#queer critique

[absolutebl]

Hey! I wanted to ask you about the bizarre imposition of "husband/wife" dynamics on BL couples.

This question first came to me when I watched my second ever BL, Bad Buddy (First being SE).

There, I thought the trope was just another way to demonstrate Pat still has some elements of toxic masculinity, but it gets shot down fast enough that I didn't think much of it other than as something that is part of Pat's growth with Pran's influence.

Then I fell down the BL rabbit hole and never looked back...

And I saw the trope EVERYWHERE

Particularly with Thai BL's. What is it with the bizarre need to apply het dynamics over a relationship that EXPLICITLY breaks the very foundations of them?

Why is the uke feminized against his will so often? Why the feminization at all? Not that femininity is bad thing, but rather, why particularly project the husband/wife dynamic?

A dynamic that stereotypically represents some of the bizzare aspects of the enforcement of gender roles with some other aspects of dominance and submission (and not in the kink way).

This became particularly alarming to me with BohnDuen in My Engineer. I'm at Episode 9 right now and the whole awful top/bottom discourse aside, this entire situation with the husband/wife makes me awfully uncomfortable.

Is there any particular reason for this?

Ah, heterosexual dysmorphia and the seme/uke dynamic. I talk about is quite a bit under the queer critique banner, here's some links:

BL Master Post (includes a brief history of the genre and its connection to yaoi, the source of this dynamic, as well as audience expectations)

Husband Wife Language in Thai BL 

Femme Representation in BL 

Sex negativity as part of the seme/uke dynamic

MORE seme/uke discussion including some coaching from P’AbsoluteBL on your sex life.... 

In which I talk a bit about the ubiquity of dubious consent in BL

Tropes that are seme/uke dysmorphic 

Hope this is helpful! 

#heterosexual dysmorphia #semeuke #thai bl #bl critique #queer critique

[rustchild]

desperately craving weird surrealist arthurania. Knights with no faces wandering through the mists. Seams between Christian and pre-Christian Britain gaping like open wounds. Beafts and visions. Maybe a monk. Maybe the monk is gay

#This post brought to you by remembering that The Green Knight exists #and longing to live in the alternate universe where it launched a whole genre of high quality queer indie arthurania retellings #craving themes of guilt honor repression wildness etc etc #bonus points if it includes critique of the whole divine right of kings English empire imaginary that can accompany Arthur retellings #I would write it myself but alas! I have no brain #Mine

[anneapocalypse]

So, just curious how many writers and creators will have to be forcibly outed by relentless harassment before we acknowledge that "This queer characters was written by a cishet person and that's why they're bad" is not good criticism.

#yes i'm just going to come out and say it i'm talking about sera #not exclusively but i am talking about her #'but her writer actually iS A--' you don't know that! it doesn't matter! and i don't care! #just say that you do not like the character. #people will reblog posts about the latest actor or YA author or whatever getting forced out of the closet and be like #'wow. :( that's terrible.' #and then GO RIGHT BACK TO DOING IT #when are we going to learn #when are we going to stop doing this BEFORE somebody is forcibly outed #because in practical terms #that means you have to be okay with queer characters being written by straight people. #you have to stop weaponizing that against writers you don't like. #you have to be willing to critique the writing on its own merits #without using the writer's (assumed) identity to prop up your arguments #that's how it works #but who wants to actually change the way they talk about media #when tearing apart people's identities for clout is far more entertaining. #gwaren exports #fandom problems #fandom critical

[deancasforcutie]

"Now you live in a secret bunker with an angel and Lucifer’s kid", AKA queering domesticity par excellence

#something capital-q Queer about the way they create a life within The Life unlike the heteronormative 'apple pie life' the show critiques #(and just the way they're masculine mlm never stereotyped into 'man/woman' roles even with constant parallels to m/f pairings) #it's barrier-breaking and they're very special to me ��� #dean winchester #castiel #destiel #spnedit #supernatural #spn #parallels #dean is bi #spn is queer #mine

[idolomantises]

i'll be real, i always hated it whenever media tries to "critique" Christianity while portraying all Christians as bigoted, misogynistic and irredeemable. its why it matters a lot to me that my own angels have some nuances to them.

Sera is very puritanical and obsessed with showing her devotion to God, but she's still a caring and well-meaning angel.

#txt #and i dont like how people get weirdly uppity about this #'oh youre saying i cant criticize christianity even though christians--' christians literally colonized my country im not saying #you cant critique them. im saying that is flat out childish to depict all christians as immoral and irredeemable in your attempt at critiqu #an angel wouldn't be anti redemption. a lot of christians are feminist and queer friendly. you have to understand the nuances #before you attempt to critique them this like. basic writing. #a really good example of this is moral orel which is a show i adore.

