniping, because Charlotte was quieter than her sister but even more competitive, and she was never quite able to catch up with the three year gap between them. Still, it made Jo uncomfortable in her late teens because she and her baby sister were always so close growing up, and she couldn’t tell if the snark was coming from someplace deeper. When Charlie was fifteen, she got a week’s suspension for breaking a boy’s nose after he called her valedictorian sister a slur she refused to repeat to anyone. Jo worried less after that, and the sarcastic comments never happened again.

Toby’s son Huck came out as bisexual in college, and Jo joined his twin sister in being his closest support system while he braced for his parents’ reactions. There was a lot of hugging, and some knowing looks between Toby and Josh when the kids weren’t paying attention, and Huck had to pay Jo twenty bucks because she promised it would go over fine and he was certain it would be a disaster. He never learned to love the Yankees but he shared his father’s temperament from an early age. He and Charlie dated briefly in their twenties, causing a minor scandal to ripple through the connected families.

CJ’s daughter Nora, who was like a distant cousin Jo never got to visit enough in sunny California, only allowed the family to use her full name. She got a lot of weird looks when strangers overheard, or friends found out how old-fashioned it was, but Jo liked to call her by it anyway when they chatted. She never got to meet her dad’s mentor, and she thought based on the stories she’d heard that he would be embarrassed but proud to learn that Claudia Jean named her firstborn Leonora after she left the White House.

Nora was the one who introduced Jo to her future wife, an architect based out of Sacramento with an independent streak and temper that secretly reminded Josh of one of his exes. Unlike him and Amy, Jo and her fiance were a happy fit, sharing similar political beliefs but no professional rivalry. They spent as much time at home swapping stories and advice about their demanding careers as they did on community activism. Jo mellowed out a little after they got married–”she’s so much like you,” Donna told Josh with a smile–and they moved five times in three years before buying a house and starting their attempts to have a family.

That was the first time Jo ever really surprised her mom, who cried when she found out they were expecting. “I thought…you never talked about wanting kids,” Donna said carefully, and Jo just grinned that bright grin that was so much like her father’s. “I needed some time,” she told her mom, “to figure out what I wanted. But I think that if I manage to be half as good at it as you were, I’ll be an amazing mom.”

Josh and Donna bantered anxiously in the waiting room while each of their eldest daughter’s three kids came into the world. Two she gave birth to, and one she didn’t. They spoiled them all the same.

And when Charlotte brought the Lyman-Moss legacy back to the White House, Jo’s youngest son got to hunt Easter Eggs on the lawn. He stood next to his aunt during the photo op, just one of a dozen kids surrounding the first female President of the United States.

#seriously #just so. many. thoughts #this got totally out of hand #josh x donna #headcanons #it's super fun to play with future fic i must say #tww #replies #theonewithwaytoomanyfandoms

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normalcryptid · 7 years

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I don't actually know how to write this or even where to start but I wanted to write something for National Coming Out day, write a very rambling mess of a something but a something. I guess I will just start where all good stories should, at the beginning(except my memory is bad so half of this is probably out of order, opps)

I actually had my first gay moment in kindergarten believe it or not. I don't remember a lot of it though which is typical. All I really remember is my best friend at the time told me to kiss her during nap time. I don't remember if I did but in second grade she started crying one day because I did. Yeah, that's a long time to be upset over a small kiss. I know. Children man. They are insane. But hey, go me. Starting young. I wonder what happened to her? After second grade I moved away because my parents divorced and at that age there isn't much you can do.

Except that's not the beginning so fuck that gay moment. Hell, I don't remember it and I was five so does it even count? The beginning is really April 8, 2014. Threeish years ago. That's the day I met the person who would later become my best friend, the person I tell everything to, probably the most important one of this story besides me(definitely the most important person besides me). There was also two others. We were a small group obessesed with supernatural and just generally being nerdy. I fell out of touch with most of them. I honesty don't know where it all began. Sometime in late May maybe? I kinda sorta mayne grew on crush on a girl I knew named Kelsey and was shocked because uh? Excuse me, I am not gay?( pro tip, you are hella gay) So anyways I asked said nerdy supernatural obessesed good friends of mine about it because of fucking course I did and found out lots of stuff I didn't know. Like shit dudes, half of what I know about gayness is because of these dudes. So I figured hetroflexible. Right. That's that's a thing. Maybe I should sure why the hell not? I'm hetroflexible and hopefully this fades during summer when I don't see her. Yeah, that would definitely work. (it didn't) And well that was that. I just let that be for a while. Later I changed my label to pan because damn everyone is cute. Romantically. Not sexually, you know. More on the pan part later, probably.

So while that was going on I was also wondering hey I don't really feel sexual attraction so uh friends is there a word for someone that doesn't feel sexual attraction unless they like know each other? Amd my friends(bless them) sent me all sorts of fucking refrences to demisexuality and I st there thinking alright this, this is good. So I am demi? Definitely demi. Pretty sure this happened when I was 'straight' so the only lgbt+ part of me I had was that. I could work with that. Maybe this happened in my junior year? Shit, I don't actually remember exactly. This is a mess.

So hey back to the pan part. So fucking as stated, the crush didn't go away and I didn't feel like bi fit exactly. So what do I do? Of fucking course I go to my friends. Of fucking course I do. And what do they do? Help me with the questioning and send me references to pan and poli and all fucking sorts of queer shit. And the good little person I am who wanted to figure this the fuck out necause this was stressful read the shit out of those refrences, found out pan fit and boom. I was now a little demi pancake. Except I was still mostly attracted to guys so that was my life. It was a lie. I'm gay. I don't like guys.

So uh....shit I don't know. I lost touch with all except for James, my best friend. We had a long distance relationship for like a week because fuck I hate distance and anxiety. I hated having to break it off. I still like James. Except there are a lot of reasons why I won't date him besides distance. He already knows. (Sorry James. I love you though) I also had my first girlfriend from September 22, 2015 to January 11, 2016. We didn't do shit and I mostly said yes to her asking me out because I was secretly questioning if pan still fit. I am horrible, I know. I had a big crush on this girl named Casey the whole time though which is honestly digusting. Casey is horrible. Fuck her. She hasn't been on her tumblr in about a year but I fucking hope she reads that one part. Just fuck her. She isn't important. Anyways, Mariana(my girlfriend) broke up with me after a month of her avoiding me and me being the clingy anxiety filled person that I am being full of anxiety and clingy. She did it in front of a bunch of my other friends between classes using the "it's not you, it's me" line. I went to class in shock wantimg to cry with my hands shaking. It was hard to breathe. I am pretty sure I would have had a panic attack if I wasn't so surprised. There was an odd bit of me thinking hey maybe pan doesn't actually fit amyways, maybe I am really straight and this was all a lie. I pined after a lot of boys that I think I mostly liked because my friend Kamryn did since we always seemed to have the same taste in gays. And then I graduated high school. That was that.