[gender0bender]

IDs: A black and white graphic of four open mouths with the words “It’s not blasphemy God wronged me first.” The second image is the same graphic inverted. ED.

#cw christianity #sort of #my art #trans artist #queer artist #autistic artist #disabled artist #um #anyway my take on blasphemy is that God is a relative concept and also #I take a gnostic standpoint that holiness is something inherent to all aspects of life #so it's actually impossible to blaspheme God. bc that's you. #but also critiquing God and the concept of God feels impt to me! woo

[corporrealism]

new piece about queer conventions of attractiveness, body hair, and my own transition <3

#not sure if I’ll mess with the background but I’ll see after tomorrows critique #this one y’all can reblog I was just self conscious abt half finished paintings lol #my art #queer art #edit: I updated the photo to what the painting looks like now after working on it again #how it was posted originally won’t change for who reblogged it before the switch #thanks yall!!

[steveyockey]

Once you start looking, you see queer presentism everywhere. It pops up when politicians espouse our “unprecedented” ability to love who we love, and when recent book bans are said to “roll back the clock” on LGBTQ+ rights, implying that clocks tick continually toward progress. It manifests in Oscar Wilde hagiography, which elevates him to the status of singular queer martyr and extrapolates an epochal paradigm from his 1895 trials. It seeps into our everyday speech, in our references to “forbidden love” and our use of the term “Victorian” to imply prudish homophobia. It both stems from and structures the editorial projects that publishers pursue, giving rise to catalogues like the NYRB Classics, where the oldest work tagged LGBTQ+ is Colette’s The Pure and the Impure (1932) — as if nothing queer was written before.

The truth is that there’s a world of queer writing that predates Colette, volumes of manuscript and books that aren’t so much products of historical suppression as they are suppressed by today’s “it’s gotten better” mindset. This is convenient for a culture industry in search of the sui generis and always eager to pat itself on the back for its own enlightenment. But the almost total neglect, outside the academy, of the queer literary archive is a shame, and not only because it propagates factual errors. In limiting our horizons for understanding how our predecessors lived, loved, and wrote, we end up narrowing our own vistas. When we apply the repressive hypothesis, we’re actually repressing ourselves.

Colton Valentine, “Against Queer Presentism​ | How the Book World Neglects the Archive,” The Drift, October 25, 2022.

#reading #this probably gives the wrong impression of the piece itself which does a lot of really interesting work critiquing modern queer literature #as failing to understand the historical existence of lgbt people BUT these two paragraphs seem like the easiest to isolate and I really like #the work they are doing!!!!! sorry Colton valentine I love the whole piece. maybe I’ll make another post

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

LGBTQ Christians, like a lot of Christians, value their feelings and comfort over the very real harm caused by Christianity and the people who've been harmed by it. Good for you that your denomination is affirming and you have every right to practice the religion of your choice but how fucking dare you try to dictate how people should feel about a god and religion that has been used as a tool to oppress the very community you're a part of.

#maybe its not my place to say #but it grinds my gears that LGBTQ Christians act more fucking offended by UwU people critiquing their religion or being rightfully angry #than actual violence and stigma that Christians perpetuate against LGBTQ people #sorry babe your fucking religion has been a tool oppression of queerness for fucking centuries #fuck off with your UwU but my church is accepting #i don't give a shit your experience IS NOT UNIVERSAL #ex christian #religious trauma #anti christianity

[ffc1cb]

i’ve always found it peculiar how during meeting the chargers cutscene the game just assumes your character automatically understands what krem is talking about when he mentions binding (though, granted, it’s all very unsubtle). like, this is a roleplaying game. what if i want to play a character who just doesn’t get it

#dragon age #cremisius aclassi #inquisitor trevelyan #at least give me an in game explanation of why the inquisitor would Know this right away #it's not like transgenderism is a widely explored topic in da lore. the most you can find about it in inquisition specifically excluding #krem and seras countless transmisogynistic lines is one codex that mentions that some previous divine mightve been a trans woman #and the way it's written sucks ass. the infamous sex in thedas codex also mentions nothing on the topic of transness. so like #whats up with that #art stuff #before anyone says anything i fully realize how i look critiquing a bioware game that came out in 2014 on its faulty queer representation #please trust me i know. im just thinking out loud #ALSO. in case it isnt obvious. parsley transed they gender. the joke is that theyre a nonbinary femme now #its hard for me to show it through art because it would involve misgendering them but they dont actually start going by they/them pronouns #until after halamshiral. so like technically if i made them refer to themselves as he/him at any point before that it would be canonical but #its not like my art is chronological by any means and cannot be taken out of context by virtue of it existing as an individual post online #if someone were to reblog an art of them saying hi im a dude theyd go cool! hashtag male inquisitor. or something #the tragic case of sacrificing narrative in order to not get second hand discomfort at seeing parsley misgendered #ANYWAY..........