Then I met a girl named Hailey. She replaced Casey once I found out how childish and bitchy Casey was as my best friend in person. I just kind of adopted pan again? but never told anyone. It was just kinda there? I had a crush on Hailey too but hey she is also a bitch so fuck her too. She is only important for one thing. So basically when I adopted pan again I started looking at girls. A lot. But me neing the oblivious fucker I am didn't fucking notice until April of this year when I created a thing called the Am I gay theory or AIGT for short where I would write notes and question myself. Needless to say, I wrote one note about how guys are still cute so obviously I am not gay but girls. I came out to Hailey on May 8th, 2017. It was hard. She was the first person I came out as gay to besides James but James knew this whole time. He was always there. He is hella important. I should mention him more because he was there for all of my questioning. Bless him. So Haiely. I came out to her in my work breakroom. I couldn't say it. The words wouldn't form on my mouth. She spent most of the break complaining about her shitty boyfriend. I threw in refrences. Small ones here and there. Jokes mostly. And then one that caught her attention( I said it mostly to myself) amd she went "Wait are you a lesbain or some shit?" and I replied with "Well not how I wanted to tell you but". That would be that except she decided to tell me I should at least kiss a boy before I decide this. No. Fuck that. Fuck you. Just fuck it. The next month a came out to a lot of my coworkers and friends mostly through small jokes. No one cared. Most of them already knew. I moved jobs. Come out to my new work friends really casually. (God this is a ramblimg paragrap.) No one cared or even blinked an eye. We made jokes. We still do. All was merry. I love my new work friends. Kayla keeps asking me if I talked to any hot babes and wanting to find me a girlfriend. People there ask about my nonexistent boyfriend and I talk to kayla about it and she assures me that she never thought I was straight from the moment she walked up to me to now(of fucking course). Why does everyone there assume I have a boyfriend? I own a shirt that says I kiss girls? Just why?

So then pride cameup. Here in Virginia it is later then most prides. It is always the end of September and I asked my paretns to go because I was supportive and I had lots of friends going. I was not out to them at the time. Then ironically Kayla and I had an entire conversation where she said my paretns definitely know I am gay and I said nah they suspect but don't know. The very next day was the Friday before pride and my mom calls me into the living room to basically say hey, I know you are gay. I had to text Kayla and tell her she was right. Amd then I had to comfirm to my dad that hey, I am gay. Surprise except not really because you already knew. Apparently longer then I knew myself. (on a side note, pride was amazing and it is where I got my I kiss girls shirt. I also got a pride flag that now hangs in my window) So now I am happily out as gay.

I also don't identify as demi anymore. I am a lot more ace then I originally thought as I realized in the middle of a conversation with you guessed it James. Also I have been questioning my gender for quite a while now? Hence the Elliot thing. Everyone who knows me in person calls me Zoe so they probably question why I always put Elliot down as a name with questions and why my personal tag is el. Well, I guess you know now. I still go by Zoe so dont feel bad. Call me whatever. I am comfortable with both. I let it rest for a bit because questioning is stressful and I didn't need a label. Well guess who is back on their shit? Me. So yeah, that is my rambling mess of a coming out story so I am just goimg to wrap it up.

Have a great National Coming Out day from your local gay ace gender questioning pal, kids.

#god el ur an idiot #gay #asking my lgbt friends 'stupid' questions is how i started questioning #questioning #a gay ace #asexual #gender questionimg #coming out story #national coming out day #long post #personal

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nerdsbianhokie · 7 years

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Turn the Page

So, I’m sure some of y’all know about the queer bookstore I hope to open eventually (It’s gunna be called Turn the Page, which is what I’ve always wanted to name a bookstore). Well I spent a few hours while at work last night thinking about it and some stuff I hope will eventually happen.

Pride So, I would attend Pride in the city I open it in, hopefully have a booth, and eventually be able to attend other Pride festivals.

Pride Flags A whole bunch of them. I wanna get people to sign them, like, people who stop at the booth during Pride, maybe during the Grand Opening. I’m just picturing countless Pride flags on the walls and hanging from the ceiling in fifty years or so.

Scholarships One thing I really want to do is eventually fund scholarships for queer kids, particularly homeless queer kids.

Partnerships I don’t really want to own multiple locations or franchise, but I like the idea of having partner stores. Like, stores in other cities, I know the owners, the stores have the same ideals, kinda. Stuff, like, all of the stores fund a scholarship if they are able to.

I kinda really like the idea of he store eventually becoming a kind of ‘must do’ for queer visitors to the city. It may end up being a more queer media store than a bookstore, cause I want to also have movies and music and such, eventually. There will also be plenty of seating, maybe a room groups can use for meetings or such.

I also think that once I’m actually in the process of saving for it, once I get close-ish, I may set up a kickstarter, if that’s still a thing then. Not just for funding, but for advertisement and such. With prizes such as a thank you card, your name put somewhere in the store, clothing with the logo, and maybe even, if someone pledges a large enough amount, a trip to the grand opening.

I just want to already have this store.

#Turn the Page

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brajeshupadhyay · 4 years

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Bois Locker Room case underscores vital need for radical, political reimagining of an education that liberates us

That year, the college was closed as Delhi witnessed harrowing anti-Sikh violence. Shortly after it re-opened, a “Sardines Chick Chart” came up on the notice board, sardines being slang for sardarnis. The most striking quality of quotidian violence is its wild-eyed avidity. The instinct to further leer at the women of a community that has recently been brutalised puts the violence in sex like masala films can but dream of.