[blossomthepinkbunny]

Poor rendition of queer characters in HH and HB

Here I am again talking about queer representation in Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss, this time just more generally. Because it's always a little weird to me when people claim HH/HB to have good queer representation, when in actuality most of the queer characters are either just blatant stereotypes or get mishandled somehow. And with Helluva Boss recently winning the Queertys - Web series reward I think that this is probably a pretty good time to acknowledge that kind of stuff (as people have done before).

TW: Sexual assault, R@pe (when referring to the actions of characters)

Blitzø (Pansexual): is very sexual and seen on screen multiple times either having sex or just having had sex. Pretty much fits the general stereotype of queer men always being sexual and also the stereotype of pansexuals just sleeping with everybody. Like, he literally screwed the mutual Ex of his coworkers even though he knew how much that guy hurt them.

Stolas (Gay): also mostly sexual (from how he was introduced) and he is in a pretty terrible "relationship" with Blitzø, which includes coercion, SA, Power dynamics and fetishization. Another very sex-driven queer man. Also just great proof for the people assuming that queer relationships are inherently predatory, unhealthy and never work out.

Moxxie (Bisexual): is often forced into a very feminine role because even in relationships with women, queer men always have to be pointed out to be feminine and putting a guy in a dress is funny I guess.

Fizzarolli & Asmodeus (Queer): they're actually better than a lot of the other characters here but there is still some of that uneven power dynamic going on with them and there are obvious issues with their relationship. Overall they aren't too bad though. They didn't get that much sexual focus and what they got is kinda warranted since Ozzie is the Lust demon. But there is that one scene with Fizz stepping out of his car with Dildo confetti canons (I think) and that was sorta weird, since in an episode before that they presented Crimson as being homophobic and stereotypical for assuming queer men are all obsessed with dicks. Which is just interesting because thats most of the queer men in Vivzepops stories.

Chaz (Queer): just a sexually abusive asshole because we definitely needed more predatory queer men in this show.

Sally May (Trans mtf): basically the single recognized trans character in both shows and she only had one line. After that they made fan merch for her which consisted of her in a bikini with her bulge being drawn pretty visibly (multiple times). Of course there's nothing wrong with Trans people who don't have surgery but it's just a tiny bit weird to me that fanservice merchandise is what she got reduced to, when something like that wasn't even the joke of the only line she had in the show and because she hasn't recieved any kind of focus after that.

Angel Dust (Gay): now there is a lot of stuff that could be said about Angel. On one hand he is another very sexual gay man whose screentime often just consists of sex jokes and references. On the other hand that's a big point for his character. How he tries to act confident in his sexuality when in reality it's the main source of his problems. Though he does often harass other men in the show and that's just so unnecessary. Talking about Angel mostly leads into discussing if he is good representation for SA victims or not, which is something I don't want to talk about that much because I feel like it's not my place to judge that as someone who never has experienced SA. I'm gonna say that I do find Viv's treatment of him outside of the show insensitive (with the pro-shipping, diminishing Valentino as an Abuser and general sexualization of the characters) but as far as the portrayal of him in the show goes I've heard different opinions and you should read the discussion's of actual r@pe survivors about this topic if you want to know about more about it.

Husk (Queer): I don't have anything to say about Husk. He is a very refreshing queer man in these show's and there is nothing bad about him I could think of right now.

Valentino (Queer): for him I mostly want to talk about how he is treated outside of the show which doesn't sit right with me. He is a villian in HH so it's understandable that he is gonna do effed up stuff. I also like that the show tries to make a point about how men get sexually assaulted too (wether they succeeded in that inside the show I'm not gonna judge too hard like I said). But there are a lot of people who not only sexualize him, but also his actions and his relationship to Angel and from what I know Viv never really spoke out against that. She actually interacts with people who do that stuff and I it's just kinda gross.

Vox (Queer): I also don't have a lot to say about him. He and Val are a couple so he is dating a r@pist but he is also a villain so you can't really expect more from him. Especially since he would still be interacting with a r@pist even if they weren't dating.