The incident however, broke the uneasy acceptance of the ‘tradition’, and grew over time to become a protest that made it to the newspapers. Consequently, as the filmmaker Saba Dewan has recounted on Kafila, women students had men hissing ‘fuck off’ at them as they walked the corridors. The Girls’ Common Room was vandalised and students’ bras and panties were strewn everywhere, including furled from the college turret, just like victory flags of war. A Hen Chart was put up, making the clichéd connection between feminists and frumps, naming the most vocal members of the protest. The administration never held any men accountable, but did call in the women’s parents to complain about them.

At around the same time, the filmmaker Bela Negi was studying in Sherwood College, a posh boarding school in Nainital, which too had only recently begun to admit women. “I was the head-girl. The head boy was the principal’s son and he wasn’t much into rules. I was a bit of a goody two-shoes so I would take my job somewhat seriously,” Negi said to me. On one occasion, she crossed the head boy over something. A few days later, “when I went out in a short skirt”, a group of about 25 boys pounced on her and gave her bumps on a pile of horse dung. “I knew it was no use complaining to the administration, so I got up and walked away, refusing to give them the pleasure of knowing they’d humiliated me.”

The similarity to the Bois Locker Room incident — an Instagram group where schoolboys aged 14 to 18, rated schoolgirls’ body parts, shared their Instagram posts without consent, morphing their heads onto naked bodies — does not require over-articulation here. There’s no real difference. Bonding in private rooms, competing to trash talk women, dismembering women metaphorically, into body parts. Threatening to assault actually or metaphorically through public shaming, when called out. Traditions are what keep a society going, no?

One of the unexpected discoveries I made while writing this essay was that the niece of a close friend was one of the minors discussed in the Bois Locker Room. I had heard over the last year that she and her mother had had several conflicts over her posting very sexualised images on Instagram. “Why do you think she does it?” I’d asked my friend then. “It’s the only way for girls to be popular in their schools”. It’s a tricky path, when popularity is equal to being an aspirational object, often leading to violent responses that you’re a bitch if you aren’t attainable, and a whore if you are. Eventually you find yourself beheaded via app and discover the dehumanisations that gives these currencies of attractiveness their power — for all genders.

St. Stephen’s and Sherwood College are among the country’s elite educational institutions, grooming the rich and powerful for generations, a tradition being carried forward by the growing number of private schools today. Many students who were part of the incidents described above, as participants, or as uneasy bystanders, doubtless occupy positions of influence today — in politics, in civil services, in media, in academia, in corporate life. Many would be considered liberal leading lights. None of them, until today, have managed to create structures that naturally incorporate the point of view of anyone except elite heterosexual men — that we know of. Many of them might run the kind of organisations that yielded a bunch of #MeToo stories. Maybe on jolly social occasions, they say to women who object to their wife jokes, ‘yaar stop being such a feminist. You’re too serious’. Well, they’re just good students. They were groomed to decide what is serious and what is not on other people’s behalf. Someone married them, not expecting, or simply going along with, becoming a wife joke. Perhaps their kids go to the ‘good South Delhi schools’ everyone keeps mentioning when they express shock at the Bois Locker Room case.

It’s such a sleight of hand, ‘good’ schools, ‘good’ families, that conflates virtue with privilege. “How can an educated person do this?” people exclaim. It is precisely an educated person who does these things. Elite education is designed as it always was, barring a few cool accessories, to train elite men to dominate other people and express that domination in a variety of ways.

Education is structured to underline the importance of material success and competition at all cost, including the cost of understanding your own pleasures, relationships and emotions, which are considered distractions to be quelled, a source of weakness. Parents focus mostly on whether you are studying, when they think of your future, not about nourishing your inner life. They might notice an issue with your inner life only if you don’t do well at school. Everyone else is your competition. Everything you do requires fitting in but still, having an edge over others. The limit of learning is the exam — not the idea that you will keep learning from life. Exams are war and everyone must be an exam warrior. When we are trained to always go to war, what can we possibly know about how to go to peace?

As you go up the ladder, the self-congratulatory declarations — “it’s just business”, “I’m just being practical” — all mean that empathy and emotion have been successfully numbed, enough, that you can defend the scrapping of labour laws and can go to the government and say, “Do not send migrant labourers home. We may need them for our (just) business.”

The making of chick charts, the rating of girls, the slurs against queer and Dalit colleagues — these are all social reminders that elite, straight men are the ones entitled to define these structures, who get to grant approval and make decisions, in schools and colleges, and later in offices, governments, the internet. Your continued presence is contingent on fitting into this system and not objecting to its ‘just fun’ traditions. They are the foam in a double shot cappuccino of privilege.

Twenty five years after the incident in school, Bela Negi ran into one of her classmates at a school reunion. “He said to me ,‘remember how we gave you bumps, ha ha’. I said, ‘I can’t believe that as a grown up you’re laughing and bragging about it instead of feeling remorse or embarrassment’.” Other male classmates looked uneasy when she brought it up. Women at the party told her ‘forget it, now it’s in the past’.

But it’s not in the past, is it? It is firmly with us in the present — the sexual language used to attack women in a political disagreement online. The baying for sexual violation of Muslim and ‘sickular’ women by right wing men. The number of liberal men named in #MeToo accounts. The calling Safoora Zargar, the arrested member of the Jamia Coordination Committee, prostitute and saying ‘give her a condom’ because she is pregnant — and Muslim and politically active. It is so much with us, that the day the hashtag #boislockerroom started trending I didn’t pay attention because I thought, “it must be some new web series”.

A lot goes into maintaining the illusion that elite men are not sexually violent on a casual and intensified basis all the time. Part of this is the reigning discourse around sexual violence, which privileges the safety of women — elite women — over their freedom. The public space is painted as a dangerous one for women, where they are under threat of being attacked by ‘other’ men — read, lower caste or class, men. If elite men bother to talk about women, it is only to hold them up as emblems of purity or achievement, or to school other men for not knowing how to respect women. (In other words they don’t seem to know how to talk to women, but that’s another discussion).

Being a bro who stands up for feminism is an elite pastime across the political spectrum — sometimes they are scolding creeps in a music video, sometimes they are killing your boyfriend on Valentine’s Day. This discussion about ‘others’ is like a curtain. Behind it is the private behaviour of men — and that is never to be discussed. A man who does it is weak. A woman who brings matters private into public light, risks marginalisation and vilification. We have seen that, through domestic violence scandals and sexual harassment cases.

That is why the first responses to many such incidents is to blame women — #girlslockerroom — and then to clamp down on the freedom of women or blame them for acting as if they lived in a world where men’s violence against them is not a given. Boys will be boys, goes the platitude. As if this is an immutable condition and we must all tiptoe around them, which we are constantly, daily being trained to do, lest we provoke their boys-will-be-boys-ism.

The other response is to demand strong punitive action against perpetrators — we don’t mind if boys are boys as long as their privilege does not expose itself through an act of criminal violence. Then, we must teach them a lesson. One sometimes wants to say, but this is the lesson you have been teaching them: of supremacy. All other lessons are sitting in the pocket of that lesson.

***

Interviewed by media, one school principal expressed bewilderment that their students could be involved in the Bois Locker Room because “the school has regularly provided inputs on gender”.

At every school and college where I, or my colleagues at Agents of Ishq have done a talk or workshop, in the last two years, young women have come up to discuss, exactly the same experience of the Bois Locker Room case. They don’t know how to counter the distasteful misogyny that the cool, edgy filmmakers and forthcoming media sensations of the future subject them to. “Why don’t you say something?” I ask. “Because I don’t feel like being rude to a friend.” “Because they call me a prude or they might think I’m un-cool.” “Why do you care what they think?” I asked a young woman. She kept quiet. She knows in theory, that she need not care, but the world has not reshaped itself enough to make this automatic and there is very little conversation to help her figure out the way to do this positively, not negatively as a victim or an aggressor.

If you are a woman working in a cool corporate job, media, art films and so on, you will recognise this experience. In elite worlds where cool is a very necessary currency, you try to hold on to it tenuously, timorously. To not accept the banal misogyny and poor humour of men, marks you as un-cool. Despite being a grown woman, you must carry out an adolescent exhibitionism while talking about sex, to show you are blasé, so you may be accepted as one of the guys — and it’s simply a different version of young schoolgirls posing in particular ways, to gain importance in this world. Even my gay friends have called me a prude (and consider, I run a platform about sex) when I tell them not to bore me with misogynistic TikTok clips. If you don’t talk about sex the way men have been trained to talk about it, then you are a prude and simply not cool enough for school.

The workshops might not be useless. But they are not the real answer to finding our way out of this dystopia. Education, like patriarchy, is a structure. Just dropping new content into it doesn’t change what it does. In the structure of competitive education, those gender and sexuality workshops too can become one more competitive module you learn to ace — because your basic purpose has not altered. The same boys who are in Bois Locker Room, might easily be acing the Model UN and debating circuits, the social media conversations, saying all the right things about gender bias, toxic masculinity and inter-sectionality.

Liberal parents often show off their children’s by-rote sensitive (but not always good) writings — the passionate awareness of being a victim of gender discrimination, the performative pain of class inequity. It is not so different from saying ‘uncle ko poem sunao’.

The same by-rote politics will manifest later in ‘women-centric’ films made by men — liberal men castigating others for not knowing how to treat women. The right gestures will be made — like putting your mother’s first name as the middle name for the entire crew, in a sudden burst of born-again feminist consciousness. The catechism or rights-based discourse will be read out. And the performative mea culpas and ritualistic discussion of toxic masculinity will follow.

In a world where life is an exam — where you have to know the poem, not become it — everyone learns the right things to say, in order to win approval. And in the same way, everyone also knows what to hide.

Education and all the resources we put into it are about succeeding in public life — to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet, as TS Eliot wrote. We do not value the private sphere enough to put thought into an education for that, mostly hidden, part of life. We can be depressed but not surprised at the inability of young men to stand up for more humane relationships with women, sexuality, desire, because that has never been part of the syllabus anywhere. They have no language for it. Young women don’t have the means to recognise it — they still imagine that a man with the right terminology will also be decent. They have only been taught to think of men in terms of public attributes, not private ones. It would be hard to find the profile of a successful man in the Indian media, which mentions what kind of friend or partner he is, or asks what he feels about the world of love and emotion.

Sex is even more separated from the discussion. It is never discussed as part of life. It is a place of secrecy, shame, embarrassment and judgment, only made public through lewd jokes or lectures about violence. The only sources of sexual knowledge — in an experiential and not clinical sense — is mainstream pornography, which fragments sex into discrete acts and bodies into body parts — and online frat house culture. Mixed with a cultural universe and an educational system that emphasises hierarchy, disconnection and competitiveness, this gives us a recipe for self-hate. It leaves young people of all genders with a complete lack of resources to manage the world of desire that surges within them. The only language young people have is a second-hand one, and how can you find your own self, when you are always speaking in someone’s given language?

At the very least, Bois Locker Room may remind us that we need sex-education, which is age-appropriate — a curriculum that grows in scope along with the child — and that it should be comprehensive: looking at how health, desire, orientation, emotion, politics and culture intersect to create a sexual world.

But the task before is a more radical and political one. If education enslaves us, compelling us to be part of herds, gangs, clubs and cliques, then what does an education that liberates us look like? If education fragments us, keeping our minds, bodies and hearts separated like Science, Arts and Commerce, what is the education that integrates all these different aspects of being a person look like?

The bandying of phrases like toxic masculinity and that most Brahmanical of words, ‘problematic’, is not the road to discovering this education and this existence. The idea that boys have to be ‘fixed’ is itself a violence that does not acknowledge that every one of us lives in the patriarchy, is shaped by it and is also wounded by it. Such an attacking language only serves to harden the divisions and make the conversation inimical.

Three years ago I went to a town in Uttar Pradesh to do a workshop in a programme on masculinity. It was an all-men’s group and it was exhausting. They trotted out the politically correct self-analysis about masculinity. But probed to speak beyond it, about their emotions and relationships, about areas of doubt and experience, they congealed together into a sticky mass of resistance. They made jokes, sometimes demeaning each other and challenged the trainers by trivialising each question.

But when we recorded their narratives individually, very different behaviours emerged. There was a small percentage of absolutely intractable men I have come to categorise as Sententious Lecturers and Eternally Wounded. One kind speaks in lofty proclamations that mean very little. The other refuses to let their wound of rejection or hurt heal, and turns it into a justification for seeing numbness as strength and love and emotion as weakness. “Now I only use girls,” one said. “If I like a girl, I don’t sleep with her, because I won’t be able to give her the love she expects.” The world of emotion is expressed as an impossibility. But the majority of other men spanned the range. Some were tentative about their relationships, some confessing to hurt and inadequacy, even depression. Some laughed at their own sentimentality or discussed wanting more confidence, more love, less pressure.