Alastor (Aromantic, Asexual): is obviously not interested in relationships or sex but his identity is pretty much ignored by a huge amount of the fandom. Vivzepop never say's anything about people blatantly invalidating him like that. It seems to me like she doesn't care about characters who can't be involved in shipping but still wanted to have more diversity in her show so she just called him AroAce. In Hazbin Hotel he isn't bad representation though. His sexuality is never the focus but thats fine, it's mostly just the treatment he gets outside of HH which I don't like.

Charlie (Bisexual): doesn't have a lot to her sexuality. This is something I talked about pretty lengthy in my other post, specifically about the lack of Sapphic content in both shows, so I won't go into too much detail here. Her relationship with Vaggie would probably be the best in both shows if it wasn't for the fact that they both never get the real spotlight as a couple. And there is that thing in Vivzepops stories where the women are pretty much sexless without men and that's obviously something that is generally an issue when talking about the lack of Sapphic representation (which is also a topic heavily tied to sexism). Charlie's portrayal isn't necessarily stereotypical but that's just because there is nothing to her identity in the show.

Vaggie (Lesbian): like I said I already talked about the Chaggie relationship so now I wanna focus on something I didn't even mention in that post. Her name literally being Vagina and that's apparently funny because she is a Lesbian so she obviously likes Vagina. That's just incredibly stereotypical and also excludes Trans Lesbians and Asexual Lesbians who don't want sex. The whole joke was that Adam named her that because he is obsessed with sex and he's a jerk. But her name was always Vagina even in the pilot (from what I know Adam wasn't conceived then and neither was the idea that Vaggie even is a former exterminator).

That's all the queer characters I could think of. I hope I didn't miss any.

I thought about including Millie here too. But she was also already included in my other discussion post and I still don't know if she is canonically Bisexual of if that is just a headcannon so I didn't put her here.

I'm just gonna say that i don't have a problem with queer men being sexual (or any queer person in that regard). But it's pretty much every one of her queer male characters. This is especially bad when a lot of the relationships are toxic as well.

I just think too many characters fit stereotypes and to me that isn't good queer representation. If you like the depiction of queer characters in HH or HB that's good for you and you don't have to agree with me. But you also can't really deny a lot of this stuff and you can't expect others to just be fine with bland, hurtful and sometimes even toxic representation like there is in these shows.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel criticism #vivzepop critical #hazbin hotel critical #hazbin hotel critique #vivziepop #helluva boss #helluva boss critical #helluva boss critique #helluva boss criticism #queer representation #queer rep in media

[seventh-fantasy]

re: jianghu as a queer space in mlc

here to answer @redemption-revenge !! in reply to this post

(also tagging @markiafc @ananeiah <3)

there are many definitions of jianghu, but this is specifically based on the framing of jianghu as the space people retreat to, away from the mainstream sphere governed by the imperial court. in that is a sense of rejection and defiance against the patriarchal, heteronormative values and norms, which had been enforced through a fixation on upkeeping order in the society. as such i guess it's not too much of a stretch to interpret jianghu as a queer space in a way that's characterised by a spirit of nonconformity to the norms. consequently, it makes sense for stories set in jianghu be used to illustrate and navigate queer identities/experiences/feelings - which I came to believe mlc had made really good use of.

there's always kind of a dichotomy between 江湖 jianghu and 庙堂 miaotang (ie. imperial court). like in mlc, there are two separate, distinct law enforcement bodies from the respective spheres - and jianghu strives to keep imperial court from interfering in their affairs. like how li xiangyi firmly stands against getting imperial court involved in jianghu matters. like how fang duobing is actively running away from the grip of the royal court on his life choices. the rejection of the mainstream (very conveniently and broadly put, confucian) norms in mlc also manifests in many of its key relationships being non-familial (in the sense of blood/marriage-based kinship) and there being little emphasis on the main characters' biological familial ties. (anyway this is for a whole different meta on its own... edit: it's here)

it's then actually a sort of irony that the imperial court's institution of law and order is what sigu sect/baichuan court had been formed to be a de facto counterpart to. so when li xiangyi becomes li lianhua, it triggered the process of deconstructing the meaning of installing such an institution and the need to maintain order to a fundamentally nonconforming space such as jianghu. mama fang's seemingly throwaway line of criticising li xiangyi and his mission is in fact the thesis statement in this particular reading of mlc's story: jianghu makes its own rules. nobody should dare to do it in its place.