Detached from the herd, and spoken to as individuals, about their emotions, they were quite different from each other and did not adhere to a fixed identity of gender and its associated behaviours. They did not have the confidence in themselves as individuals, to be themselves in front of a larger group of men.

In that they were reminiscent of the young women, who approached me in distress about the demeaning way their male friends discussed women, their conflict between seeing distasteful aspects of a friend you liked otherwise. These young women also did not have enough language to think through these contradictions.

Put very simply, we don’t give young people the means to see themselves as complex individuals — nor each other. Political language is important to identify structural issues, but in its current form where it essentially only knows how to describe a problem, it is insufficient to enable journeys of transformation and spark imaginations of change.

Education helps you to fit in with the herd to serve the larger power structures in a society. If you are very elite, you can learn the double speak of benefitting from this system, while also critiquing the system for your US college application essay.

An education which grants you immunity from the herd has to give you belief in your inner life. It has to grant importance to emotions, to desires, to pleasure, to poetry — to the ill-defined idea of personal life, an inner life — alongside the public.

I know it sounds utopian, but I don’t believe it is impossible. What it does ask from us, is to abandon the old system of report cards, to discard the traditional indicators of success and impact.

At Agents of Ishq, once we liberated ourselves from the logic of just garnering numbers for content or even working with a fixed curriculum, we began a journey that has constantly shown us new aspects of what young people need to strengthen their personal lives — they need information, they need conversation, they need a new language which fluidly incorporates love, sex, desire, attraction, lust, queerness, consent, gender identity, affection, friendship, rejection, relationality — not a language which puts all these in silos. Think of it as literacy in intimacy. Knowledge of how to relate with others on their own terms.

Perhaps all of education needs to be reimagined the way sexuality education has been reimagined. Perhaps our inner lives and our inter-dependence have to lead the way more, in redefining education. As we confront disconnection in myriad ways with pandemic isolation, we can see that we need a politics, a philosophy, a practice of relationality with others. Where the understanding that sexualness is mutually exchanged, not simply conquered and captured, is interwined with understanding that our emotional and personal worlds can be places of sustenance not weakness, to be attacked or guarded. And that is also intertwined with being able to see that resources are something to be shared for mutual survival, not hoarded, and grudgingly given or strategically taken away.

The Bois Locker Room and the crisis of our society in its current breakdown have a lot to say about each other. Both of them tell us that we have reached the limits of the system we live in. If the way out is together, then we need an education on what it means to do that.

Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker and writer whose work focuses on gender, feminism, urban life, love, desire and popular culture and spans many forms including documentary, fiction, print, video and sound installation. She is founder and creative director at Agents of Ishq.

via Blogger https://ift.tt/2YPXLWa

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exdraghunt · 7 years

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NC MerMania 2017

Today I’m finally flying home from North Carolina, so I thought it was a good time to put together my con report from MerMania, which I attended last weekend.

I arrived Friday night, about an hour before the mixer. Found my roomie, got my room key and moved my stuff into the room no problem. First time I’ve been in a con hotel that’s provided a mini-fridge in the room. score!

A line to get registered at a convention is hardly anything knew, and this was honestly nothing compared to some cons I’ve attended. Reg got a bit of a late start due to computer issues, also nothing new for cons. It was still relatively painless to fill out paperwork and get my wristband and goodie bag and all. Plus, while hanging out in line I got to re-connect with a bunch of people I hadn’t seen since last year.

The mixer was fun. The food was a nice bonus, I wasn’t expecting to get fed. As was the booths set up for vendors. I was rather dissapointed at the lack of Karaoke. I practiced a song for this year and everything. I did, at least, get to do the craft swap. Gave away nearly all my square-knot bracelets. I’m glad they were well received by everyone! Plus, I got some cool stuff in return.

My big test this year was my new ears. I’ve long wanted to include pointed ears with my mer outfit, I’ve just never had the resources before this year. I got a pair of $5 latex ear-tips at Champion, painted them to be closer to my skin color, and stuck ‘em on with spirit glue. They were a surprisingly big hit! And, even better, actually stayed on through hours of swimming. I tested them in the water for the first time in the hotel pool Friday night and was very pleased to discovered they stayed put exactly where they were.

My one issue was that i could never get the center of them to stay stuck down, creating a very obvious gap that irked me all con. Oh well, time to drop a little more money on a nicer pair of ear tips.

I spent most of the first night in the hotel trying not to roll off the edge of the bed. Narrowest hotel bed I’ve ever slept in. Didn’t get much sleep in consequence, but I’m used to operating on very small amounts of sleep. I did, at least, have plenty of time to get my makeup on and everything together before heading out to the GAC.

Staying with a roommate with a car was the best thing ever, by the way. No begging for rides to and from the GAC this year. xD

God, I do love the pool at the GAC. 17 foot deep dive well, hell yeah. I did make the decision not to use the locker rooms at the pool this year, unlike last year. There was a swim meet happening, and I was not comfortable trying to share the locker room with a bunch of non-convention goers (mundanes). Especially not in North Carolina, where it’s illegal for me to use public changing rooms anyway.

The GAC did have a gender-neutral bathroom, which came as a pleasant surprise to me. It was all the way at the end of the hall, which meant a rather long walk to and from the pool, but it saved me from the usual anxiety attack that normally accompanies using a locker room for me. Being a bathroom, the gender neutral space lacked showers, but I knew there was a shower pool-side from last year, so that wasn’t a big deal.

I did hear from another trans con-goer that she had issues accessing the gender-neutral space due to the pool staff. Which. Why would you try to keep anyone from using a gender-neutral bathroom? That’s kind of the whole point of having one, that it’s open to everyone.

Had another odd encounter with a pool-staffer. While I was sitting and hanging poolside with some other queer merfolk, one came up and randomly decided to inform us that “this was a family venue, so no kissing or anything like that.”

I have to wonder if the staffer would’ve said the same thing to a heterosexual couple kissing poolside, or if we required such a reprimand just for being queer. Even odder, none of us was kissing, or even being physically affectionate. Just a real wtf moment.

---

I didn’t attend any of the panels this year, just because there weren’t any that interested me. They all seemed very useful for other people, I must say. I also did want to attend the Mers of Color panel, but didn’t manage to get up early enough for it. I hope the people who did attend had a good time! Maybe next year we should have a panel about transgender, or LGBT merfolk in general.

I also chose not to attend the ball this year. It was a little out of my budget, and I must say I rarely have fun at them. The music just isn’t my jam, and if I don’t enjoy the music being played I know I won’t enjoy the evening. Instead, we played Cards Against Humanity up in the hotel room, and that was a real blast. I will never top the Haiku I managed to make for the “Make a Haiku Card”

Extremely Tight Pants

Exactly What You’d Expect

A Salty Surprise.

True poetry.

Sunday was another day spent mostly in the pool. I sat down to put my tail on, and immediately snapped one of the ankle-straps on my monofin. Because of course it would break at the con. Oh well, I should probably be glad it didn’t choose to break Saturday.

I was worried about finding something to borrow, since I know not a lot of mers use the Hydra fin. Fortunately, a very kind merman had one he wasn’t using that he allowed me to borrow for the day. Allowing me to swim all Sunday. (Now I just have to email Swimmear and see about getting a replacement from Spain. Yay.)

As is tradition, I was determined to do a merman group photo. We do one every year at the convention. The staff was really busy, so I had a hard time flagging anybody down to do an announcement or anything. Instead, I swam around and told every merman I could find, then got my roommate with a camera to take the shot. We didn’t get everyone (It’s honestly impossible to get every possible person for a group photo, if furry cons have told me anything), but it was certainly the largest merman group photo yet!

Finally, we packed up everything and went back to the hotel. I wiped off my makeup, packed up all my stuff, and went down to closing ceremonies. My mother apparently texted me that she had arrived to pick me up (I got that text roughly two days later), so I got my stuff and got into the car. Thus ends another Mermania.

Really, I had a great time. It’s not really like any other con I’ve attended. I know one thing, we’re gonna need a bigger venue next year!

There was also the fact that there was media everywhere you looked. I’m used to Furry cons, where media is banned, or anime cons, where the venue is so enormous you never really see the media. I gave a couple interviews, we’ll see if anything comes of it. I talked to people last year and never saw any of that footage. I’m proud of the people who did get interviewed though!