now deprived of all means to fight like he used to, li xiangyi's new life as li lianhua is essentially a refresh of how he views jianghu. the death of li xiangyi the leader of sigu sect and top of wulin, meant taking apart the idea that jianghu is a lawless arena where the fittest fight to the top for power and control over wulin. and li lianhua then putting together lotus tower, living a life focusing on a domestic lifestyle this time for real far from the reach of the governance both from the imperial court and sigu sect/baichuan court, is him living the jianghu that's defined as a space away from any form of conformity.

with that, there's also a sense of queerness to this particular way of living as li lianhua, if you consider the chinese conceptualisation of gender being more social than biological. if femininity and masculinity were respectively characterised by inner/domestic sphere and external/any space outside of that, dare I say...it actually makes li lianhua's moving house mindblowingly smart as a metaphor for gender fluidity. lonely wanderers are common in wuxia but housed lonely wanderers? he carved for himself a domestic (ie. feminine) space in the wilderness - among a jianghu space that's still dominated by masculine values of aggression and competition. and being freely mobile makes this feminine space more fluid and less tied down than the more rigid, inert domestic, feminine spaces in traditional mainstream society. when you combine it with how his character has been fem-coded - even as li xiangyi (eg. yin-coded powers/energy) (also a whole other meta on its own... edit: it's here now), it speaks to a part of him that has always found appeal in qualities conventionally associated with femininity of stability, gentleness and non-aggression. and a rejection of expectations to fight and destroy. he is defining who he is in his own terms, in the true spirit of jianghu.

#莲花楼 #mysterious lotus casebook #my posts #lhl #lhlmeta #jielin writes something #also ofc the queer reading wrt defiance against norms in the way of choosing jianghu extends to fdb (and dfs?) individually too #fdb. ace. in particular #this meta can go longer. so much more to be said. but i was committed to posting it before i go to bed #but i'll say here first that i think it's the femininity in lxy that is what precisely makes him an unparalleled swordsman. not in spite of #apologies if it doesnt make any sense or just going off tangents in general lol it's 2am #struggled supremely writing this. for hours i was mind to mouth.meme #i sound batshit insane by the last part but at least that idea had been somewhat peer reviewed by my lovely friends........... #mark and ana don't read though before yall finish the show #also this is what happens to ur brain when ur other media obsession is a hardcore confucian critique/deconstruction #of a royal court intrigue story

[amalgamezz]

aromantics went to ao3 and searched for nonromantic fics. 12 dead 407 injured as filter returned 58 mistagged romantic works out of 62 results while the rest was last updated 5 years ago.

#aromantic #actually aromantic #amatonormativity #queer #lgbtq #lgbtqia #fandom critique #fandom culture #ao3 #/m #also whenever the author plays the 'platonic... or perhaps something more?' card it kills me on spot

[coraxforaii]

Lesbian pride flag tigers! I was planning to just do one but I couldn't figure out which color scheme I liked better, so I just did all three!

#lesbian #pride #2slgbtq #lgbt art #lgbt #queer #queer art #butch #femme #tiger #tiger art #pride flag #pride 2023 #lgbt pride #sapphic #lesbian pride #wlw #always down for critiques too! #i definitely want to work on my shading more

[deancasforcutie]

how do we know spn is queer on purpose? because the hayscoded gays coparenting a child is literally just text like HELLO

#when you run a postmodern critique of heteronormative blinders up to and including the censorship conditions afflicting your work #and your audience proves you devastatingly right/negates their own queer lens by swearing you made it this absurdly transparent on ACCIDENT #dean winchester #castiel #jack kline #destiel #spnedit #parallels #supernatural #spn #13.06 #14.08 #14.16 #14.14 #15.01 #15.11 #15.13 #15.15 #spn is queer #mine

[jahiera]

without getting into the rest of this (enough thinkpieces have been written) the way you guys talk about being attracted to women is really weird sometimes. maybe it’s just the me being a dyke and all that but sometimes I can hear the “oh he wouldn’t like PUSSY 🤢🤢🤢” in your voices

#critical / #I do think there’s some interesting nuances to break down in how I DO think #that astarion’s queerness is getting kind of sanitized into a heterosexual ideal in some spheres #but on the other side of things. people can be REALLY weird about him on the other side of things. #with what amounts to Quirky Gay Man Stereotyping #but also. then someone comes out swinging with this rather than any sort of thoughtful critique on how #none of you can be normal about overt queerness that doesn’t exist safely inside some kind of binary or consumable stereotype. But! #none of that has to do with THIS. In which the nuances are reduced down to. Ew!!! Girl Cooties!!!! #I would think this is trying to bait bullshit on purpose but it’s an spn blog………