#con report #nc mermania #personal post

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brajeshupadhyay · 4 years

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In 1984, Delhi’s St. Stephen’s college was in the news for a time-honoured tradition: chick charts. Tradition is such a flexible word — making a practice sound unchangeable. In fact the college started admitting women students only in 1975 (it had been co-ed in the past, from 1928-1949). The nine years that women had been attending the college, was enough to term tradition, the frequent posting on the official college notice board, of Top 10 charts, made by male students, rating women on their breasts, butts, legs, mouths — and sometimes maybe, smiles. Smiles were what most women apparently used to mask the discomfort of the back-handed humiliation. When women are a minority, granted entrance to the worlds of men, going along with such behaviour, or being called a bad sport are often the perceived choices. That year, the college was closed as Delhi witnessed harrowing anti-Sikh violence. Shortly after it re-opened, a “Sardines Chick Chart” came up on the notice board, sardines being slang for sardarnis. The most striking quality of quotidian violence is its wild-eyed avidity. The instinct to further leer at the women of a community that has recently been brutalised puts the violence in sex like masala films can but dream of. The incident however, broke the uneasy acceptance of the ‘tradition’, and grew over time to become a protest that made it to the newspapers. Consequently, as the filmmaker Saba Dewan has recounted on Kafila, women students had men hissing ‘fuck off’ at them as they walked the corridors. The Girls’ Common Room was vandalised and students’ bras and panties were strewn everywhere, including furled from the college turret, just like victory flags of war. A Hen Chart was put up, making the clichéd connection between feminists and frumps, naming the most vocal members of the protest. The administration never held any men accountable, but did call in the women’s parents to complain about them. At around the same time, the filmmaker Bela Negi was studying in Sherwood College, a posh boarding school in Nainital, which too had only recently begun to admit women. “I was the head-girl. The head boy was the principal’s son and he wasn’t much into rules. I was a bit of a goody two-shoes so I would take my job somewhat seriously,” Negi said to me. On one occasion, she crossed the head boy over something. A few days later, “when I went out in a short skirt”, a group of about 25 boys pounced on her and gave her bumps on a pile of horse dung. “I knew it was no use complaining to the administration, so I got up and walked away, refusing to give them the pleasure of knowing they’d humiliated me.” The similarity to the Bois Locker Room incident — an Instagram group where schoolboys aged 14 to 18, rated schoolgirls’ body parts, shared their Instagram posts without consent, morphing their heads onto naked bodies — does not require over-articulation here. There’s no real difference. Bonding in private rooms, competing to trash talk women, dismembering women metaphorically, into body parts. Threatening to assault actually or metaphorically through public shaming, when called out. Traditions are what keep a society going, no? One of the unexpected discoveries I made while writing this essay was that the niece of a close friend was one of the minors discussed in the Bois Locker Room. I had heard over the last year that she and her mother had had several conflicts over her posting very sexualised images on Instagram. “Why do you think she does it?” I’d asked my friend then. “It’s the only way for girls to be popular in their schools”. It’s a tricky path, when popularity is equal to being an aspirational object, often leading to violent responses that you’re a bitch if you aren’t attainable, and a whore if you are. Eventually you find yourself beheaded via app and discover the dehumanisations that gives these currencies of attractiveness their power — for all genders. St. Stephen’s and Sherwood College are among the country’s elite educational institutions, grooming the rich and powerful for generations, a tradition being carried forward by the growing number of private schools today. Many students who were part of the incidents described above, as participants, or as uneasy bystanders, doubtless occupy positions of influence today — in politics, in civil services, in media, in academia, in corporate life. Many would be considered liberal leading lights. None of them, until today, have managed to create structures that naturally incorporate the point of view of anyone except elite heterosexual men — that we know of. Many of them might run the kind of organisations that yielded a bunch of #MeToo stories. Maybe on jolly social occasions, they say to women who object to their wife jokes, ‘yaar stop being such a feminist. You’re too serious’. Well, they’re just good students. They were groomed to decide what is serious and what is not on other people’s behalf. Someone married them, not expecting, or simply going along with, becoming a wife joke. Perhaps their kids go to the ‘good South Delhi schools’ everyone keeps mentioning when they express shock at the Bois Locker Room case. It’s such a sleight of hand, ‘good’ schools, ‘good’ families, that conflates virtue with privilege. “How can an educated person do this?” people exclaim. It is precisely an educated person who does these things. Elite education is designed as it always was, barring a few cool accessories, to train elite men to dominate other people and express that domination in a variety of ways. Education is structured to underline the importance of material success and competition at all cost, including the cost of understanding your own pleasures, relationships and emotions, which are considered distractions to be quelled, a source of weakness. Parents focus mostly on whether you are studying, when they think of your future, not about nourishing your inner life. They might notice an issue with your inner life only if you don’t do well at school. Everyone else is your competition. Everything you do requires fitting in but still, having an edge over others. The limit of learning is the exam — not the idea that you will keep learning from life. Exams are war and everyone must be an exam warrior. When we are trained to always go to war, what can we possibly know about how to go to peace? As you go up the ladder, the self-congratulatory declarations — “it’s just business”, “I’m just being practical” — all mean that empathy and emotion have been successfully numbed, enough, that you can defend the scrapping of labour laws and can go to the government and say, “Do not send migrant labourers home. We may need them for our (just) business.” The making of chick charts, the rating of girls, the slurs against queer and Dalit colleagues — these are all social reminders that elite, straight men are the ones entitled to define these structures, who get to grant approval and make decisions, in schools and colleges, and later in offices, governments, the internet. Your continued presence is contingent on fitting into this system and not objecting to its ‘just fun’ traditions. They are the foam in a double shot cappuccino of privilege. Twenty five years after the incident in school, Bela Negi ran into one of her classmates at a school reunion. “He said to me ,‘remember how we gave you bumps, ha ha’. I said, ‘I can’t believe that as a grown up you’re laughing and bragging about it instead of feeling remorse or embarrassment’.” Other male classmates looked uneasy when she brought it up. Women at the party told her ‘forget it, now it’s in the past’. But it’s not in the past, is it? It is firmly with us in the present — the sexual language used to attack women in a political disagreement online. The baying for sexual violation of Muslim and ‘sickular’ women by right wing men. The number of liberal men named in #MeToo accounts. The calling Safoora Zargar, the arrested member of the Jamia Coordination Committee, prostitute and saying ‘give her a condom’ because she is pregnant — and Muslim and politically active. It is so much with us, that the day the hashtag #boislockerroom started trending I didn’t pay attention because I thought, “it must be some new web series”. A lot goes into maintaining the illusion that elite men are not sexually violent on a casual and intensified basis all the time. Part of this is the reigning discourse around sexual violence, which privileges the safety of women — elite women — over their freedom. The public space is painted as a dangerous one for women, where they are under threat of being attacked by ‘other’ men — read, lower caste or class, men. If elite men bother to talk about women, it is only to hold them up as emblems of purity or achievement, or to school other men for not knowing how to respect women. (In other words they don’t seem to know how to talk to women, but that’s another discussion). Being a bro who stands up for feminism is an elite pastime across the political spectrum — sometimes they are scolding creeps in a music video, sometimes they are killing your boyfriend on Valentine’s Day. This discussion about ‘others’ is like a curtain. Behind it is the private behaviour of men — and that is never to be discussed. A man who does it is weak. A woman who brings matters private into public light, risks marginalisation and vilification. We have seen that, through domestic violence scandals and sexual harassment cases. That is why the first responses to many such incidents is to blame women — #girlslockerroom — and then to clamp down on the freedom of women or blame them for acting as if they lived in a world where men’s violence against them is not a given. Boys will be boys, goes the platitude. As if this is an immutable condition and we must all tiptoe around them, which we are constantly, daily being trained to do, lest we provoke their boys-will-be-boys-ism. The other response is to demand strong punitive action against perpetrators — we don’t mind if boys are boys as long as their privilege does not expose itself through an act of criminal violence. Then, we must teach them a lesson. One sometimes wants to say, but this is the lesson you have been teaching them: of supremacy. All other lessons are sitting in the pocket of that lesson. *** Interviewed by media, one school principal expressed bewilderment that their students could be involved in the Bois Locker Room because “the school has regularly provided inputs on gender”. At every school and college where I, or my colleagues at Agents of Ishq have done a talk or workshop, in the last two years, young women have come up to discuss, exactly the same experience of the Bois Locker Room case. They don’t know how to counter the distasteful misogyny that the cool, edgy filmmakers and forthcoming media sensations of the future subject them to. “Why don’t you say something?” I ask. “Because I don’t feel like being rude to a friend.” “Because they call me a prude or they might think I’m un-cool.” “Why do you care what they think?” I asked a young woman. She kept quiet. She knows in theory, that she need not care, but the world has not reshaped itself enough to make this automatic and there is very little conversation to help her figure out the way to do this positively, not negatively as a victim or an aggressor. If you are a woman working in a cool corporate job, media, art films and so on, you will recognise this experience. In elite worlds where cool is a very necessary currency, you try to hold on to it tenuously, timorously. To not accept the banal misogyny and poor humour of men, marks you as un-cool. Despite being a grown woman, you must carry out an adolescent exhibitionism while talking about sex, to show you are blasé, so you may be accepted as one of the guys — and it’s simply a different version of young schoolgirls posing in particular ways, to gain importance in this world. Even my gay friends have called me a prude (and consider, I run a platform about sex) when I tell them not to bore me with misogynistic TikTok clips. If you don’t talk about sex the way men have been trained to talk about it, then you are a prude and simply not cool enough for school. The workshops might not be useless. But they are not the real answer to finding our way out of this dystopia. Education, like patriarchy, is a structure. Just dropping new content into it doesn’t change what it does. In the structure of competitive education, those gender and sexuality workshops too can become one more competitive module you learn to ace — because your basic purpose has not altered. The same boys who are in Bois Locker Room, might easily be acing the Model UN and debating circuits, the social media conversations, saying all the right things about gender bias, toxic masculinity and inter-sectionality. Liberal parents often show off their children’s by-rote sensitive (but not always good) writings — the passionate awareness of being a victim of gender discrimination, the performative pain of class inequity. It is not so different from saying ‘uncle ko poem sunao’. The same by-rote politics will manifest later in ‘women-centric’ films made by men — liberal men castigating others for not knowing how to treat women. The right gestures will be made — like putting your mother’s first name as the middle name for the entire crew, in a sudden burst of born-again feminist consciousness. The catechism or rights-based discourse will be read out. And the performative mea culpas and ritualistic discussion of toxic masculinity will follow. In a world where life is an exam — where you have to know the poem, not become it — everyone learns the right things to say, in order to win approval. And in the same way, everyone also knows what to hide. Education and all the resources we put into it are about succeeding in public life — to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet, as TS Eliot wrote. We do not value the private sphere enough to put thought into an education for that, mostly hidden, part of life. We can be depressed but not surprised at the inability of young men to stand up for more humane relationships with women, sexuality, desire, because that has never been part of the syllabus anywhere. They have no language for it. Young women don’t have the means to recognise it — they still imagine that a man with the right terminology will also be decent. They have only been taught to think of men in terms of public attributes, not private ones. It would be hard to find the profile of a successful man in the Indian media, which mentions what kind of friend or partner he is, or asks what he feels about the world of love and emotion. Sex is even more separated from the discussion. It is never discussed as part of life. It is a place of secrecy, shame, embarrassment and judgment, only made public through lewd jokes or lectures about violence. The only sources of sexual knowledge — in an experiential and not clinical sense — is mainstream pornography, which fragments sex into discrete acts and bodies into body parts — and online frat house culture. Mixed with a cultural universe and an educational system that emphasises hierarchy, disconnection and competitiveness, this gives us a recipe for self-hate. It leaves young people of all genders with a complete lack of resources to manage the world of desire that surges within them. The only language young people have is a second-hand one, and how can you find your own self, when you are always speaking in someone’s given language? At the very least, Bois Locker Room may remind us that we need sex-education, which is age-appropriate — a curriculum that grows in scope along with the child — and that it should be comprehensive: looking at how health, desire, orientation, emotion, politics and culture intersect to create a sexual world. But the task before is a more radical and political one. If education enslaves us, compelling us to be part of herds, gangs, clubs and cliques, then what does an education that liberates us look like? If education fragments us, keeping our minds, bodies and hearts separated like Science, Arts and Commerce, what is the education that integrates all these different aspects of being a person look like? The bandying of phrases like toxic masculinity and that most Brahmanical of words, ‘problematic’, is not the road to discovering this education and this existence. The idea that boys have to be ‘fixed’ is itself a violence that does not acknowledge that every one of us lives in the patriarchy, is shaped by it and is also wounded by it. Such an attacking language only serves to harden the divisions and make the conversation inimical. Three years ago I went to a town in Uttar Pradesh to do a workshop in a programme on masculinity. It was an all-men’s group and it was exhausting. They trotted out the politically correct self-analysis about masculinity. But probed to speak beyond it, about their emotions and relationships, about areas of doubt and experience, they congealed together into a sticky mass of resistance. They made jokes, sometimes demeaning each other and challenged the trainers by trivialising each question. But when we recorded their narratives individually, very different behaviours emerged. There was a small percentage of absolutely intractable men I have come to categorise as Sententious Lecturers and Eternally Wounded. One kind speaks in lofty proclamations that mean very little. The other refuses to let their wound of rejection or hurt heal, and turns it into a justification for seeing numbness as strength and love and emotion as weakness. “Now I only use girls,” one said. “If I like a girl, I don’t sleep with her, because I won’t be able to give her the love she expects.” The world of emotion is expressed as an impossibility. But the majority of other men spanned the range. Some were tentative about their relationships, some confessing to hurt and inadequacy, even depression. Some laughed at their own sentimentality or discussed wanting more confidence, more love, less pressure. Detached from the herd, and spoken to as individuals, about their emotions, they were quite different from each other and did not adhere to a fixed identity of gender and its associated behaviours. They did not have the confidence in themselves as individuals, to be themselves in front of a larger group of men. In that they were reminiscent of the young women, who approached me in distress about the demeaning way their male friends discussed women, their conflict between seeing distasteful aspects of a friend you liked otherwise. These young women also did not have enough language to think through these contradictions. Put very simply, we don’t give young people the means to see themselves as complex individuals — nor each other. Political language is important to identify structural issues, but in its current form where it essentially only knows how to describe a problem, it is insufficient to enable journeys of transformation and spark imaginations of change. Education helps you to fit in with the herd to serve the larger power structures in a society. If you are very elite, you can learn the double speak of benefitting from this system, while also critiquing the system for your US college application essay. An education which grants you immunity from the herd has to give you belief in your inner life. It has to grant importance to emotions, to desires, to pleasure, to poetry — to the ill-defined idea of personal life, an inner life — alongside the public. I know it sounds utopian, but I don’t believe it is impossible. What it does ask from us, is to abandon the old system of report cards, to discard the traditional indicators of success and impact. At Agents of Ishq, once we liberated ourselves from the logic of just garnering numbers for content or even working with a fixed curriculum, we began a journey that has constantly shown us new aspects of what young people need to strengthen their personal lives — they need information, they need conversation, they need a new language which fluidly incorporates love, sex, desire, attraction, lust, queerness, consent, gender identity, affection, friendship, rejection, relationality — not a language which puts all these in silos. Think of it as literacy in intimacy. Knowledge of how to relate with others on their own terms. Perhaps all of education needs to be reimagined the way sexuality education has been reimagined. Perhaps our inner lives and our inter-dependence have to lead the way more, in redefining education. As we confront disconnection in myriad ways with pandemic isolation, we can see that we need a politics, a philosophy, a practice of relationality with others. Where the understanding that sexualness is mutually exchanged, not simply conquered and captured, is interwined with understanding that our emotional and personal worlds can be places of sustenance not weakness, to be attacked or guarded. And that is also intertwined with being able to see that resources are something to be shared for mutual survival, not hoarded, and grudgingly given or strategically taken away. The Bois Locker Room and the crisis of our society in its current breakdown have a lot to say about each other. Both of them tell us that we have reached the limits of the system we live in. If the way out is together, then we need an education on what it means to do that. Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker and writer whose work focuses on gender, feminism, urban life, love, desire and popular culture and spans many forms including documentary, fiction, print, video and sound installation. She is founder and creative director at Agents of Ishq.

http://sansaartimes.blogspot.com/2020/05/bois-locker-room-case-underscores-vital.html

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